
In April 2017, Apple called in five journalists for a face-to-face meeting. When Apple calls you, you come. It’s a fascinating story, and John Gruber called it that this meeting must be about the Mac Pro. I.e. either Apple was going to discontinue it, or they were going to support it, but not have anything ready to show in the near future e.g. the 2017 WWDC. So the short of the story is that Apple had painted themselves into a thermal corner with their innovative “garbage can” design of the Mac Pro. Apple had banked on two smaller size GPUs plus one CPU, while the industry went with one larger size GPU plus one CPU. With that mistake acknowledged, we now know we have Mac Pros coming – not in 2017- but they’re coming. That’s all we had to work with until the 2017 WWDC on June 5th. Tim Cook said this was going to be the best WWDC ever, and now that it’s all over, it’s hard to call him a liar. The bottom line is that we creatives are now in great shape. The iPad Pros are looking more and more focused on doing real professional / productive work with iOS 11. More importantly, the Macbook Pros and iMacs look fantastic. Both now have the option for 32 or 64 GB of RAM, meaning either machine is dialed in for the kind of work we do. Given that Mac Pros are coming, it looks like we will have a fantastic roundup of machines to serve our creative needs. But wait, there’s more! We also have an iMac Pro coming in December, featuring 8, 10 or 18 core Xeon processors and up to 128 GB of RAM with improved 5K displays and the ability to drive additional monitors. These machines are incredible, and it’s exciting that Apple is aware that creatives have been falling in love with their iMac’s due to its integrated design and significant capabilities. My dream machine might be a bottom of the line iMac Pro (partially because they will come in space gray), and I wonder if even that would be overkill. I’d probably have to invest in several thousand dollars in instruments and effects and need to score a feature length movie to tax that machine (which I’m quite pleased to do with proper funding… anyone?). These are the kinds of machines that developers, pro video folks, and physicists need. That these machines exist, and that Mac Pros are still coming, is proof that we have so much more excellence to look forward to. This interview hosted by John Gruber with beloved Apple Execs Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi AKA Hair-Force One, offers a very insightful review of the “State of Apple” and support for pro creatives. I highly recommend it. The Talk Show Live From WWDC 2017 from John Gruber on Vimeo.