Video: What would it take for Apple to turn the Mac mini into a Mac mini Pro?
A year ago Apple responded to cries from pros using Mac hardware and held a damage limitation press conference to reassure them that an updated Mac Pro was in the pipeline[1].
Now Apple says that the new hardware won't land until 2019[2].
So what's going on over at Cupertino? Why the delay?
Must read: iOS 11.3: Tips, tricks, and how to fix the biggest annoyances[3]
On the face of it, the delay is odd. After all, Apple is a company that can push out new iPhones[4], iPads[5], and Apple Watches[6] on a yearly schedule, and yet seems to need years to put together what is essentially a computer.
After all, how hard is it to throw some high-end components into a box and ship? PC OEMs do this all the time.
What I got from reading TechCrunch's[7] Matthew Panzarino's coverage of Apple's second on-the-record briefing is that Apple spent a lot of time but said very little. There's a lot of talk about "digging in these workflows" and "getting a much deeper understanding of our pro customers and their workflows and really understanding not only where the state of the art is today but where the state of the art is going," and there's even a promise to "look at everything holistically," but solid details are pretty much absent.
It's weird, but the feeling I get from reading Panzarino's piece is that Apple has forgotten how to build pro hardware.
And in some way,