This might be all completely true but doesn't regard mindshare or loyalty. Apple has historically had a fanatical fan base, and should be spending a small fraction of their huge cash reserves to make sure they keep a fanatical fan base.

Yes, Apple could license their operating system to just one high-tier desktop hardware company, and ensure that the power users will stay in the Apple ecosystem.

Somebody who will sell a high-end desktop system with: dual-socket Xeons, gobs of ECC memory, lots of storage, multiple 16x PCIe slots, and a very limited selection of high-end graphics cards.

That would satisfy the power users, and wouldn't cost them anything.

They would pay the same price Microsoft does to support random hardware. More importantly, it also wouldn't gain much. As others pointed out, the high-end workstation is barely a business for Apple.

Sure they are losing customer, but compared to the hoards of students buying Apple laptops or iPhone customers, it not really an issue.

They have so many patents on hardware that they could licence the system and clones would still not being able for example to have Apple like touchpad, touchbar screen, MagSafe or even continuity (they could block it for licensed hardware). They will not do that because they realise that they fantastic, proprietary features means nothing to average pro user. Stuff like that is nice to have but more important than that is to be able to run all needed applications reliably. Currently on Macs are only iOS devs and people that hate Windows. That second group could go to linux only if there would be Adobe Suit available on it.

>> .. MagSafe

If they licensed Magsafe to a clone manufacturer they would definitely lose sales. So many Mac users love the Magsafe.

It's really too bad they discontinued it.

and if desktop linux wasn't shit

I am pretty sure that is a subjective opinion, but you wouldn't be a productive member of the community anyway, no loss there.

you're a bit aggressive : I use it daily and it definitely works (but I work with it : no games, almost no 3D, just PyCharm, git, LibreOffice, firefox, irssi and claws mail on openbox WM; scanning/printing a document from time to time nothing fancy)

Latest problem I had were with the printer driver (Brother HL-1110 which doesn't seem to know that this printer has much less memory than advertised)

Speaking of printing in Linux, I was able to print without any problems on a printer that needed terrible drivers on mac and windows.

I think that's the key to Linux on the Desktop. It generally ranges from very limited to terrible for your average end user. Your video professional might fare slightly better, but realistically is only going to use Linux if they're working at a company that's invested in Linux for their video production stack.

Where the Linux desktop is truly unparalleled is for a developer. As a developer I'm comfortable enough with the technical details to handle the quirks (like doing things from the command line), and the strengths of Linux truly shine (again, the commandline, as well as choices in DE, software, etc). One great example is Arch. On Arch I can install any developer tool directly from the command line with very little effort. Anywhere else and you have to click through endless menus.

Yep I know that :-) My comment was a bit "anti" :-) But sure, it works as long as there's someone knowledgeable in charge (or at least a bit) :-)

The Mac Pro is barely a business for Apple. There's almost nothing about that line of business that makes any difference to Apple. Frankly, the entire macOS part of the business doesn't really matter much to Apple from a financial point of view.

I think they should give people what they want - a high powered upgradable machine. If they don't want to make it upgradable, then they should at least refresh it annually.

That seems to be Apple's thinking but I think this article shows the reason that that's a flawed approach.

Having content producers using macOS is a huge benefit to their brand and I think it's a big part of driving sales of their iOS devices. At the very least, if they lose the content producer market there will be significantly more friction to producing iOS apps.

I don't buy that.

Yes, there's a halo effect, but I don't think it's all that huge especially with respect to video pros and I bet it mostly works in the other direction - people like their iPhone so they are more likely to buy a macOS laptop or desktop. Nobody is buying a Mac Pro because they like their iPhone.

The driver for iOS development is profit and as long as iOS users are willing to pay more for apps, it will continue to dominate. And if you want to make an iOS app, you are going to buy a Mac, but probably not a Mac Pro.

The Mac Pro is like the iPod in that it exists in this weird space where it continues to be sold but is clearly not something that Apple thinks is important.