They talk in the article about being backed into a thermal corner and that's easy to believe. They simply didn't know that GPU technology was going to accelerate in advances in the way it did, and particularly not in single-GPU workloads.
I've heard again and again stories about power users that are editing videos (4K these days) or doing other content creation (3D animation, etc) which can really benefit from high-end hardware.
I'm thinking it was more an issue they couldn't figure out a high-end, upgradable Mac Pro which kept their beefy profit margins, and didn't become a support nightmare at a price point that was somewhat reasonable (i.e. less than $10K USD).
Probably, but I've read Gruber's piece twice and I couldn't help but feel as if the talk was held by a bunch of young geeks coming from a Kickstarter project.
Maybe that's an Apple's new approach at PR but it sounds like they tried to downplay the impact of bad management that ultimately led to a failure that must have cost them millions.
After the critical reception of the new MacBook Pro range amongst the Apple community, especially pro users, everyone was questioning Apple's commitment to pro users, and the Mac as a whole.
I'm glad to see Apple doing this, but I can't help thinking this was totally reactive and pre-emptive damage control. If Apple had just released the Mac Pro speed bump, there would be even more of an outcry that Apple has given up on anything more than incremental changes.
The pessimist in me thinks that Apple simply had no idea that there was this sort of demand for pro Macs. Phil and Craig mentioned the iMac numerous times, as though to say "hey pros, there is a great Mac you can use", so they can still claim that they do make great, high-performance pro devices.
My guess is "next year" means "Holidays 2018", and my guess is that Apple has only recently started work on this. Apple hasn't been about modular design or expandability for a long time. With the rise in adoption of VR, there has been even more discussion about upgrading graphics cards (remember Oculus comments about the Mac?), and the age of the CPUs is another criticism. I just can't imagine Apple starting work on this some time ago.