It's not about profit, it's about executive focus. That's the limiting factor. Mobile is changing so fast, and they don't want to take their eye off that ball.
Who says the Mac Pro line is profitable?
How could it not be? The engineering is all sunk and the margin is ~35%.
There's profit and there's profit. The margins are there but the units sold are not.
That could easily be fixed by bringing the price back down into reality (i.e. 30-50% more expensive than equivalent x86-hardware, but not 300% more expensive).
Currently you'd have to be lobotomized to buy a MacPro at this price point. You can buy literally 2-3 "beige boxes" with similar specs for that money.
The shiny case and OSX make up for a lot, but there's a limit to what people will bear.
Really? iPhones alone brought in $22 billion in revenue last quarter.
http://www.macworld.com/article/1166533/apple_nearly_doubles...
The entirety of worldwide PC shipments for a quarter is less than 100 million units. So, no, cutting prices is not going to help catch up to iOS revenues.
Exactly. Apple may be figuring that if they could divert the resources currently devoted to the Mac Pro line to other products, they would be making a greater return.
Or perhaps they have something in the pipe but not ready yet. They've never been a company to tip their hand early.
Re:Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”
by fennecfoxen on Tuesday June 12, 2012 @12:05AM
(#4098686)
Apple thrives on hype and unpredictability. Good for going after the impulse buys; lousy for people who bother trying to plan things.
Is the potential of pissing off dedicated customers worth the money they'll save? What will they do with the money they save? Add it to their unimaginably large mountain of cash?