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Comment by ynniv | Hacker News Reader

a pro machine that demanded placement on your desk, not under your desk

... and that's how Apple lost the professionals. The desk is a clean space for a huge monitor / keyboard / mouse, and MY work. It's good to make a workstation that looks nice, but it's ten times as good to make one that's flexible and powerful. The only people who want that workstation on the desktop are the designers at Apple, and stroking your own ego isn't on the path to making a great product.

Every great designer knows that form follows function.

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I wouldn't take that too literally, firstly those are Gruber's words and secondly, there isn't anything stopping you putting the Mac Pro on the floor so long as the cables reach.

You're refusing to accept the simple reality that professionals couldn't figure out how to put a computer on the floor. And that's how Apple lost an entire market!

Well not sure the air inlets taking the dust and fluff in off the floor is a great idea for it.

Couldn't agree more, I mean hell I put my G5 (cheese grater) behind my monitor (on my desk) back in the day _just_ so I could more easily dust my machine. Pretty? No way. Ergonomic? Yes.

That's pretty much true for any computer, no?

Yes, but a lot of cases these days have easily removable and cleanable filters so that most of that dust doesn't make it inside the case.

Apple themselves admitted as much. They focused too much on making something beautiful and small. Neither of those things matter to a pro, especially for a desktop.

And not only that, even Apple with its vast resources cannot keep the machine up to date because the components are so tied to the case design.

A nicely designed item is unrelated to where it should be placed. The OP was specifically saying that Apple lost the Pro market because the unit "demanded" to be put on the desk which is absurd since the Mac Pro can be placed anywhere that the cables allow it to.

I think the OP's point is that the Mac Pro is not a nicely designed item. Design is all about tradeoffs. In this case, Apple had to decide whether to prioritize form factor and appearance or upgradability and performance. They chose the former, which turned out to be the wrong design for the target market.

The feature that allows a current Mac Pro to be placed on a desk comes at the price of more important features like being able to easily upgrade and expand a Mac Pro. Could be wrong but I feel that's one thing that OP wanted to express.

The trade offs made give it a small footprint, I've seen many cheese graters on desks and they were fine. Initially I assumed OP meant the same thing as you highlight but after talking about keeping a pros desk clear I assumed they were being more literal. If the issue is that Apple made a small computer that compromised on its core requirements then that's fine but to say that the issues stems from making a computer to sit on a desk alone is absurd.

my issue with the current Mac Pro is that, yeah cute packaging, but I need a second tower/accessory/etc when I only needed one before so I immediate get new clutter and cables all because someone had a "cute" design for the main computer

It's not important where I can put it - the act of designing something that should be placed on a desk prevents them from designing what I want. A Ferrari is a desirable sports car and a terrible cargo van.

A machine the size of the trashcan Mac Pro would be awesome as an upgradable Mac Mini type device. i7, internal drive bays, RAM slots. I'd love a desktop sculpture like the Trashcan, but not with the useless dual GPUs and thermal design and everything.

Great point, and the entire Mac lineup needs to be more flexible and configurable to meet customers's needs:

- I want to configure a laptop with a 1TB spinning hard disc, so that I get a lot of space without paying $3000. I can get such a Dell for $1500 with a UHD screen. I'd prioritise disk space over weight and battery life.

- I want to configure the Mac Mini with a 6TB spinning desktop hard disc, rather than a portable one, which is costlier and has limited capacity. To reduce footprint, make the machine vertical. I also want to be able to configure the Mac Mini to drive a 5k monitor via Thunderbolt 3, and 32GB memory. All of this should be upgradeable. It's a shame that the Mac Mini isn't. It doesn't even have the "thin and light" excuse laptops have.

None of this is sexy. It won't make tech reviewers go ooh and aah. It won't earn a place in the MoMA. But it will be more useful to customers.

The first thing I did when I ditched mac was to get a pc motherboard/ram/cpu/psu and bolt it out of the way under my desk. More room on my desk is an upgrade. Nobody really makes enclosures designed to be out of the way.

I still remember the flame wars of desktop vs towers. :)

How could those be flame wars? The former group was just wrong.

Well I do concede that I was on the tower side.

I bought an HTPC case a while back that looks like a stereo receiver so I could have a desktop back. I like having my monitor sit on top of it.

I'd be okay with putting the desktop on my desktop if the form factor was tight enough. Clearly that's what they were trying to do with their current Pro model, but at the expense of it being competitive. Just sayin', there's plenty of space in the corner behind my primary display.

I don't think that's necessarily Apple's fault. Desktops/towers (much to my chagrin) are largely a thing of a bygone era. No matter where I go, everyone is on a laptop, and that's what allows the employee to be mobile.

I think that "everyone" work shopping some me to ecommerce biz down starbucks is what most people consider the Pro end of the biz

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