The pros are moving from Mac to Z | Hacker News Reader

The pros are moving from Mac to Z

www8.hp.com

4 pointsnotsony7 comments

I don't get the sense that the "Pros" are moving from Macs to Z, these pros that wanted all the power were already on PCs in the first place. And what HP really meant are the creative media pros (whose industry is still heavily on Macs), not really the same market IMO as the general pros including IT, data analysis, science and so on. I get the feeling HP is trying hard to grab the creative media pros and not really understanding them.

Mac Pro wasn't really about the specs because you always could get more powerful PCs for identical or cheaper prices. So focusing on the pure spec is not going to win you anyone. These creatives are willing to pay the higher costs and HP is missing the point IMO.

Creative media folks like Mac Pros because of the stronger ecosystem of Apple software and hardware. HP, if you want these folks, you need to work on building a stronger ecosystem and explain how it beats Apple on all endpoints.

HP did the right thing of pointing out the stronger connection to the software like Adobe and Avid stuff but it's like in a smaller print all the way down of the page.

I think HP should really show a picture of expanding a PC workstation versus the new Mac Pro which would result in a spaghetti junction of external cables, boxes and power adapters.

Also, I actually don't know any developers who are using the new Mac Pro, whereas before they would be excited and talk about the old Mac Pros. Are the new models selling well? Any start-ups using them? After the poorly received release of Final Cut Pro X, I imagine most video production folk went back to their PCs... and since Apple gave up on the server, enterprise and scientific computing markets, who is actually buying and using the new Mac Pros?

People who bought old Mac Pros (that really need the parallel performance and didn't just switch to iMacs during the long redesign lull). Developers might care about things like internal expandibility & detailed cost/performance ratio, but generally the overhead of switching OS in the pro space is heavy and in my (research IT) experience people are wedded to a particular platform regardless of individual gripes.

Interesting, but my perceptions of HP are still colored by the junk they were shipping during the Fiorina era. Also, MS-Windows isn't happening for me. I could see maybe going back to Linux.

Looks like Linux is a first class citizen:

>All HP Workstations can support a variety of operating systems. HP engineers work extensively with Windows® and Linux® operating system providers to verify top performance, flexibility, reliability, and compatibility with HP Workstations. We conduct joint engineering collaboration with industry partners long before systems are introduced.

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/products.htm...

Obviously they've never tried to install Linux on a >2Tb drive in a z640 using legacy boot...

Too bad these don't run OS X...

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