2018: The year Apple finally remembered its extreme pro users

“Although many columnists, myself included, have accused Apple of abandoning its pro users, that’s not really true. In fact, it’s fair to say that Apple has never abandoned its pro users,” David Gewirtz writes for ZDNet. “The company’s laptop and tablet offerings have been more than suitable for many professionals who use technology as part of their jobs.”
“We can define ‘pro’ as anyone who uses technology as a component of how they make a living,” Gewirtz writes. “What Apple has been shipping these past four years has been ideal for a lot of folks who make their living using tech.”
“So what is an extreme pro user? A[n] ‘extreme pro’ is someone who requires ultra-powerful computing power plus flexibility to do their job. This usually means a lot of memory, a lot of ports, big displays, tons of storage, super-fast local networking, and often a wide variety of custom implementations and workflows,” Gewirtz writes. “While clearly a much smaller segment of the total Apple market, extreme users are still very strategically important to a platform vendor like Apple. Having very extreme products meets the needs of extreme users, who are often taste-makers and key influencers… That’s why Apple’s decision making, when it comes to extreme Macs, has been such a concern for the past few years. It’s indisputable that Apple has, until this year, pretty much abandoned its extreme pro users.”
Gewirtz writes, “In the last 12 months, however, Apple has shipped products that do meet the needs of extreme pros.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: While we await the all-new “modular” Mac Pro, we’re left wondering how long it will take for Apple to regain the trust of “extreme pros” after letting product for them languish for far too many years.
After dropping the ball, then running over it and leaving it there to rot, Apple will now need to demonstrate a real commitment — backed by actions (i.e. regular updates), not just words — over a period of many years to regain the trust of the real professional users they so blatantly abandoned due to what can most charitably be described as mismanagement.
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