Has Apple's 'Pro' Branding Lost All Meaning? (theverge.com) 84
Does Apple have a "Pro" problem? "[Y]ears of Apple and competitors slapping the name onto wireless earbuds and slightly fancier phones have made it hard to tell what 'Pro' even means," argues The Verge's Mitchell Clark. It could be the reason behind Apple's recently-launched Mac "Studio." From the report: From the jump, Apple made it clear who the Mac Studio and Studio Display were for. It showed them being used by musicians, 3D artists, and developers in its presentation, and the message was clear: these are products for creative professionals or people who aspire to be creative professionals. You know, the same exact crowd it's targeted with MacBook Pro commercials for years. "My first thought was, 'Oh, I wonder when the iPhone Studio comes out,'" says Jonathan Balck, co-founder and managing director of ad agency Colossus, in an interview with The Verge. "Pro was exclusive, and it was about one way of doing things, but the whole culture is moving toward creativity," he adds while musing whether we could see Apple's Pro branding shift to become Studio branding instead.
[T]o me, the Mac Studio line is a clear successor to Apple's iMac Pro. Both computers are powered by monstrous CPUs and come standard with 10Gb Ethernet and a healthy crop of Thunderbolt and USB ports. I'm convinced that, had Apple released the new Studio even two years ago, it would've put "Pro" in the name. (Though, to play devil's advocate, I'm not as sure it would've done so for the Studio Display.) Some marketing experts tell me that the word "Pro" is starting to get long in the tooth, and not just from overuse. "The previous term Pro is, in my opinion, outdated and dry," says Keith Dorsey, founder and CEO of the creative marketing group and management company YoungGuns Entertainment. Balck agrees; "If you look at the word Pro, that is in many ways restrictive," he says in an interview, explaining that when you say a product is "professional," it evokes ideas like job interviews, portfolios, and standoffishness. Pro products, he says, come across as just for those who use creativity to get a paycheck.
The reason Apple may need to, though, is because it led the industry in thoroughly overusing the word "Pro" to the point where it's lost all meaning. It's hard to pinpoint where exactly this started (though, in my mind, it was with the two-port MacBook Pro model), but now the word gets slapped on everything. Want to sell wireless earbuds for even more money? Those are Pro earbuds now. Want to have a regular and fancy version of your phone? No problem, call the nice one the Pro. [...] But Apple's new word, "studio," seems to come ready-made to excite the company's target audience.
[T]o me, the Mac Studio line is a clear successor to Apple's iMac Pro. Both computers are powered by monstrous CPUs and come standard with 10Gb Ethernet and a healthy crop of Thunderbolt and USB ports. I'm convinced that, had Apple released the new Studio even two years ago, it would've put "Pro" in the name. (Though, to play devil's advocate, I'm not as sure it would've done so for the Studio Display.) Some marketing experts tell me that the word "Pro" is starting to get long in the tooth, and not just from overuse. "The previous term Pro is, in my opinion, outdated and dry," says Keith Dorsey, founder and CEO of the creative marketing group and management company YoungGuns Entertainment. Balck agrees; "If you look at the word Pro, that is in many ways restrictive," he says in an interview, explaining that when you say a product is "professional," it evokes ideas like job interviews, portfolios, and standoffishness. Pro products, he says, come across as just for those who use creativity to get a paycheck.
The reason Apple may need to, though, is because it led the industry in thoroughly overusing the word "Pro" to the point where it's lost all meaning. It's hard to pinpoint where exactly this started (though, in my mind, it was with the two-port MacBook Pro model), but now the word gets slapped on everything. Want to sell wireless earbuds for even more money? Those are Pro earbuds now. Want to have a regular and fancy version of your phone? No problem, call the nice one the Pro. [...] But Apple's new word, "studio," seems to come ready-made to excite the company's target audience.
Clear meaning (Score:2)
Really? I thought Pro had a pretty well defined meaning in Apple-land: "Premium pricing". It was often accompanied by higher-tier hardware to partially justify the price, but I never got the sense that was part of the core definition.
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People are fully aware the Dells they use for work aren't as powerful as the thing they run GTA-VI on at home.
Actually, prior to GPU prices going all nutty foo-foo, buying a used off-lease Dell and slapping a budget graphics card in it was a great way to get an entry level gaming rig.
Yeah, they don't look as fancy for lack of a case full of RGB LEDs and 17 front-mounted jet engine fans. But an i7 in a boring black box is still an i7.
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The iPhone 14 is reportedly going to have the latest processor, while the non-pro has a high end current gen processor.
Macbooks are just entry level notebooks. MacBook Air is a weight-based 'best performance' for the size model, and the MacBook Pro are for people who want desktop like specs and don't mind the super heft.
I think we all know that "pro" means "workstation" for the rest of the world. "professional" was the xserve which
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I don't think "Pro" was ever intended to mean "Corporate." It was short for something like "professional creator". Pro artists rather than pro lawyers, for example. Studio is better though.
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I believe in the Apple presention...near the end, they mentioned that an Apple Pro Mac was coming out, so there will likely be a new tower/work station coming out that will be called Mac Pro.
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Their older workstation machines, the Mac Pros, were at least expandable. They have RAM sockets, SATA/M.2, PCIe slots. The storage device was not soldered on to the motherboard.
Any machine with an M1 chip can't have RAM sockets. The RAM has to be tightly bonded to the CPU to get the performance Apple wants, and it's not even top tier. I suppose at least Thunderbolt means you have some decent storage/PCIe expansion options, as long as you don't mind dongles and multiple power cables. Not exactly a "pro" solu
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They should consider allowing slotted ram, on top of whatever is intergrated into the M1 chips.
Call it something like level 2 memory, similar to how you have level 1,2,3 etc cache.
If you end up swapping, you can call it level 3 memory.
Don't have to specify ram, ssd, etc, just the different levels, with higher the level number, the bigger the amount, but slower it is, just like cpu cache.
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It would mean adding another memory controller to the CPU, and software support, but I suppose it's possible.
The fact that they have stuck with the M1 makes me wonder if they are having trouble with the M2. The M1 is already a somewhat marginal design. It needs a truly massive cache to achieve decent performance, even with the memory on the same carrier and clocked quite high. Rather than iterating on the design of the M1, they are just shoving more of them onto a single chip and hoping that software become
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So, looks like there will be some form of an even higher level Mac coming out, I"m guessing will still be a tower/workstation configuration.
With what you stated about RAM, etc...it will be interesting to see what they come out with.
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The reason they're still using the M1 is because you start with the easy chips first to work out the production issues. The M1 Max and Ultra are really big chips, and so the production lines are probably only now really ramped up to make them well. They'll probably move to the M2 later this year, and you'll see the M2 Pro, Max and Ultra probably follow about a year later, just like now. I don't think there's really any magic here. Xeon chips also trail Intel's normal chip line.
It's a good architecture for w
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Great, so there are going to be two unrelated computer hardware components called M2. Thanks Apple.
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The Max and Ultra are the same chips as the bog standard M1. They just put more of them on the same substrate and provided an additional interconnect.
That's how everyone does it these days. AMD calls them "chiplets". They individual chiplets can have some testing done before they are added to a substrate, which helps increase yields.
Of course they can put out an "M2" whenever they like, what really matters is what they actually change. It will be interesting to see where they go with it. The initial benchma
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Their older workstation machines, the Mac Pros, were at least expandable. They have RAM sockets, SATA/M.2, PCIe slots. The storage device was not soldered on to the motherboard.
And then they came out with the Mac Pro and their customers said "we don't want that, we want pro machines to be upgradeable" so they went back to the drawing board and came up with the new cheese grater. I'm curious to see where they take the Mac Pro when they move it to Apple Silicon, seems like they will be going back to the trashcan.
Four Quadrants (Score:2)
The pro moniker comes from when Steve Jobs broke the PC market down into four quadrants (just search steve jobs four quadrants). At the time this was remarkably refreshing, because the PC market (and Apple's product range) was a bit of a jumble. They then created products for each of those markets which clearly pushed the main attributes those different users would want and it worked very well.
What has changed since is that computers got powerful and cheap enough that there are very few 'pro' users that can
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So it has lost all meaning then. What does Apple sell that isn't premium priced?
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"Apple" means market premium prices
"Pro" means Apple premium prices
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In the last round of Macbook Pros (the first M1s) it was barely "pro" at all though - I mean, what "pro" can use 16GB of RAM in 2021/2? So for that round of laptops, yeah, "pro" didn't mean much.
Going back a bit further, the 2015 line up was definitely segregated - the "pro" systems (especially the 15" ones) were most definitely not for your average sales person (whereas the "air" really was). Back then, the difference between the two was pretty obvious - just the cooling alone in the "pro" laptops were wha
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Yes, we call that "Prosumer" goods.
I'm sorry, who's fault is this? (Score:1)
Apple abuses the word "pro" with their entire product line and then complains that other companies also abuse the word pro so now they will "use something else" equally as meaningless.
Really brilliant. Don't do anything about your faltering product line, just rename it.
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At least they didn't do the uncreative thing and name a new variant of their computer the "Mac Max" to go with the M1 Max inside. That would have made some people "Mac Max Mad".
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Don't do anything about your faltering product line,
Apple is close to becoming the world's first three-trillion-dollar company.
Their products are not "faltering".
Financially, they are the most successful products ever created in the history of humanity.
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Pump your brakes there fanboy. They make tons of money selling regular iPhones and the surrounding services to goobers like you. This is about them shifting blame for their "pro" line of products being overused and abused and having to re-brand.
Apple sucks (Score:2)
Branding doesn't matter
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This post is actually quite accurate. Not sure why it's sitting at -1. Maybe the eds did it? I don't see any other sign of moderation around here. Something is clearly broken with slashdot. Near as I can tell this is the only moderation that has occurred on this story, but it doesn't even tell us why it was downvoted. No flamebait, no troll, nothing. What's happening?
Re: Apple sucks (Score:2)
Duplicate? Surely you're joking. You'd have enough left over to build 4 more systems. Mac charges $10,000 for it's premium workstation offering. You can get the same performance with $2,000 of off the shelf hardware. (Minus ECC memory.)
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I mean, have you looked at other vendors?
Take Sony for example. They have thousands of different PCs with names like VPCSE2AJ or VPCSE27FX. They are basically supported with drivers for 6 months and then forgotten. Meanwhile, people talking about purchasing a MacBook Air don't need to care that much if it's a VPCX390141 or a VPCX481941 because it doesn't matter for most people. They know what the Macbooks Air i
The specs does (Score:2)
I don’t care what they call it. The Mac studio seems to be able to handle a shit ton of prores streams and be a killer editing machine. Probably also able to handle an ungodly amount of audio tracks. :)
Of course there’s the issue of fan noise for a audio studio.
Even the base version will be quite a capable fcpx machine. It needs external storage but don’t you always need that anyway for big projects.
This was the machine I hoped they would make. My 2013 iMac died last summer and I wanted so
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If you can find some GPU. Good luck with that ;)
Also they will suck Power like nothing else.
And you need to build it by yourself.
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Yeah. I drive a sports car that seats 8. Branding is just losing the meaning it wants to portray. Terms are thrown will nilly and only fools get suckered in. They don't stay fools for long. When a minivan can have a title like "sport" it's pretty meaningless.
No. (Score:1)
Did it ever have any meaning? (Score:2)
Some mac pros have had all the hallmarks of the real thing, some haven't. Mostly they have been outdated and you can't just pick your processor, so mostly they haven't at best. Once they went to weird form factors without much upgrade potential, they definitely weren't promachines any longer. But then, maybe that whole idea has lost meaning. Some of the meanest workstations are used for gaming and porn.
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Yep. A pro would much rather pay thousands for a brand new computer that's going to require them to migrate all their data, reinstall all their software, and reconfigure all the customizations they made over the years, rather than paying someone else to install some upgrades that would give it several years more life.
Hmm... nope. That doesn't agree *at all* with my own experiences. I spent years upgrading the computers of professionals because they didn't want to buy a whole new computer at 5x the price
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Because that is exactly what pro....photographers let's say....want to do: spend their time fiddling with their hardware. Fitting memory boards onto their laptop mobo and the like. Browsing Newegg to see what RAM is compatible with what.
Place a RAM stick into a slot? Oh no that is far too complicated, those poor professional photographers are not capable of such a complex task. Just throw the whole thing in the bin and buy a new one!
Man you really are the personification of the movement to stupidify computing and this horrible e-waste economy. This is exactly why Apple abandoned the trashcan Mac Pro, because the professionals it was marketed to wanted upgradeability!
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Some of the meanest workstations are used for gaming and porn.
Ever since Intel added QuickSync capabilities to their silicon, even their low-end stuff is fine for "streaming". I'm willing to bet that there's probably more than a few adult entertainers over in less-wealthy countries that are running their hustle on machines that America considered e-waste.
Gaming, though, yeah. Those PCMR folks will lose their shit if the latest AAA titles won't hit at least 60FPS at 4k. When that's the case, time to hit the Microcenter and make your bank account beg for mercy.
"Pro" branding has no meaning for any company (Score:2)
Well, it does have one meaning. It always means you're going to pay more for the "pro" version. And most likely, the version that's not "pro" is so wimpy that no one would want to use it. So basically, "pro" means "regular version" that you're going to upgrade to out of sheer necessity.
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You know, I typically just buy the regular burger at Joe's. But for dinner last night I had the Joe's Pro burger. Let me tell you, it was mighty tasty - worth every penny.
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LOL
In food service, they call it "deluxe."
Energy drink logos (Score:2)
Yugo-Pro Delux (Score:2)
I thought the "Pro" naming fad ended when the 90's did. There use to be FoxPro (FoxBase Pro), QuattroPro, and a bunch of others I don't remember off the top of my head.
It fell out of favor because it was overdone, like most fads. Ordinary software came out with "Pro" in the name and they didn't even have a regular version, to make it appear to users like they were getting a "pro" version for the price of a regular version, when in fact it was the regular version because they had no advanced ("pro") version
Correction (Score:1)
Re: "and they didn't even have a regular version..."
should be "and they didn't even have pro version..."
The whole paragraph is Monday'd up, in fact.
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Heck, Windows Professional doesn't even have a lot of professional features anymore, you have to get Enterprise for that.
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really (Score:2)
musicians need a 1,500 -1,800 dollar monitor?
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Of course! Those musical notes sound better when viewed with the correct color calibration. Oh, and monster cables too.
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good question... and most musicians I've met do not have that sort of money for a monitor, and if/when they have, they save to buy new instruments.
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starving artist or mega star, what could possibly warrant a 1.5 to 1.8 thousand dollar monitor in the musicians life? Better instruments and or gear is a far better investment considering one can get a roughly equal size 4k display that doesnt suck complete ass for 3-400 bucks
I mean FFS I got a lower end 4k Samsung with all the bells and whistles for her home hobby biz and with tax and shipping was under 400 bucks, and its 27 inches.
NOW yes I absolutely know this is not the same, its not anywhere close. I c
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Any reasonably successful EDM artist could justify splashing out big money for a monitor.
Music studios routinely spend tens of thousands of dollars on equipment. I know people who've spent 5 figures on their home studio.
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I'm a game dev, and I'll tell you that audio pros do appreciate good, large monitors. They have to stare at a lot of tiny buttons with a zillion tracks and having a high quality monitor does actually make their life easier. They don't care about frame/refresh rates and HDR, they want something easy to look at with good resolution. I'm sure plenty of musicians will get these monitors if they can.
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really
You can't comprehend the discussion was about the Studio computer as well? That the list of targeted users was not exhaustive and could apply to either product?
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musicians need a 1,500 -1,800 dollar monitor?
Probably not, plus musicians use very different monitors, that it is nothing like what Apple produces (hint they play audio and has no screen).
A pro system needs to be expandable (Score:2)
Consumers are starting to realize that when their pro laptop runs out of resources managing documents and emails because they purchased the base model with 8G RAM and 128/256G HD. They can't upgrade but need to trade it in in order to upgrade and lose at least a day in productivity. I won't even get into the privacy issue.
Apple simply is a crap merchant. (Score:2)
They slap superlatives on shit, bump the price and suckers buy buy buy!
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Proof of this: Mobvoi has a watch called Tic Watch Pro 3 Ultra.
They double downed on the good stuff.
done before (Score:2)
Like "Android Studio"
Apple Branding is doing just fine right now, ... (Score:2)
... they just need to watch out not to bloat their lineup.
That's what nearly killed them prior to The Second coming of Jobs.
AFAICT they've been a little shaky on that front and risk confusion.
OTOH they have such obscene amounts of cash, are by now a premium fashion brand and just scored a bullseye with their transition to Apple silicon, which does make their hardware quite attractive these days, regardless how they faff about with their lineup.
Apple Silicon did restore some of their karma with me, after bur
Yup, pissed about no 27" iMac anymore also (Score:1)
"Pro" branding never had any meaning (Score:2)
One would expect that "pro" products would have commonly-accepted professional features such as ECC memory and RAID 1 arrays, but nope, that was never the case. So, as I said, it never had any meaning.
Why not go full circle? (Score:2)
Nothing Apple is pro (Score:2)
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Please pardon a likely stupid question...
What what is "SAS"?
Thank you in advance.
I'm Holding Out (Score:1)
come standard with 10Gb Ethernet ? (Score:2)
"Studio" = a tiny apartment with less amenities (Score:2)