Does the MacPro have more of a future than the iMac?

There's been a lot of speculation for some time now that the MacPro's days are numbered. The thinking seems to be that an ever smaller number of users need the power and expansion capabilities that the MacPro provides. The speed of the iMac, MacBook Pros, and even the Airs, is sufficient for the overwhelming majority of people, most of whom aren't the type to open up a machine (even one as easy as a MacPro) to install a new graphics card and don't need 64 – or even 16 – GB of RAM. As far back as a couple of years ago various reviewers started putting forth the idea that most people who had traditionally used MacPros and the earlier PowerMac towers could now switch to an iMac with little or no consequence.

The argument has gotten stronger with the advent of the high-speed Thunderbolt port. Standard on all new Macs except the MacPro (which it should get in it's next refresh, though that refresh is an admittedly  long time in coming), the new port potentially offers much of the flexibility of a tower. In theory, soon a host of Thunderbolt devices will hit the market, including adapters for USB, Firewire, eSATA, etc. Additionally there will be pure Thunderbolt devices, which won't be restricted by the speeds of those other interfaces. The speed of the Thunderbolt interface, even in its first incarnation, is fast enough to handle the needs of even most pro users for the foreseeable future.

I've been using pro-level Macs for a long time now, dating back to a Quadra 650 in the early 90s, and progressing through a Power Mac 7500 (on which I twice upgraded the processor), and a PowerMac G4 (one processor upgrade). So the idea of the MacPro going away was a little disconcerting. I currently use an eight-core 2008 MacPro. When I bought it to replace my aging PowerMac G4, I knew I was buying more machine than I really needed. I was no longer doing any high-end video work, and Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and MS Office ran quite well on the iMacs of the day (with a decent RAM upgrade). But I knew that USB 3 was coming, and I already had a couple of hard drive enclosures that included both USB 2 and eSATA connections, so I wanted the ability to add these ports using a PCIe card. In addition, while I'm not a huge gamer, I am a moderate one, and I knew that the stock 256 MB Radeon card that came with the machine would eventually need to be upgraded. So I figured that rather than get an iMac and have to replace it a couple of years later I'd get a monster of a machine that would last a few years longer. This has worked out pretty well and the machine is still more than sufficient for my needs, but....

If I were buying a new desktop machine today, it would be an iMac. A higher-end model, to be sure, but an iMac nonetheless. A quad-core i7 with a Thunderbolt port is plenty powerful and solves the upgradeability problem. Since Thunderbolt in based on PCIe and is compatible with the Mini Display Port, even upgrading the video shouldn't be difficult. Someone will undoubtedly come out with a box with two Thunderbolt ports that houses the latest card from AMD or Nvidia. And it's likely that someone will also just skip the extra box altogether and put the video card in the monitor itself. Maybe there's a technological reason why this won't work, but I haven't heard of it.

Notice that I said that if I were buying a  new desktop, I would buy an iMac. But I probably wouldn't buy a desktop. All the advantages of Thunderbolt are available to a MacBook Pro, as well. So I could come back from a meeting with a client, put my MacBook on my desk, plug in a Thunderbolt cable, and be ready to go. Of course, people have been doing this for years with docking stations and the like, but they tend to be expensive and surprisingly inconvenient for something that's supposed to provide convenience. But one cable that provides access to a wide range of ports and an external monitor? It doesn't get much easier than that. The ability to upgrade to higher-end graphics when needed is just icing on the cake. And you'd have your choice of monitors, from Apple or anyone else. You'd have all the advantages of a desktop with the portability of a laptop, and little to no inconvenience moving between the two.

All this makes me think that the iMac, at least in it's current All-In-One configuration, is the model that might be disappearing. Most of Apple's Mac sales are already laptops, which when you think about it, are also All-In-One machines. Why buy two machines when one machine and a couple of peripherals will give you the best of both worlds? It's possible that Apple will release the "headless" iMac that so many were speculating on a few years ago, but it doesn't seem likely. The Mac Mini is a different story and may stick around as an entry-level offering.

And the MacPro? No one knows but Apple, but it seems to me that there's still enough people doing high-end work who buy the latest and greatest because they actually need all that power. I suspect that Apple makes a pretty decent profit off of them, and with Arthur Levinson of Genentech chairing the board at Apple these days, the MacPro is probably safe for the time being. Of course, Apple could work out some kind of OS licensing deal to a high-end PC manufacturer to supply these pros, but I don't think it's likely.

All of this comes with one caveat: if Thunderbolt doesn't take off the way it's expected to, or the peripherals remain expensive (e.g. Apple's $49 cable), then this is all moot. It's really Thunderbolt that allows all this to happen.

Of course, I may be off my rocker. What do you think? Comments welcome, but please keep it civil.