Will Apple Kill the Macintosh?

This eye-catching headline is not mine. It is part of a meme that is perpetuating the discussion and heavy criticism of the to Final Cut Pro X.

We have stories about how some famous TV production company is ditching Final Cut Pro for because it cannot use FCP-X. We have stories about how Apple is secretly still selling FCP-7 under the table. Now, we are beginning to see stories about how Apple may eventually bite the bullet and kill the entire Mac side of its business.

Considering the , Apple probably could kill the Mac, and the as well, and become a two-product company. To most readers, this seems like a risky bet. It sounds like idiocy if you ask me. But is it?

is too big to become a glorified T-Mobile store. At least at a phone store, there is a huge variety of phones to compare. The Apple selection is limited to a few models, and the iPad is not going to pick up the slack, either.

Compound this with the distinct possibility that Apple is now selling more Macs than any single vendor is selling PCs, including Dell and HP. Also, the Mac is notorious for having a higher margin and more profit per machine than any Windows-based PC.

Now, this doesn't mean some bean-counter cannot come along at any time and decide it's worthless to keep the Macintosh alive with its proprietary OS and overall design. This sort of thing happens all the time. I can see someone thinking that the Mac is great and competitive but still plagued by competitors, many of them low-balling Apple.

I should point out that Apple seldom uses or refers to "Macintosh" anymore. It's all about "Mac." So, in some ways, the company has already killed the Macintosh, per se. This is part of the process to slowly divorce itself from the workstation—the Mac Pro—as far as I'm concerned.

Macs still make up only a small piece of the overall PC pie. Compare that with the , which essentially owns the entire space and ridicules the bunch of wannabees running around hoping to get some attention. That's the business you want to be in.

If this sort of thinking becomes prevalent in Cupertino, think about what might happen to , as I mentioned above. They would be ruined by discontinued the Mac.

Well, ? Big, expensive, beautiful Apple TV sets running what's left of the Mac software.

The Apple TV scenario covers the missing floor space at an Apple store to an extreme. In fact, the newest Apple stores are now so large that they only make sense if Apple is going to roll out a series of large Apple branded TVs.

Now this sort of transition cannot happen overnight without everyone complaining bitterly. Luckily for the company, it is always thinking long-term. There are some hints that we must heed, and the main tip-off is actually this Final Cut Pro situation. Apple is essentially saying that it is going to downplay this sort of use for the Mac Pro. FCP-X works fine on an iMac or a MacBook, anyway.

This tells me that the process has already begun and the dissolution of the powerful Mac Pro workstation will follow. I mean who really needs this thing? Apple will keep the more profitable laptops and iMac units that can be cranked out of China like there is no tomorrow.

How the company will manage to do this without hearing a lot of screaming, I do not know. The easiest way is to put the product on the same rigorous margin formula as everything else until sales decline to an extreme, thus "forcing" the company to discontinue the product.

The Macintosh will fade as the iMac and other "Macs" take over. The only people who will complain will be the high-end Photoshop user who cannot live with an iMac. This is a niche, not a market for a now huge company like Apple.

Of course, this is all speculation and based on nothing but clues and comments made elsewhere. I expect a modicum of fan-boy hate mail quibbling about how I am wrong about Apple all the time. But let me say that this is not something I'm eager to see. I don't like the idea of Apple following such a path. I hope I'm wrong!

How will you know, though, if this is indeed underway? Over the next 12 to 18 months, look for price increases of the Mac Pro. In an era of cheaper components and more bang for the buck, there is no reason whatsoever that the Mac Pro should rise in cost. It's the way the industry works.

Let's see what Apple does, instead.