Throughout the article they kept trying to distinguish a certain subset of pro users without clearly defining how they see it. Final Cut Pro & Logic were mentioned, but there are definitely more applications that would benefit from more beefy pro machines. It's almost like Apple is using the wrong yard stick to measure their Pro market because they're asking the wrong questions.
"Do you use Final Cut Pro?"
No, I use scikit-learn!
No, I use vagrant & virtualbox to run 4 VMs
No, I use Unity
...
> It's almost like Apple is using the wrong yard stick to measure their Pro market because they're asking the wrong questions.
I think we at HN are succumbing to a bit too much Omphaloskepsis[0], in that we [developers] feel that we are the 'Pro' users almost exclusively. This simply isn't the case. I do, however agree partly with your claim in that Apple is not using enough yardsticks. Apple have always defined their 'Pro' market by their pro-apps (as you and they mentioned, FCP, LCP, etc). There are a huge amount of creative professionals that need 'beefy' machines to do media-development work, and wouldn't be so bothered about losing their F-keys.
It's funny how Apple have always acknowledged their developers (in a big way) out-of-sight, but never really put them on the public pedestal that their 'artistic' users get. This is predominantly a fault of Marketing than anything else. Such thinking has clearly infiltrated top management, and I do hope they start getting their ideas inline with a more wholesome and comprehensive view of who their professional users really are.
"Do you use Final Cut Pro?" No, I use scikit-learn! No, I use vagrant & virtualbox to run 4 VMs No, I use Unity ...