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2019 'Alien' Mac Pro - can someone please explain why it is so expensive?

dannys1 said:
No i'm not, i'm saying Apple has it right - and those declaring they now need a "mid-level one" the mid-level pro is already served by the iMac and the iMac Pro.

There is no argument against that other than "but I want a desktop tower to have the same power but make it cheaper" which case, use a PC and build it yourself like actual working professionals dont.
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What part of “the iMac and iMac Pro throttle under any sustained load” are you having trouble understanding?

They are not options for folks that actually do stuff. We have evaluated them and found them wanting.

There are plenty of tier 1 and tier 2 vendors that can deliver much better workstations, no need to build it yourself.

And you are right - we can leave - and I am.
 
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dannys1 said:
Yeah every part you listed is wrong - a motherboard which supports 1.5TB in ram with those PCI-E slots is over £2000 alone, you've just picked a load of budget consumer parts.
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I think you might have me confused with a different poster. My motherboard was from a major server and workstation manufacturer, cost $500USD, and supported 3TB of RAM with 7x PCIe slots. Most datacenters I've supported (telecom, manufacturer, and education primarily) have had racks full of their products. They're not in any way, shape, or form a "budget consumer" company.

dannys1 said:
The processor is over £3000 - check it properly, it's closer to the Xeon Gold line.
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No, sorry, the processor is $750USD MSRP as stated by Intel. It's not related to the Intel Gold line at all. It's a Xeon W.

dannys1 said:
Have a look at speccing up the same Dell or HP workstation, they're all higher cost than the Mac Pro and NO they aren't 3x the price of the component parts or ripping a customer off - this is the pro level workstation market, not the "bloke Macrumors forum who can build a better computer out of bits from a computer fair"
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As soon as Dell or HP releases their next-gen workstations, I will run a comparison. Right now all they have are the Intel scalable processors, not the Xeon-Ws. You just can't compare a $3000USD processor with a $750USD processor and claim it's the same thing. If that's the case, we need to be comparing the 2013 nMP to the current HP/Dell lineup. (Absurd, right?) I anticipate a machine on par specs-wise with the base Mac Pro to run about $3000USD.
 
It’s the case and packaging. You can’t even compare the 2019 mMP housing to anything in the pc world. The case alone is worth 500 to 1000 empty. If you put the same components into a typical PC housing you would be the same cost + the Apple markup. (Basic rule in product design. The retail cost is normally about 4 X cost to make.) It’s a deal if you like cool things under your desk.

Question. How modular will the MacPro be? Will I be able to pull the pci boards from my old cMP and use them in the new machine???
 
Don’t forget about the FPGA card. That is not a cheap feature. Look at what the RED Rocket costs. It’s clearly a machine meant for professionals.

People are complaining because they didn’t build a consumer tower, but they seem to forget that Apple never built consumer towers. The original was 3000 when a comparable machine was 1000-1500. The original was also no where near as customized. The PCI-E implementation with thunderbolt (MPX) is not standard, the cooling is not standard, the FPGA is not standard. The T2 chip is not standard. The 1400w psu is not standard.

Outside of super niche uses, professional use and gaming, I’m not really sure what features then new Mac mini’s are lacking. From my perspective it seems like gaming is the one area Apple doesn’t really care about with respect to OS X. If you accept that, every product in apples line makes lots of sense. Their focus on gaming seems to be around iOS and tvOS. And given their revenues, that makes sense.
 
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iBrooker said:
They could have easily introduced a more affordable 'mid-range' Mac Pro and then classed these new ones as 'High end' Mac Pros.
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That really is the Cusp of the Situation, iBroker:

The Angst of these past handful of years is that there [has been] no Pro device offered by AAPL . . . Pro(-sumer), yes, but nothing that Fits The Bill.

If one desires to go {Mac}Pro, this is It ;)

I dropped USD 2,6K on the "MacPro 1,1" back in 2006, and I did not blink: even once.

I dropped USD 2K on a 2012 MacPro in 2017, and I blinked [twice] when I had to pony-up for a GfxCrd that could drive my two 27" Dells . . .

. . . if I were to be in a position where Time==$Money, my breath would be swept-away like pollen in the Spring ;)

As-It-Stands, there is no legitimate budget (or direct rationale) for a 'new' Mac "Pro" in my life; but, it's good to know that I /can/, and I would--if I should.

Regards, splifingate
 
AidenShaw said:
...and many of them don't meet typical definitions of "pro"!
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Pro Pro Pro :D
But seriously, as I've mentioned in a different thread, this isn't a classical Mac Pro, this is a thing with an identity disorder. It was showcased to developers, media had exclusivity access to it, and its target market per its presentation is miniscule.
 
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AdobeWanKenobi said:
"2019 'Alien' Mac Pro - can someone please explain why it is so expensive?"
Because Apple.

For comparison, I'm rocking a PC I built myself with the following specs:
4.5 GHz 8-core (16-thread) Intel Core i7 5960x, with 22.5 MB cache
64GB PC4-24000 (3GHz) RAM
1.75 TB SSD Storage:
  • 500 GB SSD (Samsung Pro NVME, 2.7GB/s) System drive
  • 256 GB SSD (Samsung Pro) Scratch Disk
  • 1 TB SSD (Samsung Evo) Content Drive
ASUS Strix nVidia GTX 980 TI SuperClocked (6GB of 384-bit GDDR5 RAM, 96ROPs/176TMUs, 2816 shaders, 8GT/s, 5.6 teraflops) (Mobo supports Quad-GPU SLI)
5x PCI-E, 2x 1GB Ethernet, 2x USB 3.1 (10Gbps), 8x USB 3.1 (5Gbps), 2x USB 2.0, 10x SATA 6Gb/s, 2x SATA 10Gb/s, DVD Burner, Blu-Ray Burner, HEADPHONE JACK, 8 Channels of 24bit/192KHz Audio with Optical SPDIF
$4,100.00

...so 13% faster CPU, double the RAM, 7x the SSD storage, an extra PCI-E slot, 2 more USB 3.1 slots, a faster video card, and support for 4 video cards total... for HALF the money. (My machine's about 2 years old, and STILL beats the about-to-be-launched Mac Pro.)

I guess I could call myself "Apple" and charge you DOUBLE to build you an exact clone of my system. :)
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Since the 2019 Mac Pro has yet to be launched, you have no clue if your overclocked Haswell Core i7 Extreme is going to be as fast or not as the Cascade Lake Xeon W-3223. Your GPU will be faster, good for you...you have a collection of parts that you assembled, if it works for you, good. Others will have no qualms about buying the Mac Pro for a variety of reasons. That is their prerogative.
 
Guys I know a lot of people are crying over the prices of these machines, but like others have been saying - go over to dell or hp website and try to max out their top of the line workstations. I was shocked myself. I could spec out a dell workstation all the way up to well over $300g after tax!!! Dell charges $50g (Canadian dollars) alone on memory upgrades to 1.5tb...it's ridiculous beyond ridiculous. Why would I pay $300g on a computer when I can buy a house for that money? Clearly their target demographic is not the average middle class, but the large corporations, the rich and alike.

But honestly I'm not even sure whether any sensible corporations w/ money will pay $300g when they can buy individual components themselves and upgrade based off of the base model.

I wish I could afford a maxed out mac pro, but the reality is I can't. The base model doesn't make sense from cost/performance perspective either. If I could afford a > $100g workstation, I'd choose the mac pro equivalent any time of the day.

From that perspective, I think the new mac pro prices are justified. Or who knows - we might see something like $100g mac pros when the upgrades prices hit the web soon. I'm w/ you all about the prices as well and the only part I'm happy about is that apple introduced a new machine to compete in the highest end of the curve for enterprise customers which has been lacking for many years.
 
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One of the reasons why Xeon CPUs may cost a lot is that they can be used in multi CPU configurations. That's what high end HP and Dell workstations are (and why they cost a lot). They offer dual socket motherboards. Mac Pro costs almost as much as those workstations but it offers much less (no 3TB RAM or 10 drive slots or dual CPU or NVIDIA support). Still that's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that, say, Dell workstation prices start from $600 whereas Apple workstation prices start from $6000.
 
falainber said:
One of the reasons why Xeon CPUs may cost a lot is that they can be used in multi CPU configurations. That's what high end HP and Dell workstations are (and why they cost a lot). They offer dual socket motherboards. Mac Pro costs almost as much as those workstations but it offers much less (no 3TB RAM or 10 drive slots or dual CPU or NVIDIA support).
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Yes, some of these workstation support more advanced configurations. But I think you are kind of missing the point here. First of all, higher-end Dual CPU configurations with 3 TB RAM that’s high-end Server category and not what Mac Pro is aiming for. Second, you’d be hard pressed to configure one of these workstations with comparable features for less money. If I want to match the spec of the MP with say, a HP, I almost need to go with an expensive Xeon Gold, since cheaper options simply can’t match the Xeon-W Apple uses. Also don’t forget that Apple includes dual 10-GB Ethernet, multiple thunderbolt ports and a 1400W PSU in the box - That’s not cheap. Not to mention that it’s chassis vastly superior in terms of access, setup and noise.

falainber said:
The biggest problem is that, say, Dell workstation prices start from $600 whereas Apple workstation prices start from $6000.
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All you are getting for $600 is at most a cardboard box

Don’t get me wrong, I too think that for $6000 the specs of the base MP are a bit lackluster. It should have been a 10-Core Xeon, 512 GB SSD as well as a Navi GPU. But I’m terms of expandability, the machine is very good and I have little doubt it will be favorably received by its target audience.

P.S. no, I’m not getting one, I have no need for a bulldozer.
 
Jyby said:
A company I worked for bought a $30,000 HP Z series work station... they returned it because I built the exact same one with loads more storage and better cooling, and a power supply for more graphics for $18,000..
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Not every company has someone like you just sitting around to build custom machines for them. And even if they did, highly skilled employees aren’t cheap.
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iBrooker said:
Instead Apple completely ignored us
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I think that is largely because people like you are a minuscule part of Apple’s customer base. I used to have a cheese grater Mac myself. I loved that beast, but as soon as the MBP’s became powerful enough, I traded mobility for the sweetness of that giant hunk of noisy aluminum.

To be frank, I have to admit I sometimes miss that cheese grater, but those days are gone. My MBP is more powerful than my old cheese grater and does everything I need it to do and more. You might prefer a certain form factor and I understand that, but other offerings cover the functional needs we have so most of us have moved on to MBPs, Minis, iMacs, or PCs. Those are our choices now.
 
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fathergll said:
In otherwords you are paying for a monitor you don't need. Its a classic upselling tactic.
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But for 99% of users in this user space it's the best monitor they're going to get anyway. There isn't a better 5k monitor you can buy, so why would you want another one? Bigger? How much bigger? 32" isn't going to change your life in any way.

The only real option you've got for different monitors from the iMac is a high refresh rate one (and you sacrifice resolution for that, it's only benefit is for gaming) or a reference monitor like Apple just announced.
 
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Check this out on youtube: Steve Jobs interview back in 1995


Start from 38:48 and listen to what he says about it Apple got greedy when Steve Jobs left Apple, still apply today situation obviously and this will explain why it is so expensive!
 
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