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rondocap

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 18, 2011
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MicroCenter has the 2023 base Mac Pro M2 Ultra for $4999 brand new.

I got one from them, they're excellent to deal with. If you have a Micro Center near you, that is a nice $2000 savings and makes it a better value than it was before.

You can add Apple Care on it as well like normal after purchase, they are an authorized Apple seller.

Just figured I'd share since that is where I got mine and someone was on the fence!
 
Micro Center used to be the king of these kinds of deals. It's been a long time since I've seen a discount of this magnitude from them. I'd be tempted to buy one if Apple hadn't lost me as a customer.
 
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Micro Center used to be the king of these kinds of deals. It's been a long time since I've seen a discount of this magnitude from them. I'd be tempted to buy one if Apple hadn't lost me as a customer.

We're not too far off from the M4 Mac Pro so that might be reason for sales. Will be interesting if it's another dud or if it will do something to regain some respect from enthusiasts, which would include: PCIe 5, an extreme version of the chip, GPU support, replaceable RAM support...
 
We're not too far off from the M4 Mac Pro so that might be reason for sales. Will be interesting if it's another dud or if it will do something to regain some respect from enthusiasts, which would include: PCIe 5, an extreme version of the chip, GPU support, replaceable RAM support...

Can you imagine the extreme outrage if it had GPU support or RAM that could be upgraded? We went through months and months of forum vitriol from various folks giggling that everything was going to be locked down and joyous at the death of the traditional Mac Pro.

Those people would be fuming at Apple.
 
Can you imagine the extreme outrage if it had GPU support or RAM that could be upgraded? We went through months and months of forum vitriol from various folks giggling that everything was going to be locked down and joyous at the death of the traditional Mac Pro.

Those people would be fuming at Apple.
They could probably do that if the SOC could come out and you put a new one in, like the old PowerMac daughtercards that XLR8te Your Mac and Sonnet used to sell. That would seem to be the most plausible way of creating an upgradable Mac Pro with Apple Silicon, at least to me. Here's my thinking:

- You buy an M4 Ultra Mac Pro that has an upgradable SOC (lets say you get one with 1TB SSD and 64GB of ram)
- Apple releases M5 Ultra or M6 Ultra SOCs that you can trade in with more ram and storage options (lets say 4TB SSD and 192GB of ram)

It would probably be expensive, but slightly less than buying a new Mac Pro.
 

Apple Mac Pro Wheels at 377. Lowest price I've seen. Might be good for future Mac Pro too?
 
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Apple Mac Pro Wheels at 377. Lowest price I've seen. Might be good for future Mac Pro too?
Or for your skateboard?
 
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They dropped the M2 Mac Pro to $3999, same price as the Mac Studio. That's crazy, I thought I got a good deal at $5299 but this is even crazier.

That shows you how many people are buying these, especially from Micro Center - I bet I was the only one lol.

$3999 is not bad if you need the PCIe, still almost a year until we see the M4 Mac Pro most likely.

But much better than $6999, that price is definitely too high for the market - Apple should have priced it at $4999, $1000 over the Mac Studio would have been fair imo.

 
Currently $3599.

At this price, might pick one up. Although not thrilled about the 64GB of memory.

Thoughts? Wait for M4?

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Pretty sure this is semi-clearance pricing because they were already a tough sell, and they're now 2 generations old. If you wait for the M4 the price will shoot right back up.
 
Definitely clearance pricing.

I guess the decision would be between this vs an m4 ultra Mac Studio.
 
They could probably do that if the SOC could come out and you put a new one in, like the old PowerMac daughtercards that XLR8te Your Mac and Sonnet used to sell. That would seem to be the most plausible way of creating an upgradable Mac Pro with Apple Silicon, at least to me. Here's my thinking:

- You buy an M4 Ultra Mac Pro that has an upgradable SOC (lets say you get one with 1TB SSD and 64GB of ram)
- Apple releases M5 Ultra or M6 Ultra SOCs that you can trade in with more ram and storage options (lets say 4TB SSD and 192GB of ram)

It would probably be expensive, but slightly less than buying a new Mac Pro.
Yeah, to me the Mac Pro basically exists for two niches now: people who need a lot of/internal PCIe slots, and people who want slightly more organized internal storage schemes. The price jump over the Studio is pretty dang hefty for those use cases, especially because you're not just comparing it to the product lineup now, you're also comparing it to years ago where the Mac Pro was a similar price jump up from an iMac but you got a lot more flexibility than you do now.

Having a daughter card setup so you could upgrade from an M4 to an M6 or something down the line (even if it was limited in that sense that you could probably only upgrade 1 or 2 generations from where you started or similar breaks in design like Intel sockets) would give it much more of a reason to exist and to have the high price.
 
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