Is the new Mac Pro a failure?

[ZnU]

My concern is at this time it looks like the resale value of Macs may have gone down unlike 5+ years ago. I am seeing eBay sale listings of the new Mac Pro being offered at low prices like HERE. And this may also affect the resale values of older Mac Pros as well. In the sale ad, the New Mac Pro, a 6 core 3.5 with 64g ram is being offered at $4500 for Buy It Now and at $3400 to bid plus it has AppleCare up to 2017. I don't think these sellers are selling for profits. I think the new Mac Pro's sales are good. You'll just have to take note of the resale value should you decide to sell it after some years.

A starting bid price doesn't really mean anything, and a $4500 buy-it-now price on a $4000 computer with a ~$700 aftermarket memory upgrade and AppleCare is only about 10% below full retail price.

There was an old sale ad months ago, a 12 core New Mac Pro that was sold for only $7k also with AppleCare. These are good deals considering this is the current model. If the sellers outnumber the buyers, then that may bring down the resale values not only with Mac Pros but other Macs as well.

There's a sort of "It loses 20% of its value when you drive it off the lot" phenomenon with new gear. Why is someone going to pay some random eBay seller the same price they'd pay Apple, for a system that they can't build to order, that has some hours on it, that there's a chance might not be accurately represented in the listing, and so on? Of course you're going to want to save 10 or 20% over Apple's prices; you might as well just buy from Apple otherwise. I think you may be extrapolating too much from this initial hit.

 

[rei101]

I really could kick this man (I forgot his name) in his balls when he said something that "this is innovation" when presenting the new mac pro.

Basically they too away all the storage and peripheral space and placed the rest in a cylinder that it is not very fancy and it is extremely expensive.

I do not know about PCI today, I took my original mac pro and added all the ports everyone uses now in my PCI slots but I do not know why someone would use PCI today.

Still, yes... basically all the hard drives you used to have internally now they are all over the desk instead of having a contained workstation.

Apple should have done better, in my case... I can wait, I work with video post production but I can wait for a better platform yet.

 

[fuchsdh]

I really could kick this man (I forgot his name) in his balls when he said something that "this is innovation" when presenting the new mac pro.

Basically they too away all the storage and peripheral space and placed the rest in a cylinder that it is not very fancy and it is extremely expensive.

I do not know about PCI today, I took my original mac pro and added all the ports everyone uses now in my PCI slots but I do not know why someone would use PCI today.

Still, yes... basically all the hard drives you used to have internally now they are all over the desk instead of having a contained workstation.

Apple should have done better, in my case... I can wait, I work with video post production but I can wait for a better platform yet.

Since you're in video production, may I ask what hard drives you were keeping locally to your machine?

 

[Macsonic]

A starting bid price doesn't really mean anything, and a $4500 buy-it-now price on a $4000 computer with a ~$700 aftermarket memory upgrade and AppleCare is only about 10% below full retail price.

There's a sort of "It loses 20% of its value when you drive it off the lot" phenomenon with new gear. Why is someone going to pay some random eBay seller the same price they'd pay Apple, for a system that they can't build to order, that has some hours on it, that there's a chance might not be accurately represented in the listing, and so on? Of course you're going to want to save 10 or 20% over Apple's prices; you might as well just buy from Apple otherwise. I think you may be extrapolating too much from this initial hit.

Hi Znu My earlier post mentions if sellers outnumber the buyers if you decide to resell the new Mac Pro after a few years of usage with reference to your post that the resale value of the Mac Pro is good after using the computer a couple of years.

In the eBay listing of the Mac Pro, with the bid price of $3400, sometimes buyers play it smart. They would place a bid on the last minutes of the auction to get it at the lowest price so the winning bidder may possibly get the unit lower than $4500. If the buyers feel the product is not hard to find or being sold by several sellers as supply exceeds demand, this may have a higher chance of a lower resale value of used Macs.

There's another listing of a 12 core 2.7ghz new Mac Pro as "new" with the buy it now price of $5939 HERE Could be legit or not but these sale prices may affect the way buyers perceive future sales of used Mac Pros. BH Photo sells the 12 core New Mac Pro at $6999. Prospective buyers may tend to delay the purchase and wait as prices may go down, lessening demand. I could be wrong. I am not a economic expert and supply-demand may affect resale prices.

 

[cjmillsnun]

This in and of itself does not make a product successful or not.

Erm, as far as the company that is producing it is concerned, yes it does. If they can't keep up with demand, it IS successful, as they are making a crap ton of money.

 

[cjmillsnun]

A drop in the bucket compare to their other products.

But exceeding expectations for most workstation sales, in what is a declining market. By all accounts the nMP is a success.

 

[thekev]

You seem to have an agenda that is intended to bash the new Mac Pro. Your post misses the entire point of the machine completely and totally.

Let's start with the specs:

Image





The new Mac Pro can support 43 pcie "slots". 43. There is no workstation in the world that can do that.

Those specs and that quote are completely incorrect. You used the stock gpus for the old mac pro configuration then suggested the nMP uses W9000s, which is inaccurate. 43 PCIe slots is also incorrect. The entire thing has 40 lanes, because each cpu package supports 40 lanes. Those are split up among the various IO ports. I actually agree with you about the OP having a ridiculous agenda, but that's not a good reason to put together so much misinformation.

 

[Riwam]

My current set up with my nMP takes much less place!

I really could kick this man (I forgot his name) in his balls when he said something that "this is innovation" when presenting the new mac pro.

Basically they too away all the storage and peripheral space and placed the rest in a cylinder that it is not very fancy and it is extremely expensive.

I do not know about PCI today, I took my original mac pro and added all the ports everyone uses now in my PCI slots but I do not know why someone would use PCI today.

Still, yes... basically all the hard drives you used to have internally now they are all over the desk instead of having a contained workstation.

Apple should have done better, in my case... I can wait, I work with video post production but I can wait for a better platform yet.

..................
If I compare all the room I needed for the previous MP 5.1 and all the cables and devices which had to be outside (b&w and color printers, A4 and A3 scanners, my display and a USB web cam, outside speakers which were in my case my hi fi system, external HDDs for additional data and for Time Machine, a Wacom drawing tablet, Ethernet connection for Airport.. and so on) to my my present set up:
I have just my nMP with 3 narrow USB 3 enclosures side by side for the 3 non boot drives of my previous MP 5.1 and the small (now external) Apple DVD drive...well...I have no more cable connections than before and everything fits nicely on my not large desk.
I have much more free desk surface and do not stumble any longer when I stand up over the huge enclosure of the previous MP (always fearing not to bump and scratch the aluminum surface since scratches could not be removed).
I do not even mention those other owners of a nMP who can afford a TB multi bay enclosure to put there all the previous inside HDDs.
Definitely much more comfortable and a lot of more free working space!

 

[N19h7m4r3]

..................
If I compare all the room I needed for the previous MP 5.1 and all the cables and devices which had to be outside (b&w and color printers, A4 and A3 scanners, my display and a USB web cam, outside speakers which were in my case my hi fi system, external HDDs for additional data and for Time Machine, a Wacom drawing tablet, Ethernet connection for Airport.. and so on) to my my present set up:
I have just my nMP with 3 narrow USB 3 enclosures side by side for the 3 non boot drives of my previous MP 5.1 and the small (now external) Apple DVD drive...well...I have no more cable connections than before and everything fits nicely on my not large desk.
I have much more free desk surface and do not stumble any longer when I stand up over the huge enclosure of the previous MP (always fearing not to bump and scratch the aluminum surface since scratches could not be removed).
I do not even mention those other owners of a nMP who can afford a TB multi bay enclosure to put there all the previous inside HDDs.
Definitely much more comfortable and a lot of more free working space!

Exactly! I got told I'm not doing "real work" when I posted a photo of work environment because they couldn't see much on the desk. Well of course not, I manage my cables and have the devices on a shelf under the desk, with a try for power cable bricks.

My desk is still neat and tidy and I even listed all the things I currently have connected. It'll all be expanded once Lacie's new TB 2 5Big drives are available in Ireland.

 

[ZnU]

Hi Znu My earlier post mentions if sellers outnumber the buyers if you decide to resell the new Mac Pro after a few years of usage with reference to your post that the resale value of the Mac Pro is good after using the computer a couple of years.

In the eBay listing of the Mac Pro, with the bid price of $3400, sometimes buyers play it smart. They would place a bid on the last minutes of the auction to get it at the lowest price so the winning bidder may possibly get the unit lower than $4500. If the buyers feel the product is not hard to find or being sold by several sellers as supply exceeds demand, this may have a higher chance of a lower resale value of used Macs.

OK, but there's not really much reason to believe that's occurring. Again, you seem to be saying something like "Look! These machines have already lost 10 or 20% of their value! Imagine how bad it'll be in a couple more years." But instantly losing some chunk of value like this when the gear is no longer new from the factory or is being sold by some random individual rather than a trusted retailer is entirely normal, and doesn't really tell you anything about where resale prices will be in a couple of years.

There's another listing of a 12 core 2.7ghz new Mac Pro as "new" with the buy it now price of $5939 HERE Could be legit or not but these sale prices may affect the way buyers perceive future sales of used Mac Pros. BH Photo sells the 12 core New Mac Pro at $6999. Prospective buyers may tend to delay the purchase and wait as prices may go down, lessening demand. I could be wrong. I am not a economic expert and supply-demand may affect resale prices.

Of course supply and demand influence (determine, really) resale prices, but present evidence does not especially suggest the new Mac Pro will lose value faster than other Mac models historically have.

Incidentally, there's a pretty big catch in the listing for that 12 core Mac Pro. Delivery is "Estimated between Mon. Aug. 18 and Fri. Aug. 22." There are also no original photos in the listing. These are big red flags. My first thought here is that the buyer is selling an item they don't actually have possession of, and will then attempt to acquire one at something below the price the winning bidder has agreed to pay, probably bailing on the sale if they can't do so.

 

[menano]

Having received mine 48 hours ago I can say, the short answer is no. Absolutely not.

 

[thats all folks]

The G4 was good for about one or two revisions. But then Motorola dropped the ball, the G4 was unable to scale to 500 mhz, and Apple had to cancel an entire Power Mac G4 line post announcement because Motorola was unable to produce, at all, the G4 chips they had promised Apple.

The advantages of the G5 were pretty clear: higher bus speed and faster memory. At the end of the day, you could make the G4 as fast as you wanted in theory, but you'd never be able to pipe the data in. It's why DDR memory or even PC-133 was pretty much ineffective on the G4. It was like putting a giant super factory at the end of a one lane dirt road. Yes, the G4 in theory was fast, but in practice there was no way you'd get anywhere near getting enough data in for it to process.

Of course Motorola promised to fix the bus speed problems. And they fumbled. And they managed to get a whopping 33 mhz more. And then they fumbled some more. And then a year after Apple has given up and moved on they come out with a G4 with a decent clock speed and wonder why Apple moved on when it took them 5 years to fix the G4.

What a joke.

The "unable to scale to 500Mhz" you mention both occurred and was resolved in the first six months following the G4's introduction.

The G4 gained several small but significant improvements in it's lifetime. Unfortunately, with Apple's low volume being the only source of demand for significantly faster chips (the chip had and continues to have a successful life as an embedded processor), Motorola was not interested risking the R&D costs required. The G5 was the only solution that an arrogant Apple could achieve.

The Pentium M was an impressive chip, in the mobile space. The workstation Xeons available at the time were not impressive at all. The Netburst architecture of the P4 is is now widely regarded as a failure. The higher clock and bus speed of the P4 (compared to the G4) did little during all the time you were stuck waiting for the pipeline and out of order mis-predictions to clear.

The G5 had a faster bus but didn't really do a whole lot more math than a G4. Hands on experience shows gains in performance track with clock gains over a late generation G4 system. That gain being maximized by the quad core G5. So more and faster cores for more money give more performance on software that could actually utilize those cores.

The G5 gave up getting better in less time than the G4 and clearly Apple know that was coming as (as I mentioned previously) they were ready to ship systems based on the Intel Core architecture as soon as those chips became available in early and mid 2006. The Core architecture being a major improvement over the P4.

 

[Kaspersky]

Not

 

[reco2011]

LOL. Apples and Oranges! Good thing some people don't run companies.

Yeah, I didn't agree with the comparison to hot cakes either.

 

[reco2011]

Erm, as far as the company that is producing it is concerned, yes it does. If they can't keep up with demand, it IS successful, as they are making a crap ton of money.

This all depends on how many units they're able to make in a give period of time. If they can only manufacture one a month they'd be unable to meet demand but that doesn't mean they're selling a lot of them.

 

[cjmillsnun]

This all depends on how many units they're able to make in a give period of time. If they can only manufacture one a month they'd be unable to meet demand but that doesn't mean they're selling a lot of them.

Considering they're in an automated factory, They can make a lot more than one a month.

 

[cjmillsnun]

I really could kick this man (I forgot his name) in his balls when he said something that "this is innovation" when presenting the new mac pro.

Basically they too away all the storage and peripheral space and placed the rest in a cylinder that it is not very fancy and it is extremely expensive.

I do not know about PCI today, I took my original mac pro and added all the ports everyone uses now in my PCI slots but I do not know why someone would use PCI today.

Still, yes... basically all the hard drives you used to have internally now they are all over the desk instead of having a contained workstation.

Apple should have done better, in my case... I can wait, I work with video post production but I can wait for a better platform yet.

The phrase was "Cannot innovate any more, my ass!", given by Phil Schiller and was well founded IMO.

Hard drives that used to be internal "all over the desk"? Why not stack them neatly, or better yet, go for networked storage.

Believe it or not, Steve Jobs was an evangelist of networked storage since his days at NeXT. Now that the technology is catching up and allowing networked storage to have a decent turn of speed, it's a more attractive option. I no longer have a large hard disk in my laptop (I have a rMBP which replaced my MBP) and go for networked storage instead. I can still get real work done, using local storage whilst I'm away and quickly transfer it over the network when I'm home. With gigabit networking, it's even better on the nMP.

In 2-3 years, most workstations will be like this. Apple are ahead, it might hurt them slightly now, but they will have it right in the long run. The MacBook air is a similar example. The first MBA was awful, but the concept was right, and Apple defined the ultrabook.

 

[beaker7]

There isn't another platform on the market today that can stream RAW 4K REDcam footage in realtime. Yet, the nMP certainly can... without a hiccup.

I've got an 8 core / D700 nMP that sits unused most of the time because it's so much slower with .r3d than our other workstations. May sell it if you're interested.

 

[cjmillsnun]

The G4 was good for about one or two revisions. But then Motorola dropped the ball, the G4 was unable to scale to 500 mhz, and Apple had to cancel an entire Power Mac G4 line post announcement because Motorola was unable to produce, at all, the G4 chips they had promised Apple.

That's when it become pretty clear the G4 was not going to be maintainable. Apple got Motorola to mop up the mess, but the G4 was never really quite able to recover. The Pentium M came in shortly after and steamrolled the G4 on mobile.

The G4 was great for about a year, maybe two, but honestly, both IBM and Motorola (but mostly Motorola) totally repeatedly fumbled when it came to the PowerPC.

I eventually gave up and bought an Intel machine it was so bad. I was so gosh darn happy the day Apple announced the Intel transition. The writing had been on the wall for a while.

The promise of the G4 was pretty large, but Motorola time after time after time would make promises, and then totally and incompetently fail to deliver.

The advantages of the G5 were pretty clear: higher bus speed and faster memory. At the end of the day, you could make the G4 as fast as you wanted in theory, but you'd never be able to pipe the data in. It's why DDR memory or even PC-133 was pretty much ineffective on the G4. It was like putting a giant super factory at the end of a one lane dirt road. Yes, the G4 in theory was fast, but in practice there was no way you'd get anywhere near getting enough data in for it to process.

Of course Motorola promised to fix the bus speed problems. And they fumbled. And they managed to get a whopping 33 mhz more. And then they fumbled some more. And then a year after Apple has given up and moved on they come out with a G4 with a decent clock speed and wonder why Apple moved on when it took them 5 years to fix the G4.

What a joke.

Ummm the G4 got to dual 1.25 GHz. It was at the time, a seriously quick workstation, especially compared to the Wintel machines of the day. The G5 on the other hand, just couldn't cut it. IBM couldn't make them power efficient, and then Intel were previewing core technology. Apple jumped. One of the best decisions they ever made.

 

[Sym0]

I know it's faster, but that isn't anything amazing - computers are going to get faster anyway. Here are some of the problems that I believe it has

1. No PCI slots - Thunderbolt is slower than pci and it also means that you have all the expansions all over your desk. Wires everywhere.

2. Not many usb ports

3. Non user replaceable parts

4. Only one fan

5. Not rack mountable

6. Extreme price increase


Thunderbolt is slower than PCI and way more expensive. It seems like it isn't very practical?

Basically, what I'm trying to say is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3XcUUZQqd0

Basically I just made the decision to not by the nMP because of price alone. For $5500 I picked up a Lenovo workstation with 2x E5-2650 v2 Xeons, 32GB RAM, 256 SSD + 2TB storage, 2x K2000 quadro, 2x 24" IPS desiplays, KB + Mouse.

I couldn't even get the base nMP for that money, what a joke. The C30 even comes in a slim line case, it's completely silent (and has about 5 fans, not 1) and there's no change in noise from idle to full load with 32 threads running at 3GHz.

Oh and I have a 5 year on site warranty, and get to retain my HD data in the even of the PC needing to be taken off site for replacement.

 

[Macsonic]

OK, but there's not really much reason to believe that's occurring. Again, you seem to be saying something like "Look! These machines have already lost 10 or 20% of their value! Imagine how bad it'll be in a couple more years." But instantly losing some chunk of value like this when the gear is no longer new from the factory or is being sold by some random individual rather than a trusted retailer is entirely normal, and doesn't really tell you anything about where resale prices will be in a couple of years.

Of course supply and demand influence (determine, really) resale prices, but present evidence does not especially suggest the new Mac Pro will lose value faster than other Mac models historically have.

Incidentally, there's a pretty big catch in the listing for that 12 core Mac Pro. Delivery is "Estimated between Mon. Aug. 18 and Fri. Aug. 22." There are also no original photos in the listing. These are big red flags. My first thought here is that the buyer is selling an item they don't actually have possession of, and will then attempt to acquire one at something below the price the winning bidder has agreed to pay, probably bailing on the sale if they can't do so.

My comment was in reference to your previous posting "retain resale value extremely well". Yeah I know these sale ads may not be indications of what the resale value will be a couple of years from now. It also does not indicate the resale value may be extremely good. Though as far as I know, hardware value depreciates thru time. We know that the demand for desktop computers is also declining and this may not assure us of a high resale value on used Macs. Even the sales of new computers have declined to some degree https://www.macrumors.com/2014/04/09/gartner-1q14-pc-market/

I know that ad didn't show any actual product that's why I commented earlier if the ad is legit or not There are actually many sale ads of new Mac Pros there that do not show any actual photos. I was commenting how these ads may affect how buyers may react and their perception of the resale value prices.

 

[thekev]

I know that ad didn't show any actual product that's why I commented earlier if the ad is legit or not There are actually many sale ads of new Mac Pros there that do not show any actual photos. I was commenting how these ads may affect how buyers may react and their perception of the resale value prices.

That's why I typically suggest that people base their tech purchases on an assumption of zero residual value. They should buy something that is justified by the money made through its use. When they start trying to hedge their investments based on high anticipated resale value, they are more likely to make an unwise purchase.

 

[Macsonic]

That's why I typically suggest that people base their tech purchases on an assumption of zero residual value. They should buy something that is justified by the money made through its use. When they start trying to hedge their investments based on high anticipated resale value, they are more likely to make an unwise purchase.

Yep. You're right on that. A friend of mine who works as sales consultant in an Apple reseller shop shared his side. Customers would often ask him if Macs have high resale value. He tries to give careful advise and encourages his customers to buy based on need and usage without depending much on the hope of reselling it for a high value.

 

[ZnU]

I've got an 8 core / D700 nMP that sits unused most of the time because it's so much slower with .r3d than our other workstations. May sell it if you're interested.

The 12c holds up decently with R3D, though on 5K Epic stuff 'half res good' will drop below real-time very occasionally.

To go off on a bit of a semi-related rant here, frankly this has more to do with inefficient codec design on Red's part than anything. F55 4K raw will decode at full res using half as much CPU as R3D requires to decode at half res (yes, Red's 'GPU' decoding is still somehow bizarrely CPU intensive). For a long time Red's only solution to decently fast decoding was just "buy our $5000 PCIe card," so codec optimization wasn't a major priority, and it shows. (We did buy their $5000 PCIe card, and we got a lot of use out of it... but the drivers were always a little crashy and I don't think they ever got around to supporting system sleep.)

These sorts of shenanigans (and I could cite many more questionable moves on Red's part, with workflow, camera hardware, customer relations) are a big part of why we just sold our in-house Epic rather than upgrade to their new sensor (which incidentally is about 18 months late and doesn't achieve the ASA or dynamic range they claim it does). Of course we still have to deal with Epic-originated client projects every now and then... but about 80% of the indie feature work we do, which four years ago was almost all Red, is now Alexa or F55. I guess we're not the only ones who have developed this opinion about Red.

 

[ZnU]

My comment was in reference to your previous posting "retain resale value extremely well". Yeah I know these sale ads may not be indications of what the resale value will be a couple of years from now. It also does not indicate the resale value may be extremely good. Though as far as I know, hardware value depreciates thru time.

It does, but my point is that there's an initial sharp drop in price when gear is no longer 'new in box' from a reputable retailer, then a period where depreciation tends to be pretty slow with Apple gear. You seem to be pointing at this initial sharp drop as if it's a reason to be concerned about the resale value of the nMP in particular, when in fact it's entirely normal.

We know that the demand for desktop computers is also declining and this may not assure us of a high resale value on used Macs. Even the sales of new computers have declined to some degree https://www.macrumors.com/2014/04/09/gartner-1q14-pc-market/

Demand for desktop computers is declining because consumers are increasingly using tablets and smartphones for common computing tasks. This isn't really relevant to the Mac Pro's market segment.

Meanwhile, CPU and GPU performance are not increasing quite as fast as they once where, which could lead to machines holding value better.

Yep. You're right on that. A friend of mine who works as sales consultant in an Apple reseller shop shared his side. Customers would often ask him if Macs have high resale value. He tries to give careful advise and encourages his customers to buy based on need and usage without depending much on the hope of reselling it for a high value.

Sure, you shouldn't buy hardware that won't pay for itself if you can't get decent resale value out of it, but planning for zero resale value is a little extreme. Businesses in particular should have well a thought out replacement cycle for the computers they own, and for best results estimated resale value should be taken into account in planing that cycle.