MP 7,1 Is the new Mac Pro too expensive? [MERGED]

[chilly willy]

Probably, many have pointed out, for “Pros”, these are in line with costs of such systems regardless of manufacturer. And many are not considering inflation when comparing prices of the new MP with original cheese grater models....
I think some of the angst might be from people like me who are not Pro users per se (maybe “Prosumers” )who hoped for a lower entry level price with upgrade potential. I know that was probably quite naive on my part, but the ability to assemble your own PC and/or Hackintosh option probably inspired such hopes. I also just worry about heat/throttling in iMacs, leery of Hackintosh route, so maybe i was hoping for iMac pro specs in tower design. That eternal wish for mid range tower design from Apple that ain’t happened and never will.

 

[skaertus]

Probably, many have pointed out, for “Pros”, these are in line with costs of such systems regardless of manufacturer. And many are not considering inflation when comparing prices of the new MP with original cheese grater models....
I think some of the angst might be from people like me who are not Pro users per se (maybe “Prosumers” )who hoped for a lower entry level price with upgrade potential. I know that was probably quite naive on my part, but the ability to assemble your own PC and/or Hackintosh option probably inspired such hopes. I also just worry about heat/throttling in iMacs, leery of Hackintosh route, so maybe i was hoping for iMac pro specs in tower design. That eternal wish for mid range tower design from Apple that ain’t happened and never will.

I was under the impression it was too expensive as compared to the specs of the iMac Pro, which is cheaper and more powerful at the base configuration. But it seems like all this expandability indeed costs a lot of money (and it is not only the Apple tax).

According to the keynote, the Mac Pro could even be considered a bargain, cheaper than the competition. It could make sense, as Apple now needs to convince all the users to buy a Mac Pro after neglecting the product for more than five years. Now Apple has to offer it cheaper than the competition due to the risks associated with it failing to upgrade again in the future.

 

[tevion5]

The annoyance is that they can't get a 2k, or even 3k Mac Mini, that has the performance, and upgradabiity of the 1.5k gaming PC.

That would be nice, but in fairness Apple have never offered their consumer tier Macs with much upgrade-ability.

As someone confident I'll be getting this new Mac Pro to replace my aging 2011 MBP, I definitely would have liked a better stock config for $6000. The 256GB SSD is obviously weak.

That said, because it's a Mac Pro, upgrading the SDD and RAM (and maybe later GPU) with cheaper aftermarket parts should be simple.

 

[Matt Leaf]

i think the next iMac Pro update will take design cues from the XDR

 

[maflynn]

i think the next iMac Pro update will take design cues from the XDR

Yeah, that's my thinking as well

 

[mattspace]

That would be nice, but in fairness Apple have never offered their consumer tier Macs with much upgrade-ability.

They have, but it was a looong time ago. Pre-NeXT.

 

[skaertus]

That would be nice, but in fairness Apple have never offered their consumer tier Macs with much upgrade-ability.

As someone confident I'll be getting this new Mac Pro to replace my aging 2011 MBP, I definitely would have liked a better stock config for $6000. The 256GB SSD is obviously weak.

That said, because it's a Mac Pro, upgrading the SDD and RAM (and maybe later GPU) with cheaper aftermarket parts should be simple.

A Mac Pro to replace a 2011 MacBook Pro is a huge upgrade. But you will have at least to add more storage and upgrade the GPU eventually.

 

[mode11]

They have, but it was a looong time ago. Pre-NeXT.

Depends what you consider consumer tier. The G4 tower line up could get pricey at the top end, but was pretty expandable. That was early 2000's.

 

[rapideye]

Well, I would like to understand this pro market.

Pros say they need all this expandability and a product that was not even available during the last five years. How could these pros run their businesses or exercise their professions during the last half-decade? Did they patiently wait for the new Mac Pro to be released, while watched Windows machines run circles around the old one? Is there still a business after these five years?

We needed to purchase an expansion chassis to provide PCI support, adding ~$2k to the cost of the system. An adequate but suboptimal solution. This was a primary motivation for me to stick with my 2009 MacPro4,1 two years longer than I preferred, and one of the reasons I will be an early adapter of a new Mac Pro this fall.

 

[roobarb!]

Pros say they need all this expandability and a product that was not even available during the last five years. How could these pros run their businesses or exercise their professions during the last half-decade? Did they patiently wait for the new Mac Pro to be released, while watched Windows machines run circles around the old one? Is there still a business after these five years?

More companies than would admit really have built Hackintosh systems and run their businesses from them - those that absolutely needed the highest level of performance. Many indie production companies (and, erm, some larger) already have technical staff in house supporting existing systems with more than enough skill to build and maintain a fleet of Hacks. I know of two studio facilities which have been running Pro Tools Ultimate complete with HDX cards for years. Seeing a PC tower running macOS has become pretty commonplace and often the start of "oh, how did you get on with that setup?" conversations.

Others have leveraged the very decent performance of the iMac line alongside Thunderbolt chassis. The iMac becomes a 'disposable' part of the studio setup; storage and PCIe is racked, any issues with the iMac and it's whizzed off the VESA mount and swapped out in minutes. This is a solution I've championed for places I've set up and the convenience is very high. So convenient in fact that I'm wondering if I would ever look to use a Mac Pro in a music studio environment. Desktop video jockey handling 8K every hour of every day, sure... pro music studio not so much.

 

[mode11]

Yes that would be the correct response if it was competitive in that market.

There's a kind of backwards justification going on here, where since Monday the Mac Pro is defined by what Hollywood video editors need. The only reason they are the focus all of a sudden is because Apple started with a price for the new Mac Pro, and worked backwards from there.

In my example, I was taking it to an extreme. If Apple had decided the MP needed to cost $200m and be a supercomputer, everyone would now be running around saying it makes total sense because "that's what it costs to provide meteorologists with the tools they need". It may well do, but why should anyone else care? A much larger number of people just want a powerful Mac tower that doesn't cost two legs and a spleen. Doesn't seem like too much to ask.

 

[Te0SX]

He got the CPU price point wrong, it doesn't cost ~1200 but ~3000. Big mistake by him.

 

[tevion5]

They have, but it was a looong time ago. Pre-NeXT.

Fair enough I've got an Apple II Plus sitting on my shelf, but even the 512K right next to it proves my point!

 

[mode11]

He got the CPU price point wrong, it doesn't cost ~1200 but ~3000. Big mistake by him.

Why, what CPU do you think it uses?

 

[Umbongo]

He got the CPU price point wrong, it doesn't cost ~1200 but ~3000. Big mistake by him.

No it is the W-3223 which is $748. For someone who is seen as a guru in hardware advice he seems to have no clue what actually goes on with enterprise hardware.

 

[tevion5]

A Mac Pro to replace a 2011 MacBook Pro is a huge upgrade. But you will have at least to add more storage and upgrade the GPU eventually.

It will be for sure, I've been putting off an upgrade for quite some time so I'm splashing out now.

Yep 256GB is not enough for me. Will see what 512GB config costs, but might just get a much cheaper third part 1TB SSD PCIE and add that myself.

Radeon 580x will be enough for my 30" ACD for audio production and software development for now, if I need more power in a few years I can always upgrade the GPU.

 

[dysamoria]

I am so sick of the “if you cannot afford it, it’s not for you” meme.

Okay fine, then: Where the hell is the workstation for the rest of us power users who don’t want (can’t afford) to buy disposable and stupidly compact Macs every three years when thermal issues make them intolerable?

This thing is marketed as “Mac Pro”, not “Mac Pixar” or “Mac Plutocrat”. The Mac Pro used to start at $2500. Then it started at $3000. Now it starts at $6000 and isn’t for everyone who used to buy Mac Pros????

https://angryartboy.blogspot.com/2019/06/apples-2019-mac-pro-is-for-1-only.html

 

[Umbongo]

Anyway, can you find a motherboard that has 8 PCIe slots?

Not the original poster, but Super Micro have the X11SPA-TF which has similar specs to the new Mac Pro, although it doesn't have double wide slots it does have 8 PCI-E slots. It is a $499 board.

There is also the Gigabyte C621 AORUS XTREME which is more like the ASUS board, but with 12 DIMMs and 7 PCI-E and probably a similar price tag to the ASUS one as they allow overclocking.

Note the Mac Pro has "four double-wide slots, three single-wide slots, and one half-length slot preconfigured with the Apple I/O card".

Also the CPU only has 64 PCI-E lanes so there will be some bottlenecking when filling up these devices if everything is getting pushed. Be interesting to see if that has any real world impact.

https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C620/X11SPA-TF.cfm

https://www.gigabyte.com/uk/Motherboard/C621-AORUS-XTREME-rev-10#kf

 

[amedias]

I am so sick of the “if you cannot afford it, it’s not for you” meme.

Okay fine, then: Where the hell is the workstation for the rest of us power users who don’t want (can’t afford) to buy disposable and stupidly compact Macs every three years when thermal issues make them intolerable?

I'm getting sick of people complaining about this product, when their actual complaint is the absence of a different one. ;-)

You're right, this isn't a Mac Pro for people that used to buy 2.5-3k entry level Mac Pros, it's a Mac Pro for people that used to buy kitted out 10k-20k+ Mac Pros.

They've moved the slider up and catered for those guys and left the bottom end/rest of us out in the cold, it's annoying, and it's a legitimate complaint, but that doesn't make this product bad, or bad value.

Really I think they shouldn't have re-used the name 'Mac Pro' as it implied a replacement of the old product line where as this is positioned as a new product line re-using an old name.

 

[dysamoria]

They've moved the slider up and catered for those guys and left the bottom end/rest of us out in the cold, it's annoying, and it's a legitimate complaint, but that doesn't make this product bad, or bad value.

Oh I absolutely think this is an awesome machine! It just has no tier for the rest of us who aren’t Pixar. I’ve been priced out, like I said, and I’m clearly not the only person feeling snubbed by this course of action. I waited ten years for Apple to put out a “modular” Mac Pro and retina display, and the end of that wait was a bunch of middle fingers from apologists petulantly yelling “shaddap, it’s not for YOU, loser!!!”

 

[blue_macaco]

I bought my Mac Pro 4,1 for almost 3k ten years ago. Final Cut Studio 2 cost me another 2k back then. I'm still using the cMP now, just recently upgraded it again. So on the long run it was a good deal. The new Mac Pro is pricy, but one thing is for sure: it is an awesome, really impressive workstation that will easily last well into the 2030s. I'm glad Apple focussed on functionality on this machine. The design is great, especially on the inside. I didn't put much hope in the new MacPro to be honest and I was getting ready to switch to a Windows PC with a heavy heart (having used Macs since the early 90s), so for me this was a positive surprise despite the price shock. I'll try to go with the cMP for as long as I can, putting money on the side and eventually, in two years or three, try to get one of these second hand for hopefully something around 4k. Maybe I'm just dreaming but at least there is something to dream of now...

 

[JronMasteR]

I think the price is high, too high for personal use. But that is not what this unit is for.
For the market Apple is going for, the price is just fine.
I am just very happy Apple finally made the "cheese grater" Mac Pro great again.
Its an impressive Mac, everything we wanted

 

[LorenK]

The Mac Pro 7,1 is an impressive machine, and I'm sure that Apple spent a lot of money reengineering the platform to create such an impressive machine for a community that had slipped over to Wintel due to the absence of an expandable solution to the need for greater and greater processing power. So, having said that, I would like those who are criticizing those of us unhappy that the opening price point seems excessive to please understand that there are lots of people who bought the Mac Pro because they wanted its flexibility, processing power, and didn't need to be tied to a particular monitor. As a previous owner of a 3,1 and current owner of a 5,1, the Mac Mini doesn't do it for me, and while an iMac is pretty, I prefer to tie my computer into my 65" LG OLED as well as a 32" monitor.

I get it, Tim made a machine for the studios and that's good. But look at the distance in price between the highest priced Mac Mini and the now lowest priced Mac Pro. Seems there's room for a another desktop. I realize that I'm complaining about what Apple didn't do, but that seems to be most of the complaints about Apple of the last several years. It continues to go for the grand gesture rather than serve the needs of its customers in a progressive manner. There is no need for the grand gesture of the 7,1 if Apple had actually listened to its user base before it came out with the 6,1, a grand and pointless gesture if there ever was one. The users weren't unhappy with the form of the 5,1, they were unhappy that the technology was old and wasn't keeping up on the graphics side. Funny that the new cheese grater is not that much different in concept from the old cheese grater. And while Tim is the boss, the complaints really are about him leaving his customers behind as he makes the next grand gesture.

I like that they're tying the platforms together through the OS. It would be nice if the transition between the hardware platforms were as smooth, in price.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

Again, you want to break the law, you have at it.

Hahahahaha! It doesn't matter to Apple. I am not the target market.

 

[rawweb]

I'm getting sick of people complaining about this product, when their actual complaint is the absence of a different one. ;-)

You're right, this isn't a Mac Pro for people that used to buy 2.5-3k entry level Mac Pros, it's a Mac Pro for people that used to buy kitted out 10k-20k+ Mac Pros.

I have to disagree with you. The new entry-level 7,1 is not on par with a mid-tier from yesteryear. It includes a few years old gaming-grade graphics card and only 256gb SSD. The new entry point to Mac Pro is a bit confusing and financially a difficult decision to pull the trigger on.

In my opinion, the rest of the lineup is pretty kick-butt and I'm very excited to see Apple gave as much as they did.