When you consider how much computer you're getting, Apple has done an astonishing job keeping prices down so low. It compares very favourably to the "competition" running lousy Windows.
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MP 7,1 Is the new Mac Pro too expensive? [MERGED]
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Not everybody who needs some horsepower under the desk is editing high end video... An average pro (doing less "sophisticated" stuff) can't afford these machines anymore. And I don't care about these "super pros" claiming, that they could get the money for one of these machines back in with just one or two jobs. Even if they do exist, they probably make 0.01% of the pro users Apple has. And I always take statements like that with a grain of salt anyway.
For us "normal" pros Apple has exactly nothing in their line-up since years. All-In-One? No, thanks... Mac mini? No, thanks... The Urn pro? No, thanks... And now this completely over-designed Mac Pro, which is targeting just a tiny high-end segment of the pro market. Maybe Tim can send me over a bit of the stuff they are smoking all the time at their head-quarters?
Good job, Apple... not.
what did you expect?
all have demanded a highend machine and now all are complaining about the price
unbelievably
all have demanded a highend machine and now all are complaining about the price
unbelievably
This is the big problem - due to phones Apple is the biggest company in the world with a massive basic consumer market. So when they do a niche product for professionals they think it's ridiculous priced because they have no concept of professional tools.
For what you get the Mac Pro is a bargain, but it's aimed at a very small user base.
£7000 is not a lot to pay for a reference monitor with those specs (Obviously the Sony is 43k). Professional recording studios spend £8000+ on reference monitor speakers. This is normal money for actual pros. Not prosumers, no home enthusiasts, not youtubers. The BIG studios across the world - in this case writing film scores and mastering HDR material for Blu-ray.
The people complaining about the price on here, had no idea that HP workstation even existed until yesterday - and they have no use for a Mac Pro.
I'm glad one of the biggest companies in the world are making very complex niche products they'll barely sell any of, when they could just make iOS devices and services which will remain 99% of their profit - no they're not have a "cash grab" with a monitor stand, think how many they'll actually sell, it's not even going to factor into their sales figures at all.
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As far as I could find the Xeon Apple uses in the base model costs a measly $749. Not exactly top of the line. They should at least have offered the 3.7Ghz, that one is $1200. It's as cheap as they could go in the base model.
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The CPU + GPU combined in the $6.000 machine is $1000. You think the motherboard, case and a little RAM and small SSD is worth $5.000? OK then....
Look, I love that Apple have done this, made a real, expandable modern Mac Pro. But it's certainly overpriced, also compared to the cMP and Trashcan.
The CPU is a Xeon W-3223 which is $750, the 2006 and 2008 Mac Pros had two $750-$800 Processors each.
In terms of CPU, RAM, graphics card and storage the costs to Apple are likely the same as they were all those years ago. They guide, but do not determine the price. The 2006 and 2008 Mac Pros were roughly equal to the sum of their parts at retail pricing, but this has a big premium for the high end features and custom hardware Apple are pushing as well as the market it is for - which is obviously different.
That’s.....the target audience.
I do this stuff on my side for a lot more extra income and building up my business. I can make up the price in one month from my normal job and that’s the low end of the salary for my profession.
The base price is as I expected, this is a very expensive and not at all mainstream set of hardware that took tons of R&D money to make right.
They are not going to sell a ton of these, it’s a super high end and niche product.
They are not going to sell a ton of these, it’s a super high end and niche product.
Who ever said the Mac Pro is for the masses? It has Pro in it's name because it's designed for professionals who's workload will benefit from it's performance.
I also have metal plates with threaded holes that cost more than $100. So? I’ll never have to buy another one. I have more storage in minimags than this computer comes with in the default config. That’s pathetic.
Just because almost every budget I have can pay for this machine doesn’t mean I want to blow my time and profit on it. Many productions rent cameras by the way.
In comparison, my Hackintosh cost me less than 2K and it was the fastest Mac Apple never made from about 2013-2017. It’s paid for itself probably 200x over. I wouldn’t be able to say the same for this machine.
Also, I bet a usable config of this machine will be in the Dragon-X/Gemini range. I mean it doesn’t even come with 64GB and Apple likes to charge a lot for RAM (at least you can add that yourself).
Personally, I don't think Apple can say - "only well heeled pros" and stick a consumer graphics card in it. Especially at that price - the WX5100 isn't expensive.
The price of the system isn't the issue, AFA I am concerned - it is what you get for it - it isn't 2016 anymore. 8 cores for $6K isn't getting past the bean counters.
The problem with PCIe 3.0 isn't today - the problem is if Apple goes to sleep for another 2,000 days. Do YOU trust Apple to make updates for this on a regular basis? Tim Cook's Apple doesn't seem to do that.
You seem to have more faith in Intel's engineers than I do.
I’d like to note that I used to work in a studio who’s rent alone was $15K a month. There were thirty employees and our most expensive computer was probably $10K at the time. They probably had a few hundred thousand alone in beta and digibeta decks and most people still worked on low end computers. And that was in the heyday of budgets.
I worked on a project that had a half a million dollar budget. They wouldn’t even buy me a Mac. They bought me a Windows box from CompUSA to do it and begrudgingly bought RAM for it. And they eventually went under because they couldn’t afford it.
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EXACTLY! I have no problem spending 6K if I need to. There’s no need to here.
So your $2K Hackintosh has netted you $400k in income?
And if you go/went the Apple route, even if it cost you $10k instead of $2K you're still $390K up?
I mean sure everyone likes an extra $8K in their bank account but that doesn't sound like a convincing argument once you add in hardware and OS support of the real thing, and residual value on a $10K Mac is gonna be way higher than a $2K Hack even if you have written it off as an expense.
I get that people are annoyed that there's no headless xMac option in the 2,000 - 4,000 range, that's really annoying to me too, but that doesn't make the new Mac Pro a bad computer, or a bad deal financially, it's a great computer at a competitive price when compared to other options in the same market segment.
It's not what we Pro-sumers want, but the lack of a product for 'us' doesn't make this Mac Pro a bad product for 'them'
As another point of reference, I just got a PO raised for some in-life Ram upgrades to some of our existing machines, £4k spent on just Ram, for 2 machines that are half way through their life already...price is all relative.
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There seems to be a lot of people who think the Mac Pro is not too expensive.
Yes, it is a high-end machine. But looking at the specs, they seem to not even match the ones in the iMac Pro. The iMac Pro comes with a 27-inch monitor attached to it, and it still costs $1,000 less.
I wonder if the R&D development, the expensive case, and the expandability would be worth an additional $1,000, one 27-inch monitor less, a weaker video card, and much less storage.
People in the pro market may be used to paying high prices, but that does not stop the Mac Pro from being a rip-off.
I am not buying it, and I am not in this kind of pro market, but I would just like to understand.
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Well, expandability should not cost more.
First, Apple restricts expandability from all its products, and sell it as a feature, adding a premium to it.
Now, Apple builds an expandable computer, and sells expandability as a premium feature, charging more for it.
And people still buy into this stuff.
Go figure.
No they weren't. They were still developed for professionals with professional workloads. The workloads in 2019 are much much more demanding than they were in 2010. Also, inflation. The 5,1 was insanely expensive as well for the masses, that's why they didn't buy them.
The Mac Pro for years has been targeted at corporation employees professionals with corporation wallets behind them.
Smelling BS here... but it's OK. You seem to need it. So you are claiming that you can pay off a 15k machine from one month of your salary after subtracting all the normal fixed and living costs? And that is the base salary of your "profession"?
Then are only a few professions coming into mind... pimp, drug dealer, wall street criminal, etc... But I don't see what you would you use a Mac Pro for then.Well, I would like to understand this pro market.
If people use the computer for professional purposes, then I would expect some predictability.
First, the last Mac Pro was sold for a base price of $2,999. Now the base model is being sold for $5,999. Double the price. A 100% increase in price may increase the cost of running the business. I would think the pros would like the prices to remain steady, so they would be able to put a price on the products and services they provide with the Mac Pro.
Second, the last Mac Pro was released in 2013. Now it is 2019, and the new Mac Pro is not even available for sale. What if I am a pro and need a new computer right now? Or if I needed to buy one in 2017 or 2018? Would I have to settle with a 2013 Mac Pro?
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?
The big issue is that the Mac Pro has been priced (and to some extent specified) to target a pretty small workstation market, whereas I think many wanted a mass market headless expandable Mac for a reasonable (but not low) price.
There is still that hole in the line-up. I think that hole starts around the $2.5k to $3k range, so the same price as a 15 inch MacBook Pro and spec'd like a normal high-end PC.
For that money I would expect:
- (non-Xeon) i7 or i9
- 16GB to 64GB (non-ECC) RAM
- 512GB SSD
- a decent Navi graphics card (standard dual slot)
- a bunch of PCIe 4.0 slots to fill with graphics, NvME SSDs, etc.
- the rest of the specs from the current Mac Mini (TB3, etc.).
It's so easy, I really don't get why it's not happening.
There is still that hole in the line-up. I think that hole starts around the $2.5k to $3k range, so the same price as a 15 inch MacBook Pro and spec'd like a normal high-end PC.
For that money I would expect:
- (non-Xeon) i7 or i9
- 16GB to 64GB (non-ECC) RAM
- 512GB SSD
- a decent Navi graphics card (standard dual slot)
- a bunch of PCIe 4.0 slots to fill with graphics, NvME SSDs, etc.
- the rest of the specs from the current Mac Mini (TB3, etc.).
It's so easy, I really don't get why it's not happening.
Yes, that is what I'm saying. I'm also saying I could spend that extra $8K on something else that would net me more money. It's an opportunity cost. And that's assuming the base model works for me. It doesn't. So now what? Do I pay $10-16K to stay on Mac OS? Or do I just go to Puget or Boxx and live with an OS I hate but a ROI I can get behind?
In my world, most of my bottleneck isn't my machine. It's waiting on approvals. I can't get more jobs in while I'm waiting for jobs to complete. So paying that much for a machine that will let me twiddle my thumbs longer doesn't seem like a great value.
It's built to expand. And that's what they're charging for. But by the time I put 1.5TB of RAM in it, I'll be on another machine.
@skaertus
There's quite big difference in capability and intended use between the 2013 and the new 2019 MP though, I don't think it's fair to directly compare them in intent even if they do share a product name.
In answer to your later questions...they fall into several groups of users with different answers.
For people that *needed* increased power and capability and were able to work cross platform they will have jumped ship and scaled up using HP Z or other equivalent high end workstations. This new Mac Pro may mean they can jump back to Apple.
For people that needed increased power and capability and were *not* able to move to a new platform then they will have scaled out and/or upgraded their existing machines as much as possible, and to the detriment of their margins as jobs take longer than would be possible with newer hardware.
For people that didn't need the increased power they will have limped along with what they had, upgraded specs if possible but ultimately would have been working at decreased efficiency as time went on and jobs take longer than what could be achieved with newer hardware, this would mean they are either making less margin if billing fixed rate, or make them more expensive if billing by time.
Even among pro users though use cases differ. Some will be where these kind of machines are often bough and depreciated over 3-5 years , and the base spec is rarely bought, as it'll be a machine intended for production use for several years and will be maxed out (or at least half way up the scale) at initial purchase, and then not touched again until replacement
Then there's the setups which are a subset of the above, highly specced initially and the machines internally upgraded frequently to keep up with new workloads.
Then there's users that buy machine(s) for 'a' job, the cost of the machine is built into the job quote and is essentially paid for once the job is closed. These guys may or may not then carry on using the machine for future jobs depending on the workload. It might get used again and the result is increased margin on the next job, or it may be 'disposed' of and new hardware bought for the next job.
There's more ifs. buts. and nuance beyond that too, but just a glimpse into the way stuff works in some industries.
There's quite big difference in capability and intended use between the 2013 and the new 2019 MP though, I don't think it's fair to directly compare them in intent even if they do share a product name.
In answer to your later questions...they fall into several groups of users with different answers.
For people that *needed* increased power and capability and were able to work cross platform they will have jumped ship and scaled up using HP Z or other equivalent high end workstations. This new Mac Pro may mean they can jump back to Apple.
For people that needed increased power and capability and were *not* able to move to a new platform then they will have scaled out and/or upgraded their existing machines as much as possible, and to the detriment of their margins as jobs take longer than would be possible with newer hardware.
For people that didn't need the increased power they will have limped along with what they had, upgraded specs if possible but ultimately would have been working at decreased efficiency as time went on and jobs take longer than what could be achieved with newer hardware, this would mean they are either making less margin if billing fixed rate, or make them more expensive if billing by time.
Even among pro users though use cases differ. Some will be where these kind of machines are often bough and depreciated over 3-5 years , and the base spec is rarely bought, as it'll be a machine intended for production use for several years and will be maxed out (or at least half way up the scale) at initial purchase, and then not touched again until replacement
Then there's the setups which are a subset of the above, highly specced initially and the machines internally upgraded frequently to keep up with new workloads.
Then there's users that buy machine(s) for 'a' job, the cost of the machine is built into the job quote and is essentially paid for once the job is closed. These guys may or may not then carry on using the machine for future jobs depending on the workload. It might get used again and the result is increased margin on the next job, or it may be 'disposed' of and new hardware bought for the next job.
There's more ifs. buts. and nuance beyond that too, but just a glimpse into the way stuff works in some industries.
That isn’t in the $6K base. I love the big text though...
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