IMO real power users use Linux and a version they compiled completely themselves...
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MP 7,1 Poll - So what should the base MP 2019 be sold for then??
- Thread starter mtasquared
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...if you think a "plain old Mac" has ever been an "expandable tower" then, yes, you do.
No, they want a Mac Pro, which has always been a workstation-class expandable tower since it was launched in 2006 - as a replacement for the PowerMac G5 expandable workstation-class tower before it. Not that some people wouldn't like the option of a consumer-grade i5 tower Mac for $1500 - but I don't think may people seriously expected the new Mac Pro to be anything other than a Xeon tower or cheaper than previous Pros.
Right. War is peace, truth is lies, freedom is slavery and $6000 is $3000. Got it.
Pro tip: if Tim Cook sells you a new suit of clothes made from a material so fine that the unenlightened can't see it, make sure that you're wearing warm, clean underwear.
All the previous Mac Pros were workstation-class machines with Xeon processors and ECC memory starting at $2500-$3000 for the minimum-spec Xeon in the range (with BTO options suitable for pro video/3D costing far more). The new Mac Pro is a workstation-class machine with Xeon processor and ECC memory starting at $6000 for the minimum-spec Xeon in the range. Whether its because it is over-specced, over-designed or just over-priced, the cost of a workstation-class, expandable Mac desktop was $3000 and is now $6000 and there's no 'new', comparable product at the old price point. They. Have. Raised. The. Price.
...and it's not a gallon of petrol, a studio flat in San Francisco or even a loaf of bread, its a computer for which the reasonable expectation is that, as time passes and technology improved, you'll get more computer for the same number of dollars. Not less.
...and the same could be said (and probably was) about every previous Mac Pro, which all had custom-designed mainboards, cooling systems and premium-quality cases, yet the entry-level systems came in at the $2599-$3000 mark, which was defensible against PC offerings with comparable CPU/GPU/RAM specs. Even the trashcan - it might have been a mistake but it was a highly non-trivial bit of product design.
Agreed, agreed, agreed. This seems so simple, yet many of us have to keep explaining the problem with doubling the price for the same product segment we’ve been using and wanting refreshed for years now. That the new Mac Pro is “not intended for you” or the thousands of other Mac Pro users and fans is a silly apology for Apple...like it’s a gift to be chosen by Apple for a product “targeting”. Most of us needing and asking for a new Mac Pro (those whom Apple was responding to when admitting the 2013 didn’t pan out) were asking for a similar price/performance point to what we’ve had in the past. Pretty sure most of us weren’t saying “Just give us a new one and charge anything you like, and we’ll buy it!!”
No **** on your first comment, you have no idea on the R&D price so you are talking out of your ....
why bother posting in a garbage topic in the first place, wouldn't your valuable time be better off used elsewhere?
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That is very true - and they aren't going to get my business anymore.
I have an AMD system in my future. It will outperform the 7,1 for a whole lot less (based on my workflow and what I actually do with my MP. I'll be migrating my family away from the iPhone, my next tablet won't be an iPad, and I'll be getting a Roku to replace the Apple TV.
Better performance, less money.
And no, I don't really care about OSX - the UI still isn't as good as OS/2's workplace shell and the OS is no longer head and shoulders above windows.
All the tech pundits pleasure themselves on how great the mac pro is and are eager to say “it’s not for you”, a huge portion of the enthusiast market is going bye bye like above.
The reality is the original mac pro had a $2500 entry point and enthusiasts could get into that market. That is the product enthusiasts want. A product that lets them expand with slots and storage. When apple and idiot pundits say, the Mac Pro is not for you, the iMac is for you... who the **** are they to tell users that what they want and dont want. What users need and dont need. The users get to do that.
The enthusiasts want slots too, and instead, apple just gave them the finger.
That group, the enthusiasts, is their CORE base. If apple thinks that the pro market is their core, they are in for a rude surprise. It wasnt a bunch of Pixar wonks that saved apple in 96. It is not the pro market that is their core that saved them, it was the enthusiast market. The same market they just kissed goodbye.
Apple's only hope is the idiot pundits wake up, and the user base gets angry enough to complain loudly enough, that next year, they introduce an entry Mac Pro at the $3000-3500 price mark. If not, the last of the enthusiasts will leave, like above, and their outsized influence and effect will go elsewhere with them.
Let’s be honest. iTunes / iPod / iPhone saved apple. Mac hardware hadn’t little to do with it besides benefiting from the halo effect.
A base Mac Pro should be available in a bare bone configuration consisting only of case, motherboard and CPU with options for buyers to add anything else they need if they wish...
I would have loved to see a generalist, Mac tower using the same specs as the high end iMac and 2 full length GPU slots. Heck, call it the plain old "Mac," and the current model the "Mac Pro."
But I think Apple cornered themselves with thermals in the old Mac Pro. They cornered themselves with pricing in the new Mac Pro. Management probably could not see offering a tower that costs less than the iMac Pro.
But I think Apple cornered themselves with thermals in the old Mac Pro. They cornered themselves with pricing in the new Mac Pro. Management probably could not see offering a tower that costs less than the iMac Pro.
Um no. In 1995/1996 Apple was near bankrupt. From 1996 to 2001 apple had returned to profitability on the back of the imac/mac and unix and enthusiasts. The think different campaign wasnt for the ipod, it was for the mac enthusiasts.
They dragged its near corpse back so that they had a few bux to invest in the ipod. No doubt the ipod helped take them to the next level, but without the mac coming back, there would be no ipod.
The Mac Pro (2019) should be sold for whatever the heck Apple WANTS to sell it for. If you don't want to pay the price, don't buy one. Do you think you have a RIGHT to their shiny new tech?
I cannot and will not pay the price for one. And I'm good with that. They're a company, not a charity.
I cannot and will not pay the price for one. And I'm good with that. They're a company, not a charity.
I'd like to see performance benchmarks of the base model compared to a similar 2010 Mac Pro. I wonder how much faster it really is
I agree with all of that, but that is not the point and problem most have with it. The question is one of marketing. Is apple making a marketing mistake by not providing a cheaper entry option, with say a 4 core xeon and 8GB of ram for around $3000, that more of the enthusiast market could get into. Assuming they could still make a profit at that point, was it a net net mistake for them to ignore that segment of the market.
I think fair minded folks can disagree on that, but personally, I do think it was a mistake to exclude that segment of the market. As always, YMMV.
And PCIe 4.0
At that point, it isn't unreasonable IF the end user insists on staying with Intel.
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No one is paying $3,000 for a quad core in 2019. - That is Ryzen 3 territory.
Apple is pricing their workstations like it is 2016 and Intel is the only game in town.
First, I disagree. A 4 core with lots of expansion abilities will be attractive to many users. Also, there are alternatives. Use a 6 core, or a down speed 8 core, or prev gen 8 core. There plenty of things they could have done to make an entry model.
Casted my vote at $2500, because that's what my 2008 cost me for a "base" model, no frills. Actually, I paid less than that. Count for some inflation. Final answer.
Not to fan the flames, but you had to have known Apple was going to use Intel in the 2019 Mac Pro. We all did, even if some secretly hoped Apple would get off the Intel merry-go-round.
I bear no ill will towards AMD, but they aren't a reliable enough partner for CPUs, not that Intel necessarily is at this point...actually, since the Broadwell debacle - but that's another story for another time.
Looking at AMD's market cap from 2005-2019 - https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMD/amd/market-cap - you can see how they have bounced around. Honestly, if Apple was ever serious about using AMD CPUs in any of their computers, they would/should have been smart to simply buy them outright in 2012 or 2015 while Intel floundered about with the Broadwell and Skylake releases.
PCIe 4.0 may be out in the wild now, but as @AidenShaw so astutely pointed out, bus transitions are never easy or fun, especially on a 1.0 product. I applaud AMD for grabbing the tiger by the tail, but don't be surprised of the tiger bites back.
Whether PCIe 4.0 gains traction in the market before, or if, PCIe 5.0 penetrates the consumer market enough to overtake, is an unknown. We are at the dawn of the post PCIe 3.0 era. Intel is not going to move fast to replace PCIe 3.0. Unfortunately, my gut tells me that the PCI SIG just gave us their version of USB 3.2 and 3.2x2, no wait...make it USB 4.0.
Bottom line, which should manufacturers choose? PCIe 4.0..that is just starting to deliver products to market, albeit slowly, or PCIe 5.0, which is going to be with us for a long time, but is just now ratified and will take another 6-12 months for first gen products to get to market, if there is even a chipset that will support it, much less a CPU. Frankly, I expect Intel's Xeon CPUs first, with the PCH lagging behind as they are built on an N+1 process. It looks like PCIe 4.0 is generating more heat and requiring more power...which is going to make 4.0 products more expensive and less simple to drop in to someone's existing or future PCIe 3.0 builds.
People can gripe about Apple all they want, they are very conservative when it comes to engineering their computers...its frustrating at times, but it's also generally not going to end up coming back to bite the end user.
If you have to move on, I get it, you have to do what is best for you. I would have to say though that Apple wasn't going to give you what you wanted with the Mac Pro, regardless.
It might not be 2016, but for Apple, Intel is the only game in town for them. And while AMD may have some spectacular tech, they are still going to have to prove their long term stability to a lot of people before they are given more trust and consideration. This Navi rollout is beyond excruciating as they drip drip a GPU one at a time and drag things out. The proof in the pudding will be how smoothly the 7/7 release of Ryzen 3 and the RX5700 and RX5700XT. Just my 2¢.
You might want to tell the Department of Energy, Amazon, etc. that AMD isn't a "reliable enough" partner for CPUs. At the end of the day, Apple isn't a computer company - they are a high fashion company that dabbles in computing.
The stock price doesn't actually affect the performance of their CPUs.
Whether PCIe 4 is adapted or not, the nMP will be on PCIe 3.0. That will matter down the road. The nMP isn't future proofed when it is using PCIe technology that is approaching EoL, video cards that will be either 1 or 2 (in the case of the 580X) generations behind, and CPUs that are untrustworthy.
I have never been willing to pay more for less performance.
Video cards right now are no where near max'ing out PCIe 3.0. It would be better if the new Mac Pro had 4.0, but it's also completely unnecessary.
It might make a difference in 8 years, but by then you're probably looking at replacing the machine anyway. If a video card ends up actually using enough bandwidth to take advantage of PCIe 4.0, the CPU is going to be a bottleneck.
PCIe 4.0 power delivery is what I'd worry more about, but I think with the amount of 3.0 hardware out there, it will take a long, long time for card manufacturers to drop the aux connectors.
Personally, I think they see the iMac XS Pro Plus (Apple's naming conventions suck) as being the fill for that gap. The new Pro is for users with VERY high performance needs. It's not intended for a large audience.
BUT!!! The iMac Pro DOES start way too high- the $5K entry point should be shaved back. A 6 core i7, 16GB, 512GB SSD machine would be a better starting point. However, while I have zero sympathy for Apple the company, I have to say that no matter WHAT they do, there will be the crying and gnashing of teeth from a certain segment. ("Who wants a 6 core i7 in a 'PRO' machine?" "Only 16GB RAM???" etc. etc. etc. You know that drill.)
Look, as much as I love the products, Cook & Company really make justifying buying Apple hard to do.But in THIS case, I don't think their pricing is out of line at all. I remember how much my ex-wife's company paid for a Silicon Graphics system a good while back, and as much as it was, it was pedestrian compared to this machine. There were many workstations available for better prices. (Gee... whatever happened to Silicon Graphics?) But all of those were not steps ahead like the Mac Pro is. If you don't have to look at it, this new system (including the monitor) sounds pretty freaking awesome. I would LOVE to take one, shove it behind my desk where it is out of view (sorry, Apple, but it is one of the most hideous devices I've ever seen- and I made a career out of working with IBM hardware!) and play all day long on it. But again, I am not intended as the customer the machine is designed for.
Apple has hardware to fit in the gaps but they have done a craptastic job of aligning their marketing with their products. The revised Mac Mini, the iMac Pro, and the upcoming Mac Pro all serve varied stopping points on the professional level highway. Their overlap, though, is minimal, and that is problematic. The way they're pushing this stuff, they're not leaving grey areas covered, and that could come back to bite them. They need to overlap high end products and low end products of the next step on the rung much better. The true problem pricing I see is the iMac pro. (I speak only of the pro lines.) Nice hardware, but priced above where it should be, even with the Apple Tax included.
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One more thought after reviewing the seminal post and the poll here- note the discussion was indeed about the machine AS IT IS- in other words, it's not about offering a version that is more modest in features and pricing, but "Why don't they sell this to us for half the price???" I think that is simply silly thinking.