MP 6,1 Prices need to drop on 2013 Mac Pro - Let's Go!

[MacPoulet]

Why aren’t they able to sell them? It was a good savings over the $3,699 sticker price. They had it in stock for quite a while. I guess there weren’t many students looking to purchase one at that price. I’m surprised one of the departments didn’t snatch it up after they discounted it. Maybe because they’re closed. I called and left a voicemail and someone got back to me the next day. They said yeah we do have one of those we can sell. What time can you be here? I hurried up and went over there.

IF i remember correctly, it was Apple Canada who made the call on that. It was a bit of a blow to a lot of campus computer stores at the time. Apple is more than a little draconian in the Canadian market.

I may get some friends and family in the US to track one down too. That could be an option.

 

[deconstruct60]

Saw this a few years ago and reading your post I'm still confused how this company makes money and what kind of customer base they have. Clearly the demand is extraordinary for them to pretty much buy up the entire supply chain from under customers.

Demand wasn't extraordinary, but was substantive. A graphic from a recent Tweet.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1248385104176537605

There was a substantive uptick in CPU cycles "consumed" in Aug 2019 that held through Dec 2019. Pretty likely the trend line goes back a year or so also. So they probably predicted they would need more cycles and had set up to buy them. ( The reintroduction of the concept of a rack Mac (Pro) model would also probably indirectly help their business. Some will rack in future and then figure out they don't want to do the "work" to keep that running in-house. )

On the graph, you can see one of the substantive drivers for the business in those consumption drops every month that are also on a regular basis ( where many customers briefly don't need it. That's why customers want to 'rent'. ).

They aren't "buy up ... from under customers". They had customer growth to begin with. A decent chunk of those customers had needs best met with a 6,1 ( since Apple wasn't offering anything else better). The factor that probably comes into play here is that extremely likely is that Apple stopped making MP6,1 after announced the new Mac Pro (perhaps even before ). Apple's objective would be to clean out the inventory that was in the retail/wholesale market before the new system arrived. Not likely that the new 6,1 were "fast movers" over the last 2-3 years. There was report in these forums that the reason Apple kept selling the 6,1 from June through basically end of November was that "some substantive number of people are still buying".

The rack Mac Pro 2019 isn't particularly cloud services data center efficient spacewise ( besides the issues with T2 and common hypervisors ). They can pack more Mini's and 6,1 per square foot of data center then those 5U new models. Lots of time with cloud services it is buying more of what you already have (the process ,tooling , etc. are already worked out and working well.. just want bigger scale. )

Could this be one of the leading reasons 6,1 prices have inflated so much in the past year?

MacStadium and the other small number of macOS cloud service providers all by themselves? Probably not. I don't this is as much "price inflation" as much as prices not dropping as folks wished they would. All the "6,1 is a disaster.. worst pro Mac ever ... blah blah ... nobody could ever possibly use one for 'real' work. " was suppose to push the prices down. It didn't. And when the 5,1 was dropped from macOS upgrade support was another factor too ( the 6,1 is now at the oldest supported position. )

 

[th0masp]

All the "6,1 is a disaster.. worst pro Mac ever ... blah blah ... nobody could ever possibly use one for 'real' work. " was suppose to push the prices down.

Just wondering - who said that?

I mean I read plenty of that here in the forum but that wouldn't seem like the right place to make statements to affect prices and all.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I was previously sort of in the "6,1 isn't good" camp, or rather "5,1 is better." Some people may say things like that to try to effect prices, but I don't think most people do. There are just a lot of people who speak out against it and those ideas start to rule. I had a change of heart after I evaluated it on it's own merits. Sure it lacks internal PCIe slots, but it isn't true to say it's not upgradeable. The RAM, SSD, and CPU can all be upgraded. All the specs are better than a 5,1. Double the memory bandwidth, faster CPU with AVX, fast solid state storage, 802.11ac WiFi, etc. The 5,1 could be upgraded with some of that, but it's more of a hack solution. The biggest thing the 5,1 has going for it of course is the ability to upgrade the GPU, but the 6,1 GPUs aren't that bad for most workstation tasks. And of course there are two of them. No other Mac Pro came standard with 2 GPUs. They are still being used to make TV shows and movies.

 

[MisterAndrew]

It's also possible 6,1 prices may never go very low. The supply will continue to grow smaller and demand will remain high as long as the 7,1 is still priced high. The data center units may never reach the used market. It's hard to say what their ultimate fate is. You also have to consider the 6,1 is very unique and a beautiful captivating design. So out of all the Mac Pros, and maybe any recent Mac, I think it has the best chance at becoming collectible. All the others are similar design. Sure the 7,1 is gorgeous and powerful, but it's still just a big cheese grater tower. Nothing particularly special in the grand scheme of things. The 6,1 is very special.

 

[MacPoulet]

I was previously sort of in the "6,1 isn't good" camp, or rather "5,1 is better." Some people may say things like that to try to effect prices, but I don't think most people do. There are just a lot of people who speak out against it and those ideas start to rule. I had a change of heart after I evaluated it on it's own merits. Sure it lacks internal PCIe slots, but it isn't true to say it's not upgradeable. The RAM, SSD, and CPU can all be upgraded. All the specs are better than a 5,1. Double the memory bandwidth, faster CPU with AVX, fast solid state storage, 802.11ac WiFi, etc. The 5,1 could be upgraded with some of that, but it's more of a hack solution. The biggest thing the 5,1 has going for it of course is the ability to upgrade the GPU, but the 6,1 GPUs aren't that bad for most workstation tasks. And of course there are two of them. No other Mac Pro came standard with 2 GPUs. They are still being used to make TV shows and movies.

One of my colleagues has a post-production house that does lots of commercial work for clients all over and says their 6,1 is a beast. They’ve been very happy with it.

 

[MooffooM]

FWIW, prices are softening... I recently picked up a used 6core/16GB/D300/1TB for $900
Upgraded to E5-2667v2 and 64GB for $300 (parts only, I did swap).

It is a nice machine; and other than the cable mess I have no trouble using external Thunderbolt to PCIe enclosures...

 

[MisterAndrew]

FWIW, prices are softening... I recently picked up a used 6core/16GB/D300/1TB for $900
Upgraded to E5-2667v2 and 64GB for $300 (parts only, I did swap).

It is a nice machine; and other than the cable mess I have no trouble using external Thunderbolt to PCIe enclosures...

Naw, I think you just got lucky.

 

[Alexis Noel]

FWIW, prices are softening... I recently picked up a used 6core/16GB/D300/1TB for $900
Upgraded to E5-2667v2 and 64GB for $300 (parts only, I did swap).

It is a nice machine; and other than the cable mess I have no trouble using external Thunderbolt to PCIe enclosures...

That's quite a bargain. Enjoy your new machine.

Currently loving my 8-Core D700 32GB RAM.

 

[MacPoulet]

FWIW, prices are softening... I recently picked up a used 6core/16GB/D300/1TB for $900
Upgraded to E5-2667v2 and 64GB for $300 (parts only, I did swap).

It is a nice machine; and other than the cable mess I have no trouble using external Thunderbolt to PCIe enclosures...

That wasn’t in Toronto was it? I saw an ad on Kijiji and thought it was too low to be legit.

 

[Charadis]

A D700 model just sold on eBay for 1300 plus 75 shipping. Seems like a good deal

 

[MisterAndrew]

A D700 model just sold on eBay for 1300 plus 75 shipping. Seems like a good deal

I saw that listing, but the details were entered wrong under Item specifics. It says model ME253LL/A with D300s and there's no photo of the system specs. So something isn't right.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I managed to snag the last 8-core D700 unit at the Micro Center in Brooklyn. I have a business client nearby and I offered them a discount if they picked that up for me.

 

[MacPoulet]

I managed to snag the last 8-core D700 unit at the Micro Center in Brooklyn. I have a business client nearby and I offered them a discount if they picked that up for me.

How many do you have now? It's turning into a very expensive Pokemon game, isn't it?

 

[MisterAndrew]

How many do you have now? It's turning into a very expensive Pokemon game, isn't it?

Just 3. I’m going to have to part with one of them though. It’ll be sad.

 

[MacPoulet]

Just 3. I’m going to have to part with one of them though. It’ll be sad.

Oh no!

 

[TrevorR90]

Just sold my D500 six core on eBay for a little over $1,800. I’m surprised I got that much for it.

 

[MacPoulet]

Just sold my D500 six core on eBay for a little over $1,800. I’m surprised I got that much for it.

People on eBay just like to bid, bid, bid.

 

[TrevorR90]

People on eBay just like to bid, bid, bid.

I think it may have been because it still had a year of Applecare+ left on it. I bought it new about year and half ago so even though it was old tech, it wasn't old.

But still surprising to get that much anyways.

 

[MacPoulet]

I think it may have been because it still had a year of Applecare+ left on it. I bought it new about year and half ago so even though it was old tech, it wasn't old.

But still surprising to get that much anyways.

That would do it. Don’t see that many with AppleCare on them these days.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I don't see how that price is surprising. $1800 for a D500 unit with AppleCare+ is definitely on the low side. That could have went for $2k+ easy.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I listed my D300 unit in the Marketplace. It's available with or without AppleCare+.

 

[TrevorR90]

I don't see how that price is surprising. $1800 for a D500 unit with AppleCare+ is definitely on the low side. That could have went for $2k+ easy.

Well, it was a 7 day auction and final price was 1,832.00 so eh. I was happy with the price though! Helped pay for my 7,1

 

[Charadis]

There is a brand new D300 unit up on eBay, 1600 plus shipping. Wonder if it's possible to still get the AppleCare activated on it.. ? I probably have bought this back when I was still hunting for one. With businesses reopening now, and teleworking being phased (like at my job), maybe prices will start readjusting?

 

[MisterAndrew]

Mine's a better deal with the warranty already activated.