Those machines were consumer machines, not workstations.
These prices went out the door with the G5 and Mac Pro.
Apple doesn't make an equivalent to the Power Mac G4 anymore. They left that market 15 years ago.
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MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)
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Those machines were consumer machines, not workstations.
These prices went out the door with the G5 and Mac Pro.
Apple doesn't make an equivalent to the Power Mac G4 anymore. They left that market 15 years ago.
I'd argue they were both, but with the caveat that back then, "consumer" CPUs (Pentium and Core) had at most two cores. Any more and you had to choose from the Xeon family. Today, of course, even the most basic "consumer" CPU averages at least four cores and six and eight cores are not uncommon.
I fully agree with you that since 2013, the Mac Pro has been a "true" workstation with CPUs that have core counts will beyond what one would find in "consumer" CPUs (you have to go to "enthusiast" CPUs). The 2019 model tracks even more so to this trend.
*nods*
Both in the Mac and general PC market.
I think Apple kind of tried to have it both ways. But you never saw them benchmarking the G4s against Xeons. They pretty much stuck to benchmarking against the P3 and P4.
The design of the machine made it easier to ship consumer and pro variants too. The pro version shipped with a dual CPU module, and the consumer version shipping with a single CPU module. I don't think they even had two different boards.
That sort of delineation doesn't really fit in well with a Xeon workstation. There isn't a good way to cut a Xeon in half for a consumer version that works on the same board.
Agreed.
And the PowerMacs were very much consumer-oriented computers (even if Apple liked to call them "supercomputers"
) so the PIII and P4 were indeed their competition.
Or any windows machine - most of which will outperform a Mac at almost every given price point.
Sorry. The multi-quote option is generally pretty good, but it remembers older quotes that were not posted, as well, so sometimes that mixes up my editing.
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And if you want to run Windows, more power to you.
A fair number of folks on this thread do not.
Which probably should not be surprising since it is about a machine designed around running macOS and not Windows.
No, they were not consumer targeted machines. Obviously you have short memory of the Mac line up in 2002 or you just started using and buying Macs today.
In that same keynote, Steve Jobs said the PowerMac G4 is for our professional customers and did comparisons between the Intel Xeon and PowerMac G4 in that same Macworld presentation I took the screen grab from.
No, they were not consumer machines, its clear you are a post 2013 Mac user.
That screen grab is from Macworld NY 2001. Steve Jobs said those Macs are for professionals and even did comparison workflows with a Intel Pentium for high end production work - video encoding, high end graphics.
The PowerMac G5 started at $2,000, which is about $2,700 in 2019. Apple started comparing with XEON's.
The 2006 Mac Pro started at $2,400, which is about $3,000 in 2019. Apple started using XEON CPU's.
The 2013 Mac Pro started at $3,000, which is about $3,200 in 2019.
The reality is, Apple is not making computers for the common man anymore and the reality is, the target audience they are building these machines for have already moved on to Windows and Linux based workflows. After a 6 year hiatus, they don't trust Apple anymore to risk the company coming up with another excuse 2 years from now that they transitioning to A Series. The stupid MBA's who likely have taken over Apple are clearly not thinking, do you want to sell 700,000 Mac Pro's or 2 million Mac Pro's?
Do you really want to bring in potentially new users to th Mac ecosystem or not? Because, the Mac Pro or any Apple device should be about that. It simply must be reasonably priced, even if its high end. But I think a little yes man MBA out of Harvard or Wharton who is out of touch said, we can easily squeeze an extra 3 to 5 grand out of both the monitor and unit. Tim Cook obviously out of touch himself signs off on the pricing without thinking or asking; do we want to sell a lot of these or only sell it to particular group of people where its finite?
Remember, its the enthusiast that brought this company back from the brink of extinction. Not even Pixar was using Macs, it was Linux boxes that have helped to created a lot of the animated movies over the past couple decades.
Insiders even admitted they did take their eye of the ball. The out of touch messages over the past few years such as $17,000 dollar Apple Watch Edition, the over priced 2016 to present MacBook Pro's with failing keys. Strategy of making Apple store boutique indoor parks with loud mouth workshop presenters.
At the rate Apple is going, by 2029, if Mac Pro's are still around, an entry level Mac Pro by then will cost $12,000. Scary!
Ultimately, my prediction is, within a year, Apple will half the price of the Mac Pro, the XDR display itself is gonna suffer so bad in sales, Apple will drop it to 1,600 including the stand.
Apple never dropped the price of previous Mac Pro, so I don't expect Apple to drop the price regardless of how it sells. They will simply phase them out and it wouldn't even affect them much.
While the price of Mac Pro is up to debate, XDR display is actually very competitive for the market it is aiming, both on specs and price.
Wrong by a long shot.
I know which keynote that is. I watched it when it happened.
And your own words show the problem. Pentiums were consumer machines, even back then. Not workstations. By your own words, the G4 was a Pentium competitor, not a Xeon competitor.
You could use Pentiums for video and photo work. But they weren't workstations, and aren't in the same class as the G5 and Xeon.
You're just repeating exactly what I said. The Mac Pro is a different class than the Power Mac.
Literally around the time of that keynote, he did a keynote with Intel announcing that he was buying Xeon render farms for Pixar, because they were the fastest boxes Pixar could buy. The reason he could sell the G4 and buy Xeons for Pixar was because they were in two different weight classes.
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Actually that screen will sell very well if it performs as promised.
Particularly when combined with a Blackmagic Terranex 8k.
It’s clearly not a display meant for normal users. No camera. No speakers. No microphone. No Ethernet port or other docking connectors.
If it doesn’t sell it will be discontinued. There won’t be a price drop. It’s not meant to exist in the $1600 market or be mass market.
Noticed how you conveniently ignored my point about the introductory G5 for $1,999 that Apple started comparing with the Intel XEON?
Apple was reasonably pricing its workstation machines back in 2003 and that includes the G4 too. Also, I noticed you ignored the key point which is the workflow.
The same work flow that the 2019 Mac Pro's target, is the same work flows Apple was pushing the Quick Silver PowerMac G4 at in 2001 - Animation, Encoding, Music production, Final Cut Pro, Graphics. The irony is, these are the same things they demoed at WWDC for the press. In 2001 presentation, they even used Rubenstein to explain the 'megahertz myth'.
That same Macworld, they brought up Aliaswave Wavefront, now owned by Autodesk to demo Maya and other vendors such as Adobe to demo workstation class apps on the Power Mac G4, OS X and the QuickSilver.
Pretty much the same developers at Macworld 2001 also said they were providing support for the 2019 Mac Pro.
At the 2003 WWDC when the Power Mac G5 was revealed, they showed a similar demo from eMagic (which eventually became Logic when Apple purchased it) on the Power Mac G5.
The point I am making is, workflows have not changed much in nearly two decades for Apple to be raising prices. If anything, the cost of the Mac Pro should be dropping in price.
But Apple is just trying to sell its logo at a premium.
Look, I know they are a business, but, be a reasonable one.
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Well, that would be a significant change in Apple's business strategy. Even royal Apple subjects like Jason Snell have described Apples approach to product development as targetting scale. If they are not aiming to millions of the product, it doesn't make sense to them. Sure, there are ebs and flows to how Apple see's itself in the market: 1%, BMW, premium.
But, I don't see them selling no more than 100,000 Mac Pro's. Thats probably a couple billion worth of sales.
In contrast, if they reasonably priced it, by even consuming some of the cost, there are users out there who would be willing to part with the cash. Apple could easily sell 700,000 Mac Pro's a year.
But, I just done see the volume out there for Mac Pro. So, its either they give up or cut the price. But you are right, they are still selling 2015 Mac Pro's for $2,500 and the 2013 Mac Pro is still available for $3,000.
The problem with the $1999 G5 is it was a single processor version of what really was a dual CPU system. The dual CPUs were the workstations, while the single CPUs were consumers. They literally shipped that configuration to consumers in an iMac.
What do you want them to do with the current Mac Pro? Cut a Xeon in half? There’s no dual CPU version to ship a smaller version of.
I don’t know how you’re suggesting Apple even make such a box. There’s no obvious downgrade path.
They were salespeople selling a product.
Not saying the G4 was horrible, but when Steve went to go buy Pixar some computers, he got them Xeons from Dell.
He clearly didn’t believe his own hype.
Again, I don’t see a reasonable downgrade path here to anywhere below $5000. I’m not sure what you’re asking for that would make sense.
Again, there’s no path to make a cheaper version. They can’t cut a single CPU in half. Even if they shred their margins there is no way they get close to $3000. The lowest competing price anyone has posted so far is $4500, and that’s taking a decent hit in build quality.
On the older boxes they could offer a cheaper option by cutting the CPU count in half and selling a single CPU option. They don’t have that flexibility any more.
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Somehow I’m gonna wager the “stupid MBAs” in charge of the biggest company in the world have a little more insight than random forum user, but more power to your blind certainty.
But a year out from release you can come back to crow if your prediction comes true, and if not I expect you'll graciously admit you were completely off-base.
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You’ll be more than lucky to grab that display for $1,600 second hand 3 years from now
The brightest engineers made a huge mistake by betting on the 2013 thermal design of the Mac Pro, three iterations of the current MacBook Pro.
Yep, just some random forum user. At the end of the day, you can have the smartest MBA’s and engineers, but my money contributed to the success of that company. So, I will have an opinion as a user.
I wouldn't put money on "stupid MBAs" - All you have to do is look at the wreckage over the past 30 years or so to see numerous examples of those clowns wrecking companies.
Anyone with an MBA should never be in the person with the final say - for them day 91 doesn't exist.
....and similarly, "Just because you don’t need something, does not mean it’s not over-priced".
Does anybody want to dispute that it is not more pricey than previous Mac Pros? It is specced to have very powerful components which can speed up many tasks. And yes it is overkill for most users.
As others have previously said, there is a space between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro. I would imagine they will sell quite a few Mac Pros because of pent up demand for a machine like that. After a couple years, I imagine sales will drop off. Perhaps Apple, having recouped its R&D efforts, would offer something less powerful, less expensive than the Mac Pro, a Mac Pro light, or perhaps a supermini.
As revenue falls off from smart phones they may be interested in garnering some extra sales from such a thing. It depends on how hard they want to work for extra revenue.
As others have previously said, there is a space between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro. I would imagine they will sell quite a few Mac Pros because of pent up demand for a machine like that. After a couple years, I imagine sales will drop off. Perhaps Apple, having recouped its R&D efforts, would offer something less powerful, less expensive than the Mac Pro, a Mac Pro light, or perhaps a supermini.
As revenue falls off from smart phones they may be interested in garnering some extra sales from such a thing. It depends on how hard they want to work for extra revenue.
Just for the record, Apple is not a very big company , and not one of the biggest by any standard .
They do make a lot of profit, but are tiny in terms of depth and diversity .
Many posters want to sell that tale , thanks for joining .
In 2012 an entry level, classic Mac Pro with comparable specs ( for the time ) and usability was about $2500 .
Now it's $6000 , and you lose built in storage capacity and a bunch of ports .
There is nothing in the new MP that makes it more capable than the last version of the cMP, apart from the obvious use of current technology .
Plenty of forum users said the 6,1 was the wrong way to go.
The stupid MBAs saw that in advance did they?