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Where have all the refurbs gone ?
- Thread starter Mactrunk
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I suspect people are snapping them up as soon as they appear. Amazon is sold out. BHphoto has some, but they have increased the price to Apple's recommended price which is about $250.00 more than BH was selling them for a month ago. There seems to be some demand 
There are only two 12 core machines left on the Canadian refurbished site. With price tags over 4k.
I hope this is a sign. I'm a huge OS X and Mac fan but I gotta say, I hope the new Mac Pro flops big time and Apple remakes it to be much more like the current one.
The Apple refurbished inventory changes frequently, sometimes several times per day. Just be patient and more items will appear in time. If you're looking for a particular item, refurb.me can alert you when it becomes available.
Old models dry up as new models are about to be released. Apple is pretty good with inventory management.
Refurb availability changes all the time.
These are routine and are not signs of new Mac Pro success or failure.
Refurb availability changes all the time.
These are routine and are not signs of new Mac Pro success or failure.
You did notice that the are no "new" Mac Pro for sale Apple's website? Anyone who needs a "new" (comes with Apple warranty and eligible for Apple Care) Mac Pro before December what are their other options? If stop selling "new" then refurbs are the only option though Apple.
No 3rd party retailer with any sense would be holding onto large Mac Pro inventories either. Apple has been whispering "new Mac Pro coming" for over 16 months now.
This is the same situation that EU Markets have been in for almost a year now. Same issue refurbs far fewer and harder to come by. (at least in those EU market countries that even have a refurb option. )
If the new Mac Pro flops then the Mac Pro as a whole flops. Apple will just move on. The fundamental flaw here is that the old one wasn't highly successful either. If it was they never would have let it go "dark" in the EU markets for almost 11 months or dribble out that 'placeholder' update in June '12. If anything that would just add more ammo to the folks internal to Apple who have advocated terminating it back in 2010-2011.
Like they have come back with the MBP 17" , MacBook , XServe , XRaid , Six slot towers, Laser Printers, etc ?
Eventually, a wider (& taller) variant with a bigger fan and not quite so minimal power supply? Perhaps. But back to box-with-slots is probably not going to happen.
The first "tweak" Apple can do is adjust the pricing. (e.g., price drops on rMBP 13" )
Apple has the money so that if it takes them 2 years to jumpstart this design back into a healthy growing product, then they can wait out the period until the technology catches up with where the concept already is. It is only going to get easier over time to put more cores , denser RAM , and denser storage into this cylinder. There is a 10's of billions R&D forces working to make that happen. It probably will.
Price drop? They are pretty cheap to begin with but if they had one for $2000 or $2500 with maybe a single GPU or slower clocked CPU I might bite. Even a low power workstation could beat the pants off a top end iMac or rMBP...would be nice to have a home workstation as well!
Only when priced versus mainstream FirePro cards configurations. The value proposition problem is that Apple has stripped 2 of 3 differentiating Fire Pro aspects at the entry level. Warranty is probably stripped back to Apple's 1 year. A drop to cover increased AppleCare costs ( or just include AppleCare ). The VRAM capacity is different at the W7000 level versus plain-Jane AMD 7870 GHz edition. What Apple is inserted is exactly the same as the plain-Jane model which means it has a far more of a plain-jane value proposition. Competing system vendors will be able to deliver the differences.
The core problem is that they actually aren't providing an equivalent Fire Pro solution at the entry level. It is one thing to debate whether the Fire Pro differences are worth the "Pro" price increase and quite another to deliver no differences and then demand the same extremely high mark-ups.
Apple's "performance" benchmarks being exclusively the non-stripped D700 cards that the internal non-kool-aid drinkers at Apple know this too.
Throw on top a likely FirePro speed bump mid 2014 that Mac Pro won't see till next overall system upgrade that possibly drags into 2015 and the hole just gets deeper.
Stripping off the VRAM already didn't help. Stripping even more hardware doesn't address the core problem.
There are no viable slower clocked CPUs in E5 1600 series ( 1620 v2 is already a $294 CPU. It is not what is driving the > $2,300 cost here even in the slightest. The BTO Core i7 4771 in the iMac actually costs more. The top iMac standard config's i5 4670 is just $80 less. ).
A single GPU basically defeats one of the critical differentiators of the system. Huge computational horsepower focused system node is one of the primary things this design has going for it. Still have a GPU card that is lacking in value prop.
The major value prop problem with a non-group, more single one-man-band, context like "home" is going to be bulk storage.
There are low end Firepros. The same goes for Quadros. It seems AMD still makes the V3900, even if it has no place in such a system. I'm not sure how many people on here are aware that other oems typically have a base 3 year warranty on their workstation lines.
I still cannot understand why people cling to the use of Xeons when it comes to price inflation when there is a real overlap in cpu prices. The $3000 configuration really should have been the lower cost configuration. I'm not sure you could strip enough out to get to $2500 at identical margins.
I'd be fine with either. Would make the choice of going Hackintosh or going Win that much easier.
I'm with you on this but I think Apple enjoys having their hardware sealed up. Screws weren't enough of a deterant so they have now resorted to glue and tape.
Very soon they will know EXACTLY what parts are in every machine that their AppleCare script readers need to help with. Will make their jobs easier.
Imagine Windows where they have to support a 5 year old this with and obscure that and figure out why the USB mouse is glitchy.
And if course Apple won't have pesky, thrifty (to them "cheap") customers milking extra years out of hardware.
Look how quickly iMacs drop in value. A big part of reason is GPU locking them in time. I would be willing to bet $100 that the percentage of 2008 iMacs used in revunue generating applications has dropped off far more than the 2008 MPs.
This is wonderful for Apple, the top GPU in nMP will have it's 2nd birthday 1 month after the nMP release. Well on it's way to obsolescence at release.
A new tech will require the Hawaii Islands GPUs next year and all of the Tahiti/Pitcairn based nMPs will drop in value like a paralyzed falcon. To get an idea, read through iMac section, the angst and desire to free themselves of old GPUs, especially the folks who got entry or mid level 3-5 years ago.
But Apple makes almost no money from people extending life of machine via 3rd party parts. They are a smart company that has found profitability a better choice than having to take desperate handouts from Microsoft.
I hope it flops and they bring back something more cheese grater-ish. I also wish that my grandparents would discover oil in their back yard and mail me $10,000,000.00.
Both about as likely I'm afraid.
I agree with everything you say, but thats not the whole story. The simple fact of the matter is people don't need to buy apple computers at all... they can switch to PCs or start building hackintoshes. It has been many years since apple had just a regular "Mac", a simple tower computer that wasn't extremely expensive. Yes people with them can upgrade them and won't buy new computers as often, but if they created this product the market for it would be much larger than what they had with the mac pro, and most likely even the iMac.
With Android competing with iOS out there, if they grew their Mac user base I'm sure it would work like the "ipod halo effect" and bring even more people to the ecosystem.
Plus, apple already licenses hardware. If they don't then they can say they don't support it, so I don't think the support issue really exists. They still will have to deal with all the peripherals people are going to connect through USB and thunderbolt.
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everything points to the reality that there is not such a large market for standalone towers
In my opinion, if the new Mac Pro truly flops, there's a very real possibility that it's the last Mac Pro we ever see coming from Cupertino.
Oh well.
It's actually been cancelled.
Look at rMBP, they just yanked the GTX650 from most, performance down 30%. Guess "pro" didn't mean much in that name either.
I wonder which demograpgic asked for "reduced GPU performance please, all we care about is battery life". Function follows flash and form, a little too far.
My gut tells me it will flop.. It is quite possible its cylinder shape was chosen, rather than a rectangle or cube as Apple probably wanted to avoid comparisons to the failed cube.....
Time will tell the full story...
Short term blimp. Apple follows paths to long term gain. They have plenty of money to get over local mins to get to global maxs. The short term problem is that Intel is charging 640M+VRAM money for the Iris Pro ( iGPU + eDRAM ). Relatively reasonable since getting graphics and RAM with the price.
From a couple of reports Apple was one of the customers that strongly asked Intel to build this stuff. So darn well better buy it once Intel makes it. Otherwise, they won't get what they ask for in the future.
On the path the Intel has been increasing iGPU performance, they will either catch up to or blow past the 780M ( and perhaps its next iteration) on the Broadwell shrink. Either that or there will be an even higher volume Intel option will drive down the costs so that going back to standard dual GPUs is just as costly as it was.
Either Intel to going to catch Nvidia/AMD on performance or start to clobber them on costs with relatively minor performance gaps on next iteration. In the first case Apple might keep the prices the same. Otherwise will move the rMBP 15" down into the old MBP 15" price points with lower cost retina screen and Iris Pro only parts that are more affordable.
It is same pattern where Apple went to Flash and capacities temporarily dropped. Right now it is a trade-off incremental better battery life vs. incremental high end 3D slow down. It is kind of hard to be a "Pro" if have a depleted battery .... so lots of pros rank that higher on their laptop.
Nevermind that in 2008-2009 transition Apple went to iGPU only ( albeit Nvidia 9600M ) with entry 15" model. It disappeared with a price bump.
"Pro didn't means much " and "not Nvidia fan boys " are two different things.
In the laptop market? Chuckle. yeah nooooobody cares about battery life in that group. Especially when for normal workload there isn't much difference (emphasis added below)
" .. Iris is good enough for productivity use and even some gaming at lower resolutions (gaming at panel resolution was never an option even with a dedicated GPU), but it's a small step back when it needs to be a step forward. ... "
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/1...s-15-inch-2013-retina-macbook-pro-reviewed/2/
The gamer laptop market? Yeah sure Apple looses sleep every night worrying about that crowd. Didn't last iteration. Isn't now. What new about that?
Chuckle. One of the complaints about the new Mac Pro is that you can't seal/lock it. (or at least there doesn't appear to be a locking mechanism. )
So the relevancy of this rant is ?
Pushing relevant diagnostic information into the support queue process is basically any highly competent 21st century support queue best practice. Both sides of the conversation waste alot reguritating the system configuration information on every single support contact session. The overall system configuration is far more relevant though.
Apple doesn't have to have "sealed' hardware to do this. A config agent that pushes the data to Apple would work too. Frankly, work better since it could capture overall system configuration. [ doubtful that DIMMs configuration is going to leave all desktops ever. So "from the factory" is never going to be complete]
Because Apple's design stop folks from using a quirkly USB mouse. ......
Far more so because don't have to deal with folks who replace things in slots "just because I can.... it is mine I'll stick something in this socket even if really doesn't match the specs."
Thunderbolt does little to stop folks from milking more years out of their equipment over a broad spectrum.
Probably largely because they made a faster return on investment. They cost less so it is easier to make the money back. Mac Pros with higher sunk costs take longer to make money back on the same revenue stream.
The misdirection here is that the revenue streams don't exactly overlap here.
It is Volcanic islands. Hawaii is just one implementation of that microarchtecture. A very high TDP , lower double precision focused implementation that probably will never make it into the Mac Pro.
Given the timing of the Mac Pro ( December) it is not impossible that the bumped version of Pitcairn (Curacao ) isn't in the D300 and will just be missing FirePro enabled status on new features. Likewise underclocked Tahiti XT2 and Tahiti LE2 . It isn't like AMD didn't do this earlier in the year with Bonaire back in March 2013.
What? Folks in macrumors forums complaining? Surely you jest. *cough* Here is a correlation test. Filter out the number of those folks with "drama" who are heavily engaged in revenue producing applications and see how many are left over.
Almost as illuminating as taking the "new Mac Pro is evil" posts and filtering out the folks who sell add-on hardware , system building consultancy, or system sales.
If it doesn't have to be an official Apple refurb, then my recommendations are for here:
http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Se...D|1&Ne=5000&N=100402&N2=100402&Ntt=OWCUsedMac
and here:
http://www.macofalltrades.com/Refurbished-Used-Apple-Mac-Pros-s/298.htm
I've purchased from both companies (most recently from OWC for my MP) and have been very happy with both purchases.
Just a thought: you can buy your refurb at a fraction of the cost of an official Apple refurb, do some significant upgrading, and still pay less total than what Apple would have charged you.
Off topic somewhat: It just so happens that I use a 2008 iMac at work for preflighting customer files and design work (at a printing company). It would be so great if it were a MP instead.
I bet the market is larger for a mid tower than for an expensive cylinder with two non-upgradeable video cards with one drive that may or may not be user upgradable.
Be that as it may, it doesn't concern Apple. They clearly designed the nMP for a crowd already happy with the current FCP X ecosystem. And third-party companies like Blackmagic Design are feeding the fire by embracing it (with TB-enabled video hardware) so they can stay relevant with the Mac crowd.
For this reason, I don't see the nMP flopping as hard as some speculate. As long as there are manufacturers and developers willing to conform, Apple will continue this strategy - and probably get away with it.
My worst fear is when Apple inevitably cripples drivers in future iterations of OS X to the point where Hackintosh systems are no longer viable solutions to those who want to run OS X on a cobbled together box with slots. And eventually, how long will it be before OS X is still worth Apple's price of admission?
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