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Comment by skyyler | Hacker News Reader

Is this a big surprise? A brand new, cutting edge processor outperforms an Ivy Bridge Xeon.

Mac Pros are older hardware right now. They haven't really been updated in four years. I've seen rumours that they're coming out with a new one next year.

Side note: I don't feel like the cost comparison is fair, here. A large portion of the cost of the Mac Pro goes towards the design of the thing. Having a small, arguably aesthetically pleasing object on a desk vs even a Mini-ITX case is a no-brainer for a lot of creative folks. The Ryzen PC didn't include the cost of the power supply, case, OS, storage (seriously one of the big selling points of the Mac Pro is the PCIe flash storage)!

The Mac Pro is definitely a failure, it failed to capture the attention of its target market. Why not focus on the real shortcomings? The high cost is only a small part of why that device will probably forever be known as Apple's trash can that should have seen the trash.

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> A large portion of the cost of the Mac Pro goes towards the design of the thing. Having a small, arguably aesthetically pleasing object on a desk vs even a Mini-ITX case is a no-brainer for a lot of creative folks

That's not really fair. They also came up with a cooling design that was pretty quiet with just heat sinks and a fan.

There was no reason they couldn't have made more of the components user replaceable and updated the specs regularly.

Had they kept up a lot more people would have trash cans on their desks. Probably the same for the Mini.

Desktops are probably not very profitable for them anymore, but it seems like making a competitive offering would be good just to lock in their customers.

They've even said they were planning on regular upgrades, but were already at the edge of the thermal envelope with the first release.

You should pay less for that awful constrictive design. Apple's product history is littered with failures due to design-led development. G4 cube, round mouse, tube-shaped Trashintosh. Any time the object is based on a standard shape like a circle, cube, or tube you know it will fail. I'm surprised Ive hasn't done a globe yet.

Don't forget the mouse that can only be charged when it's flipped upside down.

and you can only right click when you lift up your other finger

Well, there was the iLamp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G4). Terrible for expansion, but I do like the aesthetic of this one.

>Apple's product history is littered with failures due to design-led development

Also littered with huge successes.

I definitely agree with some of these points—like the round mouse and the G4 cube—but it's kind of hard to take a comment seriously when it includes the word "trashintosh".

The iMac G4 could be described as half of a globe.

Yeah, good point. I don't think it was a particularly good design. I read somewhere that the philosophy was 'not to do the obvious thing and put the guts of the computer behind a large screen' - which is what they eventually did with the next iMac.

This desire 'not to do the obvious thing' is also behind the Trashintosh. And it's also why I'm worried about the future Mac Pro. The obvious thing would be to revive the cheesegrater case, but Ive and co feel they have to do something 'radical' to justify their salary.

They also argued that the optical drive could not be oriented vertically.

I actually really liked how easy it was to reposition the screen frequently, so that I changed my seating position more often.

$320 CPU

$255 mobo

Say $377 for 64GB of RAM ($127+250)

$550 for the GPU

$100 for a PSU

$120 OS license

$100 case

$200 for a 256GB NVME SSD

Just over $2000, with room for argument about whether attractive case design is worth $3200, and how increased productivity due to attractive tools isn't offset by operations taking half the CPU time.

Well take a Mini-ITX case and put a trash can on it, best of both worlds, still less expensive.

The Corsair One case[1] would be a great form factor to rival the Mac Pro and have your own hardware inside, if Corsair ever releases the case standalone. Right now I believe the only way to get it is buying the full computer.

[1] http://www.corsair.com/en-us/landing/one

> I've seen rumours that they're coming out with a new one next year.

No, they're just not releasing one this year. maybe 2018, maybe not. They did make some noises about a new modular architecture, which is cool. but given this year is out they've been at it for 5 years with no end in sight.

I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt with the 5 year effort, the alternative is they finished up the last pro and left the line to die. Hopefully that's not the case, and some brave souls have been working on improvements.

> They did make some noises about a new modular architecture

So, kinda like a PC?

There are modular PCs and there are non-modular PCs. There aren't any PCs which run macOS natively, which is a meaningful distinction to users who want a modular design and their OS of choice.

They recently held a small event for a handful of journalists to discuss the Mac Pro and Pro hardware/software in particular. To sum it up, they acknowledge that they made a bet (dual GPUs) which hasn't paid off (software is optimised for larger single GPUs), and which they can't reverse because of the design they went with (they kept referring to a "thermal" corner, but it's a combination of the new cooling system and the boards in the Mac Pro which means a larger single GPU won't fit).

They also mentioned something interesting which perhaps contradicts some of your post, which is that many of their Pro customers are moving towards iMac as their machine of choice. Not because the Mac Pro is out of date (it wasn't always), but because that suited them better. I think the implication here is that for most Mac users, and most pro Mac users, a Mac Pro is not necessary.

One could argue that people buy iMacs because the Mac Pro pricing does not suit them, rather than anything to do with specs.

One would have to be a right chump to buy 4-year-old hardware at those prices. They were already pretty steep at release time, which you could justify as Apple tax; today they are just stupid. I know I'd rather get a computer that makes me wait a few seconds more for this or that intensive task, than subject myself to daylight robbery.

> A large portion of the cost of the Mac Pro goes towards the design of the thing.

A that's why upon initial release, people did not mind paying the premium that the macpros had compared to equivalent hardware. The macbooks are in the same situation, people are more than okay paying a premium for quality hardware and design.

> Having a small, arguably aesthetically pleasing object on a desk vs even a Mini-ITX case is a no-brainer for a lot of creative folks.

I am not a part of those "creative people" nor do i really use a mac. But a good portions of mac pro user a regular professional, and i have many of those around me. you seems to have a very romantic view of why people use the macpro. The most cited reason is MacOs.

>>Having a small, arguably aesthetically pleasing object on a desk vs even a Mini-ITX case is a no-brainer for a lot of creative folks

No, the people I know who do fine art are already broke after buying a $2 mac.

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