You could hear a gasp in the crowd when they listed $999 for the stand alone.
Apple is certainly pushing themselves up-market with this one.
Apple is certainly pushing themselves up-market with this one.
Fairly predictable. Commodified tablets for consumers, laptops for developers (still working on that...), hugely expensive thoroughbred (status symbol) hardware for professional content creators with professional budgets.
Problem is, there's much more money in the prosumer niche than there is at the high end. For every successful LA movie score composer there are thousands, even tens of thousands, of bedroom DAW users.
What "pros" really want is outstanding performance at an affordable price. This is outstanding performance at a painful price - which is a novel combination of aspirational and incredibly annoying.
If Apple's quality control game leaks over into this new Pro line, then there will be lots of unhappy professionals staring at their $11k paperweights while shopping for something else.
Not sure why you want the Mac Pro to be dumbed down for non-professionals.
With luxury pricing you're used to purchasing a complete package or product, then you may put expensive add-ons on top. If you had to add $[high number] add-on for what's typically a standard part, for ex: a seat-belt of a Mercedes or a zipper on a Hermes hand-bag, in order to even buy the bag or car, it'd take some people by surprise. Even if it's basically the same markup as any luxury / high-end purchase.
Whether releasing this without an upgraded consumer/prosumer level display was a good idea is another question.
I understand the whole "money is no object for real professionals" line of thinking, but:
a) it's unlikely that the $1000 stand improves productivity in any appreciable way over a regular stand and
b) if you had 10 employees and you found a way to significantly cut down on that $1000 stand price (say, with that $200 VESA mount, what a steal in comparison!), you could pay for an extra Mac Pro with the savings
I think Apple has managed to price something so poorly that even "I'm such a professional I don't care what it costs" professionals have to do a double take.