This is the only traditional desktop computer that Apple sells, so it’s disappointing that everybody outside of movie studio employees has to fall back to an iMac or a Windows/Linux machine.
- Apple finally made the RAM on the new Mac Mini upgradeable, but it is not user-serviceable; you have to get the RAM installed by an Apple-authorized repair center in order for the warranty to stay valid on the Mac Mini. The same holds true for the iMac Pro.
- The Mac Mini lacks expansion slots. All expansion must be done externally using Thunderbolt or USB-3.
Until the 2013 Mac Pro was released, Apple has sold an entry-level Power Mac or Mac Pro model for around $2,500 in inflation-adjusted currency that was user-serviceable and has expansion slots. The 2013 Mac Pro was still user-serviceable, but it lacked expansion slots. Now Apple is finally selling a user-serviceable, expandable Mac, but at prices that are beyond what many users can afford. There are no user-serviceable, expandable Macs that cost under $5,999.
I'm pretty confident this isn't legal in the US. Under a law from the 70's the FTC released a letter reiterating this fact last year. Apple and other companies have made this purposefully vague as well as fighting right to repair laws.
> There are no user-serviceable, expandable Macs that cost under...
This has been a gripe against Apple for at least 20 years.
1. Apple first failed to update the cheese grater line for years consecutively
2. Then Apple's redesign of the Mac Pro transformed it into a larger Mac Mini trashcan which wasn't really expandable compared to the original cheese grater line. No one asked for that.
There is evidence for demand for a reasonably priced Mac Pro Tower if you look at the Hackintosh community and eBay sales of older cheese grater Mac Pros, but Apple keeps refusing to meet demand.
There is "niche" demand for consumer towers, sure, but I don't think it would be worth Apple's effort. The iMac 5K is really good, and its even the cheapest option to get one of the best displays out there.
> Prices ranged from $1,599 to $3,499,
According to one online inflation calculator, $1599 in 2000 dollars is $2,372.95 in 2019 dollars. and $3499 is $5,192.58.
So, I guess, yeah.I do recall them seeming awfully expensive.
I agree this new release seems awfully awfully expensive.
By 2012, the entry level Mac tower was up to $2499. Since 2013, the cheapest Mac Pro (no PCI/E slots) has been $2999.
The 2019 model is literally more than twice as expensive as the 2013, which in turn was already the previous most-expensive entry-level Mac workstation ever.
PowerMac/MacPro prices have always seemed steep, but this is a new ballgame even for Apple.
It's about $23k in 2019 dollars.
Also in googling for it I found it had been featured in Jurassic Park: https://productplacementblog.com/movies/supermatch-20-t-moni...
Mac IIcx, 16 MHz 68030, 4 MiB RAM, 80MiB HD: $7069
Radius two-page display (19”): $1495
Monochrome video card: $699
Extended Keyboard II: $229
Accounting for inflation, the old 2012 cheese grater models started at $3150 in 2019 dollars. The older models were $1000 cheaper
No, but an entry-level SGI Octane was like TWENTY GRAND back then. The Mac Pro is what occupies that space today.
> It's for people who don't know what a CPU core is but know how to produce a platinum album, get an Oscar nomination, or bring a revolutionary industrial design to market.
Wait, what? When I say "for pros" I mean able to support latest specs. Something that had the latest NVIDIA cards, or could at least USE the latest NVIDIA cards to do ML or rendering would qualify under most people's definition of Pro I think? Right? When did the definition of Pro become "Music Producer"?
My lab has grant support. I've bought workstations just as expensive as this recently, but then new Apple ones are non-starters, even if I've been using Macs since I was in 2nd grade.
And to think music studios need so much horsepower when "Sgt. Pepper's" was recorded on 4 tracks…
What audio effects there were in Sgt. Pepper’s were generated in analogue effects pedals and synths. Today, those same effects are expected to be simulated, in parallel, in realtime, on the DAW you’re producing the track on. (And modern music genres use way more effect layers. Modern pop music is a fifty-deep effects tree with one-second-long samples at the bottom, with full-fidelity rendering of such monitored in real-time as performers feed vocals and other live input in.)
Estimates are > 700 hours for the album; 700/13 = more than 50 hours per track. A lot of that time was bouncing down 4 tracks to smaller numbers for future takes.
Currently, his only outstanding need is for better render times on Final Cut Pro (rendering videos of conference proceedings for YouTube), but I know he'll balk at $6000 for the new Mac Pro. I don't know what I'll recommend.
> It's for people who don't know what a CPU core is
We were talking about different kind of "Pro", lol.
And issue is not in butterfly keyboard - humans can adapt to different things. Issue that keyboard breaks too often.
The new Mac Pro is for movie studios and maybe very large machine learning models.
So no Nvidia cards is a feature for me.
You have to wonder how many you could reasonably expect to sell that way, though. Everyone in this thread is talking about some upper-elite of pro computer users (above your ordinary multi-six-figure developer salary on HN), but at only $6k per, that's not any way to make money. If that's really the target market, I would worry about making my design money back, let alone making a profit.
So I have to assume that that's not quite true: it's a computer targeted at studios, other million dollar a year creative professionals, and (the largest market) relatively rich folks who want to play at being creative professionals. Nothing else makes sense: it's not a computer for enthusiasts, because it's at least 50% overpriced for the market, it's not for developers, as this thread amply illustrates. Consumers are far more likely to buy an iMac than a Mac Pro if they have a desktop at all. The only major market left are people with enough disposable income to buy products because of their branding and because they know it's what the fancy creatives are buying. Buying a Mac Pro will make you feel like a multimillionaire creative - that's the selling point.
It's really the same principle as in digital cameras. Pricey full frame SLRs like the Canon 5D mk.IV are great cameras that are essential to photography professionals, but the vast majority of the market for these cameras is wealthy people who want to buy the expensive model from a recognizable name brand because "it's what the pros use".
Edit: perhaps those who disagree with this could provide their own breakdown of who they think is the target market for these, and how many Apple can expect to sell to each.