Apple’s $1000 monitor stand is a massive and unnecessary PR fail
9to5mac.com
9to5mac.com
They’re pretty clearly chasing after the commercial, high-end computing market, but they’ve kinda left the high-end consumer market behind in some ways.
Still no definitive fix to the fly switch keyboards, lots of complaints about other design issues in MacBooks, basic spec bumps in mainstay products like the iMac. All while they continue to (somewhat unjustifiably) raise prices.
The new Mac Pro is the coolest piece of tech they’ve built in a while, and it’s completely unsuited for 99.9% of users. What’s the point in mass-marketing it? It felt like watching a marketing video to buy an airplane or something.
It doesn't come close to an iMac or an iMac Pro.
It's because sites like this have been complaining for years that Apple has left the Pro market behind. This was their response to that. And now this site is switching to complaining that Apple's definition of "Pro" is too "Pro" for us.
If by too Pro you mean someone using an 8 core CPU with 32 GB of RAM ...
The higher end models might be great, with some genuine innovation in the GPU interface that to some will justify high prices. But I don't know who the target demographic for a $6k PC with those specs is supposed to be.
They're banking that the margins of these new, higher-end products offsets the sales lost by shrinking their market. The problem with this strategy is that it isn't very sustainable and leaves them vulnerable to losing market share.
Microsoft keeps getting more serious about Linux compatibility, and if they ship a surface pro or something similar that can seriously compete with the MBP, things will get interesting.
Is features.
Apple was already "expensive" but somehow reachable. Now, the Mac line is more and more out of reach for anyone without deep pockets.
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I could have understand (somehow, still out my reach for a machine >3000) if the Mac Pro was > 10 cores, >= 32 GB, >= 1TB SSD, Vega or Nvidia > 1080
ie: just buy and is already a top of the line (or, what you will do with a base (old) Mac Pro to get to middle config)
Most tech professionals I know had lots of misgivings about Apple’s design decisions around the MBP. Mainly, shipping only with usb-c and the Touch Bar, which has been a total dud. Neither of those things were demanded by the market, but apple pushed them anyway. In the process of redesigning the MBP chassis, they introduced numerous design issues which plague them today. Apple baker in a bunch of incorrect assumptions that haven’t planned out for them. The incredibly high sales of refurbished pre-usb-c MBPs really drive this home.
The new Mac Pro, on the other hand, is very clearly designed for users that require massive parallelism and power in their work, which just aren’t most people. How many people need 20 cores? Most users weren’t complaining about the core count in 2016, they were complaining that Apple took a rock-solid product and introduced a bunch of regressions to it.
This is a homer car made of money.
The mac pro itself might have never been meant for everyone. Most of the people in the "pro" group didn't know or didn't care that they might only be on the lower end in terms of "proness" and asked for a new mac pro anyways. But I guess Apple considers them already well served with the iMac pro.
Previously I thought the iMac pro would be phased out as soon as a real mac pro is introduced but perhaps Apple will keep it around now.
Edit: I couldn't find a single 128 GB DDR4 ECC 2993 MHz DIMM, but the closest I found is the 128 GB DDR4 ECC 2400 MHz DIMM at 2249.99 a piece. Now imagine 12 of those, at higher frequency, with the usual Apple markup. That's already 30 to 40K alone.
Add a little extra because it’s apple and I could see it pushing 100k
That's exactly what this is. It may sell some units to professionals and high end consumers but it's main value is establishing Apple at the top of the consumer pyramid which works to move all their other products. I remember getting my import Alfa Romeo serviced at the dealer where they also sell Ferraris. It was fun except for paying the same hourly rates.
Should part of the blame for the high price should go towards Intel? The 8-core CPU in the base Mac Pro looks like it might be an Xeon Gold 6244 [1][2] which costs $2925. Obviously Apple will be paying less, but half the cost is the CPU alone.
[1] https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/192442/...
[2] https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/xeon_gold#5200.2F6200-Ser...
Perhaps Apple figured it would be seen through the same eyes as those considering a $12k Mac Pro workstation, and appreciated in a similar way.
Another note: contra-wise, Apple did flirt with “luxury” watches for a time. Though I think they gave up on that direction.
Granted, it's not nearly as nice as Apple's stand. But I suspect the reception would have been a lot better if the narrative was "the $5000 screen comes with an ok stand, the great one is $1000 extra" instead of "lol, the $5000 screen is useless unless you buy a $120 Vesa mount plus some off-brand stand, or the $1000 official stand"
Underwhelming indeed.
But if you are using a six year old, $200 monitor you're not the market for a display like this.
Counterbalanced, Humanscale stands go for $400+ Nice equipment is expensive--it is the whole point of this release.
Though I don't own a Macbook, there's one aspect that I truly love about them: you can open the laptop easily with one hand. The vast majority of laptops I've come across require two hands. It's a rather minor detail, but as a result it smooths out an equally minor nitpick that I have with other laptops. For many, little details like that are worth the extra money.
For example: There's a Dell laptop to the side of my desk. Opening it one-handed causes the lid to open slightly, but then the base starts to rise. I need to either stick my hand inside a bit and wedge it open (which is a little more strenuous than I'd like) or use my other hand to pry it open (which feels fiddly and requires rotating my chair or adjusting my seating position).
I don't know enough about fancy monitor stands to judge Apple's stand, but generally: if I needed to perform work that required adjusting my monitor a few times a day, there would be a quite a bit of value in buying a monitor stand that makes the process somewhat easier.
It's sold for professionals who use it with $5000 Apple Pro Display XDR. It's 6K monitor with 1,000 nits brightness (1,600 nits peak). Typically reference monitor of that caliber sells for $30,000 - $40,000. (check the price for Sony BVM-HX310 31" 4K HDR)
They could have added $1000 for the monitor price and given the stand with the monitor. Then those who can afford $5000 but not $6000 would have suffered in silence.
Internet is reactionary outrage machine.
A more appropriate venue would have been a special media event in, say, Los Angeles, amid all the high-end post houses and VFX shops that can actually justify investing in both the Mac Pro’s pixel throughput and the Pro Display’s reference accuracy.
The monitor stand is like a $99 hamburger on the menu. For the people rich enough to never care about the cost of a restaurant meal it’s a purchase, and for everyone else it’s a cue that this brand is absolutely top end prestigious and expensive.
Im counting the days until I see one in a rap video or all over rich kid Instagram.
The message is that Apple shit is so top of the line that even our monitor stand is an uncompromising work of art.
It’s really not that complicated, it’s a textbook luxury branding and pricing strategy. Ever seen a Restoration Hardware catalog? They sell painted tree stumps for $1000.
The problem is that this 10x overpricing strategy doesn't apply to their entire lineup, but that's not made explicit. As a result, people might mistakenly generalise it to their other products such as iPhones, leading people to think that their phones are also 10x overpriced and are actually only worth $100, thus diminishing its value.
Price is one thing that most people are quite sensitive about.
The monitor stand has a nice appearance, but everyone understands that it's a mass-produced, functional product that can't justify its cost artistically or by virtue of materials and construction. The stand is also usually included with the monitor!
There's a clear message change. We've moved from "this is the cost of luxury" to "this is the cost we've greedily slapped onto a random part you need"
The difference between the two isn't vast- you have to pay attention to the nuance here.
I guess the stand is for different audience with audiophile-level fanaticism towards Apple products or for organizations that don't care about the price, but definitely not for mass market.
The price for the phone likely has to be this low, though if this genuinely is a new strategy they might introduce a gold version or something like that. However getting the newest iPhone each year is already mostly a status symbol, while the monitor stand probably has a lifetime more comparable with a watch.
That sounds as if you are saying the iPhone is cheap.
And let's not forget some go higher than the iPhones like the $2000 Samsung Galaxy Fold.
Also, Apple always makes older gen phones available if you're price sensitive -- the iPhone 7 (and 8) is available starting at $300 on their site for example.
Great except kids on instagram don't buy in the same bulk as video production companies.
If you burn your target market chasing rich kids on instagram thats a big marketing fail.
Prestigious? Not really. There's one word which sums up a product like this: overpriced. Expensive doesn't describe if its worth it.
And given I seen some Louis Rossman videos recently: recent Apple hardware is overpriced as well. Its bug ridden which I wouldn't expect with regards to such price tags. And I say that as an owner of 2 MBPs (4 in total).
That might make sense of the Mac Pro was a toy for the wealthy. But IIUC it's target audience is commercial production.
I would expect that market to eschew spending money for prestigious tools that their customers will rarely see.
Also on the desk of every big YouTube content producer, who can also benefit from the power of the Mac Pro for editing video. And with "YouTuber" being the most desirable career for a lot of kids out there, there's a good chance that kind of product placement could bolster sales for lower-priced Apple products for years to come.
The way that its currently broken out is quite puzzling. As a fun conjecture, perhaps they are planning a range lower spec monitors and want to upsell the stand.
Some of the features that make it "luxury" in my mind are:
* Build materials / quality
* Small footprint
* Magnetic connector (no screws)
* Ease of adjusting height / rotating (according to Apple)
For a 32-inch, 16 lb monitor that may need to be moved around a lot and shared amongst multiple people, I can see how those qualities might be important enough to justify the price for some.
And if it's really identical to any other stand out there, can you show something comparable at a lower price?
It's actually good PR: everybody talk about it, but they also they it's a good quality monitor, just that apple is over pricing an accessory, which is a cheap way of making the luxury brand perceptuon stronger... Huge com win for very little effet.
There is almost certainly no one who might actually buy this display who is complaining about the price.
Without the stand, all headlines would have been on how Apple finally listened and produced a great MacPro - something only us geeks care about. Whereas this $1k-stand trolling generates mainstream headlines which reinforce the luxury-brand image that actually makes them the big money.
It's entirely possible that people will now buy this monitor even if they don't need it simply so that they can flaunt the "famous" $1k stand.
1: https://www.humanscale.com/products/mflex-m10-monitor-arm-co...
For me it is a A glimpse of rememberance from Steve original NeXT MegaPixel Display ...
Likewise, this product will be hailed as a status symbol in a few months precisely because of its absurdity.
Apple will continue to be contemptuous of its consumers because it keeps being richly rewarded for it. I am not trying to be edgy by making this claim: it was all laid out more than a century ago by a cheeky Norwegian-American, and more recently by patio11.
Apple did not want people to talk about other things introduced or not introduced at WWDC. With so much attention from non-developers for a developer event, they need to carefully handle expectations until the hardware event in fall, with its focus on the general public, will hopefully introduce the amazing new things everyone always expects.
This year was not a disappointment for sure but the things shown are incremental improvements at best. Putting that stand out there will give the public something largely irrelevant to complain about and at the same time generate more attention for a specific niche product: the new mac pro.
And in doing so they avoid real criticism for all the other products that are so much more important for their success. Apple does not lose anything here
side note: anyone else remember when Tim Cook thanked everyone involved in the end and emphasized the overtime and weekends they worked through? No idea what to make of this, does not sound like a normal thing to admit tbh as CEO. To me that sounded like a plea for something, perhaps to be more understanding and to wait until fall to see how everything plays out?
(timestamp 2:15:56 at https://www.apple.com/apple-events/june-2019/)
> these guys have given up their nights and weekends from their families
Which is a troubling message, normalizing exploitation, but is perfectly in line with contemporary executive-think.