Comment by atonse | Hacker News Reader

Comment by atonse | Hacker News Reader

They deserve all the mockery they got for the $999 stand (and more).

However, my complaint about the new Pro and Display are not that they are overpriced (they're perfectly priced for what they are). But that there is no lower end option.

Even if they took the display in the 5k iMac and just made that a standalone thunderbolt display, charged $1,500 for it (even though I would've slightly grumbled), I would've ordered it on day one. But $5k for a display is just something I won't spend.

Same with the desktop. If they had reasonable defaults for $6k, then yes I absolutely would buy it (because of the amazing expandability, and I'm truly tired of laptops).

But the display is to me truly disappointing that they solved problems only a very very small sliver of pros asked for (pro photographers and film people), rather than a secondary class of pros (developers, etc). I don't need true reference-grade color for viewing webpages and code all day. But I would generally like a 5k or 6k display for more screen real estate.

So if they sold a display like the one in the iMac that is actually manufactured by LG, you’d buy it....

So why not just by the LG display?

Not OP but I presume a major reason is that the LG display (5k Ultrafine) only has a TB3 video input which means virtually all GPU cards can't drive it. I ended up with a HP Z27Q 5K display for my setup but would have much preferred the LG if it had more input options.

He said he wished Apple would sell a stand-alone display. If Apple sold one, what are the chances that it wouldn’t also be TB3 only?

BTW, as far as I can tell, HP no longer sells the model you bought.

Forgive my ignorance, but what's stopping you from buying a third-party screen and attaching that? Right now, I'm using a MBP with a Dell monitor. It would seem insane if the Mac Pro had a priority monitor interface.

There are very few third-party 5K monitors and they're flaky.

There are a lot of native size requirements that third party monitors don't meet as well. If you want 5K, which is the ideal for 2x 2560x1440 at 27", you're in a very different market. A 4k display running at 1x is easy to find, but a good 5K is a very different story.

This is why Apple sells the LG 5K display and why their iMacs have 5K displays when possible. Third party displays do work, but when you want to get into crazy town resolutions it's much harder to find them with high quality.

> A 4k display running at 1x is easy to find, but a good 5K is a very different story.

I have to ask - what's the value of 5k over 4k? 4k is already 'retina' quality (speaking of my 32" 4k as reference), what does another 1024 horizontal lines bring to the party?

I have a 31" 4K display and it's nowhere near retina dpi. I run it at 1x

At 27-inch, 5K gets you 2× the pre-retina resolution.

For one if you're doing 4k video editing you can view the video in its native resolution and see UI elements simultaneously.

Random super low quality image of this. http://noamkroll.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Screen-Shot-...

That makes the most sense to me; I suspected something like that might be the answer. Thanks!

Nah.

My 13" MacBook Pro is 13.3" at 2560x1600 or 227 PPI.

My 24" 4K monitor is 24" at 3840x2160 or 184 PPI.

Your 32" 4K monitor is 138 PPI, so only 60% of the density of MacBook displays.

That doesn’t mean that it’s not at a sufficient pixel density; I can’t discern them in normal operation (display an arm’s length from my eyes).

Two Dell 4k monitors here, they are too skinny.

I'd like a 16:10 or even 4:3 monitor at 200+dpi, but they don't exist. (Maybe that IBM beast from ~2000.)

I do have a Dell 4k monitor (P2715Q), and it works really well and I have no complaints about its compatibility or picture quality. But I just like the Thunderbolt hub + monitor + charger solution, plus the webcam, and would've been great if these monitors came with Face ID.

The LG monitor sort of does this. But it's just ugly.

I had the Dell at my old job. Great picture quality! But 4K on 27“ is however still a compromise, since everything will show up too big when using 2x scaling. And when going for 1.5x or 2x things will get blurry. I now use 2x with smalller fonts in editors and browser zoomed out by default as a compromise.

But I’m really looking forward to have a real >200dpi desktop display for 2x scaling.

I have to believe a new monitor is coming between 1,500 and 2,000.

The 6K Mac Pro is very much low end. It's not even high end by consumer standards.

The problem with the base model of the new Mac Pro is that all the non-upgradable components are extremely high end, but the CPU, RAM, GPU and SSD capacity are low-end. You can max out a consumer-grade desktop platform and end up with a much better system for a third of the price. But that system would have no headroom for further upgrades. The Mac Pro gives you six DRAM channels instead of two, several times the IO bandwidth, supports several times as many CPU cores, and a power supply that delivers more than twice the wattage any consumer desktop ever needs. But the base model doesn't use any of that functionality.

Apple can't do anything about the underlying technological reality that there's a big difference between current consumer desktop platforms and current workstation/server platforms. They're also being hurt by the fact that the base configuration Mac Pro is quite different from the typical configuration Mac Pro. For consumer PCs, it's common for the base model to be one of the most popular configurations, but for the Mac Pro the base model is a niche product that relatively few customers will opt for. This defies the expectations of people who approach the Mac Pro as if it is a consumer product.

> The Mac Pro gives you six DRAM channels instead of two, several times the IO bandwidth, supports several times as many CPU cores

That's not true. Threadripper has more cores, supports more memory, has 6-channel memory, more PCIe-lanes and so on.

Even the AM4 socket will soon have 16-core CPUs and PCIe4, so it will probably have more bandwidth than any Mac Pro, for a few hundred USD. The world is moving fast, that's for sure.

Threadripper obviously is not a consumer desktop class platform; it's one of the workstation/server platforms that is substantially more expensive than consumer desktop platforms. It's not quite as overpriced as Intel's workstation and server platforms, but it's in the same general category. (It also has only four DRAM channels, which contributes to its lower prices than Intel's 6-channel platforms.)

And yes, AMD's consumer desktop platform is getting a substantial update next month that will put it well ahead of Intel's current consumer desktop platform. But PCIe 4 is also driving up the cost of that platform quite a bit, at least in the near term.

Threadripper is expensive by consumer standards but you can still buy a 32 core 2990WX workstation with 64GB quad channel RAM, 1TB NVMe SSD, etc. for less money than a base model Mac Pro.

Presumably the next gen Threadripper platform with PCIe 4 will launch not too far off the time the new Mac Pro does.

> for less money than a base model Mac Pro.

As has already been pointed out, the base model is pretty much irrelevant and that Threadripper system would probably be maxed out. Also that systems wouldn't run Mac software.

Everything you say is entirely true, but most people buying these new Mac pros simply won't care because it's not relevant to their actual requirements.

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