Testing the ‘Apple tax’ | Hacker News Reader

Testing the ‘Apple tax’

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40 pointsanu_gupta58 comments

The only problem with these comparisons is that the majority of people do not need ECC memory nor "workstation" GPUs which are in fact, inferior to their gaming counterparts on many workloads and mostly exist as expensive dongles for CAD applications.

Really, the Mac Pro sports a set of $3000+ "workstation" class FirePro W9000's, which are egregiously marked up versions of last generation GPUs. For the price of a single D700 in the Mac Pro you could buy 3+ Radeon 290X's.

A PC user building a high end system would not opt for Xeon CPUs, ECC RAM, and workstation GPUs. They'd put in top of the line consumer CPUs with liquid cooling, top-end current generation NVidia or AMD cards, all for a fraction of the cost.

And in an Apples-to-Oranges comparison on major benchmarks, there's be practically zero different in performance, the PC would whup the ass of the "workstation" class system in games, and some DCC apps might perform slightly worse.

To show what a rip off these workstation cards are, there used to be a jumper hack for NVidia cards that would turn a consumer GPU into a "Quadro" workstation GPU, which would allow the workstation class OpenGL drivers to work, and the result was no different in benchmarks.

That is, the "workstation GPU" turns out to be a HW dongle to allow OpenGL drivers tuned for triangle throughput to run.

The exception is if you are perhaps running long running simulations. ECC could be useful there. But for Final Cut Pro? The ECC and workstation GPUs are overkill.

There isn't an Apple tax, there is an "Intel tax" and "workstation tax" on unneeded/overkill HW that delivers marginal returns to performance for enormous extra cost.

I love the Mac Pro's design, I just wish it came in non-Xeon/non-FirePro GPU versions.

Yep. A lot of this was true of the old Mac Pro as well. I didn't know a lot of people who had even those, but those who did had absolutely no need for ECC RAM or server Xeons. Or for that matter a case made of steel. The Apple tax on these things isn't so much in the price as in selling you things you don't actually need with no way to customize them to your needs.

Note that I don't disagree that Apple makes probably the best overall laptops on the market. But on the desktop, both low and high end, their products are almost pure gouge.

> absolutely no need for ECC RAM or server Xeons, where it's not so much about performance as longevity and stability

ECC RAM has nothing to do with performance, it is in fact for stability. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory

That is what I was saying. Removed it to avoid being unclear, though.

Any serious workstation should have three things:

1) A high quality power supply. Bad PSU guarantees crashes.

2) ECC RAM. It makes the difference between rock solid and crashes/does weird things occasionally.

3) Any kind of storage fault redundancy, like RAID 1.

Everything else is negotiable, but those stand, because they make all the difference in reliability and stability.

A high quality power supply.

I remember data from a while ago that power supplies were the #1 cause of failures, but don't seem to be able find it any more. Anyone have info?

ECC RAM

This has become more and more necessary with the massive increase in DRAM capacities we've seen over the last years.

A google study showed "...a mean of 3,751 correctable errors per DIMM per year."[1]

10 errors per DIMM per day is a lot, and several orders of magnitude more than the conventional wisdom says! And if you don't have ECC, all of those are likely either crashes or silent data corruption.

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/dram-error-rates-nightmare...

This mac doesn't have RAID, if you want it you'll need the external rack they offer. For $1,500 you get 4 x 2TB hard drives, which will handle RAID 0, 1, 5, 50, 6, 10.

Otherwise you'll need to go find someone else who sells Thunderbolt racks.

The "workstation" video cards are not only an ID change.

They have different workloads than regular cards. A games video card is more glitch tolerant as well.

See the specs here and compare with a 'games' video card http://www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/WORKSTATION/GRAPHICS/ATI-FIRE...

(Still, I agree, it's marked up a lot)

And of course a games video card is faster, they give up correctness for speed. Including there some specific tuneups for certain games.

Cromwellian made the point that the difference between a Quadro and a Geforce, at one time, was just a jumper change. It was exactly the same hardware -- and changing that jumper activated the card's ability to give you better wireframe performance and whatever supposed advantages Quadro had.

And for a long time, the workstation class cards were all that Autodesk would certify their software against. Several years ago, we users finally convinced them to start certifying against Geforce cards so that we could use consumer class cards for their software and take the "hit" in wireframe performance.

"that the difference between a Quadro and a Geforce, at one time, was just a jumper change. It was exactly the same hardware"

Are you sure it was the same hardware?

Sure, changing the jumper makes it identify itself as a Quadro. But:

Were the GPUs binned the same? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning

Were the thermal solutions the same?

Were the memories the same? And by 'the same',same speed characteristics?

Did the cards have the same power circuitry (damping capacitors, shielding, load capacity, etc)

But yes, I am in favour of using consumer class cards for 3D Apps, I would leave the 'pros' for the top end or specialist apps (like the Quadros that have multiple monitor outputs)

Consumer cards have multiple monitor outputs too. Frankly, the rest of the stuff is scaremongering. Consumer class GPUs run gaming loads which stress the thermal envelope far more than say, Autodesk or SolidWorks. It's all FUD to sell someone a piece of hardware at 300% margin, and cognitive dissonance from those people who consider themselves "Pros" to have paid for a placebo.

With the exception of NVidia cards with GPGPU tuned architecture (e.g. double precision FP at lower penalty) there is precious little advantage a workstation class GPU has.

It's the same mentality of "no one ever get fired for buying IBM" as if buying the "Pro" version nets you any real advantage.

"Consumer cards have multiple monitor outputs too"

I mean something like this: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvs-compare-product-specs.html

"Oh but you can add another video card", not always, this is needed in some cases (a niche case, true)

For the other aspects, your guess is as good as mine. Sure, games stress the card more than Autocad, but maybe things like Maya put more (or different) stresses on it

I don't disagree with you, I would use a regular video card first to see if it meets my needs.

Now, for CUDA or other calculation apps, I would go for the Pro video cards, specifically because I would have someone to complain if it didn't work the way it should. And that's usually why things cost more sometimes.

'...the majority of people do not need ECC memory nor "workstation" GPUs...'

Yes, and the majority of people do not need or buy Mac Pros. They buy iMacs, minis or laptops.

"Really, the Mac Pro sports a set of $3000+ "workstation" class FirePro W9000's, ... you could buy 3+ Radeon 290X's."

Well, on the Mac Pro, you do get 2 of those $3000 graphics cards for $1000 total, or $500 each. This is an upgrade price from the low end cards, which have been estimated at a combined value of ~ $1000 themselves[1], so the total would actually be $1000 per card, or what you said you can get that sort of card for...

[1] http://architosh.com/2013/10/the-mac-pro-so-whats-a-d300-d50...

They're still last generation GPUs, not AMD R9's.

I had Mac Pro (old 2005) model and over the course of 8 years of continuous use I had maybe a handful of ECC errors detected. I had far more crashes from unreliable software.

There are a class of people who want fast expandable machines with top end GPUs who don't want ECC level reliability. The iMac is not a replacement for the guy who wants a Mac that runs Crossfire AMD GPUs for games or video editing.

Again, the Xeon is a huge unneeded tax that leaves a whole in the market between iMac and Mac Pro, a whole that PCs fill. There are lots and lots of people who build tricked-out PCs that run rings around this Mac Pro as gaming or video editing rigs. The cases and build quality and "design" suck ass, power speed and cost wise they win.

Apple is leaving money on the table I think by leaving such a huge donut whole, and the people comparing Mac Pros to what PC users can build don't understand what PC users want.

I'd argue ECC is far more important in cloud based systems handling mission critical data than say, The Verge.com editing a review video, in which a single bit error is unlikely to be catastrophic or invite a law suit over data loss.

They're still last generation GPUs, not AMD R9's.

Can you elaborate?

There are a class of people who want fast expandable machines with top end GPUs who don't want ECC level reliability.

Sure, but I think we can agree that people who actually expand machines are not a majority. We are also now straying from the article, which asked "is there an Apple tax?" (not really, the machines are good value for money) to "does Apple make the machine I want?". The latter is a valid question, but a different one.

The iMac is not a replacement for the guy who wants a Mac that runs Crossfire AMD GPUs for games...

Again, I'd say that Apple doest not target gamers, and I don't think they'd be very successful if they did. How does this affect the position that the MacPro is good value for the market it serves?

...or video editing.

I don't think I'd take as cavalier an attitude towards RAM errors as you do, especially since computers are digital and therefore have highly non-linear failure modes.

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/dram-error-rates-nightmare....

By which you mean you can upgrade from whatever is in there for $500 each. They’re certainly not “from no video card to W9000” for $500.

Yes, that's what I mean. Which is why I wrote it:

... This is an upgrade price from the low end cards, which have been estimated at a combined value of ~ $1000 themselves[1], so the total would actually be $1000 per card, or what you said you can get that sort of card for...

Upvoted because my reading skills switched off half-way through your comment.

Apple doesn't enter markets where it can't make money. There is at least some money to be made selling proper workstations with Xeon CPUs, ECC RAM, and workstation-class graphics cards with application certifications, etc. There are customers that are going to be looking for those requirements, and aren't going to purchase consumer-grade equipment. The new Mac Pro offers a lot of value per dollar for these customers. The customers who are happy to run workstation apps on a home-built consumer system probably have no interest in Apple anyway, except at a price point that makes no sense for Apple to sell a product at.

Isn't it possible that the Pros are a ... dividend ... for faithful Apple fans? I mean, does the Pro line even have to be a money maker? (I agree with others that the people who need this kind of machine are rare these days, but why not support them?)

No. Apple is about margins, deep down in its DNA. It is a fundamental principal. They just -- as always -- are brilliant at marketing.

They hid all that delicious markup in Xeon and FirePro brands. They know that FirePros are just (1 or 2 generation old) consumer grade with maybe some custom binning and pinout tweaks. They pushed on Intel and AMD to price those parts very well -- in exchange for volume (and not just the MacPro volume, future "Apple" volume), and now every new MacPro owner thinks they got a really good deal.

It is transparent, but also clever as hell.

For the heck of it, I did the breakdown

CPU: $2,789 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116...)

RAM: I could not find the identical type but it seems like it's in the ballpark of ~$800 given the ones I found were either a tad slower or came in 8 pieces instead of 4 (but then they were faster).

GPU: It seems like the exact GPU was introduced only for Mac Pro so it does not seem like you can buy it normally. But let's say ~$700.

HDD: ~$500-$600 http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-adapter-Internal-CT96...

Motherboard: Seems like best LGA 2011 motherboards are in the the ~$500 range.

Total: ~$5300 (given you'd probably spend a couple more hundred on a power supply, case etc). Note that when I was estimating the prices, I was generally estimating higher than lower.

So I'd really like to see their cost breakdown of the 11k they mentioned.

> So I'd really like to see their cost breakdown of the 11k they mentioned.

http://www.futurelooks.com/new-apple-mac-pro-can-build-bette...

they put the cost of the GPUs at ~$7k

> These graphics cards currently are available for $3,400.31 US a piece. Although on the PC side, if you are using the system for Adobe Creative Suite and using Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, the NVIDIA Quadro K5000′s for $1799.99 US a piece might be a better performance option since CUDA implementation is a little more mature than OpenCL in those apps. You have no choice with the Mac Pro because it’s AMD or bust.

Lolwut?

Right now you can't take advantage of Mac's GPU since many apps aren't compatible with the drivers, that's what he's probably referring to.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/23/5234574/apple-mac-pro-rev... http://forums.adobe.com/message/5081640

I'm confused by the part "You have no choice with the Mac Pro because it’s AMD or bust".

Well, if the MacPro is shipping the AMD cards, you can expect better drivers and increased compatibility/performance in the future

Example http://www.philiphodgetts.com/2013/10/mavericks-bonus-opencl...

The cards aren't plugged into a expansion slot like most computers. They are mounted on their own boards. The PCB's make a triangle, 2 sides are the Graphics cards, the last one is CPU and RAM slots. (With the SSD above it.

Apple probably didn't want a contract with both companies. AMD probably had a better deal (in Apple's eyes) than Nvidia did.

This is the real article that talks about the parts chosen: http://www.futurelooks.com/new-apple-mac-pro-can-build-bette...

The problem with this is it tries too hard to match things about the Mac Pro that would never matter to someone building their own. No one is going to choose a twice-as-expensive AMD card that adds thousands to the cost for no reason, and honestly no one ever seemed to care about a workstation being a small form factor until Apple made one that looks like R2-D2.

Yeah, it seems like the GPU is a much bigger factor than I thought.

HP and Lenovo make nice SFF workstation. I wanted one of the HP ones for ages, I like SFF and want a workstation styled desktop for work

He mentions that in the end. It's the Yahoo article that is quick to only give you the "Apple is better than PC DIY" story.

There's no way the dual D700 GPUs cost around $700.

It seems that the D700 are the AMD W9000 but underclocked. So I would lean towards the price being around $3000-5000.

Fair enough.

Two AMD FirePro S9000 6GB run about $4400. The S9000 and W9000 parts are virtually identical performance-wise and are much cheaper than w9000 parts (which run about $3400 ea.)

http://hothardware.com/News/AMD-Sets-Its-Eyes-On-New-GPU-Vir...

While I think the Mac Pro is a nice bit of kit, it feel heavily specialised for video editing, post production and 3D work with a quiet profile.

But if your speccing competing kit, why wouldn't you build a 'better' product, rather then trying to find the exact parts. Your never going to build an off the shelf system with the same parts, make it quieter and keep it under budget when apple is pumping them off the production line.

Why would you spec a wintel system with a single 12 core proc instead of 2x hex (or oct) core procs?!?!? The 12 core part is rare and expensive, compared to the commodity 6 core part.

Why would a workstation grade machine at this point in time not have a mirrored disk array?

Why would you not have either 10gbit or quad 1gbit ethernet. Bond these up and connect to fast NAS / SAN storage for storage. Alternatively use a SAS connector and directly connect to a JBOD. A dual proc server board might even have 14 SAS/SATA ports to allow you to have a nice local storage array running RAID10/5/6.

An Intel Xeon E5-2630v2 (hex core, 2.6ghz) can be had for $792 AUD a pop.

Not to mention that you can put hundreds of GB of ECC memory in a Dual proc Xeon board.

Some people will value size over performance/price and think that such a machine will never be a replacement. I think on the other hand having a RAIDed system disk and much more ram is more valuable for my workloads.

While they will sell thousands of them, I really don't see the value outside a small number of applications optimised for OSX. For these workloads the cost is insignificant compared to the productivity.

Its disappointing for those hoping Apple might finally build a decent general purpose workstation, but with such limited upgradability I can't see these being used for a lot of the applications that people considered the previous mac pro for.

Yes that is what I thought if your building a high end DIY mac pro replacement why would you not go for a dual processor system based around something like a SR2 water cooled board.

This copy-paste job adds nothing to the original article: http://bgr.com/2013/12/26/mac-pro-windows-diy-cost/

Edit: And the article they copied from is a shorter write-up of the actual original: http://www.futurelooks.com/new-apple-mac-pro-can-build-bette...

This has been a common observation since time memorial: equivalent Mac systems tend to be competitive. Apple just doesn't compete in the very low end of the market at all.

Common observation also : if you build a car from scratch using parts you'll end up with a much higher price. If a competitor builds a similar PC with the same sales volume, enabling the same bulk discount, the comparison would be valid.

Although you could also argue that building a PC from scratch is a far less exceptional case than building a car.

Depends in performance terms a kit car like a lotus 7 will out perform a lot of performance cars for less cash as would say a well sorted and stepped on 427 kit car when compared to a real 60's vintage 427.

Ok you might not have an air con, cupholders or a cd player but as MR Clarkson says "more powwerrrrrr"

Another common observation: things that apply to cars don't necessarily apply to computers, where build-your-own has often been the most economical option.

Or as we say in German: Nur weil's hinkt ist's noch lange kein Vergleich :-)

> equivalent Mac systems tend to be competitive.

This article only shows that equal Mac systems are competitive (cheaper). An equivalent, however, would be something completely different. No need to buy that exact GPU they have, for instance, when you could get equivalent performance for many thousands dollars less.

Right, cheaper is much stronger than just competitive. The Mac configurations are $2000 and $1000 cheaper on the high and low ends respectively.

That leaves a lot of room for substituting components on the other side of the comparison, and you then have to add labor, warranty protection, assurance of compatibility for the whole (through system upgrades) and a really cool design and compact form factor.

If you value all of those things, the value is pretty awesome, but even if you value none of them it is still competitive. (Competitive does not mean "unconditionally better/cheaper" etc. It just means "able to compete successfully").

If you match exactly the specs of an apple system the price tends to be competitive; the reason there's a "tax" is the apple model range is a lot smaller. If you choose the specs to start with (e.g. the system requirements for some game), and then compare the cheapest mac you can get with those specs with the cheapest PC you can get with those specs, that's when a price difference tends to be visible.

Apple has unfairly gotten this rep that their machines are expensive when in fact equivalent windows systems are in fact more expensive. I realized this when I was searching for a display and naturally thought that I can find a display comparable to the Apple one from some other manufacturers at a much steeper discount. But found that most do not make equivalent displays or when they do (Dell) its priced higher than Apple's. I have found the same thing when it comes to Mac Mini's as well. For the form factor there is nothing on the market that is even comparable. Things might have changed now (I hope) have not checked.

Funny, I ran a similar comparison and came up with ~$9000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6937203

I didn't include ECC RAM which might up the price a bit. My conclusion was that there really wasn't much of an Apple tax anymore.

However, I think the system is spec'd wrong. In same ways it's spec'd out like a server, in others like a high-end CAD workstation...but it's not really suitable for the former and the market for the latter is really small.

As a server the overly expensive video is completely unnecessary. And the form factor is all wrong anyways.

For gaming, music production, video editing, photo work, etc. the workstation-class video parts, CPU and expensive RAM aren't useful and the storage is too small anyways.

Nobody targeting either class of user would spec a system out like this.

So who is this targeted at? The more stationary rMBP users who do lots of virtualization and want more RAM with the occasional CAD work and/or bitcoin mining?

I dunno, this product line feels weird.

I just built a pretty decent system that I'm expecting to last for the next 4-5 years and spent well under $2k.

Core i7-4770K

Nvidia GTX680

32GB RAM

512GB SSD

4TB HD

Blue Ray writer

+ some other odds and ends and they tossed in 3 free brand new games.

However, I would have liked to have it running with fewer fans, in a smaller case (half the size of my current mid-tower would have been nice).

Had I gone with 2x the RAM and a pair of the top of the line video card I would have still been around the cost of the lowest end Mac Pro at better day-to-day performance. But then again, my case is huge compared to this thing. Hell, I think my CPU cooling setup alone is about the same size as a Mac Pro.

I think the good thing is that at least the small size and high power at least has the tech world thinking and talking again, about part sizes and shapes, airflow, heat management etc. I predict some fast followers in the PC market at various specs and similarly sized form factors, including the huge open gap in the Apple lineup.

Maybe my next system build in 5 years will be in a tube shaped case with a single fan and much smaller parts?

Typical fanboi-ism that is being repeated.

There are 2 different lines of AMD GPUs that use the same GPU parts: FirePro Wxxxx and Radeon xxxx / R7 or R9 xxx.

For instance, the W9000 uses the same GPU as the Radeon HD 7970 Ghz Edition. This card sells for a retail price of maybe $500. Even if it is instead based on the 7990, that card is not $3K either.

The difference between the W9000 and the Radeon is that the RAM on the card is ECC on the FirePro and not ECC on the Radeon series... and nowhere that I can see, does Apple say that the DDR5 RAM on the graphics card is ECC; only that the main RAM for the CPU is ECC.

See this for codenames of the various GPUs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_HD_7000_Series#Southern_... .

Look up the equivalent retail prices of the cards mentioned, on the Wiki page... note that currently the prices are higher at retail because of the GPU shortage due to people buying these for Litecoin / Dogecoin mining.

See that the Apple fanbois in their "I Want to Believe" behavior don't understand what is going on...

>note that currently the prices are higher at retail because of the GPU shortage due to people buying these for Litecoin / Dogecoin mining.

And that price issue doesn't effect apple at all, right?

Probably not, given the nature of long-term OEM agreements; the shortage is just due to early supply ramp-ups going into the Christmas season (the R9 series cards were press-released in late September 2013).

Apple has been an ATI customer for 10+ years IIRC .

The original article states that the Windows machine is without any Thunderbolt 2 connectivity. If you wanted to match the hardware more closely, you would have to add the price of fairly expensive Thunderbolt 2 add-on cards.

I'm not even sure you could match the 6x Thunderbolt 2 ports and 4x USB 3 ports available on the Mac Pro with a DIY PC at this time.

The Mac Pro also has dual gigabit ethernet and built-in speaker, which this comparison does not seem to take into account.

Even if there was an apparent 'Apple tax' on the new Mac Pros, as long it wasn't too much, I wouldn't mind. They make great hardware and software, and sometimes it's worth it to pay a little bit extra to get this. After all, we don't go around testing the Apple tax on the iPhone, and comparing it to other smart phones, since the iPhone is one of the more expensive phones on the market.

If you compare an Asus Zenbook to a equivalently specced Macbook Air, they actually come out at pretty much the same price.

Yes but the MacBook will actually last. I have a co-worker that has a Zenbook and while the hardware specifications are nice it has garbage build quality.

When will there be another great PC hardware manufacturer?

I've wondered if one would come along or if the barriers to entry and consumer preferences would simply never allow it.

> When will there be another great PC hardware manufacturer?

No joke!

I think this is the most disappointing thing about Surface. Microsoft is now in the hardware market. They could have put that kind of build quality into an actual ultrabook, but instead focused on this weird design for Windows 8.

> Yes but the MacBook will actually last.

Exactly. You may end up saving $50, but why bother when you can get something of a lot higher quality.

Isn't the new Mac Pro built in the USA? It seems like it would be even less expensive if it was built in China.

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