I am a huge Apple product fan. I have at least one of just about everything they sell. I am not sure if I can justify the latest Mac Pro!!
The new Mac Pro fully configured costs $50,000 but wait, there is still the option to add casters for an additional $400.
That seemed like a lot for wheels until I realized that if I bought the Apple Pro Display XDR for $5,000 if would cost me an additional $1,000 for the stand.
Hmmm, maybe next Christmas.
Edit: I just read that there is an optional nano screen coating for the monitor for $1,000.This message has been edited. Last edited by: straightshooter01,
I am not a Apple/Mac person, but the prices (while high) are not completely outrageous. The very expensive $50K type options include things like the very high core count Intel processors which are definitely not cheap (Like $7k-9K for a processor all by itself). I think the base systems are more poorly priced than the upper end systems (in a what you get inside for your money manner). Being Apple, the outside looks/construction is going to always cost more, but it's more out of whack on the lower end base-price side. I do think they kind of painted themselves into a corner by taking so long to come out with it and only having Intel Skylake derivative Xeons, and not having cheaper and better AMD Threadripper multi-core systems as the per-core IPC performance and feature king (i.e PCIe Gen 4, which none of the Intel processor's support) is currently AMD for high end, high number multi-core processors.
As for the monitor, while it too seems too expensive, that level of super professional monitors used in the high end video/graphics industry are normally even more expensive, so $5K for the professional level monitor itself is not out of line. No most people don't need or want to pay for the features that monitor supports. Yes the stand is a rip off, but most professionals use VESA setups and will not buy the stand anyway. Yeah, there's a $200 Apple tax on just the VESA mount, but that beats the $1000 Apple tax on the fancy monitor stand professionals wont use.
Is it worth it? I don't think so, because I'm not a Apple guy. But for the "small business" (Not giant corporate) professional people who I do know who do use Macs and would consider the <$10K more-basic models, they tend to keep and be productive with the same-model Mac for many years so the higher upfront cost is worth it to them over a Windows system. For example, my professional Graphics designer friend who paid like $9K dollars for a used dual Xeon 6-core Mac Pro with 64GB RAM from 2011-2012-ish and a 30" Apple Cinema Monitor, still uses the same system to this day, so she got her money out of the system. I know, because I helped her spec that system all those years ago, and she has been using it ever since without any problems whatsoever beyond a cheap video card upgrade when the newer OSX versions quit supporting her original video card and Apple HD replacements with cheap SSD's. As her main software is still Adobe Suite (she doesn't do much if any video editing) she hasn't yet needed to up her CPU horsepower. The big thing is that nothing has physically failed, still works with newer add-on cards like the upgraded video card (non-Apple AMD RX580) so I give Apple credit for the long lasting hardware.
Posts: 4366 | Location: Boise, ID USA | Registered: February 14, 2003
Wow. I just looked up that machine. The specs are incredible.
To be honest, I didn't know something like this existed outside educational or .gov super computers.
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Originally posted by 12131: 50k? Does it cook, clean, and sing for you?
Well it does have a built in cheese grater. Non Mac followers may not get the reference...
SNIP: Both the Mac Pro and the Pro Display XDR are available for purchase starting today, with pricing on the Mac Pro starting at $5,999 and pricing on the Pro Display XDR starting at $4,999.
When you are editing a $100 million movie, $50k is a drop in the bucket. This is a video and game rendering system. A lot of that work is done locally on desktops instead of remotely for a combination of business and technical reasons.
It's a little funny to think that people believe this to be a lot of computing power though. Yes, it's a lot for a desktop but a moderately sized cloud compute cluster will be many times that spec. Look at something like an X1 Amazon EC2 instance with 128 cores and 4 TB of RAM that you can spin up and use with your credit card and about 5 minutes. Of course you're billed by the minute and something like that costs around a dollar a minute to operate, or somewhere around $20-$40k a month last time I checked.
And no, that type of computing power isn't reserved for government. More like one rack of 2U boxes at your neighborhood data center.
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Posts: 5326 | Location: The Virginia side of DC | Registered: February 20, 2005
Originally posted by 911Boss: Reminder - Apple now offers 10% off to all Veterans...
And 6% cash back if you buy your new Mac Pro from Apple, using your Apple Pay card (this month only). If I won the lottery, I would have one of these (maxed out) just for the hell of it. In the meantime, I will stick to my 2018 Macmini, with a 32" 4k monitor.
When in doubt, mumble
Posts: 10876 | Location: South Congress AZ | Registered: May 27, 2006
Well I just read that there is an optional $1,000 "nano" screen coating for the monitor which would take it to $7000 with the stand. But you have to only use the special Apple cleaning rag to clean it and they have not announced the price of the cleaning rag replacement.
