5 ms·

The new mac pro is a sweet piece of hardware, but you have to take the price into account. I remain unimpressed.

by chrisweekly 7y ago

6nf 7y ago
Not sure what you expected with the pricing, Apple isn’t known for bargains.
- chrisweekly 7y ago
  $12,000 is a little excessive.
  - threeseed 7y ago
    It starts at $5999. And you should only be buying the monitor if you are after a reference quality display. In which case you would know how cheap it is.
    - frostburg 7y ago
      The base model is unfit for purpose for basically every possible buyer.
      - cmsj 7y ago
        I've argued that that's probably deliberate - everyone buying the new Pro ought to need a lot of something. For some people it'll be CPU, some people GPU, some people RAM, some storage, etc. The base model has a good enough CPU if all you need is loads of GPU, a good enough GPU if all you need is loads of CPU, etc, etc. tl;dr the only people who buy the base model will be the enthusiasts who just want a Mac Pro, and they are indeed getting a bad deal, but this machine isn't for them, however much they want it to be.
        danieldk 7y ago
        I think the bottleneck for nearly everyone is the 256GB SSD, which is borderline insane for a $6000 machine. A 512GB or even 1TB SSD over 256GB is peanuts (well, unless you purchase the upgrade from Apple). 256GB does not store you a lot of RAW photos, video, or whatever Pros are editing with this machine.
        throwanem 7y ago
        Pros aren't using the drive in a machine as the authoritative storage for raw photos, videos, or whatever they're editing with that machine. Hell, I don't even do that, and I'm just a nerd with a couple of cameras.
        darkpuma 7y ago
        A couple year ago I started buying computers with the smallest hard-drives offered, because my primary storage is now on an NFS NAS across a VPN (if I'm not home.) Everything is in one place and the storage is cheaper. NFS thankfully works better on MacOS than it did a few years ago. Not a good configuration for everybody, but pretty good for me.
    - etangent 7y ago
      The amount of Apple shilling on this board is incredible. $5999 gets you a base configuration that is outperformed by any $2000 Dell.
      - geodel 7y ago
        Let me know which model of Dell support 1600 nits brightness.
        chx 7y ago
        The Acer ProDesigner BM270 is 1700 USD and 1000 nits just as well... (1600 is not sustained on the Apple monitor.)
        threeseed 7y ago
        That monitor is 4K versus Apple's 6K. Pretty big difference.
    - kllrnohj 7y ago
      > And you should only be buying the monitor if you are after a reference quality display. In which case you would know how cheap it is. Apple's display specs are impressive but it's not actually going to compete with reference displays. It's missing all the actual reference display features (interlacing controls, SDI inputs, programmable LUT, info overlays, etc...). You can buy more products that add that, like this input box from Blackmagic: https://www.studiodaily.com/2019/06/blackmagic-caters-apple-pro-display-xdr-new-teranex-mini-converter/ https://www.studiodaily.com/2019/06/blackmagic-caters-apple-... But now the price is adding up and you've got more boxes and dongles to deal with. But out of the box the display itself is competing with high-end color accurate displays, the content creation displays. It's not competing at all with reference displays. All that said more relevant to this discussion is the fact that Apple doesn't have a cheaper display at all. If you want a workstation and you go to an Apple store the only monitor option they have is the Pro Display XDR, when all you may actually want or need is the display from an iMac just in a standalone case for use with the Mac Pro.
rorykoehler 7y ago
Pretty good value for money for pros who need what it is designed for. It's not a student computer for writing essays and browsing reddit.
- _ph_ 7y ago
  Not for "pros" in general. For a certain group of video editors it is great. For other professionals, it would be nice, but is priced far outside of the budgets.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  > Pretty good value for money for pros who need what it is designed for. Come on, this is just not true. It's an 8-core with 32GB of RAM and 256GB SSD for 6000$. Just because Apple found some PC workstation that's even more expensive than the Mac Pro doesn't mean it's good value.
- whywhywhywhy 7y ago
  This "it's not for you" eliteism that creeps in when defending this product is getting ridiculous. I feel I very much should be in Apples target for a pro-machine considering my Windows workstation is a dual GPU 1080Ti machine (cost a fraction of an iMac Pro and outperforms it) I use for 3D rendering, animation and video editing. Yet when I point out it's terrible value I again just get told it's not for me and it's for people who edit "Marvel movies" for a living. I mean the only real complaint you could have with their pre-Mac Pro lineup was it just didn't have any way to fill niches, everything had to be good for the 80% and not right for rest. Wouldn't it have made a lot more sense to target this product as modular enough to fill the rest of those needs instead of targetting it specifically at the highest-of-high-end blockbuster movie editors.
  - icelancer 7y ago
    It's not elitism, not at least by the people who accurately describe it. It's for absolutely price-insensitive people who feel they need: 1) OSX 2) Top of the line specs Anyone seriously buying a Mac Pro is either in the above group or just a crazed fanboy happy to pay the ludicrous premium to say they did.

The new mac pro is a sweet piece of hardware, but you have to take the price into account. I remain unimpressed.

6nf 7y ago

Not sure what you expected with the pricing, Apple isn’t known for bargains.

chrisweekly 7y ago
$12,000 is a little excessive.
- threeseed 7y ago
  It starts at $5999. And you should only be buying the monitor if you are after a reference quality display. In which case you would know how cheap it is.
  - frostburg 7y ago
    The base model is unfit for purpose for basically every possible buyer.
    - cmsj 7y ago
      I've argued that that's probably deliberate - everyone buying the new Pro ought to need a lot of something. For some people it'll be CPU, some people GPU, some people RAM, some storage, etc. The base model has a good enough CPU if all you need is loads of GPU, a good enough GPU if all you need is loads of CPU, etc, etc. tl;dr the only people who buy the base model will be the enthusiasts who just want a Mac Pro, and they are indeed getting a bad deal, but this machine isn't for them, however much they want it to be.
      - danieldk 7y ago
        I think the bottleneck for nearly everyone is the 256GB SSD, which is borderline insane for a $6000 machine. A 512GB or even 1TB SSD over 256GB is peanuts (well, unless you purchase the upgrade from Apple). 256GB does not store you a lot of RAW photos, video, or whatever Pros are editing with this machine.
        throwanem 7y ago
        Pros aren't using the drive in a machine as the authoritative storage for raw photos, videos, or whatever they're editing with that machine. Hell, I don't even do that, and I'm just a nerd with a couple of cameras.
        darkpuma 7y ago
        A couple year ago I started buying computers with the smallest hard-drives offered, because my primary storage is now on an NFS NAS across a VPN (if I'm not home.) Everything is in one place and the storage is cheaper. NFS thankfully works better on MacOS than it did a few years ago. Not a good configuration for everybody, but pretty good for me.
  - etangent 7y ago
    The amount of Apple shilling on this board is incredible. $5999 gets you a base configuration that is outperformed by any $2000 Dell.
    - geodel 7y ago
      Let me know which model of Dell support 1600 nits brightness.
      - chx 7y ago
        The Acer ProDesigner BM270 is 1700 USD and 1000 nits just as well... (1600 is not sustained on the Apple monitor.)
        threeseed 7y ago
        That monitor is 4K versus Apple's 6K. Pretty big difference.
  - kllrnohj 7y ago
    > And you should only be buying the monitor if you are after a reference quality display. In which case you would know how cheap it is. Apple's display specs are impressive but it's not actually going to compete with reference displays. It's missing all the actual reference display features (interlacing controls, SDI inputs, programmable LUT, info overlays, etc...). You can buy more products that add that, like this input box from Blackmagic: https://www.studiodaily.com/2019/06/blackmagic-caters-apple-pro-display-xdr-new-teranex-mini-converter/ https://www.studiodaily.com/2019/06/blackmagic-caters-apple-... But now the price is adding up and you've got more boxes and dongles to deal with. But out of the box the display itself is competing with high-end color accurate displays, the content creation displays. It's not competing at all with reference displays. All that said more relevant to this discussion is the fact that Apple doesn't have a cheaper display at all. If you want a workstation and you go to an Apple store the only monitor option they have is the Pro Display XDR, when all you may actually want or need is the display from an iMac just in a standalone case for use with the Mac Pro.

rorykoehler 7y ago

Pretty good value for money for pros who need what it is designed for. It's not a student computer for writing essays and browsing reddit.

_ph_ 7y ago
Not for "pros" in general. For a certain group of video editors it is great. For other professionals, it would be nice, but is priced far outside of the budgets.
gridlockd 7y ago
> Pretty good value for money for pros who need what it is designed for. Come on, this is just not true. It's an 8-core with 32GB of RAM and 256GB SSD for 6000$. Just because Apple found some PC workstation that's even more expensive than the Mac Pro doesn't mean it's good value.
whywhywhywhy 7y ago
This "it's not for you" eliteism that creeps in when defending this product is getting ridiculous. I feel I very much should be in Apples target for a pro-machine considering my Windows workstation is a dual GPU 1080Ti machine (cost a fraction of an iMac Pro and outperforms it) I use for 3D rendering, animation and video editing. Yet when I point out it's terrible value I again just get told it's not for me and it's for people who edit "Marvel movies" for a living. I mean the only real complaint you could have with their pre-Mac Pro lineup was it just didn't have any way to fill niches, everything had to be good for the 80% and not right for rest. Wouldn't it have made a lot more sense to target this product as modular enough to fill the rest of those needs instead of targetting it specifically at the highest-of-high-end blockbuster movie editors.
- icelancer 7y ago
  It's not elitism, not at least by the people who accurately describe it. It's for absolutely price-insensitive people who feel they need: 1) OSX 2) Top of the line specs Anyone seriously buying a Mac Pro is either in the above group or just a crazed fanboy happy to pay the ludicrous premium to say they did.