7 ms·

I agree 100%. Consumerism has reached such a strange state that people get genuinely offended when a company releases a product that doesn't perfectly fit their

by grecy 7y ago

I agree 100%. Consumerism has reached such a strange state that people get genuinely offended when a company releases a product that doesn't perfectly fit their needs and price point, even if said company has a different product that does! It's utterly absurd. I think it's because people are realizing they have sold their entire lives to their jobs and they get emotionally overwrought when they realize a company they have some products from also sells products they will never be able to afford. I think it's the pain involved in realizing they didn't get enough money for the life they sold.

kick 7y ago
Arguably Apple brought this on themselves; every one of their marketing initiatives over the past two decades and every one of their bids toward user-exclusivity has led to this by design. I don't really have any opinion on this, but cult-like outrage over a company that markets themselves as a cult isn't something that users can be blamed for, generally.
sysbin 7y ago
More like the life they're born into. I agree, I think people find products they daily use from a company, usually interpreted to all of the products should be affordable to them.
_ph_ 7y ago
The point is, Apple doesn't. They already had a big gap in the area of a "desktop mac". There was a large unoccupied space between the Mini and the Pro - and while they finally refreshed the Mac Pro, they moved it to a new price range, creating an even larger gap.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  What about the iMac Pro? Doesn't it fill that space?
  - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
    I'd actually argue the "non-Pro" iMac fills that space for a lot of people. An 8-core i9 with a 1TB SSD and 32GB of RAM is $3600 (or ~$3200 if you buy it with the stock 8GB of RAM and upgrade it yourself, as that's one of the few Macs you can still easily do that with!), and that's a pretty serious computer. For a web developer and writer like me, it's arguably already overkill. I think there's still a desire for a "midrange" headless Mac between the Mac mini and the Mac Pro, but that's been something people have wanted for many years -- it's pretty clear Apple doesn't think there's enough of an addressable market there to make it worthwhile. (I also think people underestimate how much power you can actually stuff into the current Mac mini as long as your work doesn't require a serious GPU.)
    - bluedino 7y ago
      And at that point you're shopping it side by side with a $3799 refurbished iMac Pro
    - _ph_ 7y ago
      I am using a late 2015 5k iMac, as this was the only alternative back then. And if needed, I probably would get another high end non-Pro iMac. I would be much more excited about the iMac, if Apple had not glued the machine and I could access and exchange the HD in it. Also a big problem with all iMacs is, you are stuck with the graphics card you bought it with - and there was not really much choice back then.
      - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
        Yeah, I'd like to see the iMac -- and the Mac mini, for that matter -- move back to at least somewhat more user-upgradeable. I'm willing to mostly forgive the Everything Glued Down aspect of the laptops (although even there they take that unnecessarily far), but there's not much reason both the RAM and the HD/SSD couldn't be more readily swappable on all the models, at the least. It'd be nice to have the GPU on a daughter card, too, even if it's something weirdly proprietary.
    - 7y ago
- grecy 7y ago
  The iMac Pro clearly fits the needs of 99.9% of people who need some horsepower in their work - video editing, pro photographers and coders who want a ton of VMs or whatever. I'd be interested to hear of a workload that is unsuitable for the iMac Pro that is suitable for the new Mac Pro, but for which you think a $5k machine should be capable of doing. Then let me know what $5k machine exists on the market you can buy that can do that workload.
  - _ph_ 7y ago
    Basically any desktop machine with a high end desktop processor and some decent graphics card. With the iMac pro you are even limited to buying RAM with the machine. And with a desktop, you get to choose your graphics card.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      > With the iMac pro you are even limited to buying RAM with the machine. You can upgrade the RAM after purchase by going to an authorized repair store, or by reading a couple of iFixit guides if you're fine with doing it "unofficially".
      - _ph_ 7y ago
        Well, nice that it isn't soldered, but the machine is glued shut. So any work on the inside is getting expensive. When I bought my iMac, the dealer charged me close to $300 for a disk exchange.
    - arvinsim 7y ago
      > And with a desktop, you get to choose your graphics card. MacOS is now stuck to using AMD GPUs only.
      - _ph_ 7y ago
        That is certainly something else one could critisize, though with the combination with Metal2, the AMD graphic cards seem to be a great alternative. Yet, they offer way more choices than you have when configuring an iMac or even Mac Pro (but with that, probably generic AMD graphic cards would probably work)
- renaudg 7y ago
  The 2018 6-core Mac Mini is the cheap Mac Pro you're looking for. Couldn't be happier with mine for photography / music production.
shotashotshota 7y ago
There's a legitimate reasons to be concerned about the product choices that people make. A company putting a 1k price on a stand AND people buy it is a bad sign. We want the price of something to represent something of value, but at this point sentimental value is almost everything. Wouldn't you agree its a problem if people are spending money on an option that have better alternatives? Call it consumer education, activism, whatever ... Whats more, Apple is a standard setter. They make decisions that others tend to follow because they have such a huge market that everyone wants to partake in. Just imagine if we introduce the product under a different name, would people buy them? If not then we are putting such a high price on the brand name. I personally don't buy anything anymore...
- scarface74 7y ago
  Do you buy the cheapest car that will get you from point A to point B? Do you live in the cheapest house that provides you shelter?
  - shotashotshota 7y ago
    No, like I said, I like to think that I buy the stuff that have the highest value to price ratio. I fully agree that brands have value, if I am Japanese in the Edo era or whatever, I would feel great pleasure from buying an iron made by local electric shops. But imagine if the iron explodes after every 2nd usages, you must wonder if I am making a sound decision or not.
- criddell 7y ago
  If they put a $1000 price on a stand AND people buy it, then that's what the stand is worth. At the very least, there's a market at that price. > Just imagine if we introduce the product under a different name, would people buy them? That monitor and stand are selling because they cost significantly less than what people have been paying. Monitors of that class were being rented for hundreds of dollars per week.
  - shotashotshota 7y ago
dahdum 7y ago
I think you’re missing the source of the anger, it’s not the price, it’s the value. Nothing about it is exemplary except the styling, which Apple uses to justify such a high markup. So many here hate it because it’s form over function.
- grecy 7y ago
  > it’s not the price, it’s the value 1. People can just choose not to buy one if they think it's poor value. 2. Do we have actual concrete products from other companies that are similar in terms of specs and warranty and software and show the Mac Pro to be substantially overpriced? (NOTE: I have no interest in looking at a home built machine with no warranty. Anyone spending > $10k on a machine needs it to work. All the time.)
  - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
    Well, there's another comment in this thread that mentioned a machine from Dell that's comparable to the maxed-out Mac Pro comes in at around $49K. Your parenthetical is also important; the target market for the Mac Pro (and that Dell) is very, very tiny and it's just not going to be comprised of people kit-bashing stuff they're picking up at MicroCenter.
  - Torgo 7y ago
    Every single overpriced Mac Pro I've seen sitting on a desk was bought with other people's money.
- thinkr 7y ago
  > So many here hate it because it’s form over function. I think that is the general point GP is trying to get at. As a consumer, you consider many factors to base your purchase on and if a product doesn't meet your needs, then you don't buy it - that doesn't warrant that you have to "hate" it or tell others how stupid their decision is for buying something, especially when interacting with strangers on the internet. Hate is a strong emotion that consumes a lot of energy, so why waste it on a product? To me, this is part of the overall cultural landscape of tribalism and in-groups. Just as there are product evangelist, there seems to be a good number of anti-evangelist (I see it among my own peer group). People like to be seen as "knowledgeable" about this tech vs that tech - in their minds, they feel as if they are doing a public service by bashing... sorry "critiquing" products for YOUR benefit so that you make the right purchasing decision. I've played this game myself when I was younger and always advocating building your own PC, explaining why this is better than that, etc. As I get older, I don't have time to evangelize - I just choose the product I want to use based on my needs and I understand that other people have different needs, so I don't let their choices affect me. I notice that others feel "hurt" and "anger" when you make a decision that they wouldn't have made themselves, with many people getting too emotional about a consumer purchase. Anyways that's just my 2 cents.
kungito 7y ago
I used to think likewise but now after I started enjoying niche things I really started feeling the pain when there really is only 1 company doing something and then they stop or change. It really is genuine loss happening and it's natural to get angry.

by grecy 7y ago

kick 7y ago

Arguably Apple brought this on themselves; every one of their marketing initiatives over the past two decades and every one of their bids toward user-exclusivity has led to this by design. I don't really have any opinion on this, but cult-like outrage over a company that markets themselves as a cult isn't something that users can be blamed for, generally.

sysbin 7y ago

More like the life they're born into. I agree, I think people find products they daily use from a company, usually interpreted to all of the products should be affordable to them.

_ph_ 7y ago

The point is, Apple doesn't. They already had a big gap in the area of a "desktop mac". There was a large unoccupied space between the Mini and the Pro - and while they finally refreshed the Mac Pro, they moved it to a new price range, creating an even larger gap.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
What about the iMac Pro? Doesn't it fill that space?
- chipotle_coyote 7y ago
  I'd actually argue the "non-Pro" iMac fills that space for a lot of people. An 8-core i9 with a 1TB SSD and 32GB of RAM is $3600 (or ~$3200 if you buy it with the stock 8GB of RAM and upgrade it yourself, as that's one of the few Macs you can still easily do that with!), and that's a pretty serious computer. For a web developer and writer like me, it's arguably already overkill. I think there's still a desire for a "midrange" headless Mac between the Mac mini and the Mac Pro, but that's been something people have wanted for many years -- it's pretty clear Apple doesn't think there's enough of an addressable market there to make it worthwhile. (I also think people underestimate how much power you can actually stuff into the current Mac mini as long as your work doesn't require a serious GPU.)
  - bluedino 7y ago
    And at that point you're shopping it side by side with a $3799 refurbished iMac Pro
  - _ph_ 7y ago
    I am using a late 2015 5k iMac, as this was the only alternative back then. And if needed, I probably would get another high end non-Pro iMac. I would be much more excited about the iMac, if Apple had not glued the machine and I could access and exchange the HD in it. Also a big problem with all iMacs is, you are stuck with the graphics card you bought it with - and there was not really much choice back then.
    - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
      Yeah, I'd like to see the iMac -- and the Mac mini, for that matter -- move back to at least somewhat more user-upgradeable. I'm willing to mostly forgive the Everything Glued Down aspect of the laptops (although even there they take that unnecessarily far), but there's not much reason both the RAM and the HD/SSD couldn't be more readily swappable on all the models, at the least. It'd be nice to have the GPU on a daughter card, too, even if it's something weirdly proprietary.
  - 7y ago
grecy 7y ago
The iMac Pro clearly fits the needs of 99.9% of people who need some horsepower in their work - video editing, pro photographers and coders who want a ton of VMs or whatever. I'd be interested to hear of a workload that is unsuitable for the iMac Pro that is suitable for the new Mac Pro, but for which you think a $5k machine should be capable of doing. Then let me know what $5k machine exists on the market you can buy that can do that workload.
- _ph_ 7y ago
  Basically any desktop machine with a high end desktop processor and some decent graphics card. With the iMac pro you are even limited to buying RAM with the machine. And with a desktop, you get to choose your graphics card.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    > With the iMac pro you are even limited to buying RAM with the machine. You can upgrade the RAM after purchase by going to an authorized repair store, or by reading a couple of iFixit guides if you're fine with doing it "unofficially".
    - _ph_ 7y ago
      Well, nice that it isn't soldered, but the machine is glued shut. So any work on the inside is getting expensive. When I bought my iMac, the dealer charged me close to $300 for a disk exchange.
  - arvinsim 7y ago
    > And with a desktop, you get to choose your graphics card. MacOS is now stuck to using AMD GPUs only.
    - _ph_ 7y ago
      That is certainly something else one could critisize, though with the combination with Metal2, the AMD graphic cards seem to be a great alternative. Yet, they offer way more choices than you have when configuring an iMac or even Mac Pro (but with that, probably generic AMD graphic cards would probably work)
renaudg 7y ago
The 2018 6-core Mac Mini is the cheap Mac Pro you're looking for. Couldn't be happier with mine for photography / music production.

shotashotshota 7y ago

There's a legitimate reasons to be concerned about the product choices that people make. A company putting a 1k price on a stand AND people buy it is a bad sign. We want the price of something to represent something of value, but at this point sentimental value is almost everything. Wouldn't you agree its a problem if people are spending money on an option that have better alternatives? Call it consumer education, activism, whatever ... Whats more, Apple is a standard setter. They make decisions that others tend to follow because they have such a huge market that everyone wants to partake in. Just imagine if we introduce the product under a different name, would people buy them? If not then we are putting such a high price on the brand name. I personally don't buy anything anymore...

scarface74 7y ago
Do you buy the cheapest car that will get you from point A to point B? Do you live in the cheapest house that provides you shelter?
- shotashotshota 7y ago
  No, like I said, I like to think that I buy the stuff that have the highest value to price ratio. I fully agree that brands have value, if I am Japanese in the Edo era or whatever, I would feel great pleasure from buying an iron made by local electric shops. But imagine if the iron explodes after every 2nd usages, you must wonder if I am making a sound decision or not.
criddell 7y ago
If they put a $1000 price on a stand AND people buy it, then that's what the stand is worth. At the very least, there's a market at that price. > Just imagine if we introduce the product under a different name, would people buy them? That monitor and stand are selling because they cost significantly less than what people have been paying. Monitors of that class were being rented for hundreds of dollars per week.
- shotashotshota 7y ago

dahdum 7y ago

I think you’re missing the source of the anger, it’s not the price, it’s the value. Nothing about it is exemplary except the styling, which Apple uses to justify such a high markup. So many here hate it because it’s form over function.

grecy 7y ago
> it’s not the price, it’s the value 1. People can just choose not to buy one if they think it's poor value. 2. Do we have actual concrete products from other companies that are similar in terms of specs and warranty and software and show the Mac Pro to be substantially overpriced? (NOTE: I have no interest in looking at a home built machine with no warranty. Anyone spending > $10k on a machine needs it to work. All the time.)
- chipotle_coyote 7y ago
  Well, there's another comment in this thread that mentioned a machine from Dell that's comparable to the maxed-out Mac Pro comes in at around $49K. Your parenthetical is also important; the target market for the Mac Pro (and that Dell) is very, very tiny and it's just not going to be comprised of people kit-bashing stuff they're picking up at MicroCenter.
- Torgo 7y ago
  Every single overpriced Mac Pro I've seen sitting on a desk was bought with other people's money.
thinkr 7y ago
> So many here hate it because it’s form over function. I think that is the general point GP is trying to get at. As a consumer, you consider many factors to base your purchase on and if a product doesn't meet your needs, then you don't buy it - that doesn't warrant that you have to "hate" it or tell others how stupid their decision is for buying something, especially when interacting with strangers on the internet. Hate is a strong emotion that consumes a lot of energy, so why waste it on a product? To me, this is part of the overall cultural landscape of tribalism and in-groups. Just as there are product evangelist, there seems to be a good number of anti-evangelist (I see it among my own peer group). People like to be seen as "knowledgeable" about this tech vs that tech - in their minds, they feel as if they are doing a public service by bashing... sorry "critiquing" products for YOUR benefit so that you make the right purchasing decision. I've played this game myself when I was younger and always advocating building your own PC, explaining why this is better than that, etc. As I get older, I don't have time to evangelize - I just choose the product I want to use based on my needs and I understand that other people have different needs, so I don't let their choices affect me. I notice that others feel "hurt" and "anger" when you make a decision that they wouldn't have made themselves, with many people getting too emotional about a consumer purchase. Anyways that's just my 2 cents.

kungito 7y ago

I used to think likewise but now after I started enjoying niche things I really started feeling the pain when there really is only 1 company doing something and then they stop or change. It really is genuine loss happening and it's natural to get angry.