7 ms·

Opinion: The Mac Pro isn’t overpriced, it offers something nothing else does

15 points by ako 7y ago

Cyder 7y ago
It's just first on the consumer market with 32 cores. Wait until AMD and Intel's comparable chips hit the mass market. 32 cores isn't unbelievable l like it use to be. Putting multiple graphics cards in a machine has been common for a long time in gaming rigs. Crypto-miners run +12 graphics cards in an attempt to be profitable. There's nothing unique mentioned in the article except the proprietary video stream processing, and I guarantee you, there's other high end machines that do the same thing if not more. I really wonder what the author's specialty is, since he thinks these specs are actually unique to Apple.
- wcip 7y ago
  >I really wonder what the author's specialty is, since he thinks these specs are actually unique to Apple. https://www.digitaltrends.com/users/alexblake/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/users/alexblake/ https://twitter.com/volume103 https://twitter.com/volume103 Looks like he's a guy who writes about how awesome Apple stuff is primarily.
- alwillis 7y ago
  It’s the integration and testing and support that Apple offers. In fact, the more demanding your requirements, the more likely you need all of these fairly exotic components to work seamlessly together. If you’re working on the next Star Wars movie, there are billions of dollars at stake; you can’t rely on some Linux box a guy you know put together, no matter how good the specs supposedly are. Even if you could get comparable components, you’re not going to have the driver support you need. If you have downtime, you can’t wait for some guy on an email list who’s day job is not supporting this mission critical driver, to get back to you. And you’re not going to get the performance of Apple’s APIs like Metal2, etc. which blow OpenGL, etc. away.
  - jnwatson 7y ago
    You get get that from Dell. They and HP have been selling this stuff forever.
    - alwillis 7y ago
      Yes, Dell and HP sell perfectly fine workstations. No, there's nothing like the current Mac Pro. A quick look doesn't show a Dell Precision desktop workstation that goes beyond 48GB RAM, for example, while the Mac Pro goes to 1.5 TB. I also didn't see anything like the MPX Module: The MPX Module starts with an industry-standard PCI Express connector. Then, for the first time in a graphics card, more PCIe lanes integrate Thunderbolt and additional power provided to increase capability. With up to 500 watts, the MPX Module has power capacity equivalent to that of the entire previous-generation Mac Pro. Didn't see a way to have up to 8K streams going at the same time or the ability to attach up to 12 4K displays on the Dell site. It goes on and on. You can approximate a lot of what Apple is offering, but you can't duplicate what they're offering at a lower price. There's so much Apple-designed silicon in this box, it's literally impossible for Dell, HP or anyone else to compete with off-the-shelf, commodity components. For the target market Apple is going for, the cost of even a tricked-out Mac Pro is a rounding error.
      - detaro 7y ago
        look again at e.g. the Dell 7920: Up to 3 TB RAM, 4 GPUs with 4 DP ports each if you want, dual processor if you want (so 56 cores), ... Costs more or less the same as the Mac though, or more if you go higher-spec. MPX might be interesting, although I notice the Apple marketing comparing it to previous Macs and not competing PC-workstation cards, and of course application-dependent.
        alwillis 7y ago
        MPX might be interesting, although I notice the Apple marketing comparing it to previous Macs and not competing PC-workstation cards, and of course application-dependent. They were saying this one card has more processing power than the last generation Mac Pro.
- mseidl 7y ago
  This should've used AMD 64 cores blah blah blah, is getting kind of old. For the work loads that these will be GPU driven not CPU. Plus more CPU cores doesn't mean more performance, as software has to be optimized to handle so many cores and more cores means lower clock per core. That being said, I do like AMD over Intel.
cprayingmantis 7y ago
The Mac Pro is worth exactly what people pay for it. If it sells then who are we to judge it’s price/utility?
- NicoJuicy 7y ago
  Depends, i thought it's market share was dropping. But I can't see proof of it from latest months. Statistics seem to agree till q3 2019. But don't know exactly why it wasn't after that.
- 345218435 7y ago
  i have this weird theory in my head that tim is allocating financials internally to either A: save money and try to let a product die (mac mini, mbp, ipod) B: invest to signal hope that a product is in fact not dead (mac pro, also mbp) both approaches will eventually lead to an iphone-ipad-only apple because in case A things just fade away with the occasional life sign as to not lose too many customers. case B, on the other hand, gives people what they were yearning for for years and keeps „professionals“ and press stimulated but at a ridiculous price point so that, b/c of low sales, the product line can finally be killed.
  - jasomill 7y ago
    The new Mac Pro price points don't seem ridiculous compared to comparable workstations from Dell and HP, though, as as in the past, Apple's configuration options are comparatively limited. The (wholly understandable) frustration with Mac Pro pricing seems mostly due (1) to the continuing lack of lower-cost, non-Xeon modular systems in Apple's lineup, and (2) sporadic upgrades leading to eventually overpriced systems (e.g., the 2013 Mac Pro ca. 2019).
- topkai22 7y ago
  I've always hated the "it's worth what the market will bear truism." We are all part of the market, we all get to contribute to the assessment of value.
  - 7y ago
ken 7y ago
On the flip side, it's the only offering from Apple that offers what everyone else does. Nobody is complaining that Apple offers a $6K tower. They're complaining that Apple doesn't offer any towers less than $6K. I could put a Mac Mini on my desk with half a dozen adapters sticking out of it, but even then I still can't upgrade the RAM. The last Mac Mini with user-upgradeable RAM was 2012. The 2019 Mac Pro feels to me like an Apple Lisa. Even at 1/4 the price, it would seem steep to me. I want what it has, but there's no way I'll ever be able to justify that. This is new territory for OSX-era Apple. It didn't used to be so expensive to buy an expandable Mac. You could get a PowerMac G5 for $1800, and a PowerMac G4 from $1500.
- barberousse 7y ago
  >I could put a Mac Mini on my desk with half a dozen adapters sticking out of it, but even then I still can't upgrade the RAM. The last Mac Mini with user-upgradeable RAM was 2012. The 2018 Mac Mini is user-upgradeable up to 64GB. Storage is soldered on however.
- malshe 7y ago
  Although Apple says that users can't upgrade memory, you can. https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/owc/apple-mac-mini/2018 https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/owc/apple-mac-mini/20...
unlinked_dll 7y ago
The only thing that Mac Pro offers that "nothing else" does is a valid MacOS license in a workstation class tower suitable for pro media production. I don't know why the author needs to spout bullshit about the specs like you can't build an equivalently (or higher) spec'd machine for less money. You just can't put MacOS on it without some effort and violating the ToS. As for the MPX connectors, I don't see how those are different than the kinds of PCIE slots you'd see in top of the line ATX/EATX mobos. As an aside, the improvement over the iMac Pro is largely proper cooling (Apple's AIOs haven't been able to take a fast multicore processor to respectable loads in like a decade) and availability of disk space worth a damn.
- mseidl 7y ago
  The afterburner card ...
wiseleo 7y ago
It’s a legal Hackintosh. You finally get access to workstation class hardware legally from Apple. Running a Hackintosh on an inexpensive surplus server (40 core servers cost less than $1000 on eBay) would serve similar purpose but not be legal.
- Mo3 7y ago
  Afaik, Hackintoshes are not illegal.
throwGuardian 7y ago
> "if you needed a 28-core computer with 1.5TB of RAM, would you really be quibbling on the price" Yes - when you need a few thousand of these to render your SFX, you shop around for alternatives. Then some startup that recently built a cloud render farm for this exact use case will save you the CapEx, give you a manageable OpEx and prove this Op-Ed wrong. SFX studios are legendary for hiring and firing elastically, you think they care about Apple hardware lock-in? Also, if you're a software business built on Apple, do some research - they'll fuck you over in a heartbeat. Maybe they'll block you on the Mac Store for using a private API [1], or retroactively apply a bogus rule [2] if they want to compete with you. Control your destiny by moving off an exclusive-Apple strategy [1]: https://m.slashdot.org/story/362994 https://m.slashdot.org/story/362994 [2]: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/6/5/17430532/apple-app-store-rules-valve-steam-link-game-streaming https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2...
- alfalfasprout 7y ago
  Don't most VFX packages now have linux renderers? At least Autodesk Maya's own documentation shows how to kick off renders on a linux CLI and most of the renderers nowadays have headless linux clients. I guess the mac pro makes sense for animators, etc.
  - throwGuardian 7y ago
    > I guess the mac pro makes sense for animators, etc. Is that because animation software is Mac only? Is there any hardware or software benefit unique to the Mac that they (animation software developers) rely on?
    - mseidl 7y ago
      Maya , imho , the best animation software, has a native client for Linux.
ksec 7y ago
>It is Apple’s attempt to meet the needs of people like Ridley Scott and Calvin Harris. We have already established [1] that even ColdPlay level musicians or Hollywood level Audio effects does not Mac Pro level computational power. Something we assumed for a long time I guess we now have evidence to call this a fact. And everything in that video could have been done on a iMac Pro or even latest MacBook Pro. So apart from SFX or Data Science / AI, I cant think of anything that requires these level of Computation power. And none of those are on the Mac Platform. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv5HIrOrn2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv5HIrOrn2o

15 points by ako 7y ago

It's just first on the consumer market with 32 cores. Wait until AMD and Intel's comparable chips hit the mass market. 32 cores isn't unbelievable l like it use to be. Putting multiple graphics cards in a machine has been common for a long time in gaming rigs. Crypto-miners run +12 graphics cards in an attempt to be profitable. There's nothing unique mentioned in the article except the proprietary video stream processing, and I guarantee you, there's other high end machines that do the same thing if not more. I really wonder what the author's specialty is, since he thinks these specs are actually unique to Apple.

wcip 7y ago
>I really wonder what the author's specialty is, since he thinks these specs are actually unique to Apple. https://www.digitaltrends.com/users/alexblake/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/users/alexblake/ https://twitter.com/volume103 https://twitter.com/volume103 Looks like he's a guy who writes about how awesome Apple stuff is primarily.
alwillis 7y ago
It’s the integration and testing and support that Apple offers. In fact, the more demanding your requirements, the more likely you need all of these fairly exotic components to work seamlessly together. If you’re working on the next Star Wars movie, there are billions of dollars at stake; you can’t rely on some Linux box a guy you know put together, no matter how good the specs supposedly are. Even if you could get comparable components, you’re not going to have the driver support you need. If you have downtime, you can’t wait for some guy on an email list who’s day job is not supporting this mission critical driver, to get back to you. And you’re not going to get the performance of Apple’s APIs like Metal2, etc. which blow OpenGL, etc. away.
- jnwatson 7y ago
  You get get that from Dell. They and HP have been selling this stuff forever.
  - alwillis 7y ago
    Yes, Dell and HP sell perfectly fine workstations. No, there's nothing like the current Mac Pro. A quick look doesn't show a Dell Precision desktop workstation that goes beyond 48GB RAM, for example, while the Mac Pro goes to 1.5 TB. I also didn't see anything like the MPX Module: The MPX Module starts with an industry-standard PCI Express connector. Then, for the first time in a graphics card, more PCIe lanes integrate Thunderbolt and additional power provided to increase capability. With up to 500 watts, the MPX Module has power capacity equivalent to that of the entire previous-generation Mac Pro. Didn't see a way to have up to 8K streams going at the same time or the ability to attach up to 12 4K displays on the Dell site. It goes on and on. You can approximate a lot of what Apple is offering, but you can't duplicate what they're offering at a lower price. There's so much Apple-designed silicon in this box, it's literally impossible for Dell, HP or anyone else to compete with off-the-shelf, commodity components. For the target market Apple is going for, the cost of even a tricked-out Mac Pro is a rounding error.
    - detaro 7y ago
      look again at e.g. the Dell 7920: Up to 3 TB RAM, 4 GPUs with 4 DP ports each if you want, dual processor if you want (so 56 cores), ... Costs more or less the same as the Mac though, or more if you go higher-spec. MPX might be interesting, although I notice the Apple marketing comparing it to previous Macs and not competing PC-workstation cards, and of course application-dependent.
      - alwillis 7y ago
        MPX might be interesting, although I notice the Apple marketing comparing it to previous Macs and not competing PC-workstation cards, and of course application-dependent. They were saying this one card has more processing power than the last generation Mac Pro.
mseidl 7y ago
This should've used AMD 64 cores blah blah blah, is getting kind of old. For the work loads that these will be GPU driven not CPU. Plus more CPU cores doesn't mean more performance, as software has to be optimized to handle so many cores and more cores means lower clock per core. That being said, I do like AMD over Intel.

cprayingmantis 7y ago

The Mac Pro is worth exactly what people pay for it. If it sells then who are we to judge it’s price/utility?

NicoJuicy 7y ago
Depends, i thought it's market share was dropping. But I can't see proof of it from latest months. Statistics seem to agree till q3 2019. But don't know exactly why it wasn't after that.
345218435 7y ago
i have this weird theory in my head that tim is allocating financials internally to either A: save money and try to let a product die (mac mini, mbp, ipod) B: invest to signal hope that a product is in fact not dead (mac pro, also mbp) both approaches will eventually lead to an iphone-ipad-only apple because in case A things just fade away with the occasional life sign as to not lose too many customers. case B, on the other hand, gives people what they were yearning for for years and keeps „professionals“ and press stimulated but at a ridiculous price point so that, b/c of low sales, the product line can finally be killed.
- jasomill 7y ago
  The new Mac Pro price points don't seem ridiculous compared to comparable workstations from Dell and HP, though, as as in the past, Apple's configuration options are comparatively limited. The (wholly understandable) frustration with Mac Pro pricing seems mostly due (1) to the continuing lack of lower-cost, non-Xeon modular systems in Apple's lineup, and (2) sporadic upgrades leading to eventually overpriced systems (e.g., the 2013 Mac Pro ca. 2019).
topkai22 7y ago
I've always hated the "it's worth what the market will bear truism." We are all part of the market, we all get to contribute to the assessment of value.
- 7y ago

ken 7y ago

On the flip side, it's the only offering from Apple that offers what everyone else does. Nobody is complaining that Apple offers a $6K tower. They're complaining that Apple doesn't offer any towers less than $6K. I could put a Mac Mini on my desk with half a dozen adapters sticking out of it, but even then I still can't upgrade the RAM. The last Mac Mini with user-upgradeable RAM was 2012. The 2019 Mac Pro feels to me like an Apple Lisa. Even at 1/4 the price, it would seem steep to me. I want what it has, but there's no way I'll ever be able to justify that. This is new territory for OSX-era Apple. It didn't used to be so expensive to buy an expandable Mac. You could get a PowerMac G5 for $1800, and a PowerMac G4 from $1500.

barberousse 7y ago
>I could put a Mac Mini on my desk with half a dozen adapters sticking out of it, but even then I still can't upgrade the RAM. The last Mac Mini with user-upgradeable RAM was 2012. The 2018 Mac Mini is user-upgradeable up to 64GB. Storage is soldered on however.
malshe 7y ago
Although Apple says that users can't upgrade memory, you can. https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/owc/apple-mac-mini/2018 https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/owc/apple-mac-mini/20...

unlinked_dll 7y ago

The only thing that Mac Pro offers that "nothing else" does is a valid MacOS license in a workstation class tower suitable for pro media production. I don't know why the author needs to spout bullshit about the specs like you can't build an equivalently (or higher) spec'd machine for less money. You just can't put MacOS on it without some effort and violating the ToS. As for the MPX connectors, I don't see how those are different than the kinds of PCIE slots you'd see in top of the line ATX/EATX mobos. As an aside, the improvement over the iMac Pro is largely proper cooling (Apple's AIOs haven't been able to take a fast multicore processor to respectable loads in like a decade) and availability of disk space worth a damn.

mseidl 7y ago
The afterburner card ...

wiseleo 7y ago

It’s a legal Hackintosh. You finally get access to workstation class hardware legally from Apple. Running a Hackintosh on an inexpensive surplus server (40 core servers cost less than $1000 on eBay) would serve similar purpose but not be legal.

Mo3 7y ago
Afaik, Hackintoshes are not illegal.

throwGuardian 7y ago

> "if you needed a 28-core computer with 1.5TB of RAM, would you really be quibbling on the price" Yes - when you need a few thousand of these to render your SFX, you shop around for alternatives. Then some startup that recently built a cloud render farm for this exact use case will save you the CapEx, give you a manageable OpEx and prove this Op-Ed wrong. SFX studios are legendary for hiring and firing elastically, you think they care about Apple hardware lock-in? Also, if you're a software business built on Apple, do some research - they'll fuck you over in a heartbeat. Maybe they'll block you on the Mac Store for using a private API [1], or retroactively apply a bogus rule [2] if they want to compete with you. Control your destiny by moving off an exclusive-Apple strategy [1]: https://m.slashdot.org/story/362994 https://m.slashdot.org/story/362994 [2]: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/6/5/17430532/apple-app-store-rules-valve-steam-link-game-streaming https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2...

alfalfasprout 7y ago
Don't most VFX packages now have linux renderers? At least Autodesk Maya's own documentation shows how to kick off renders on a linux CLI and most of the renderers nowadays have headless linux clients. I guess the mac pro makes sense for animators, etc.
- throwGuardian 7y ago
  > I guess the mac pro makes sense for animators, etc. Is that because animation software is Mac only? Is there any hardware or software benefit unique to the Mac that they (animation software developers) rely on?
  - mseidl 7y ago
    Maya , imho , the best animation software, has a native client for Linux.

ksec 7y ago

>It is Apple’s attempt to meet the needs of people like Ridley Scott and Calvin Harris. We have already established [1] that even ColdPlay level musicians or Hollywood level Audio effects does not Mac Pro level computational power. Something we assumed for a long time I guess we now have evidence to call this a fact. And everything in that video could have been done on a iMac Pro or even latest MacBook Pro. So apart from SFX or Data Science / AI, I cant think of anything that requires these level of Computation power. And none of those are on the Mac Platform. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv5HIrOrn2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv5HIrOrn2o