4 ms·

No, Apple's New Mac Pro Isn't Overpriced

9 points by alwillis 7y ago

posix_me_less 7y ago
Yeah, "what about HP expensive offerings". Of course they're overpriced too. HP, Dell and likes demand ridiculous premiums on the front so they can build respect and offer "discounts" later in the back. You can see the real value after 4-5 years when you can find their boxes on ebay for peanuts. Apple on the other hand is a master of price hiking behind smoke and mirrors. The target group of this product seem to be gullible easy spenders. Which is not a small group, and maybe containing some big rich companies that do not care for price, so profit-wise, it makes sense for Apple to price the weakest config for $6000. People or small businesses that care about value/money will go with buying/building their own Xeon machine, or go with the EPYC/Threadripper platform with its tradeoffs, in both cases with much higher performance. For half the price at most.
- bitwize 7y ago
  Here's what gets me. The other day on youtube I saw a review of a very thin, very crappy laptop that was going on sale at Wal-Mart for less than $100. It was held together with six screws. The guy dismantled it on camera to give the audience a view of its innards. Meanwhile, Apple is selling laptops in the two-kilobuck range and higher that are glued together. This tells me that using glue instead of screws is not about keeping cost, thickness, or weight down. It is strictly about keeping the end user from being able to easily disassemble and then reassemble the equipment they bought. If your MacBook wears out or breaks, Apple expects you to buy new. (Or take it to the Genius Bar, which in principle is the same as buying new.) Apple's great reputation is built, in part, on the top-quality machines of the 90s and early 2000s, which were designed to be able to be kept running for years if not decades. Now, it's like, MacBook is four years old? Why haven't you bought new yet? They are catering to the more-money-than-brains crowd. Maybe the Mac Pro is different, but it wouldn't surprise me if it turns out to be engineered to have a very short service lifetime also.
  - hellofunk 7y ago
    I think this is a bit of a distortion. I know many Apple users, myself included, who still have laptops or desktops from 8 - 10 years ago that are still running and useful. They last just as long as Windows machines, if not usually longer.
    - thawaway1837 7y ago
      Apple wasn’t gluing things together 8-10 years ago. My 2008ish MacBook lasted almost a decade because I was able to open it and replace the HDD with an SSD and max out its RAM. Without that even if it was working fine, it would have basically been unusable. This is not true of their current offerings. Also, this doesn’t factor in that when things do go wrong, and they often do, repairing them has become significantly more expensive, because you cannot simply replace an HDD for example.
  - 1123581321 7y ago
    Glue has some other advantages you can probably think of. Repairability is nice, but it comes with tradeoffs that buyers for whatever reason are not willing to make right now. Longevity in modern Apple laptops is quite good and it’s partly due to the control Apple has over the internal environment due to how they are built. As for the Mac Pro, there are several videos that show how it opens and which parts are removable.
    - bitwize 7y ago
      The only advantage I can think of is a fluid-tight seal which is irrelevant for MacBooks. I can think of another disadvantage: glue breaks down under heat. Recent-year MacBooks are notorious for their airflow problems, and some have a tendency to simply fall apart after they've run hot for long enough. And you can't put them back together in quite the same way once they do. It seems like you stan for Apple no matter what, so it's not surprising that you defend this sort of thing, but this is straight up shitty build quality, and Apple really has no excuse. As the premier brand, they need to be doing better by their customers.
thebruce87m 7y ago
I wish people would stop using the term “overpriced”. Apple sets the price. Their sales targets and subsequent results dictate whether they have priced it appropriately. We will probably never know if it was overpriced. But we already have a word to describe something that costs a lot: expensive. Really we should be asking if it is good value for money.
- cyphar 7y ago
  > Really we should be asking if it is good value for money. Which is what the term "overpriced" is almost always referring to. Overpriced is not a synonym of expensive.
  - thebruce87m 7y ago
    I guess I’ll have to get used to people using terms such as this one, “on accident” etc.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  According to Merriam-Webster, "overprice" is a word that has been in use since at least 1576 and has always meant "to price too high (relative to its perceived value)". https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/overprice https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/overprice
  - thebruce87m 7y ago
    Good info. I wonder if the feeling of “nails on a blackboard” will go away whenever I read it now that I know.
Zanni 7y ago
When (some) people claim the Mac Pro is overpriced, what they're really reacting to is that there isn't an upgradable tower Mac available at a price point they can afford. There are people who don't need Xeon processors and multi-terabyte SSDs who still want the option to swap and upgrade components but can't afford to start at higher than $2k-$3k. The Mac Pro isn't overpriced for what it is, but its overpriced for what many people want.
jacobjuul 7y ago
Does this mean I can finally run slack and chrome without running out of memory?

9 points by alwillis 7y ago

Yeah, "what about HP expensive offerings". Of course they're overpriced too. HP, Dell and likes demand ridiculous premiums on the front so they can build respect and offer "discounts" later in the back. You can see the real value after 4-5 years when you can find their boxes on ebay for peanuts. Apple on the other hand is a master of price hiking behind smoke and mirrors. The target group of this product seem to be gullible easy spenders. Which is not a small group, and maybe containing some big rich companies that do not care for price, so profit-wise, it makes sense for Apple to price the weakest config for $6000. People or small businesses that care about value/money will go with buying/building their own Xeon machine, or go with the EPYC/Threadripper platform with its tradeoffs, in both cases with much higher performance. For half the price at most.

bitwize 7y ago
Here's what gets me. The other day on youtube I saw a review of a very thin, very crappy laptop that was going on sale at Wal-Mart for less than $100. It was held together with six screws. The guy dismantled it on camera to give the audience a view of its innards. Meanwhile, Apple is selling laptops in the two-kilobuck range and higher that are glued together. This tells me that using glue instead of screws is not about keeping cost, thickness, or weight down. It is strictly about keeping the end user from being able to easily disassemble and then reassemble the equipment they bought. If your MacBook wears out or breaks, Apple expects you to buy new. (Or take it to the Genius Bar, which in principle is the same as buying new.) Apple's great reputation is built, in part, on the top-quality machines of the 90s and early 2000s, which were designed to be able to be kept running for years if not decades. Now, it's like, MacBook is four years old? Why haven't you bought new yet? They are catering to the more-money-than-brains crowd. Maybe the Mac Pro is different, but it wouldn't surprise me if it turns out to be engineered to have a very short service lifetime also.
- hellofunk 7y ago
  I think this is a bit of a distortion. I know many Apple users, myself included, who still have laptops or desktops from 8 - 10 years ago that are still running and useful. They last just as long as Windows machines, if not usually longer.
  - thawaway1837 7y ago
    Apple wasn’t gluing things together 8-10 years ago. My 2008ish MacBook lasted almost a decade because I was able to open it and replace the HDD with an SSD and max out its RAM. Without that even if it was working fine, it would have basically been unusable. This is not true of their current offerings. Also, this doesn’t factor in that when things do go wrong, and they often do, repairing them has become significantly more expensive, because you cannot simply replace an HDD for example.
- 1123581321 7y ago
  Glue has some other advantages you can probably think of. Repairability is nice, but it comes with tradeoffs that buyers for whatever reason are not willing to make right now. Longevity in modern Apple laptops is quite good and it’s partly due to the control Apple has over the internal environment due to how they are built. As for the Mac Pro, there are several videos that show how it opens and which parts are removable.
  - bitwize 7y ago
    The only advantage I can think of is a fluid-tight seal which is irrelevant for MacBooks. I can think of another disadvantage: glue breaks down under heat. Recent-year MacBooks are notorious for their airflow problems, and some have a tendency to simply fall apart after they've run hot for long enough. And you can't put them back together in quite the same way once they do. It seems like you stan for Apple no matter what, so it's not surprising that you defend this sort of thing, but this is straight up shitty build quality, and Apple really has no excuse. As the premier brand, they need to be doing better by their customers.

thebruce87m 7y ago

I wish people would stop using the term “overpriced”. Apple sets the price. Their sales targets and subsequent results dictate whether they have priced it appropriately. We will probably never know if it was overpriced. But we already have a word to describe something that costs a lot: expensive. Really we should be asking if it is good value for money.

cyphar 7y ago
> Really we should be asking if it is good value for money. Which is what the term "overpriced" is almost always referring to. Overpriced is not a synonym of expensive.
- thebruce87m 7y ago
  I guess I’ll have to get used to people using terms such as this one, “on accident” etc.
ThrowawayR2 7y ago
According to Merriam-Webster, "overprice" is a word that has been in use since at least 1576 and has always meant "to price too high (relative to its perceived value)". https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/overprice https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/overprice
- thebruce87m 7y ago
  Good info. I wonder if the feeling of “nails on a blackboard” will go away whenever I read it now that I know.

Zanni 7y ago

When (some) people claim the Mac Pro is overpriced, what they're really reacting to is that there isn't an upgradable tower Mac available at a price point they can afford. There are people who don't need Xeon processors and multi-terabyte SSDs who still want the option to swap and upgrade components but can't afford to start at higher than $2k-$3k. The Mac Pro isn't overpriced for what it is, but its overpriced for what many people want.

jacobjuul 7y ago

Does this mean I can finally run slack and chrome without running out of memory?