9 ms·

The comments are mentioning the Xeons in Mac Pros and how Apple should switch. I have no factual basis for this, but I figure Apple has got to be using AMD's ne

The comments are mentioning the Xeons in Mac Pros and how Apple should switch. I have no factual basis for this, but I figure Apple has got to be using AMD's new chips as leverage to get some pretty sweet deals on Intel silicon.

wmf 7y ago
Deals that Apple does not pass on to their customers.
- nyx_ 7y ago
  So? As any corporate sack-chortler worth their salt will eagerly tell you, to seek rent is not only their prerogative but their moral duty.
- jlgaddis 7y ago
  If people continue to pay Apple's (sometimes) outrageous prices, why should they lower them? (I'm just as guilty, having spent over two grand on MBPs multiple times!)
  - bcrosby95 7y ago
    Despite their price, there was a time when macbooks were only 5-10% more than the PC equivalent laptop. People that were complaining about its price were inevitably comparing it to bottom of the barrel PC laptops, not higher end business laptops that had comparable specs. I haven't priced out any recent macbooks to know if that's still true though. Glancing at the new 16" macbook pro, it seems like it might be reasonably priced for what you're getting.
    - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
      There is so much that goes in to a laptop that doesn't make it to the spec sheet either. People only look at a couple of specs to decide how much it should cost but some laptop makers put everything in to those specs and cheap out on everything else and you end up with a laptop with a fast CPU but brittle plastic, A TN display, a DAC that hisses and a whole bunch of other nastyness
    - x3sphere 7y ago
      Yeah, the MBP 16” is pretty comparable to the Dell XPS in price - at least when comparing base models. However, the costs go up a lot if you spec out a custom config (+$400 just for 32GB RAM). Then the MBP starts looking quite a bit more expensive. Overall I don’t think they’re a bad buy though if you want macOS.
      - tracker1 7y ago
        That said, the Mac pro, even starting at the base price is pretty outrageous... I mean, I get $500 for the case and $1500 for the MB, but the rest just seems to be too much in aggregate, and even more ridiculous for mfg upgrades out of the box.
      - ksec 7y ago
        >Yeah, the MBP 16” is pretty comparable to the Dell XPS in price - at least when comparing base models. The Dell XPS [1] with a comparable spec cost $1650 compare to MBP 16" $2399. In the old days Apple would have priced it closer to $2199 or slightly lower. Somewhere along the line they started making Mac same margins as iPhone. [1] https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/deals/new-xps-15-laptop/spd/xps-15-7590-laptop/xnber5cr656ps?view=configurations https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/deals/new-xps-15-laptop/spd/...
    - ksec 7y ago
      >Despite their price, there was a time when macbooks were only 5-10% more than the PC equivalent laptop. I seriously doubt 5-10%. You are talking about minimum $50 - $100+ dollar difference, that has never happened. Mac has always been roughly 20-30% more expensive than a laptop with comparable specs. So $1000 comparable spec laptop, Apple will sell you one for $1300, ( But with more expensive upgrades ) The 30% has been fine for years, the quality and finishing as well as macOS was well worth the price tag. But in recent years it hasn't been 30% at all.
      - olavgg 7y ago
        I remember when I bought my first Macbook Pro in 2014, the specs compared to Dell/Lenovo was in the same price range. There was no Apple Premium. So I decided to give Apple a chance, and I am still using that laptop today, it has really been great value for my money.
  - JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
    As you lower the price, more people can and will buy your product giving you (hypothetically) more profits than before. I’d like to think Apple has done all their homework about what price point to sell at to maximize profit but honestly at this point I think they just make up whatever huge number they want for the Mac Pro price to make it seem cool and go with it. https://blog.asmartbear.com/price-vs-quantity.html https://blog.asmartbear.com/price-vs-quantity.html
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    Don't feel too bad. 386 PCs used to sell for $15k in 2020 dollars.
    - james_s_tayler 7y ago
      When I was in high school in the early 2000s I had a friend who told me his parents purchased a 386 when they first came on the market where I live and they paid around $15k. My jaw just dropped. Then my friend just started chuckling at his parents folly when looking back even at that time it was such an expensive paperweight. Heck, thinking about it now it probably came up in conversation because at the time I had a hobby of picking up old computers that people had thrown out and cobbling together the working parts and built a 386 and a 486 that way. Good times.
  - jdkee 7y ago
    Apple has been successfully using the Good, Better, Best three-tiered pricing model for quite some time. I remember buying a Powerbook 140 at the time when I really wanted the 170 but could not justify the increased price. From wikipedia: "Intended as a replacement for the Portable, the 140 series was identical to the 170, though it compromised a number of the high-end model's features to make it a more affordable mid-range option. The most apparent difference was that the 140 used a cheaper, 10 in (25 cm) diagonal passive matrix display instead of the sharper active matrix version used on the 170. Internally, in addition to a slower 16 MHz processor, the 140 also lacked a Floating Point Unit (FPU) and could not be upgraded. It also came standard with a 20 MB hard drive compared with the 170's 40 MB drive."
    - wmf 7y ago
      So where's the "good" Mac with a PCIe slot?
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    The MBP isn’t even a very good example of Apple price gouging. Any other laptop that your can get for less money is likely to have rather significant trade-offs.
- uncle_j 7y ago
  Why should they? The market dictates the price. If people are buying Apple products at those prices then why should Apple lower their prices? The answer is they shouldn't.
  - wmf 7y ago
    Ah yes, the "market" for macOS machines with PCIe slots.
    - uncle_j 7y ago
      While you may scoff enough people are willing to pay the extra for Mac OS and a high level workstation to justify their prices.
  - liquidise 7y ago
    Indeed it does. Which nicely explains the rising popularity of Hackintosh's, particularly among developers and other technologists. AMD Hackintosh's[1] in particular have skyrocketed in maturity and simplicity since Ryzen. 1: https://amd-osx.com/ https://amd-osx.com/
    - uncle_j 7y ago
      Apple are locking down the platform via proprietary chips etc. It isn't a long term solution and shouldn't be relied upon.
      - reanimus 7y ago
        To be fair, the Hackintosh community is pretty persistent. They added opcode emulation into the kernel, for example, to handle running on CPUs without the expected instructions (older AMD CPUs back in 10.8 or so). I wouldn't be surprised to see the cat-and-mouse continue.
        close04 7y ago
        Wonder what happens when Apple starts "enforcing" a Tx chip to boot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors#Apple_T1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors#Appl...
- tedunangst 7y ago
  Not much of a deal, but the price differential on the high end Mac Pro CPUs is actually slightly less than Intel list.
saagarjha 7y ago
I'm sure Apple's own chip team works pretty good as leverage too.
SCdF 7y ago
Unfortuntately Threadripper only ("only"..) supports 256GB of RAM, Mac Pros can go up to 1.5TB. So they definitely couldn't switch completely, and supporting both would be expensive for apple due to doubling mobos + testing + drivers etc, and confusing for the consumer because of the differing max RAM capabilities.
- amiga-workbench 7y ago
  You're not considering AMD Epyc chips here, and Supermicro already have dual socket boards out that will take 2TB of RAM.
  - SCdF 7y ago
    You're right I wasn't, because I presumed those chips were clocked too low to be useful outside of server farms. I am not the audience for a Mac Pro though, maybe it's fine?
kilo_bravo_3 7y ago
My hunch is that the ARM transition is coming sooner rather than later and instead of spending time and effort into rewriting a bunch of OS functions (like AirPlay Mirroring) to support AMD processors that lack Intel-only features like QuickSync, Apple is just going to drop the iOS pieces it has written for ARM64 into the MacOS (or whatever it's called) that runs on their upcoming ARM-based desktops and laptops. I mean, I wouldn't re-write code to support hardware-accelerated video transcoding on Ryzen+GPU if I knew that in 2-3 years I was moving from x86-64 to ARM64.
- bob1029 7y ago
  How well would Premiere or Photoshop run on ARM? How long would it take to rewrite these apps to run natively (i.e. with acceptable performance) on an ARM platform? Until you can do video/photo/audio editing faster w/ ARM using existing software products, I do not see it being viable as a replacement for x86 in any of Apple's higher-end products. Perhaps ARM is included for sake of mobile development, but with 32+ modern x86 cores you could just as well emulate ARM and barely feel any overhead. Sure, there are a lot of neat tricks ARM can do with special instructions and hardware accelerators in very well controlled use cases. But, for the average creative professional who doesnt have time or patience to play with hyper-optimizing their workflow, having an x86 monster that can chew through any arbitrary workload (optimized or otherwise) is going to provide the best experience for the foreseeable future.
  - jdsully 7y ago
    Apple has dragged Photoshop kicking and screaming onto different platforms and even OS’ before. If they succeeded when they were nearly dead (OS X Cocoa timeframe) they will have no problems doing it now.
  - e12e 7y ago
    Like sibling comment says, it's not exactly the first cpu transition for Photoshop... > Photoshop 1 > Photoshop 1 (1990.01) requires a 8 MHz or faster Mac with a color screen and at least 2 MB of RAM. The first release of Photoshop was successful despite some bugs, which were fixed in subsequent updates. Most users ended up using version 1.07. Photoshop was marketed as a tool for the average user, which was reflected in the price ($1,000 compared to competitor Letraset’s ColorStudio, which cost $1,995). > Photoshop 1.x requires Mac System 6.0.3, 2 MB of RAM, a 68000 processor, and a floppy drive. Source: https://lowendmac.com/2013/photoshop-for-mac-faq/ https://lowendmac.com/2013/photoshop-for-mac-faq/
ksec 7y ago
And 100 Comments but not a single mention or suggestion as to how would Apple deal with their vested interest in Thunderbolt. I would not be surprised if 90% of the PC shipped with Thunderbolt were from Apple. USB 4 is out, the Thunderbolt 3 spec has been out for quite a long time as well, and yet we dont even have a single announcement with USB 4 controller.

wmf 7y ago

Deals that Apple does not pass on to their customers.

nyx_ 7y ago
So? As any corporate sack-chortler worth their salt will eagerly tell you, to seek rent is not only their prerogative but their moral duty.
jlgaddis 7y ago
If people continue to pay Apple's (sometimes) outrageous prices, why should they lower them? (I'm just as guilty, having spent over two grand on MBPs multiple times!)
- bcrosby95 7y ago
  Despite their price, there was a time when macbooks were only 5-10% more than the PC equivalent laptop. People that were complaining about its price were inevitably comparing it to bottom of the barrel PC laptops, not higher end business laptops that had comparable specs. I haven't priced out any recent macbooks to know if that's still true though. Glancing at the new 16" macbook pro, it seems like it might be reasonably priced for what you're getting.
  - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
    There is so much that goes in to a laptop that doesn't make it to the spec sheet either. People only look at a couple of specs to decide how much it should cost but some laptop makers put everything in to those specs and cheap out on everything else and you end up with a laptop with a fast CPU but brittle plastic, A TN display, a DAC that hisses and a whole bunch of other nastyness
  - x3sphere 7y ago
    Yeah, the MBP 16” is pretty comparable to the Dell XPS in price - at least when comparing base models. However, the costs go up a lot if you spec out a custom config (+$400 just for 32GB RAM). Then the MBP starts looking quite a bit more expensive. Overall I don’t think they’re a bad buy though if you want macOS.
    - tracker1 7y ago
      That said, the Mac pro, even starting at the base price is pretty outrageous... I mean, I get $500 for the case and $1500 for the MB, but the rest just seems to be too much in aggregate, and even more ridiculous for mfg upgrades out of the box.
    - ksec 7y ago
      >Yeah, the MBP 16” is pretty comparable to the Dell XPS in price - at least when comparing base models. The Dell XPS [1] with a comparable spec cost $1650 compare to MBP 16" $2399. In the old days Apple would have priced it closer to $2199 or slightly lower. Somewhere along the line they started making Mac same margins as iPhone. [1] https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/deals/new-xps-15-laptop/spd/xps-15-7590-laptop/xnber5cr656ps?view=configurations https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/deals/new-xps-15-laptop/spd/...
  - ksec 7y ago
    >Despite their price, there was a time when macbooks were only 5-10% more than the PC equivalent laptop. I seriously doubt 5-10%. You are talking about minimum $50 - $100+ dollar difference, that has never happened. Mac has always been roughly 20-30% more expensive than a laptop with comparable specs. So $1000 comparable spec laptop, Apple will sell you one for $1300, ( But with more expensive upgrades ) The 30% has been fine for years, the quality and finishing as well as macOS was well worth the price tag. But in recent years it hasn't been 30% at all.
    - olavgg 7y ago
      I remember when I bought my first Macbook Pro in 2014, the specs compared to Dell/Lenovo was in the same price range. There was no Apple Premium. So I decided to give Apple a chance, and I am still using that laptop today, it has really been great value for my money.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
  As you lower the price, more people can and will buy your product giving you (hypothetically) more profits than before. I’d like to think Apple has done all their homework about what price point to sell at to maximize profit but honestly at this point I think they just make up whatever huge number they want for the Mac Pro price to make it seem cool and go with it. https://blog.asmartbear.com/price-vs-quantity.html https://blog.asmartbear.com/price-vs-quantity.html
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  Don't feel too bad. 386 PCs used to sell for $15k in 2020 dollars.
  - james_s_tayler 7y ago
    When I was in high school in the early 2000s I had a friend who told me his parents purchased a 386 when they first came on the market where I live and they paid around $15k. My jaw just dropped. Then my friend just started chuckling at his parents folly when looking back even at that time it was such an expensive paperweight. Heck, thinking about it now it probably came up in conversation because at the time I had a hobby of picking up old computers that people had thrown out and cobbling together the working parts and built a 386 and a 486 that way. Good times.
- jdkee 7y ago
  Apple has been successfully using the Good, Better, Best three-tiered pricing model for quite some time. I remember buying a Powerbook 140 at the time when I really wanted the 170 but could not justify the increased price. From wikipedia: "Intended as a replacement for the Portable, the 140 series was identical to the 170, though it compromised a number of the high-end model's features to make it a more affordable mid-range option. The most apparent difference was that the 140 used a cheaper, 10 in (25 cm) diagonal passive matrix display instead of the sharper active matrix version used on the 170. Internally, in addition to a slower 16 MHz processor, the 140 also lacked a Floating Point Unit (FPU) and could not be upgraded. It also came standard with a 20 MB hard drive compared with the 170's 40 MB drive."
  - wmf 7y ago
    So where's the "good" Mac with a PCIe slot?
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  The MBP isn’t even a very good example of Apple price gouging. Any other laptop that your can get for less money is likely to have rather significant trade-offs.
uncle_j 7y ago
Why should they? The market dictates the price. If people are buying Apple products at those prices then why should Apple lower their prices? The answer is they shouldn't.
- wmf 7y ago
  Ah yes, the "market" for macOS machines with PCIe slots.
  - uncle_j 7y ago
    While you may scoff enough people are willing to pay the extra for Mac OS and a high level workstation to justify their prices.
- liquidise 7y ago
  Indeed it does. Which nicely explains the rising popularity of Hackintosh's, particularly among developers and other technologists. AMD Hackintosh's[1] in particular have skyrocketed in maturity and simplicity since Ryzen. 1: https://amd-osx.com/ https://amd-osx.com/
  - uncle_j 7y ago
    Apple are locking down the platform via proprietary chips etc. It isn't a long term solution and shouldn't be relied upon.
    - reanimus 7y ago
      To be fair, the Hackintosh community is pretty persistent. They added opcode emulation into the kernel, for example, to handle running on CPUs without the expected instructions (older AMD CPUs back in 10.8 or so). I wouldn't be surprised to see the cat-and-mouse continue.
      - close04 7y ago
        Wonder what happens when Apple starts "enforcing" a Tx chip to boot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors#Apple_T1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors#Appl...
tedunangst 7y ago
Not much of a deal, but the price differential on the high end Mac Pro CPUs is actually slightly less than Intel list.

saagarjha 7y ago

I'm sure Apple's own chip team works pretty good as leverage too.

SCdF 7y ago

Unfortuntately Threadripper only ("only"..) supports 256GB of RAM, Mac Pros can go up to 1.5TB. So they definitely couldn't switch completely, and supporting both would be expensive for apple due to doubling mobos + testing + drivers etc, and confusing for the consumer because of the differing max RAM capabilities.

amiga-workbench 7y ago
You're not considering AMD Epyc chips here, and Supermicro already have dual socket boards out that will take 2TB of RAM.
- SCdF 7y ago
  You're right I wasn't, because I presumed those chips were clocked too low to be useful outside of server farms. I am not the audience for a Mac Pro though, maybe it's fine?

kilo_bravo_3 7y ago

My hunch is that the ARM transition is coming sooner rather than later and instead of spending time and effort into rewriting a bunch of OS functions (like AirPlay Mirroring) to support AMD processors that lack Intel-only features like QuickSync, Apple is just going to drop the iOS pieces it has written for ARM64 into the MacOS (or whatever it's called) that runs on their upcoming ARM-based desktops and laptops. I mean, I wouldn't re-write code to support hardware-accelerated video transcoding on Ryzen+GPU if I knew that in 2-3 years I was moving from x86-64 to ARM64.

bob1029 7y ago
How well would Premiere or Photoshop run on ARM? How long would it take to rewrite these apps to run natively (i.e. with acceptable performance) on an ARM platform? Until you can do video/photo/audio editing faster w/ ARM using existing software products, I do not see it being viable as a replacement for x86 in any of Apple's higher-end products. Perhaps ARM is included for sake of mobile development, but with 32+ modern x86 cores you could just as well emulate ARM and barely feel any overhead. Sure, there are a lot of neat tricks ARM can do with special instructions and hardware accelerators in very well controlled use cases. But, for the average creative professional who doesnt have time or patience to play with hyper-optimizing their workflow, having an x86 monster that can chew through any arbitrary workload (optimized or otherwise) is going to provide the best experience for the foreseeable future.
- jdsully 7y ago
  Apple has dragged Photoshop kicking and screaming onto different platforms and even OS’ before. If they succeeded when they were nearly dead (OS X Cocoa timeframe) they will have no problems doing it now.
- e12e 7y ago
  Like sibling comment says, it's not exactly the first cpu transition for Photoshop... > Photoshop 1 > Photoshop 1 (1990.01) requires a 8 MHz or faster Mac with a color screen and at least 2 MB of RAM. The first release of Photoshop was successful despite some bugs, which were fixed in subsequent updates. Most users ended up using version 1.07. Photoshop was marketed as a tool for the average user, which was reflected in the price ($1,000 compared to competitor Letraset’s ColorStudio, which cost $1,995). > Photoshop 1.x requires Mac System 6.0.3, 2 MB of RAM, a 68000 processor, and a floppy drive. Source: https://lowendmac.com/2013/photoshop-for-mac-faq/ https://lowendmac.com/2013/photoshop-for-mac-faq/

ksec 7y ago

And 100 Comments but not a single mention or suggestion as to how would Apple deal with their vested interest in Thunderbolt. I would not be surprised if 90% of the PC shipped with Thunderbolt were from Apple. USB 4 is out, the Thunderbolt 3 spec has been out for quite a long time as well, and yet we dont even have a single announcement with USB 4 controller.