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Apple: $52,000 Mac Pro Is Now Worth $1k
- thisisnico 4y agoSell it yourself.
- GavinMcG 4y agoWorth $1k... to Apple, who isn't in the business of selling one-off used products. So what?
- postalrat 4y agoWhats your offer?
- dylan604 4y agoI'll pay for shipping to be delivered to me
- kevingadd 4y agohttps://www.apple.com/shop/product/G0ZKMLL/A/Refurbished-Mac-Pro-25GHz-28-core-Intel-Xeon-W-Two-Radeon-Pro-Vega-II-Duo-Apple-Afterburner?fnode=855eff7148294b95d7dc06e44a9e69f44d94f18deb452b36d69ae0fb4d62aa16acf969362ac4ccbdeb0ae1924e1866250b9df6f5ff3a7374801586e79f36d6e11f975e5cceaa8687b055c5e8371de9a1 https://www.apple.com/shop/product/G0ZKMLL/A/Refurbished-Mac... You could spend like 5 seconds verifying that they do in fact sell these used
- tgma 4y agoApple refurbished is not even close to selling used by say an eBay seller. They basically remanufacture the product outer components and batteries.
- betaby 4y agoSo other parts are used?
- tgma 4y agoPresumably they could be used. The point is it is not a direct dealership business. I am not even sure if the used parts are fed from primarily from the trade-in pipeline (as opposed to AppleCare/warranties). I’m totally speculating here but I suspect the trade in pipeline is primarily sold to a third party vendor and not touched by Apple (they accept Androids and such too, for example)
- GavinMcG 4y agoSorry, “not in the business of” does not mean to me that they never do it. I’m aware they sell refurbished. I’d imagine margins are not all that great because it’s not a huge part of their business, there’s a fair amount of labor, and a fair number of new components. If they were in that line of business and could benefit from economies of scale, they’d likely offer more. As it stands, they’re likely offering a price that allows for them to be a disposal option or make a profit on recycling, but isn’t meant to grow that segment of their business.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 4y agoIf you wanna resell your Mac, get one of the stock configurations. Unusual configurations are presumably annoying for Apple to handle in the refurb/resale program; if you want more for it, that's what eBay etc. are for.
- SkyMarshal 4y agoWhat's an unusual configuration? When you buy an Apple, you have a limited number of customization options - disk space, memory, CPU speed/cores, and pre-installed software usually. Hard to see how any of that could be non-standard or unusual.
- ceejayoz 4y ago$52k is an unusual configuration. If you walk into an Apple Store, you can buy specific configurations off-the-shelf. If you pick the boosted RAM or faster processor or whatnot, they have to ship it to you.
- lockhouse 4y agoI think a $52k desktop computer would be an unusual configuration from any manufacturer.
- kube-system 4y agoBy "unusual configuration", they mean SKUs which are not stocked.
- cactusplant7374 4y agoSometimes this site returns 500. It appears to be under load.
- rootusrootus 4y agoSo keep that in mind when you buy the next $52K computer from Apple, and/or sell it on the open market if the $19K convenience fee feels like it's too much.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- candiodari 4y ago"Once you have their money, you never give it back" - Quark
- ceejayoz 4y agoApple's happy to give you a pretty decent trade-in value in most cases, because you're a) buying a new device as part of the process and b) it keeps it off the third-party resale market.
- jbotdev 4y agoTitle is misleading.. You get $1k if you decide to trade it in with Apple. Technically it’s still worth more on the second-hand market.
- agloeregrets 4y agoIs that what it is saying? "Apple: " aka "apple says"
- tablespoon 4y ago> Title is misleading.. You get $1k if you decide to trade it in with Apple. Technically it’s still worth more on the second-hand market. I think the main point of the article was the Apple's trade-in price is offensively low: > This ultra-low value disrespects the customers.
- ProAm 4y agoOr is it market value to Apple?
- Terretta 4y agoWhy would they want it? I'm surprised they offer anything.
- tablespoon 4y ago> Why would they want it? I'm surprised they offer anything. I was thinking the same thing as I read, and wondering if the trade-in price was just a token to get a customer to turn the machine into e-waste, but later on the article notes Apple sells similar refurbished machines for tens of thousands of dollars, a fact that I verified: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/G0ZKMLL/A/Refurbished-Mac-Pro-25GHz-28-core-Intel-Xeon-W-Two-Radeon-Pro-Vega-II-Duo-Apple-Afterburner?fnode=855eff7148294b95d7dc06e44a9e69f44d94f18deb452b36d69ae0fb4d62aa16acf969362ac4ccbdeb0ae1924e1866250b9df6f5ff3a7374801586e79f36d6e11f975e5cceaa8687b055c5e8371de9a1 https://www.apple.com/shop/product/G0ZKMLL/A/Refurbished-Mac... https://web.archive.org/web/20230201183646/https://www.apple.com/shop/product/G0ZKMLL/A/Refurbished-Mac-Pro-25GHz-28-core-Intel-Xeon-W-Two-Radeon-Pro-Vega-II-Duo-Apple-Afterburner?fnode=855eff7148294b95d7dc06e44a9e69f44d94f18deb452b36d69ae0fb4d62aa16acf969362ac4ccbdeb0ae1924e1866250b9df6f5ff3a7374801586e79f36d6e11f975e5cceaa8687b055c5e8371de9a1 https://web.archive.org/web/20230201183646/https://www.apple... This kind of has the feel of a unscrupulous car salesman low-balling a trade-in to take advantage of a customer.
- fishtoaster 4y agohttps://archive.is/dEGFa https://archive.is/dEGFa
- Alupis 4y agoHow can $52,000 go all the way down to $1,000 in just 3 years? Because that $52,000 computer was never actually worth that much in the first place. The hardware inside is nothing special... Xeon 28 core CPU, 1.5TB RAM, dual Radeon Pro GPU's, and 8TB storage. Sure it's fast, but it was only worth ~$20k-30k when it was new. The Apple Tax is very real, folks. Flashy case goes for ~$30k apparently...
- shuckles 4y agoCan you point me to a configured system with 1.5TB of ECC RAM sold at retail today for "a few thousand bucks"?
- ProAm 4y agohttps://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished (I jest) But we all know Apple products are severely overpriced per specification. It's how they sustain their profit margin, and in turn are also not currently laying folks off because of their war chest.
- rootusrootus 4y ago> we all know Apple products are severely overpriced per specification Do we? Every time it comes up, invariably the comparisons are all something "largely similar" but not exactly equivalent, frequently in a meaningful way. It seems like the real truth is that Apple doesn't really make budget configurations in the first place, they only cater to different levels of the premium market. In particular, when it comes to the Mac Pro over the years, it's been repeatedly demonstrated to be a pretty good deal for what you actually get. Another well known example is when you could by the 27 inch 5K iMac for the same price as you could buy just the panel if you were building a PC. Whenever someone makes a really nice laptop, aluminum, great touch pad, great screen, the whole nine yards, it ends up being close to the same price as a macbook.
- wmf 4y agoApple does genuinely overprice RAM and storage. For the rest you're right.
- shmatt 4y agoNew startup pitch: Bring a Trailer, but for rare hardware builds
- siva7 4y agoI'm seriously wondering who takes this deal. There must be a market for this, right? Companies with fu money?
- gjsman-1000 4y agoI wonder if it is for companies who had lots of Mac Pros, in many weird configuration, eyeing Apple Silicon. In which case, because many of them don't want to deal with eBay or customer service, it is often quickest and cheapest to send them to a recycling center. But if Apple will take them all for a quick $1K each and no extra employee effort... why not?
- siva7 4y agoThe extra employee effort would save in this case maybe a million? Maybe that's not much money in some circles to think about
- gjsman-1000 4y agoI don't know. Why did perfectly good 16" MacBook Pros get into the hands of recyclers last week?
- randomdata 4y agoMore likely it is for nobody. This is Apple saying: "We really don't want to deal with this, but if you will pay us many thousands of dollars in value to take it off your hands I guess we can bend this time." They have made it clear that their preference is for you to leave them alone if you want to sell one of these machines.
- kderbyma 4y agoThis is their business model. Sell cheap stuff for a lot of money....
- lockhouse 4y agoIf you expect a high resale value on Intel Macs this far into the transition to Apple Silicon you’re going to have a bad time. Yes this is a bit extreme, but I doubt refurbished high end Intel Macs are flying off the shelves at this point. Also you always take a bath on trade ins to the manufacturer for the convenience factor. This is not unique to Apple
- auggierose 4y agoIn general you should NEVER use Apple's trade-in program, and just sell it yourself. You always get MUCH more.
- arnaudsm 4y agoDepends how much you value your time. Creating the listing, negotiating and shipping isn't trivial. That's why refurbishing programs are still a thing.
- Alupis 4y agoIf a few minutes, maybe an hour of your time isn't worth $5,000 or more, then I need to know what business you're in.
- Karsteski 4y agoUsually when I sell PCs or PC hardware, people just come pick up the stuff at my house. The listing takes a few minutes for each item but other than that it's barely any effort
- arnaudsm 4y agoI personally do it too, but the longevity of Apple's refurbishing program proves there's a market for it
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- goodSteveramos 4y agoI think the right choice would be for Apple to stick with Intel for the Mac Pro. Its a vanity project focused on a tiny market that wants full expandability and compatibility. I thought apple learned their lesson with the Trash Can Mac Pro.
- giobox 4y agoYou think Apple should bear the cost and support burdens of maintaining compatibility for two CPU architectures across their OSes, app stores and in house applications for the benefit of a few thousand Mac Pro sales? There is simply no way this strategy makes sense at Apple's size, I'd argue, especially for a "vanity project focused on a tiny market" as you correctly put it. Just as with 68k and PPC before it, MacOS will eventually drop x86 CPU support and it will be fine - the process of migrating the entire computer line is already almost complete.
- goodSteveramos 4y agoYes. I think they should bear the cost of continuing to develop new intel mac pros if thats what it takes to serve that market.
- Rapzid 4y ago> You think Apple should bear the cost and support burdens of maintaining compatibility for two CPU architectures across their OSes, app stores and in house applications for the benefit of a few thousand Mac Pro sales? They sorta already do this via Rosetta.. But more to your point, yes they need to treat this like a leak in a damn and plug it even if it takes seemingly disproportionate resources.
- giobox 4y ago> They sorta already do this via Rosetta.. Across Apple, to continue making x86 machines alongside ARM, is going to need a lot more than just the Rosetta software layer. Rosetta doesn't help hardware design, R&D expenditures for this tiny handful of x86 machines OP is proposing Apple keep in the lineup. Those R&D expenses for just x86 development work are much harder to justify when its just the Mac Pro that benefits, not the entire computer line, too.
- jshaqaw 4y agoEvery time I refresh my gear I try to figure out which is more cost effective - buying top tier stuff and getting another X years out of it before obsolescence or buying mid-tier stuff and just refreshing more often. I end up just getting the top(ish) tier because once I start clicking on things I can't resist but obviously given the rate technology develops any 50k machine was bound to lose its value fast.
- deathanatos 4y agoPrevious discussion from when the tweet happened: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34418425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34418425 (… boy that would have been easier to find if journalists would just cite the source and not a random re-tweet…)
- fIREpOK 4y agoThe other discussion is locked though.
- giantg2 4y agoI think the moral of the story is that you shouldn't be paying $50k for a machine that can do essentially the same stuff as a machine that costs 10x less. You didn't get screwed on the trade-in, you got screwed on the purchase.
- tablespoon 4y ago> I think the moral of the story is that you shouldn't be paying $50k for a machine that can do essentially the same stuff as a machine that costs 10x less. You didn't get screwed on the trade-in, you got screwed on the purchase. Not if you want/need to run MacOS. Also that machine appears to have a proprietary accelerator card that a cursory google leads me to believe has no clear substitute: https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-equivalent-hardware-of-a-Mac-afterburner-card-for-a-PC https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-equivalent-hardware-of-a-.... Lots of companies (and sometimes people) pay up the nose for hardware, because their software has a dependency on it. See all the weird "new model" mainframes that just run an emulator on Intel chips (e.g. Unisys Dorado 8590 https://www.unisys.com/siteassets/collateral/pi-sheet/pi-200145-clearpathforwarddorado8590.pdf https://www.unisys.com/siteassets/collateral/pi-sheet/pi-200...).
- giantg2 4y agoAre there not alternatives, including other cheaper MacOS devices? If someone "needs" it, they should know that a $50k PC is basically a rip-off and are paying that money knowing it's never coming back. Electronics in general depreciate spectacularly fast. Mainframes are a completely different class for which a $50k bill would be quite low. It's a different paradigm. Companies know they're using it until it's obsolete, or will get pennies on the dollar.
- tablespoon 4y ago> Are there not alternatives, including other cheaper MacOS devices? There are always alternatives, but sometimes buying "overpriced" hardware is the cheaper/better option, at least in the short/medium term. If you want/need the fastest Mac and/or one with certain expansion options, this machine is probably it. > Electronics in general depreciate spectacularly fast. Apple itself is selling a refurb today for $37,939.00. That is a lot more than $1,000. > Mainframes are a completely different class for which a $50k bill would be quite low. It's a different paradigm. Companies know they're using it until it's obsolete, or will get pennies on the dollar. Look at the spec sheet I linked. It looks like that "mainframe" machine is a 4 CPU Xeon server. I don't know how much one costs, but I'm guessing it's orders of magnitude more than similar "commodity" PC hardware.
- dylan604 4y agoIf you bought one of these, you were either a)in a business using it to make money OR b)had so much money that it doesn't matter to you. if b), then fuck off!!! ;-) if a), then hopefully you made enough money from it that this is just the typical depreciation of production equipment. is this devaluation shocking to anyone other than someone looking to get some clicks?
- RantyDave 4y agoBut ... this is right. It's three years old, it's been written down to $0 (ish) for tax reasons. $1k is the book value. I don't know why you'd trade it in to be honest. The Mac Pro is all about high bandwidth shovelling of data across PCIe for edit suites. I don't think there's any real replacement.
- jollyllama 4y agoThe problem is they're paying the Apple Tax, like others are pointing out. More specifically, paying it three times: 1) For the base system. Ok, this is unavoidable if you're buying Apple. 2) For the upgrades. The problem is that Apple machines used to be easy to upgrade yourself, like 8 years ago with the iMac. You could buy the base memory model and max it out yourself with sticks in a few minutes for a fraction of the cost. If you cared about money, you'd do this; people with money to burn could presumably pay Apple and not worry about it. Unfortunately I don't think this can be done anymore. 3) For the trade in. Yeah, you will do much better selling it yourself.
- Kukumber 4y agomisleading title, that's some FUD, it's the Intel onen, it's now a deprecated architecture if you ask me, that's a good investment, if you plan to sell one in few decades
- MangoCoffee 4y agoDIY PC is the way to go. you can load up Linux or Windows.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- chasing 4y agoUh, okay. Well if you think it's worth more than that then don't sell it back to Apple? I'm not totally sure what the complaint, here, is apart from the usual "Apple's stuff is expensive." ... Hey, I'll buy your 2019 Ferrari for $1000.
- Quarrelsome 4y ago> I'm not totally sure what the complaint, here, that the company you bought your product from will offensively low ball you on a trade-in?
- hobofan 4y agoSo like basically any other luxury goods company? Ever tried to trade in jewelry?
- randomdata 4y agoIt's nice of them to consider buying it at all. Very few manufacturers want their product back. They are in the business of producing new stuff, not shuffling around used stuff. Of course a used product dealer is going to pay you less than the next consumer will. They have to sell to the same consumer and need a margin to justify their time acting as the middleman. Same reason the used car dealer will give you less for your used car than the next driver buying direct will give you.
- pivo 4y agoThis past weekend I took a 2018 Mac Mini w/i7, 32G RAM and 1T SSD the the Apple Store to trade it in for a new MacBook Air my wife wanted. Before the Apple person looked up the trade in value she told me, "I can tell you right now it's not going to be a good offer. You'll get a much better price using Facebook Marketplace or something like that." It wasn't as dramatic a difference as this Mac Pro, but they offered us only $185 for it. It's still a hugely useable machine, so of course I declined.
- JohnTHaller 4y agoIt's a 5 generation old laptop processor-based machine so Apple's interest in it is probably only as replacements for existing machines. You'll get a far better price on ebay where like-new in-box machines like yours sell for $700-900.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- NoLinkToMe 4y ago52k Mac Pros are probably <0.5% of Apple's unit sales and just not representative. Why even bother writing articles about subjects like this, it's such a niche issue that affects virtually nobody, is written to generate clicks, and is a complete non-issue for the obviously ridiculously loaded individuals out there buying 50k Macs and selling them shortly after, and are unwilling to use any of the million alternative sales channels that are available to them. It's a free market, just ignore a passive offer for the opportunity to resell a purchased product for very little and continue on with your life. I mean I've literally never, ever, in my life, sold a product I bought, to the company or person that sold it to me. The fact that one of these companies happens to offer a ridiculously low-ball price is not news, it's completely irrelevant. It's a funny thing, sure. Feel free to mock Apple for it. But the whole outrage with words like 'disrespecting customers' is just silly. If you think it's so easy and straightforward to pay significantly more than Apple and resell the things for even more, enjoy the free profits with your new business. I happen to have met a guy who's been reselling Macs for the past 10-15 years or so, to the tune of a low seven figure profit annually at a NYE party a few weeks back. Be less outraged and enjoy the business opportunities, I'd say.
- sgammon 4y agoWhy are you booing this man, he's right
- chasing 4y agoI will also note that there is such thing as dissuasive pricing. “Go away” pricing. “We’ll do this, but it’s not really our thing so we’re going to make it expensive for you.” Not sure if that’s what’s happening here. But sometimes when you see a bad offer what you’re really seeing is “we’d rather not.”
- lamontcg 4y agoThis is such as weird way to get all pissed at Apple because that is what you're looking to do.
- sgammon 4y agoclaiming the mac pro is their "flagship" SKU is nonsense, the author is thinking of the macbook lol