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But if you had a 53k Mac Pro you probably wouldn’t be using it to develop VisionOS apps. Anyone who’s spending that kind of money is probably using it for some

But if you had a 53k Mac Pro you probably wouldn’t be using it to develop VisionOS apps. Anyone who’s spending that kind of money is probably using it for some kind of specialised workflow which needs 1500gb of RAM and which probably won’t change much in the future, maybe something like processing 16k video, complex CG rendering, simulations etc

godzillabrennus 3y ago
It still hurts the resale value of the thing, makes it less useful so more likely to end up junked, and even if the original owner “got their moneys worth” out of their purchase, this is still a relatively new computer sold to pro users who Apple should support better for that kind of price tag.
- sneak 3y ago
  The fact that it's Intel is what hurts the resale value of the thing.
- cdogl 3y ago
  > makes it less useful so more likely to end up junked Only if more than a tiny sliver of the resale market for that product is for VisionOS development (a market segment that does not yet really exist).
- rbanffy 3y ago
  You can still ignore the fact it's a Mac and install Linux on it. With 1.5TB of RAM, it'll be really good to play with large-ish datasets or spin up tons of VMs up to the point storage becomes the bottleneck.
  - znpy 3y ago
    I just saw a listing on ebay (https://www.ebay.it/itm/115853434151 https://www.ebay.it/itm/115853434151) selling a machine with 1TB ram and 4x "Xeon Platinum 8160" (24c/48t each) for ~8'000 euros. The motherboard should support up to 12TB ram. And it's a plain regular HP ProLiant server, so it's not going to give you any hassle when running Linux. Heck, some distributions (likely RHEL or SuSe) might even be certified for use on that platform. So to sum up: for people with money and wanting to play on large-ish datasets, a second hand mac pro is really a poor choice on how to spend their money. Note: i didn't even look that hard for a better offer or a better-priced listing.
    - rbanffy 3y ago
      OTOH, the HPE is much noisier - you don't want it under your desk. And the Mac still looks cooler. But yes - good luck selling a 1.5TB Mac to anyone not doing video production (and depending on the platform) for anything remotely close to retail prices. Apple probably realized they only sold approximately three fully configured machines and decided 192GB should be enough for anyone.
danpalmer 3y ago
I agree it's disingenuous to take a fully-spec'd system to make a stronger point here, it sounds silly on the surface, but as you said, those machines are purchased for one job and probably do that 24/7 for a few years until retired. I think it's a much worse state of affairs that a $6000 base Mac Pro from a few months ago, which was marketed to developers, cannot do this development. Arguably the Mac Studio was a better targeted machine for those developers, but even that only takes us back a year or so. A $6000 machine for development should last a while – even for professional use where more expense can be tolerated, it should still have 3+ years of support.

godzillabrennus 3y ago

It still hurts the resale value of the thing, makes it less useful so more likely to end up junked, and even if the original owner “got their moneys worth” out of their purchase, this is still a relatively new computer sold to pro users who Apple should support better for that kind of price tag.

sneak 3y ago
The fact that it's Intel is what hurts the resale value of the thing.
cdogl 3y ago
> makes it less useful so more likely to end up junked Only if more than a tiny sliver of the resale market for that product is for VisionOS development (a market segment that does not yet really exist).
rbanffy 3y ago
You can still ignore the fact it's a Mac and install Linux on it. With 1.5TB of RAM, it'll be really good to play with large-ish datasets or spin up tons of VMs up to the point storage becomes the bottleneck.
- znpy 3y ago
  I just saw a listing on ebay (https://www.ebay.it/itm/115853434151 https://www.ebay.it/itm/115853434151) selling a machine with 1TB ram and 4x "Xeon Platinum 8160" (24c/48t each) for ~8'000 euros. The motherboard should support up to 12TB ram. And it's a plain regular HP ProLiant server, so it's not going to give you any hassle when running Linux. Heck, some distributions (likely RHEL or SuSe) might even be certified for use on that platform. So to sum up: for people with money and wanting to play on large-ish datasets, a second hand mac pro is really a poor choice on how to spend their money. Note: i didn't even look that hard for a better offer or a better-priced listing.
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    OTOH, the HPE is much noisier - you don't want it under your desk. And the Mac still looks cooler. But yes - good luck selling a 1.5TB Mac to anyone not doing video production (and depending on the platform) for anything remotely close to retail prices. Apple probably realized they only sold approximately three fully configured machines and decided 192GB should be enough for anyone.

danpalmer 3y ago

I agree it's disingenuous to take a fully-spec'd system to make a stronger point here, it sounds silly on the surface, but as you said, those machines are purchased for one job and probably do that 24/7 for a few years until retired. I think it's a much worse state of affairs that a $6000 base Mac Pro from a few months ago, which was marketed to developers, cannot do this development. Arguably the Mac Studio was a better targeted machine for those developers, but even that only takes us back a year or so. A $6000 machine for development should last a while – even for professional use where more expense can be tolerated, it should still have 3+ years of support.