8 ms·

Testing the ‘Apple tax’

40 points by anu_gupta 13y ago

mpweiher 13y ago
This has been a common observation since time memorial: equivalent Mac systems tend to be competitive. Apple just doesn't compete in the very low end of the market at all.
- kubiiii 13y ago
  Common observation also : if you build a car from scratch using parts you'll end up with a much higher price. If a competitor builds a similar PC with the same sales volume, enabling the same bulk discount, the comparison would be valid.
  - _frog 13y ago
    Although you could also argue that building a PC from scratch is a far less exceptional case than building a car.
  - walshemj 13y ago
    Depends in performance terms a kit car like a lotus 7 will out perform a lot of performance cars for less cash as would say a well sorted and stepped on 427 kit car when compared to a real 60's vintage 427. Ok you might not have an air con, cupholders or a cd player but as MR Clarkson says "more powwerrrrrr"
  - mpweiher 13y ago
    Another common observation: things that apply to cars don't necessarily apply to computers, where build-your-own has often been the most economical option. Or as we say in German: Nur weil's hinkt ist's noch lange kein Vergleich :-)
- maaaats 13y ago
  > equivalent Mac systems tend to be competitive. This article only shows that equal Mac systems are competitive (cheaper). An equivalent, however, would be something completely different. No need to buy that exact GPU they have, for instance, when you could get equivalent performance for many thousands dollars less.
  - mpweiher 13y ago
    Right, cheaper is much stronger than just competitive. The Mac configurations are $2000 and $1000 cheaper on the high and low ends respectively. That leaves a lot of room for substituting components on the other side of the comparison, and you then have to add labor, warranty protection, assurance of compatibility for the whole (through system upgrades) and a really cool design and compact form factor. If you value all of those things, the value is pretty awesome, but even if you value none of them it is still competitive. (Competitive does not mean "unconditionally better/cheaper" etc. It just means "able to compete successfully").
lmm 13y ago
If you match exactly the specs of an apple system the price tends to be competitive; the reason there's a "tax" is the apple model range is a lot smaller. If you choose the specs to start with (e.g. the system requirements for some game), and then compare the cheapest mac you can get with those specs with the cheapest PC you can get with those specs, that's when a price difference tends to be visible.
lucaspiller 13y ago
If you compare an Asus Zenbook to a equivalently specced Macbook Air, they actually come out at pretty much the same price.
- tbrock 13y ago
  Yes but the MacBook will actually last. I have a co-worker that has a Zenbook and while the hardware specifications are nice it has garbage build quality. When will there be another great PC hardware manufacturer? I've wondered if one would come along or if the barriers to entry and consumer preferences would simply never allow it.
  - trimbo 13y ago
    > When will there be another great PC hardware manufacturer? No joke! I think this is the most disappointing thing about Surface. Microsoft is now in the hardware market. They could have put that kind of build quality into an actual ultrabook, but instead focused on this weird design for Windows 8.
  - lucaspiller 13y ago
    > Yes but the MacBook will actually last. Exactly. You may end up saving $50, but why bother when you can get something of a lot higher quality.
adamnemecek 13y ago
For the heck of it, I did the breakdown CPU: $2,789 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116925 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116...) RAM: I could not find the identical type but it seems like it's in the ballpark of ~$800 given the ones I found were either a tad slower or came in 8 pieces instead of 4 (but then they were faster). GPU: It seems like the exact GPU was introduced only for Mac Pro so it does not seem like you can buy it normally. But let's say ~$700. HDD: ~$500-$600 http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-adapter-Internal-CT960M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RGL6 http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-adapter-Internal-CT96... Motherboard: Seems like best LGA 2011 motherboards are in the the ~$500 range. Total: ~$5300 (given you'd probably spend a couple more hundred on a power supply, case etc). Note that when I was estimating the prices, I was generally estimating higher than lower. So I'd really like to see their cost breakdown of the 11k they mentioned.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- gabemart 13y ago
  > So I'd really like to see their cost breakdown of the 11k they mentioned. http://www.futurelooks.com/new-apple-mac-pro-can-build-better-cheaper-pc-diy-style/ http://www.futurelooks.com/new-apple-mac-pro-can-build-bette... they put the cost of the GPUs at ~$7k
  - adamnemecek 13y ago
    > These graphics cards currently are available for $3,400.31 US a piece. Although on the PC side, if you are using the system for Adobe Creative Suite and using Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, the NVIDIA Quadro K5000′s for $1799.99 US a piece might be a better performance option since CUDA implementation is a little more mature than OpenCL in those apps. You have no choice with the Mac Pro because it’s AMD or bust. Lolwut?
    - rickyc091 13y ago
      Right now you can't take advantage of Mac's GPU since many apps aren't compatible with the drivers, that's what he's probably referring to. http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/23/5234574/apple-mac-pro-review-2013 http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/23/5234574/apple-mac-pro-rev... http://forums.adobe.com/message/5081640 http://forums.adobe.com/message/5081640
ZoFreX 13y ago
This copy-paste job adds nothing to the original article: http://bgr.com/2013/12/26/mac-pro-windows-diy-cost/ http://bgr.com/2013/12/26/mac-pro-windows-diy-cost/ Edit: And the article they copied from is a shorter write-up of the actual original: http://www.futurelooks.com/new-apple-mac-pro-can-build-better-cheaper-pc-diy-style/ http://www.futurelooks.com/new-apple-mac-pro-can-build-bette...
yalogin 13y ago
Apple has unfairly gotten this rep that their machines are expensive when in fact equivalent windows systems are in fact more expensive. I realized this when I was searching for a display and naturally thought that I can find a display comparable to the Apple one from some other manufacturers at a much steeper discount. But found that most do not make equivalent displays or when they do (Dell) its priced higher than Apple's. I have found the same thing when it comes to Mac Mini's as well. For the form factor there is nothing on the market that is even comparable. Things might have changed now (I hope) have not checked.
cromwellian 13y ago
The only problem with these comparisons is that the majority of people do not need ECC memory nor "workstation" GPUs which are in fact, inferior to their gaming counterparts on many workloads and mostly exist as expensive dongles for CAD applications. Really, the Mac Pro sports a set of $3000+ "workstation" class FirePro W9000's, which are egregiously marked up versions of last generation GPUs. For the price of a single D700 in the Mac Pro you could buy 3+ Radeon 290X's. A PC user building a high end system would not opt for Xeon CPUs, ECC RAM, and workstation GPUs. They'd put in top of the line consumer CPUs with liquid cooling, top-end current generation NVidia or AMD cards, all for a fraction of the cost. And in an Apples-to-Oranges comparison on major benchmarks, there's be practically zero different in performance, the PC would whup the ass of the "workstation" class system in games, and some DCC apps might perform slightly worse. To show what a rip off these workstation cards are, there used to be a jumper hack for NVidia cards that would turn a consumer GPU into a "Quadro" workstation GPU, which would allow the workstation class OpenGL drivers to work, and the result was no different in benchmarks. That is, the "workstation GPU" turns out to be a HW dongle to allow OpenGL drivers tuned for triangle throughput to run. The exception is if you are perhaps running long running simulations. ECC could be useful there. But for Final Cut Pro? The ECC and workstation GPUs are overkill. There isn't an Apple tax, there is an "Intel tax" and "workstation tax" on unneeded/overkill HW that delivers marginal returns to performance for enormous extra cost. I love the Mac Pro's design, I just wish it came in non-Xeon/non-FirePro GPU versions.
- stormbrew 13y ago
  Yep. A lot of this was true of the old Mac Pro as well. I didn't know a lot of people who had even those, but those who did had absolutely no need for ECC RAM or server Xeons. Or for that matter a case made of steel. The Apple tax on these things isn't so much in the price as in selling you things you don't actually need with no way to customize them to your needs. Note that I don't disagree that Apple makes probably the best overall laptops on the market. But on the desktop, both low and high end, their products are almost pure gouge.
  - dspillett 13y ago
    > absolutely no need for ECC RAM or server Xeons, where it's not so much about performance as longevity and stability ECC RAM has nothing to do with performance, it is in fact for stability. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory
jlawer 13y ago
While I think the Mac Pro is a nice bit of kit, it feel heavily specialised for video editing, post production and 3D work with a quiet profile. But if your speccing competing kit, why wouldn't you build a 'better' product, rather then trying to find the exact parts. Your never going to build an off the shelf system with the same parts, make it quieter and keep it under budget when apple is pumping them off the production line. Why would you spec a wintel system with a single 12 core proc instead of 2x hex (or oct) core procs?!?!? The 12 core part is rare and expensive, compared to the commodity 6 core part. Why would a workstation grade machine at this point in time not have a mirrored disk array? Why would you not have either 10gbit or quad 1gbit ethernet. Bond these up and connect to fast NAS / SAN storage for storage. Alternatively use a SAS connector and directly connect to a JBOD. A dual proc server board might even have 14 SAS/SATA ports to allow you to have a nice local storage array running RAID10/5/6. An Intel Xeon E5-2630v2 (hex core, 2.6ghz) can be had for $792 AUD a pop. Not to mention that you can put hundreds of GB of ECC memory in a Dual proc Xeon board. Some people will value size over performance/price and think that such a machine will never be a replacement. I think on the other hand having a RAIDed system disk and much more ram is more valuable for my workloads. While they will sell thousands of them, I really don't see the value outside a small number of applications optimised for OSX. For these workloads the cost is insignificant compared to the productivity. Its disappointing for those hoping Apple might finally build a decent general purpose workstation, but with such limited upgradability I can't see these being used for a lot of the applications that people considered the previous mac pro for.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- walshemj 13y ago
  Yes that is what I thought if your building a high end DIY mac pro replacement why would you not go for a dual processor system based around something like a SR2 water cooled board.
greenwalls 13y ago
Isn't the new Mac Pro built in the USA? It seems like it would be even less expensive if it was built in China.
mjp94 13y ago
Even if there was an apparent 'Apple tax' on the new Mac Pros, as long it wasn't too much, I wouldn't mind. They make great hardware and software, and sometimes it's worth it to pay a little bit extra to get this. After all, we don't go around testing the Apple tax on the iPhone, and comparing it to other smart phones, since the iPhone is one of the more expensive phones on the market.
interpol_p 13y ago
The original article states that the Windows machine is without any Thunderbolt 2 connectivity. If you wanted to match the hardware more closely, you would have to add the price of fairly expensive Thunderbolt 2 add-on cards. I'm not even sure you could match the 6x Thunderbolt 2 ports and 4x USB 3 ports available on the Mac Pro with a DIY PC at this time. The Mac Pro also has dual gigabit ethernet and built-in speaker, which this comparison does not seem to take into account.
bane 13y ago
Funny, I ran a similar comparison and came up with ~$9000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6937203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6937203 I didn't include ECC RAM which might up the price a bit. My conclusion was that there really wasn't much of an Apple tax anymore. However, I think the system is spec'd wrong. In same ways it's spec'd out like a server, in others like a high-end CAD workstation...but it's not really suitable for the former and the market for the latter is really small. As a server the overly expensive video is completely unnecessary. And the form factor is all wrong anyways. For gaming, music production, video editing, photo work, etc. the workstation-class video parts, CPU and expensive RAM aren't useful and the storage is too small anyways. Nobody targeting either class of user would spec a system out like this. So who is this targeted at? The more stationary rMBP users who do lots of virtualization and want more RAM with the occasional CAD work and/or bitcoin mining? I dunno, this product line feels weird. I just built a pretty decent system that I'm expecting to last for the next 4-5 years and spent well under $2k. Core i7-4770K Nvidia GTX680 32GB RAM 512GB SSD 4TB HD Blue Ray writer + some other odds and ends and they tossed in 3 free brand new games. However, I would have liked to have it running with fewer fans, in a smaller case (half the size of my current mid-tower would have been nice). Had I gone with 2x the RAM and a pair of the top of the line video card I would have still been around the cost of the lowest end Mac Pro at better day-to-day performance. But then again, my case is huge compared to this thing. Hell, I think my CPU cooling setup alone is about the same size as a Mac Pro. I think the good thing is that at least the small size and high power at least has the tech world thinking and talking again, about part sizes and shapes, airflow, heat management etc. I predict some fast followers in the PC market at various specs and similarly sized form factors, including the huge open gap in the Apple lineup. Maybe my next system build in 5 years will be in a tube shaped case with a single fan and much smaller parts?
patrickg_zill 13y ago
Typical fanboi-ism that is being repeated. There are 2 different lines of AMD GPUs that use the same GPU parts: FirePro Wxxxx and Radeon xxxx / R7 or R9 xxx. For instance, the W9000 uses the same GPU as the Radeon HD 7970 Ghz Edition. This card sells for a retail price of maybe $500. Even if it is instead based on the 7990, that card is not $3K either. The difference between the W9000 and the Radeon is that the RAM on the card is ECC on the FirePro and not ECC on the Radeon series... and nowhere that I can see, does Apple say that the DDR5 RAM on the graphics card is ECC; only that the main RAM for the CPU is ECC. See this for codenames of the various GPUs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_HD_7000_Series#Southern_Islands_.28HD_7xxx.29_Series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_HD_7000_Series#Southern_... . Look up the equivalent retail prices of the cards mentioned, on the Wiki page... note that currently the prices are higher at retail because of the GPU shortage due to people buying these for Litecoin / Dogecoin mining. See that the Apple fanbois in their "I Want to Believe" behavior don't understand what is going on...
- gte910h 13y ago
  >note that currently the prices are higher at retail because of the GPU shortage due to people buying these for Litecoin / Dogecoin mining. And that price issue doesn't effect apple at all, right?
  - patrickg_zill 13y ago
    Probably not, given the nature of long-term OEM agreements; the shortage is just due to early supply ramp-ups going into the Christmas season (the R9 series cards were press-released in late September 2013). Apple has been an ATI customer for 10+ years IIRC .

40 points by anu_gupta 13y ago

This has been a common observation since time memorial: equivalent Mac systems tend to be competitive. Apple just doesn't compete in the very low end of the market at all.

kubiiii 13y ago
Common observation also : if you build a car from scratch using parts you'll end up with a much higher price. If a competitor builds a similar PC with the same sales volume, enabling the same bulk discount, the comparison would be valid.
- _frog 13y ago
  Although you could also argue that building a PC from scratch is a far less exceptional case than building a car.
- walshemj 13y ago
  Depends in performance terms a kit car like a lotus 7 will out perform a lot of performance cars for less cash as would say a well sorted and stepped on 427 kit car when compared to a real 60's vintage 427. Ok you might not have an air con, cupholders or a cd player but as MR Clarkson says "more powwerrrrrr"
- mpweiher 13y ago
  Another common observation: things that apply to cars don't necessarily apply to computers, where build-your-own has often been the most economical option. Or as we say in German: Nur weil's hinkt ist's noch lange kein Vergleich :-)
maaaats 13y ago
> equivalent Mac systems tend to be competitive. This article only shows that equal Mac systems are competitive (cheaper). An equivalent, however, would be something completely different. No need to buy that exact GPU they have, for instance, when you could get equivalent performance for many thousands dollars less.
- mpweiher 13y ago
  Right, cheaper is much stronger than just competitive. The Mac configurations are $2000 and $1000 cheaper on the high and low ends respectively. That leaves a lot of room for substituting components on the other side of the comparison, and you then have to add labor, warranty protection, assurance of compatibility for the whole (through system upgrades) and a really cool design and compact form factor. If you value all of those things, the value is pretty awesome, but even if you value none of them it is still competitive. (Competitive does not mean "unconditionally better/cheaper" etc. It just means "able to compete successfully").

lmm 13y ago

If you match exactly the specs of an apple system the price tends to be competitive; the reason there's a "tax" is the apple model range is a lot smaller. If you choose the specs to start with (e.g. the system requirements for some game), and then compare the cheapest mac you can get with those specs with the cheapest PC you can get with those specs, that's when a price difference tends to be visible.

lucaspiller 13y ago

If you compare an Asus Zenbook to a equivalently specced Macbook Air, they actually come out at pretty much the same price.

tbrock 13y ago
Yes but the MacBook will actually last. I have a co-worker that has a Zenbook and while the hardware specifications are nice it has garbage build quality. When will there be another great PC hardware manufacturer? I've wondered if one would come along or if the barriers to entry and consumer preferences would simply never allow it.
- trimbo 13y ago
  > When will there be another great PC hardware manufacturer? No joke! I think this is the most disappointing thing about Surface. Microsoft is now in the hardware market. They could have put that kind of build quality into an actual ultrabook, but instead focused on this weird design for Windows 8.
- lucaspiller 13y ago
  > Yes but the MacBook will actually last. Exactly. You may end up saving $50, but why bother when you can get something of a lot higher quality.

adamnemecek 13y ago

For the heck of it, I did the breakdown CPU: $2,789 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116925 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116...) RAM: I could not find the identical type but it seems like it's in the ballpark of ~$800 given the ones I found were either a tad slower or came in 8 pieces instead of 4 (but then they were faster). GPU: It seems like the exact GPU was introduced only for Mac Pro so it does not seem like you can buy it normally. But let's say ~$700. HDD: ~$500-$600 http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-adapter-Internal-CT960M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RGL6 http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-adapter-Internal-CT96... Motherboard: Seems like best LGA 2011 motherboards are in the the ~$500 range. Total: ~$5300 (given you'd probably spend a couple more hundred on a power supply, case etc). Note that when I was estimating the prices, I was generally estimating higher than lower. So I'd really like to see their cost breakdown of the 11k they mentioned.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
gabemart 13y ago
> So I'd really like to see their cost breakdown of the 11k they mentioned. http://www.futurelooks.com/new-apple-mac-pro-can-build-better-cheaper-pc-diy-style/ http://www.futurelooks.com/new-apple-mac-pro-can-build-bette... they put the cost of the GPUs at ~$7k
- adamnemecek 13y ago
  > These graphics cards currently are available for $3,400.31 US a piece. Although on the PC side, if you are using the system for Adobe Creative Suite and using Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, the NVIDIA Quadro K5000′s for $1799.99 US a piece might be a better performance option since CUDA implementation is a little more mature than OpenCL in those apps. You have no choice with the Mac Pro because it’s AMD or bust. Lolwut?
  - rickyc091 13y ago
    Right now you can't take advantage of Mac's GPU since many apps aren't compatible with the drivers, that's what he's probably referring to. http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/23/5234574/apple-mac-pro-review-2013 http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/23/5234574/apple-mac-pro-rev... http://forums.adobe.com/message/5081640 http://forums.adobe.com/message/5081640

ZoFreX 13y ago

This copy-paste job adds nothing to the original article: http://bgr.com/2013/12/26/mac-pro-windows-diy-cost/ http://bgr.com/2013/12/26/mac-pro-windows-diy-cost/ Edit: And the article they copied from is a shorter write-up of the actual original: http://www.futurelooks.com/new-apple-mac-pro-can-build-better-cheaper-pc-diy-style/ http://www.futurelooks.com/new-apple-mac-pro-can-build-bette...

yalogin 13y ago

Apple has unfairly gotten this rep that their machines are expensive when in fact equivalent windows systems are in fact more expensive. I realized this when I was searching for a display and naturally thought that I can find a display comparable to the Apple one from some other manufacturers at a much steeper discount. But found that most do not make equivalent displays or when they do (Dell) its priced higher than Apple's. I have found the same thing when it comes to Mac Mini's as well. For the form factor there is nothing on the market that is even comparable. Things might have changed now (I hope) have not checked.

cromwellian 13y ago

The only problem with these comparisons is that the majority of people do not need ECC memory nor "workstation" GPUs which are in fact, inferior to their gaming counterparts on many workloads and mostly exist as expensive dongles for CAD applications. Really, the Mac Pro sports a set of $3000+ "workstation" class FirePro W9000's, which are egregiously marked up versions of last generation GPUs. For the price of a single D700 in the Mac Pro you could buy 3+ Radeon 290X's. A PC user building a high end system would not opt for Xeon CPUs, ECC RAM, and workstation GPUs. They'd put in top of the line consumer CPUs with liquid cooling, top-end current generation NVidia or AMD cards, all for a fraction of the cost. And in an Apples-to-Oranges comparison on major benchmarks, there's be practically zero different in performance, the PC would whup the ass of the "workstation" class system in games, and some DCC apps might perform slightly worse. To show what a rip off these workstation cards are, there used to be a jumper hack for NVidia cards that would turn a consumer GPU into a "Quadro" workstation GPU, which would allow the workstation class OpenGL drivers to work, and the result was no different in benchmarks. That is, the "workstation GPU" turns out to be a HW dongle to allow OpenGL drivers tuned for triangle throughput to run. The exception is if you are perhaps running long running simulations. ECC could be useful there. But for Final Cut Pro? The ECC and workstation GPUs are overkill. There isn't an Apple tax, there is an "Intel tax" and "workstation tax" on unneeded/overkill HW that delivers marginal returns to performance for enormous extra cost. I love the Mac Pro's design, I just wish it came in non-Xeon/non-FirePro GPU versions.

stormbrew 13y ago
Yep. A lot of this was true of the old Mac Pro as well. I didn't know a lot of people who had even those, but those who did had absolutely no need for ECC RAM or server Xeons. Or for that matter a case made of steel. The Apple tax on these things isn't so much in the price as in selling you things you don't actually need with no way to customize them to your needs. Note that I don't disagree that Apple makes probably the best overall laptops on the market. But on the desktop, both low and high end, their products are almost pure gouge.
- dspillett 13y ago
  > absolutely no need for ECC RAM or server Xeons, where it's not so much about performance as longevity and stability ECC RAM has nothing to do with performance, it is in fact for stability. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory

jlawer 13y ago

While I think the Mac Pro is a nice bit of kit, it feel heavily specialised for video editing, post production and 3D work with a quiet profile. But if your speccing competing kit, why wouldn't you build a 'better' product, rather then trying to find the exact parts. Your never going to build an off the shelf system with the same parts, make it quieter and keep it under budget when apple is pumping them off the production line. Why would you spec a wintel system with a single 12 core proc instead of 2x hex (or oct) core procs?!?!? The 12 core part is rare and expensive, compared to the commodity 6 core part. Why would a workstation grade machine at this point in time not have a mirrored disk array? Why would you not have either 10gbit or quad 1gbit ethernet. Bond these up and connect to fast NAS / SAN storage for storage. Alternatively use a SAS connector and directly connect to a JBOD. A dual proc server board might even have 14 SAS/SATA ports to allow you to have a nice local storage array running RAID10/5/6. An Intel Xeon E5-2630v2 (hex core, 2.6ghz) can be had for $792 AUD a pop. Not to mention that you can put hundreds of GB of ECC memory in a Dual proc Xeon board. Some people will value size over performance/price and think that such a machine will never be a replacement. I think on the other hand having a RAIDed system disk and much more ram is more valuable for my workloads. While they will sell thousands of them, I really don't see the value outside a small number of applications optimised for OSX. For these workloads the cost is insignificant compared to the productivity. Its disappointing for those hoping Apple might finally build a decent general purpose workstation, but with such limited upgradability I can't see these being used for a lot of the applications that people considered the previous mac pro for.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
walshemj 13y ago
Yes that is what I thought if your building a high end DIY mac pro replacement why would you not go for a dual processor system based around something like a SR2 water cooled board.

greenwalls 13y ago

Isn't the new Mac Pro built in the USA? It seems like it would be even less expensive if it was built in China.

mjp94 13y ago

Even if there was an apparent 'Apple tax' on the new Mac Pros, as long it wasn't too much, I wouldn't mind. They make great hardware and software, and sometimes it's worth it to pay a little bit extra to get this. After all, we don't go around testing the Apple tax on the iPhone, and comparing it to other smart phones, since the iPhone is one of the more expensive phones on the market.

interpol_p 13y ago

The original article states that the Windows machine is without any Thunderbolt 2 connectivity. If you wanted to match the hardware more closely, you would have to add the price of fairly expensive Thunderbolt 2 add-on cards. I'm not even sure you could match the 6x Thunderbolt 2 ports and 4x USB 3 ports available on the Mac Pro with a DIY PC at this time. The Mac Pro also has dual gigabit ethernet and built-in speaker, which this comparison does not seem to take into account.

bane 13y ago

Funny, I ran a similar comparison and came up with ~$9000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6937203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6937203 I didn't include ECC RAM which might up the price a bit. My conclusion was that there really wasn't much of an Apple tax anymore. However, I think the system is spec'd wrong. In same ways it's spec'd out like a server, in others like a high-end CAD workstation...but it's not really suitable for the former and the market for the latter is really small. As a server the overly expensive video is completely unnecessary. And the form factor is all wrong anyways. For gaming, music production, video editing, photo work, etc. the workstation-class video parts, CPU and expensive RAM aren't useful and the storage is too small anyways. Nobody targeting either class of user would spec a system out like this. So who is this targeted at? The more stationary rMBP users who do lots of virtualization and want more RAM with the occasional CAD work and/or bitcoin mining? I dunno, this product line feels weird. I just built a pretty decent system that I'm expecting to last for the next 4-5 years and spent well under $2k. Core i7-4770K Nvidia GTX680 32GB RAM 512GB SSD 4TB HD Blue Ray writer + some other odds and ends and they tossed in 3 free brand new games. However, I would have liked to have it running with fewer fans, in a smaller case (half the size of my current mid-tower would have been nice). Had I gone with 2x the RAM and a pair of the top of the line video card I would have still been around the cost of the lowest end Mac Pro at better day-to-day performance. But then again, my case is huge compared to this thing. Hell, I think my CPU cooling setup alone is about the same size as a Mac Pro. I think the good thing is that at least the small size and high power at least has the tech world thinking and talking again, about part sizes and shapes, airflow, heat management etc. I predict some fast followers in the PC market at various specs and similarly sized form factors, including the huge open gap in the Apple lineup. Maybe my next system build in 5 years will be in a tube shaped case with a single fan and much smaller parts?

patrickg_zill 13y ago

Typical fanboi-ism that is being repeated. There are 2 different lines of AMD GPUs that use the same GPU parts: FirePro Wxxxx and Radeon xxxx / R7 or R9 xxx. For instance, the W9000 uses the same GPU as the Radeon HD 7970 Ghz Edition. This card sells for a retail price of maybe $500. Even if it is instead based on the 7990, that card is not $3K either. The difference between the W9000 and the Radeon is that the RAM on the card is ECC on the FirePro and not ECC on the Radeon series... and nowhere that I can see, does Apple say that the DDR5 RAM on the graphics card is ECC; only that the main RAM for the CPU is ECC. See this for codenames of the various GPUs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_HD_7000_Series#Southern_Islands_.28HD_7xxx.29_Series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_HD_7000_Series#Southern_... . Look up the equivalent retail prices of the cards mentioned, on the Wiki page... note that currently the prices are higher at retail because of the GPU shortage due to people buying these for Litecoin / Dogecoin mining. See that the Apple fanbois in their "I Want to Believe" behavior don't understand what is going on...

gte910h 13y ago
>note that currently the prices are higher at retail because of the GPU shortage due to people buying these for Litecoin / Dogecoin mining. And that price issue doesn't effect apple at all, right?
- patrickg_zill 13y ago
  Probably not, given the nature of long-term OEM agreements; the shortage is just due to early supply ramp-ups going into the Christmas season (the R9 series cards were press-released in late September 2013). Apple has been an ATI customer for 10+ years IIRC .