[warning: I've been awake for 36 hours due to traveling so this might not make sense, possibly overly sentimental]
[edit: after a nap, I realized the obscene markup even over PC components]
I am very proud to be one of the "professionals" that said mean things about the Trash Can Mac Pro that apparently inspired them to add back in PCIe slots. I found it very out of character and frankly surprising that it was actually consumer feedback that not only inspired them to do a total 180 but also to admit it.
I remember October of 2013 this forum was lit-up with people ranting about how the Gen 2 Thunderbolt was going to make it the most expandable mac ever -- that the low cost PCIe cards we'd been using for years would be replaced with tons of daisy-chained boxes with individual power bricks. Not only would it be EVEN BETTER, but the prices of these little boxes would drop like a rock.... yeah that never happened, and the performance drops were intolerable with eGPU over TB2 (just as predicted) and the software support took 4 years to materialize.
The cost comparison with PCs running FirePro W9000's was totally superior, even though the GPUs only advantage over the consumer 7970 (released in 2011 for 1/5 the cost) was in software that did not then and has never since run on Mac OS X. Not to mention it was FirePro costs with consumer-level customer service (ATI offered on site, same-day service for many W9000 customers with several year warranties, compared with AppleCare garbage).
At least some users could pretend they were getting a good deal, even given that Apple only offered options replete with features they would never and could never use.
So now onto the cheesegrater 2.0: Exactly what the trash-can haters like me asked for... Except now they don't even pretend to charge a similar amount to the PC hardware. [strikethrough]I haven't done a price comparison with a similar PC -- I'm sure it's very similar.[/strikethrough] Apple has chosen to do what we all knew they would do: Offer a computer so far apart from everything in their line that nobody is going to compare it to anything except maybe the iMac Pro.
[Edit: after actually looking at a couple of price breakdowns at least on the base model (the only price we have), this thing is nearly double the price of an equivalent PC in terms of internal specs.]
Did you really think they were going to plop an i7 in there and sell it for $1000 ?? What about a Threadripper or Ryzen? That's not how Apple plays the game. For these products and others, Apple buys horrible price/performance PC hardware which is only necessary for very specific workloads (or isn't necessary at all, like using non-standard PCIe storage). Don't need 10GBe? Too bad, a $10 NIC turns to $150 x 2. Don't need ECC? Too bad, you're going to get a mobo/CPU that supports it. Do CPU-centric but not GPU-centric workloads and just need enough GPU to run a 4k display? Tough bananas. 16GB RAM is fine for now, given the RAM cartels' price fixing? You probably don't even wear sunglasses while using your computer either, loser. SATA SSDs are all you need? Where's your sense of adventure?
The 2006 Mac Pro retailed for $2,500 and was a freaking bargain -- that $3200 roughly in todays dollars. It has been morphing into overpriced (for people who don't need this specific feature set) cash-shredders ever since.
Congrats Apple, this looks like a very high-quality product for a very specific population. You listened and delivered in the only way a reasonable person would have expected you to... Except now the Apple tax isn't just with poor price/performance hardware, now you're just straight-up dumping a Johnny Ives tax on top. This is a niche within a niche within a niche (niche-ception?) that might have to rely on sex-appeal over substance.
Sadly though, my i7 Windows PC with a GeForce card you forced me to switch to in 2013 (with incremental upgrades over time) is still going strong for my use-case, and this isn't getting me to switch back. Not to mention the fact that even if I were in the market for this hardware, your poor support and massive markup is going to be a huge turn off.
However, It is even more comically similar to a cheese-grater now. As a recovering troll I sincerely hope was intentional.
[edit: after a nap, I realized the obscene markup even over PC components]
I am very proud to be one of the "professionals" that said mean things about the Trash Can Mac Pro that apparently inspired them to add back in PCIe slots. I found it very out of character and frankly surprising that it was actually consumer feedback that not only inspired them to do a total 180 but also to admit it.
I remember October of 2013 this forum was lit-up with people ranting about how the Gen 2 Thunderbolt was going to make it the most expandable mac ever -- that the low cost PCIe cards we'd been using for years would be replaced with tons of daisy-chained boxes with individual power bricks. Not only would it be EVEN BETTER, but the prices of these little boxes would drop like a rock.... yeah that never happened, and the performance drops were intolerable with eGPU over TB2 (just as predicted) and the software support took 4 years to materialize.
The cost comparison with PCs running FirePro W9000's was totally superior, even though the GPUs only advantage over the consumer 7970 (released in 2011 for 1/5 the cost) was in software that did not then and has never since run on Mac OS X. Not to mention it was FirePro costs with consumer-level customer service (ATI offered on site, same-day service for many W9000 customers with several year warranties, compared with AppleCare garbage).
At least some users could pretend they were getting a good deal, even given that Apple only offered options replete with features they would never and could never use.
So now onto the cheesegrater 2.0: Exactly what the trash-can haters like me asked for... Except now they don't even pretend to charge a similar amount to the PC hardware. [strikethrough]I haven't done a price comparison with a similar PC -- I'm sure it's very similar.[/strikethrough] Apple has chosen to do what we all knew they would do: Offer a computer so far apart from everything in their line that nobody is going to compare it to anything except maybe the iMac Pro.
[Edit: after actually looking at a couple of price breakdowns at least on the base model (the only price we have), this thing is nearly double the price of an equivalent PC in terms of internal specs.]
Did you really think they were going to plop an i7 in there and sell it for $1000 ?? What about a Threadripper or Ryzen? That's not how Apple plays the game. For these products and others, Apple buys horrible price/performance PC hardware which is only necessary for very specific workloads (or isn't necessary at all, like using non-standard PCIe storage). Don't need 10GBe? Too bad, a $10 NIC turns to $150 x 2. Don't need ECC? Too bad, you're going to get a mobo/CPU that supports it. Do CPU-centric but not GPU-centric workloads and just need enough GPU to run a 4k display? Tough bananas. 16GB RAM is fine for now, given the RAM cartels' price fixing? You probably don't even wear sunglasses while using your computer either, loser. SATA SSDs are all you need? Where's your sense of adventure?
The 2006 Mac Pro retailed for $2,500 and was a freaking bargain -- that $3200 roughly in todays dollars. It has been morphing into overpriced (for people who don't need this specific feature set) cash-shredders ever since.
Congrats Apple, this looks like a very high-quality product for a very specific population. You listened and delivered in the only way a reasonable person would have expected you to... Except now the Apple tax isn't just with poor price/performance hardware, now you're just straight-up dumping a Johnny Ives tax on top. This is a niche within a niche within a niche (niche-ception?) that might have to rely on sex-appeal over substance.
Sadly though, my i7 Windows PC with a GeForce card you forced me to switch to in 2013 (with incremental upgrades over time) is still going strong for my use-case, and this isn't getting me to switch back. Not to mention the fact that even if I were in the market for this hardware, your poor support and massive markup is going to be a huge turn off.
However, It is even more comically similar to a cheese-grater now. As a recovering troll I sincerely hope was intentional.
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