I was looking at the base price for a Mac Pro and found out it was $6000. I was wondering if anybody is crazy enough to buy a $6000 computer.
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MP All Models Anybody Out There Have A Mac Pro?
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If you are asking this question you don’t need one.
Computers can cost much, much more than that.
This forum is a very small slice of the worldwide population of Mac Pro owners and there are thousands of people here who own Mac Pros. Many of us have spent more (sometimes much more) than $6000 on our systems—if not all at once, then over the life of the system on storage, RAM, graphics, and other upgrades.
$6000 is simply not that much money for a high-end computer system. Many of us who work in IT have purchased systems for work that cost well over a million dollars just for one system. (And sometimes the software alone costs that much.) If this is what the business needs to operate, this is what we buy. You can't make money without it.
For reference, when the Apple 2 was introduced in 1977, I believe the price of the base model was $1298 USD. In today's dollars adjusted for inflation, that is just under $5700.
A computer is just like any other tool. If you don't need it, it seems frivolous. But if you can't do your job without it, then it seems like a bargain.
$6000 is simply not that much money for a high-end computer system. Many of us who work in IT have purchased systems for work that cost well over a million dollars just for one system. (And sometimes the software alone costs that much.) If this is what the business needs to operate, this is what we buy. You can't make money without it.
For reference, when the Apple 2 was introduced in 1977, I believe the price of the base model was $1298 USD. In today's dollars adjusted for inflation, that is just under $5700.
A computer is just like any other tool. If you don't need it, it seems frivolous. But if you can't do your job without it, then it seems like a bargain.
Being primarily a graphic designer/web designer/photograher (with some video), I would have been perfectly content with my 2012 5,1 Mac Pro - even from a speed standpoint. After all, I made hundreds of thousands of dollars with it!
Unfortunately, software updates, Mac OS changes and workflows finally may become insurmountable. Developers even like Adobe add time-saving functionality and features to apps that require running the latest OS. I found myself between a rock and a hard place last year and was either going to be stuck in the past or upgrade. I "could" have switched to a Mac Mini or an iMac in theory, but I needed other expandability that a modular tower offered. It also did not make much since for me to buy the base $6.000 unit with the 580-GPU (same as what I already had in my 2012) and be locked to the slightly slower RAM speed - so I went with the 12-core. Even then, that was still just the beginning of the transition cost! After all the 3rd party internal and external upgrades I was at about twice the base price.
On the downside, I lost support for some of my favorite 32-bit apps and it appears lots of those developers just gave up when 64-bit was required and I have seen no replacements. I had thousands of dollars invested in Digital Juice assets and set-up time which no longer function in Catalina forward. Hundreds of CD/DVD assets that are no longer useable in Catalina. The list goes on and on. At first, I thought I would buy the 2019 Mac Pro and still keep my 2012 model to retain access to all these assets, but the greedy subscription software services limited me to (2) installations (my main computer and laptop). To install on a 3rd computer would require purchasing a second subscription! Just like DirecTV... I live alone and can only watch one TV at a time, yet they charge me by the number of TV's I have connected!!!
Bottom line is I have been fighting this fight for 30 years and it is always going to be one-step forward and two-steps back. Most of the changes today are no longer making things better (unless all you do is rip videos and just need more speed) - just changes to keep internal staff employed and make whatever you just bought obsolete. At no point in time since I started doing what in do in 1989 has "everything" just worked... not even for one day.
Unfortunately, software updates, Mac OS changes and workflows finally may become insurmountable. Developers even like Adobe add time-saving functionality and features to apps that require running the latest OS. I found myself between a rock and a hard place last year and was either going to be stuck in the past or upgrade. I "could" have switched to a Mac Mini or an iMac in theory, but I needed other expandability that a modular tower offered. It also did not make much since for me to buy the base $6.000 unit with the 580-GPU (same as what I already had in my 2012) and be locked to the slightly slower RAM speed - so I went with the 12-core. Even then, that was still just the beginning of the transition cost! After all the 3rd party internal and external upgrades I was at about twice the base price.
On the downside, I lost support for some of my favorite 32-bit apps and it appears lots of those developers just gave up when 64-bit was required and I have seen no replacements. I had thousands of dollars invested in Digital Juice assets and set-up time which no longer function in Catalina forward. Hundreds of CD/DVD assets that are no longer useable in Catalina. The list goes on and on. At first, I thought I would buy the 2019 Mac Pro and still keep my 2012 model to retain access to all these assets, but the greedy subscription software services limited me to (2) installations (my main computer and laptop). To install on a 3rd computer would require purchasing a second subscription! Just like DirecTV... I live alone and can only watch one TV at a time, yet they charge me by the number of TV's I have connected!!!
Bottom line is I have been fighting this fight for 30 years and it is always going to be one-step forward and two-steps back. Most of the changes today are no longer making things better (unless all you do is rip videos and just need more speed) - just changes to keep internal staff employed and make whatever you just bought obsolete. At no point in time since I started doing what in do in 1989 has "everything" just worked... not even for one day.
⁉️I don't believe I'm crazy - others may disagree⁉️
You do realize this is a Mac Forum and your asking the question in the Mac Pro section❓
Lou
Getting the same basic on-paper stats (cores, ram, gpu) for my cheesegrater, would be around $13.6k here. HP will do a comparable Z8 for around $13.9k, or a Z6 for $8.5k, but they won't sell you one, because they're perpetually out of stock.
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As many said, if your computer is your primary tool, then you know if you need a Mac Pro or not, for me as software engineer it has lifted a huge load from day to day tasks, I haven't had to worry about my computer getting on the way at all ever since. Best purchase I've made for my professional workflow so far 
You’ll also need to count the global sales of the 2019 new Mac Pro outside of this forum. Companies and professionals buy this machine for its improved design, better and wider expansion, speed that meets the needs of their work.
Chump change for many more than you think, eg.professionals, YouTubers, cryptocurrency, etc.
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My daughter works as the accountant for a very large organization that produces a lot of video and graphic content. She recently told me they were hiring another videographer and was told the person would need a Mac Pro and the approximate cost would be around $25,000. She called me - as I have a Mac Pro for video and graphic work at my job. She thought the price was off the scale. I just smiled and told her that was not an unreasonable price, and might even be more. If the person they are going to hire is really talented enough to effectively create the level of content they are wanting it will be money well spent.
Depends on the value of your time and/or who you work for and what kind of work you do.
Also worth pointing out that - yes, it is eye-wateringly expensive compared to most other computers.
Apple could have made an extensible, customisable machine for less that would have had utility for professionals.
But CAN YOU IMAGINE the whining on here and elsewhere about how underpowered a $2,999 MP would have been?
Many professional users (photography, music etc) can now use other Apple machines (not least the M1s) and for the 4K and 3D guys there's the MP.
Apple could have made an extensible, customisable machine for less that would have had utility for professionals.
But CAN YOU IMAGINE the whining on here and elsewhere about how underpowered a $2,999 MP would have been?
Many professional users (photography, music etc) can now use other Apple machines (not least the M1s) and for the 4K and 3D guys there's the MP.
If the Base model was $2,999. There would have been so many happier Forum members alone, let alone in the wider community.
I think a lot of people haven't seen one and don't know/care how much better the build quality is than most tech products. It's heavy, expensive and beautiful.
It's much, much better than the original cheese grater Mac Pros if that's your frame of reference.
It's much, much better than the original cheese grater Mac Pros if that's your frame of reference.
Quite a lot, actually, and most of them even run the latest version of the OS they came with (Windows 10) just fine out of the box while the cMP can't even run the latest version of the OS made by its manufacturer (mac OS) without hacks and mods.
It's certainly a nice design (although, because it was essentially a rehash of the PM G5 design, it was already getting long in the tooth when the first cMP came out), but in terms of build quality and servicability the cMP is OK but not exactly stellar. Compared to a HP z800 (which is the same generation as the cMP 4,1/5,1), the cMP is a real maintenance nightmare
Great, just what we needed, another Mac Pro price whining post. /s
For the people who need a Mac Pro 7,1, it is probably one of their lesser expensive pieces of equipment. Even if they are a photographer a new Sony camera body (Alpha 1) is more than a base Mac Pro and that doesn't even include lenses or anything else.
“probably” is doing quite a bit of heavy lifting in that sentence!
Even if your point is broadly correct I think most 7,1 price whine posts are not moaning that the price is out of reach for high end content producers but instead that it excludes a further bracket of people who are working full-time on macOS and would greatly appreciate the expandability/customisability of a tower machine.