While reading some information about the 2019 Mac Pro I had a number of thoughts which I decided to share with the forum. The first, based this article, 2019 Apple Mac Pro vs. 2013 Mac Pro: How Far Has the Hardware Come?, really shows how far behind the 2013 Mac Pro was. We all knew it but when you compare the two "side by side" as PC Mag did it really brings it home. The 2013 looks absolutely pathetic and it's difficult to believe Apple was still selling it right up until two days ago.
The second observation is that, based on this video from Apple Insider, Apple's 2019 Mac Pro Is Here: Who's Buying It & Why?, it appears the base model will sell better than, IMO, what participants of this forum (I include myself in that group) may have thought. This information was obtain by asking buyers what they were considering / purchasing.
Then there is this opinion piece Opinion: The Mac Pro isn’t overpriced, it offers something nothing else does from Digital Trends. I agree with the overall premise the 2019 Mac Pro (and I'll also include any other high cost tool) will offer great value to those who can benefit from what it has to offer. However there's one part I take issue with and I've seen similar statements made in this forum:
As someone who has worked in some very large companies (market cap > 200 billion) I have never seen a situation where they're unconcerned about costs. Sure, the CEO (along with James Cameron and Steven Spielberg) get whatever they want, cost no object. But the general worker still has to justify things which cost more than an alternative. I am working several projects where more resources would be helpful. But I have to justify those costs in order get the money and, even if I do, there's a real possibility the additional resources will be denied or a lower cost solution approved. This is not to say that "expensive" things won't justify their cost, they can and do. However this "Companies don't care about costs because it will pay for itself" blanket argument is not valid.
On to my final thought. I suspect there will be very few fully maxed out 2019 Mac Pros ever sold. Where the 2019 Mac Pro shines is its configurability. It allows one to choose an appropriate level of processing and GPU power, memory configuration, storage, etc without being forced to configure aspects of it which offer little benefit to the intended user. This has been reinforced by the configurations people have posted in the forum regarding their purchases. I see moderate CPU power configured with moderate memory configurations coupled with higher end GPU configurations. Or higher CPU power configured with moderate memory and base GPUs. It's still too early to tell how people will configure their systems but, IMO, a fully loaded (or near fully loaded) system will be rare, relatively speaking. This aligns with my second observation where people will buy the base and expand it over time. There is one situation where I see fully loaded 2019 Mac Pros being the norm: When they're considered obsolete and 1.5 GB of max RAM is viewed as small (like the 6,1 Mac Pros 64GB ceiling is today).
These are just some random thoughts I decided to share. Overall I think the 2019 Mac Pro is a nice system and I'm waiting to see if Micro Center will have them on sale (similar to what they did with the iMac Pro). I don't need one but I might pick up a base model because I have every other Mac Pro.
The second observation is that, based on this video from Apple Insider, Apple's 2019 Mac Pro Is Here: Who's Buying It & Why?, it appears the base model will sell better than, IMO, what participants of this forum (I include myself in that group) may have thought. This information was obtain by asking buyers what they were considering / purchasing.
Then there is this opinion piece Opinion: The Mac Pro isn’t overpriced, it offers something nothing else does from Digital Trends. I agree with the overall premise the 2019 Mac Pro (and I'll also include any other high cost tool) will offer great value to those who can benefit from what it has to offer. However there's one part I take issue with and I've seen similar statements made in this forum:
Does anyone really believe the likes of James Cameron or Steven Spielberg make their films on a Chromebook or MacBook Air? Of course not, they have incredibly powerful equipment at their disposal. At that level, the price is not a concern — getting your expensive, important work done is. The more powerful, the better.
As someone who has worked in some very large companies (market cap > 200 billion) I have never seen a situation where they're unconcerned about costs. Sure, the CEO (along with James Cameron and Steven Spielberg) get whatever they want, cost no object. But the general worker still has to justify things which cost more than an alternative. I am working several projects where more resources would be helpful. But I have to justify those costs in order get the money and, even if I do, there's a real possibility the additional resources will be denied or a lower cost solution approved. This is not to say that "expensive" things won't justify their cost, they can and do. However this "Companies don't care about costs because it will pay for itself" blanket argument is not valid.
On to my final thought. I suspect there will be very few fully maxed out 2019 Mac Pros ever sold. Where the 2019 Mac Pro shines is its configurability. It allows one to choose an appropriate level of processing and GPU power, memory configuration, storage, etc without being forced to configure aspects of it which offer little benefit to the intended user. This has been reinforced by the configurations people have posted in the forum regarding their purchases. I see moderate CPU power configured with moderate memory configurations coupled with higher end GPU configurations. Or higher CPU power configured with moderate memory and base GPUs. It's still too early to tell how people will configure their systems but, IMO, a fully loaded (or near fully loaded) system will be rare, relatively speaking. This aligns with my second observation where people will buy the base and expand it over time. There is one situation where I see fully loaded 2019 Mac Pros being the norm: When they're considered obsolete and 1.5 GB of max RAM is viewed as small (like the 6,1 Mac Pros 64GB ceiling is today).
These are just some random thoughts I decided to share. Overall I think the 2019 Mac Pro is a nice system and I'm waiting to see if Micro Center will have them on sale (similar to what they did with the iMac Pro). I don't need one but I might pick up a base model because I have every other Mac Pro.
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