
The Mac “Pro” - ingve
https://pilky.me/the-mac-pro/
======
liquidise
I’m a developer who daily drives a stacked 2009 Mac Pro. Friends sassed me for
spending 3.5k on it in 09, “why would you ever need 32GB of ram?” Well today
it does everything I want from it except install new Mac OS’s. Ironically,
this machine can handle modern tech stacks but can’t install anything past
Sierra, which means it can’t do modern iOS development.

I highly anticipated the new Mac Pro and was generally excited with the
result. It is, in my opinion, a realignment and a positive move from Apple.
But, as the article points out, it is a piss poor value until you considerably
upgrade from the base specs. Worse still the Xeon options are a disaster
compared to newly minted threadripper parts dollar for dollar.

The Pro and the 16” have me feeling more positive about Apple than I have in
years. It’s also too little too late. I’m part way into a hackintosh build
that I hope to ride for a couple of generations to watch Apples decisions from
a safe distance. I want them to win me back, but I remain nervous that
developers represent a market segment Apple either doesn’t understand or isn’t
interested in pleasing.

~~~
bewilderbeast
Do you know about dosdude's Catalina patcher? And for previous versions? It's
unofficial, so it might not suit you at all. It allows older hardware to run
(with some caveats) newer macOS versions.

[http://dosdude1.com/catalina/](http://dosdude1.com/catalina/)

Currently I have a 2009 MacBook Pro 5.1 running High Sierra.

~~~
enev
Just an FYI, at least on previous patchers it turns off SIP. I’ve turned it
back on and haven’t had an issue, but it does display a warning on boot that
things may not work.

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mikl
Apple’s “Pro”-products are certainly moving upwards in price. Despite being a
pretty wealthy software engineer, I find myself less and less willing to pay
for the Pro upgrade. I don’t use iPhone or iPad enough to really enjoy the
benefits of “Pro”. For programming, a regular iMac is more than adequate. Only
in the MacBook line is “Pro” really worth it for most people who use the
device professionally.

Tim Cook has become a slave to the stock price, they keep increasing the
profit margin to boost their stock price, despite already being ludicrously
profitable and having billions in the bank. If that trend continues, they will
eventually price themselves out of business.

~~~
ncmncm
Apple's claims of better quality for the higher price seem plausible until you
see the growth rate of their cash hoard. They have the opportunity, every day,
to do better by the customers by spending more to make products better, but
every day they choose to pocket the extra money, instead.

What customers are left with is just price-signaling, which, while it has
value of its own in customer circles, competes with the always-hovering
sucker-signaling. Once the latter pops to the top, momentarily, all the price-
signaling for new products instantly transmutes into sucker-signaling, and
only people with older machines will have any left.

High prices _and_ sucker-signaling do not make a strong brand. Flirting with
sucker-signaling is a dangerous game.

~~~
scarface74
You realize that Apple products have costs much more than competitors for well
over 30 years? If Apple’s business model was a fad, they would have been dead
decades ago.

~~~
ncmncm
I am quite a lot older than Apple. And, probably, you.

Absurdity is new terrain for them, iMacs notwithstanding.

~~~
scarface74
Well, in the context of the discussion about Apple, what does that matter? I’m
older than Apple and I’ve owned:

\- their first mainstream computer - the Apple //e

\- one of the first “consumer Mac” - the LCII (with a //e card)

\- one of the first PPC Macs - a 6100/60 (with a 486Dx/2 card)

\- one of the first Intel Macs - the Core Duo Mac Mini.

And they’ve all been “overpriced” compared to their competitors.

As far as absurdity. The $329 10.2 inch iPad is a great value by any
measurement and the cellular Apple Watch is smaller, faster, with more
features than any of its competitors. The Series 3 Cellular at $330 is a great
deal.

The “74” in my name should give you a clue that I am not exactly a spring
chicken.

------
_bxg1
> It is this last group [software developers] which Apple has repeatedly
> stated to be its biggest Pro market.

Sorry, what? I haven't seen a shred of marketing material aiming the new Mac
Pro at programmers. Everything about it - including every piece of software
shown onscreen in a render - screams Hollywood, which by the author's own
admission, "wouldn't bat an eyelid at paying high 5 figure sums for hardware".

> even the 1.5TBs a maxed out Mac Pro can handle

The max is currently 4.0TB, with an 8.0TB option on the way. Not sure where
1.5 came from.

The value proposition on the baseline model is definitely weird, especially
how it compares to Apple's own iMac, but I think it's an extreme case for a
machine that's really intended to be specced-up. And most of the article was
spent laying out, in detail, just how bad of a deal that anomalous
configuration is, instead of discussing the more realistic ones.

~~~
nwallin
Mac is kind of not there in the developer community, unless you're talking
about shops that deal primarily in the iOS space.

One of my coworkers was given a Mac laptop by IT, not sure why. He uses it to
RDP into his Windows desktop. I've told him he should probably... fix that,
but he says he's happy with his workflow, and who am I to judge. It's also
helped us catch at least one RDP related bug in our software, which is nice.

Apple is rightfully very targeted towards the content creation crowd. It's a
very spendy bread and butter to carry around in your pocket.

~~~
coldtea
> _Mac is kind of not there in the developer community, unless you 're talking
> about shops that deal primarily in the iOS space._

Not in the West. Go to any conference, Java, Rails, JS, Rust, etc, and the
share of Mac is widely more than its average market share (like 40% vs 5-10%
of the overall market).

And when it comes to presenters and "star devs" it's way too much Mac share...

------
peapicker
In terms of relative purchase power, in 1987 you could build a "newest
processor" 80386 with a then-huge 80Mb drive in a tower case with you basic
setup and pay about $3,000 when building it yourself. According to my
inflation calculator, that's $6,182.61 in today's dollars.

In 1987, PC's Limited (later renamed Dell) 386-16 included a 16MHz Intel 80386
CPU, 1MB RAM, a 1.2MB floppy drive, a 40MB hard drive, and a monochrome video
card for $4,799.

We just tend forget how powerful and cheap Moore's law made things. In terms
of relative inflation-adjusted dollars, many of us old-timers back in the day
have already spent as much or more than Apple is asking multiple times on
'prosumer' machines when you factor in inflation.

(That said I don’t need that much machine right now and am running on a Dell
laptop at the moment...)

~~~
gdubs
To further this point, SGI Indigo II workstations were, what, $40k in mid-90s
dollars? And a fully-featured license for something like Wavefront or Alias
Power Animator was another $15-30k.

------
Ari_Ugwu
I'm not an Apple fan but the Macbook 13 8/128 is a solid buy. Competitively
priced against the other industry leaders (XPS, Surface, X1, etc).

The only reason I don't own one is because the 16/512 variant makes a silly
jump in price. I think that's where the complaint should be. Not with the Mac
"Pro".

Apple is not dumb. They sell the 8/128 variant to college kids and know that
companies will pony up the ridiculous price jump so their developers can run
VMs and local compiles on a i7 16/512.

~~~
KSS42
I don’t see a “MacBook” for sale on the Apple Store. Did you mean MacBook Air
Retina or MacBook Pro 13”?

I wouldn’t buy these until they update the keyboard.

~~~
Ari_Ugwu
Apologies. Macbook Pro 13.

I'm not an Apple person so all the funny distinctions get lost on me
sometimes.

------
throwGuardian
Driving prices down expands the market, further empowering the seller, further
driving process down,....

Apple can win at this game, all they need to do is price it 25% over the best-
quality competitor, as the market is willing to pay a premium for Apple's
brand and perceived quality. Apple's distinct advantage is not in engaging in
self cannibalizing price wars with the cheapest competitor, but being at the
intersection of "High Quality " and "Affordability"

But whoever's advising this pricing needs to be held accountable for their
input. Unless they really intend for this to be a vanity purchase, like a
Hermes bag. Just remember, none of the designer brands have market caps
comparable to mass market brands, so what is sold Apple upto?

~~~
ksec
>Apple can win at this game, all they need to do is price it 25% over the
best-quality competitor, as the market is willing to pay a premium for Apple's
brand and perceived quality.

I am willing to pay even 30%. The problem is Apple has already pass this range
and edging closer to 50%.

One reason being competitors are increasing racing to laser thin margin.

------
ptico
Author stated: “And there isn't much left to account for, just the case, the
motherboard, and the cooling. None of those come close to explaining away all
the additional cost”

Okay: \- Xeon W compatible motherboard: ~$700-750 \- E-ATX case with a good
airflow: ~$200-300 \- Quiet cpu fan (not server one): ~$70 \- Keyboard/Mouse:
~$50-100 \- OS: $199

After some simple calculation we may see _a little bit_ increased estimated
price about $3000 which is not so impressive as $1739 right?

This is a “budget” setup compared to Apple’s “luxury” components like highly
extensible custom motherboard with T2, Thunderbolt 3 etc., large, beautiful
aluminum case with an excelent airflow and so on.

Had Apple a leeway space to lower the price? Of course yes, but it’s
definitely not $4200, i’d say like $500-1000. Should Apple do this? No. I see
no reason for price drop, while competitors like Dell and Asus offers more
expensive and less featured workstations.

------
bluegreyred
I think this is Steve Job's famous truck, the vehicle that only very few
people need.[1] Admittedly this is slightly ironic given recent Tesla news
headlines.

Unlike with the iPad this device can be upgraded, repaired at home, it'll run
software purchased outside the app store, the battery won't degrade and users
may even get a whole decade of use out of it. One could argue that's all lost
potential revenue to Apple and thus priced into the machines.

Perhaps I'm wrong. The main thing that makes me doubt this theory is that the
Mac mini exists at its current price point. Come to think about it, one could
build quite the renderfarm out of these for $60k.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfJ3QxJYsw8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfJ3QxJYsw8)

------
zepto
This post would make sense if it didn’t ignore the iMac Pro.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I can't see that product lasting, the standard iMac is due a redesign, I
expect the iMac Pro to be dropped at that point.

~~~
zepto
I’m curious why? It seems to fill exactly the performance gap between the iMac
and the Mac Pro.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
It was supposed to be the replacement for the Mac Pro, once they decided to
resurrect the Mac Pro it becomes redundant.

~~~
zepto
I don’t see how you arrive at that conclusion.

I have never seen them say it was meant to be the replacement, and it fits a
gap in the price/performance space that no other machine fills.

What makes it redundant?

~~~
tonyedgecombe
>I have never seen them say it was meant to be the replacement

Well they rarely pre-announce anything.

>What makes it redundant?

It will be squeezed by the iMac from below and the Mac Pro from above.

It looks to me like they planned for the iMac Pro to be the replacement for
the Mac Pro but after the outcry from power users they changed tack. I'd put
money on it disappearing from the range in a year or two.

------
tracker1
I have absolutely no intention of every buying another Apple product. Pretty
much everything I use runs on Mac, Windows and Linux. I'm on Windows at work
and now Linux at home, and passing my old rMBP as an XMas gift.

In the end, I'm relatively happy with Linux... waiting on a R9-3950X to become
available to bump out my placeholder (R5-3600). If I really needed more, would
absolutely go ThreadRipper at this point. If I needed more ram, would probably
get a workstation class machine elsewhere, and likely Epyc in that space.

It's just hard to consider any situation where the Mac Pro is really worth it.

------
markandrewj
I mainly see a computer like this useful for things like this
[https://veertu.com/](https://veertu.com/). That said, although it has nice
specs, I do agree that it seems over priced (400$ for caster wheels as an
example).

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reiichiroh
Ive’s fetishization of looks above all led to the keyboard mess.

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PaulHoule
Comparing to other Apple products is a mistake.

Compare it to High End Desktop Windows or Linux machines because the hardware
is ~almost~ the same. (e.g. the mac has the special platform chip, but you can
get a NVIDIA GPU for a non-Mac which is much more useful if you are doing
GPGPU work)

~~~
KingMachiavelli
How would the comparison change? For the base model, the article did compare
the cost to off the shelf components and it was only ~1/3 of the Apple price.
At the high end, while the Intel tax eats into the Apple tax (price only goes
up $7000 while Intel's listed price is $7500, etc.), it still can't out
perform commodity hardware because Intel itself is in 2nd place currently.

Really there is nothing new here. Some business run MacOS only software so
they will have to pay the premium. Nearly everyone else using a Mac would be
better off, on paper, using something else but a lot of people just like Apple
computers so they too pay the price.

