
Apple Mac Pro Available to Buy - FireBeyond
https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro
======
woah
Why do people get so angry about Apple products? I wouldn't buy one, but
apparently someone does, and I'm guessing they make enough money using them
that they can afford to have the best tools. I never see people on here
ranting about construction companies who buy Ford F-250's instead of Toyota
Tacomas. Seems like a bizarre obsession, blowing blood vessels about things
other people buy.

~~~
grecy
I agree 100%. Consumerism has reached such a strange state that people get
genuinely offended when a company releases a product that doesn't _perfectly_
fit their needs and price point, even if said company has a different product
that does! It's utterly absurd.

I think it's because people are realizing they have sold their entire lives to
their jobs and they get emotionally overwrought when they realize a company
they have some products from also sells products they will never be able to
afford. I think it's the pain involved in realizing they didn't get enough
money for the life they sold.

~~~
_ph_
The point is, Apple doesn't. They already had a big gap in the area of a
"desktop mac". There was a large unoccupied space between the Mini and the Pro
- and while they finally refreshed the Mac Pro, they moved it to a new price
range, creating an even larger gap.

~~~
grecy
The iMac Pro clearly fits the needs of 99.9% of people who need some
horsepower in their work - video editing, pro photographers and coders who
want a ton of VMs or whatever.

I'd be interested to hear of a workload that is unsuitable for the iMac Pro
that _is_ suitable for the new Mac Pro, but for which you think a $5k machine
should be capable of doing. Then let me know what $5k machine exists on the
market you can buy that can do that workload.

~~~
_ph_
Basically any desktop machine with a high end desktop processor and some
decent graphics card. With the iMac pro you are even limited to buying RAM
with the machine. And with a desktop, you get to choose your graphics card.

~~~
saagarjha
> With the iMac pro you are even limited to buying RAM with the machine.

You can upgrade the RAM after purchase by going to an authorized repair store,
or by reading a couple of iFixit guides if you're fine with doing it
"unofficially".

~~~
_ph_
Well, nice that it isn't soldered, but the machine is glued shut. So any work
on the inside is getting expensive. When I bought my iMac, the dealer charged
me close to $300 for a disk exchange.

------
satysin
Honestly these prices are better than I thought they would be. Topping out at
~$50k is extremely competitive with the likes of Dell for example.

These are not the kind of machines normal people buy of course but instead
studios or a very specific kind of person who knows what they need and why.

Anyone complaining about the markup on memory and storage most likely don't
work in industries that buy these kinds of machines so it will be jarring to
them but I can quite confidently state that Apple's markups here are not
obscene in the slightest, at least compared to alternatives. Honestly I am
kind of shocked to see the high end spec under $60k.

------
samatman
I'm no more likely to buy one of these than I am to purchase a McLaren, but
it's nice to see the cheese grater back in service.

My G5 Mac Pro tower was my first Mac, and a rock-solid piece of kit, which I
would occasionally open just because I could.

~~~
macjohnmcc
My Intel based equivalent no longer powers on but I keep it because it's so
nice to look at. Especially inside.

~~~
oppositelock
These things have amazing build quality. I bought an 8-core 2008 Mac Pro in
2008, and it's still running 11 years later. I've added SSD's, better video
card, and it worked great until apple dropped support for it. In 2008, it was
a good value compared to other professional workstations for getting 8 Xeons
and 32GB of RAM. Sadly, you can't even install later OSX versions on it
because those require AES-NI and AVX instruction,s which these CPU's lack.

------
rewtraw
Over $50k when maxed out with a 28 core processor and 1.5TB of RAM.

~~~
TimTheTinker
A similar (but slower) workstation from Dell (28C Xeon 8180, 2.5 GHz/3.8GHz
turbo) tops out at $49k:

[https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/workstations-isv-
certif...](https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/workstations-isv-
certified/precision-7920-tower-
workstation/spd/precision-7920-workstation/xctopt7920us_3)

Also note this configuration from Dell uses 24x64GB memory sticks. If
configured for equivalency with the Mac Pro (12x128GB) it tops out at $70k.
(12 sticks isn't superior to 24; actually, 24 is theoretically better because
it is more parallelized, but only if the processors and system bus can handle
the full theoretical bandwidth of that much memory...)

~~~
Scipio_Afri
So never buy a high end computer, build it yourself.

~~~
toasterlovin
If you're doing something professionally that actually requires a $50k
computer, your hourly rate is so insanely high that there's no way it makes
financial sense to build and repair a computer like that on your own.

~~~
stagger87
The markup on these types of PC's is ~100%. If you needed to build even a few
of these per year, the savings in buying the components yourself would pay for
an employee to maintain them, (not even including the deep discount you could
get negotiating prices on high end parts from a vendor). Not that you would
even need a full time employee to maintain them...

~~~
Scipio_Afri
That was my point, the markup is insane for it to be $50k.

------
antonyh
What’s the obsession with maxing out? Anything can be made expensive. It’s
just gold-plating.

What about ranking price versus the recommended spec for a given task; this
would give a better sense of value.

~~~
colejohnson66
It’s for the shock value. When the newest iPhones came out, people used the
maxed out ~$1500 model as the price for comparison against a bottom line
OnePlus.

------
JetBen
I wonder if Chrome would be able to eat up all of its resources, the way it
does with so many other machines.

FYI - I'm on a 2019 Mac Pro with 32 GB of RAM and Chrome STILL, yes STILL
often eats up all of its resources and I get the beach-ball while the fans
spin and the machine gets super hot.

~~~
satysin
FWIW I'm on a 2018 MacBook Pro with 32 GB RAM and while Chrome eats up its
share of RAM it doesn't ever cause me any issues. Currently at 17 days system
uptime with Chrome running all of that time, currently running 5 windows with
at least 10 tabs in each window and Chrome is using 3.8GB RAM. I currently
have 19GB RAM free with zero swap use. Can't recall the last time I saw a
beach ball or the fans spin up without me doing something I knew would spin
the fans up (such as a long ffmpeg encode).

------
waynecochran
If could put nVidia cards in one and knew it would work seamlessly I'd buy
one. I have a lot of mental investment in CUDA programming, so I won't use
these for development.

Apple and nVidia need to get together and make friends. I mean you could walk
from nVidia's headquarters to Apple's spaceship. Come on -- show us how
progressive and tolerant you are -- at least have lunch together once.

------
minimaxir
The wheels are $400? Must be some good wheels.

~~~
Scipio_Afri
Clearly you haven't heard about the R&D spending that Apple has been putting
into computer case wheels. They are the only computer case wheels to have a
rating of 200 miles or 3 years and come with an additional hazard warranty.

~~~
ct0
Rumor in my office is that a OTA firmware update will bring autopilot to
models that are bought with the wheels. God forbid you have to drive the $57k
mac pro yourself.

------
w-m
Interesting that when going for 768 GB of RAM, you can choose to spend an
additional $4000 to leave half the slots open for possible future expansion:

\- 768GB (6x128GB) of DDR4 ECC memory - $14,000

\- 768GB (12x64GB) of DDR4 ECC memory - $10,000

~~~
bdcravens
Beyond leaving the slots open, there's a slight performance benefit

~~~
w-m
I’m not very knowledgeable about Dual Channel operations, so maybe you can
enlighten me. Intuitively I’d have said that using all slots with sticks of
half the size would be the faster configuration, as they could then be used in
parallel. Why do you say the configuration with half the slots open would be
faster?

------
grecy
Interestingly there will be a rack-mount version... "coming soon" for a $500
premium.

~~~
copperx
What is the Rac Pro for? Are people using OS X as a server?

~~~
ganoushoreilly
It's not uncommon in the Audio production world to rack your machine in
another room and use Fiber between the two to control it. If I upgrade the
iMac Pro in my studio, i'd probably still grab the rack mount model as well
and keep it in the studio. Assuming the noise profiles advertised are
accurate.

~~~
copperx
Are you a Logic shop?

------
arvinsim
The new AMD Threadripper CPUs really stole the thunder from the the Mac Pro
CPUs.

The Intel CPU is a lot less impressive in comparison.

------
Karunamon
Interesting pricing here, especially if you want to max the system memory out
in the future.

128GB ECC DDR4 sticks can be had for about $1000ish a pop, so this is the
usual Apple memory markup (to the tune of about double the MSRP)

You need the 24-core CPU to do this, so you're spending an extra $6000. I
can't seem to find what exact CPU model they're using, but a close equivalent
would appear to be the Xeon W-3265M, which sells for around $6000 and change,
so that one's actually at a slight discount assuming that's the right model.

\--

I could see myself purchasing one of these and then using it for a combination
workstation/VM server. I find that the main constraint on virtual machines
tends to be memory, and even if I stick with the base CPU, I'll have room to
expand to up to 768 gigs, and the ability to install bog-standard PCI cards
that can do pretty much anything else I'd be interested in doing.

------
faitswulff
Serious question: what do people use these for?

~~~
DonaldPShimoda
The Mac Pro is intended for use as a _workstation_ , as opposed to a typical
desktop computer. Workstations are used for tasks with high computational
intensity, such as video editing and rendering, 3D modeling, graphics
development, etc. I expect machines like this would see use at Pixar, Sony,
Weta, and so on. For example, if you watch the announcement keynote from WWDC
(I think it was), they show its ability to live-render multiple 4K video
streams simultaneously — where a high-end desktop would struggle with live-
rendering even a single video stream of a lesser quality.

~~~
ykl
Except Pixar, Sony, Weta, etc. are all Linux houses. MacOS has very little to
no presence in the top-tier CG studios for actual CG work (we have a lot of
MacBooks around for Keynote and video calls and whatnot though).

~~~
asperous
Is that new since 2014?

[https://www.businessinsider.com/pixar-uses-apples-mac-pro-
to...](https://www.businessinsider.com/pixar-uses-apples-mac-pro-to-make-
films-2014-1)

~~~
thdrdt
The lanscape can change a lot in 6 years time.

And Apple just lagged begind.

For example, Nvidia came with super fast GPUs but it was almost impossible to
upgrade your Mac Pro with them. So a lot of companies jumped to Windows.

Also the software changed a lot. Nowadays Houdini is very big and 3DsMax and
Maya are being replaced with Blender.

~~~
auggierose
Exactly. And in 6 more years they will be back with Apple.

~~~
thdrdt
Could be. But I think the lack of Nvidia support won't help Apple at the
moment.

But I think they have something with their 'cheap' reference monitor.

------
rockwotj
Not gonna lie, I thought this was a cheese grater at first glance on mobile.

------
randyrand
It looks like you can buy base and add your own memory/cpu/storage.

If so, it’s looks a ~$4k premium over market prices to get base. Might be
worth it for some folk.

~~~
Clubber
Yes, I think many people (me included) are frustrated at the base price and
take it out on the high end price.

IIRC, the 2009 MacPro base was around $2500, then the 2013 jumped to $3000 for
the base and it had fewer cores. This one is $6000, which makes it much more
difficult to justify for people who don't work at companies that will buy
them.

I have a 2013, but I bought it off eBay for a reasonable price two years ago.
I bought a 2009 new but couldn't justify the $3000 base of the 2013.

------
mariopt
Upgrade just the CPU to the 28 core -> $12,999.00

Thats just horrendous!

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX 32 cores goes for around $1300

Go Ryzen.

~~~
wmf
That CPU alone is $7453.
[https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/193754/...](https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/193754/intel-
xeon-w-3275m-processor-38-5m-cache-2-50-ghz.html)

~~~
xvf22
Yup it is and it's still a terrible value proposition vs AMD.

------
pupppet
A complete rip-off. People like to point out this is for the pro market but
the previous cheese grater Mac Pros circa 2008 were powerful AND were
relatively affordable.

------
tambourine_man
MKBHD's review:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOPswcaSsu8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOPswcaSsu8)

~~~
satysin
Not a review. His video is an unboxing and “second” impressions. His first
being using it at the reveal.

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miles
$6k for 256GB of storage. Brilliant.

~~~
haskaalo
No. Innovative.

~~~
justinzollars
I think he's being sarcastic?

~~~
saagarjha
So is the comment you’re replying to, probably.

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tus88
Server version! Was that announced previously??

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sys_64738
The stand for the LCD costs $999.

~~~
bonestamp2
I just looked up how much it would cost me to buy a block of aluminum big
enough to mill one of these stands... $1400. Of course they can buy cheaper
aluminum than I, but to make a profit they must also be using slightly larger
blocks so they can mill two (one inverted).

------
mjcohen
Max out at $52,599. I did not see Applecare. Probably $1,499.

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abvdasker
Is anyone going to buy this?

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agumonkey
Probably secondary but the case design feels like reductio ad nauseam

------
wkoszek
I'm going to be an honest one here: I'd love to be able to just max it all
out, checkout, and have it no impact on my finances :)

------
caymanjim
Another Apple product with hilariously-poor specs for 3x what anyone else
charges. But hey, that case sure is, uh, made of metal. Yeah.

~~~
ct0
I believe they are made in America too.
[https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/09/apples-new-mac-pro-
to...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/09/apples-new-mac-pro-to-be-made-
in-texas/)

------
umvi
This seems insane. I just built a PC for $600 that has an 8 core Ryzen 7, 16
GB RAM, 500 GB EVO 970 and a Radeon 570 8 GB. I just cannot fathom how this
can cost literally 10x as much for _marginally_ better specs.

~~~
eemil
You can't really compare that build to a mac pro. On the low end, you're
mostly paying for the _platform_ :

    
    
      - Full-sized, machined metal case
      - *Huge*, complex, dual-socket Xeon motherboard
       - 12 memory slots, 6 memory channels
       - "MPX" slots
       - Custom video acceleration card support
       - Dual 10 GBit Ethernet, Thunderbolt
       - A lot more PCI-e lanes
      - 1.4 kW power supply + cooling capacity

~~~
_ph_
Unfortunately, despite of the price, it is a single-socket motherboard. That
means, the 28 cores is already the top of the line configuration. Which is not
very much in the age of 64-core AMDs, with dual sockets even 128 cores.

~~~
eemil
My mistake.. maybe I assumed because of that 1.5 TB memory capacity.

