
You can spend $9,599 on a Mac Pro, but should you? - Jtsummers
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/12/you-can-spend-9599-on-a-mac-pro-but-should-you/
======
coldtea
Of course not. Why should I?

I can build a PC to the same specs!

Of course it won't run OS X well, it won't have the same exact specs, it will
have severely worse construction with wires hanging here and there and huge
fans, it won't be as silent, it will be bigger, components wont be selected,
adjusted and tested to work together, and it might end up costing the same
amount of money or near-ish after I add all the options (like the SSDs and
thunderbold). And I'll have to support it myself, replacing parts if they
fail, instead of just taking it to the Applestore for a fix. But that won't
stop me saying it's overpriced.

~~~
csmuk
Or you can buy an HP Z820. OSX is pretty much moot for workstation grade
machines. The software is all cross platform.

And wires dangling everywhere? To get anything other than comedy storage,
you're going to need a pile of lightning devices hanging off it.

And don't give me all that crap about Apple being tried and tested - last
MacBook Pro I had was totally unreliable.

~~~
yapcguy
Yep, the new Mac Pro is going to be a pain for IT support to move to another
desk or office with all its bits hanging off it.

That is, of course, if the new Mac Pro ever makes it into the enterprise given
Apple's track record in that area. I always what happened to the IT manager
who convinced their boss to invest heavily in a few XServes... :-)

~~~
coldtea
> _That is, of course, if the new Mac Pro ever makes it into the enterprise
> given Apple 's track record in that area._

Track record? You mean the inroads they've been making for like 5 years with
the iPhone and the iPad?

That said, Mac Pro is not for the enterprise. It's for big calculations:
video, 3D, pro audio, scientific computing, etc.

It's not for running Lotus Domino and accessing some VB internal app.

------
bane
Since nobody here seems to have access to newegg here's the closest

CPU: Xeon E5-2697 12-core 2.7 Ghz - $2749.99

Video: AMD FirePro S9000 6GB - $2199.99 ea. (close as I could get) - x2
$4,399.98

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 64GB (8 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3
12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL10Q2-64GBZL - $599.99

SSD: SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE1T0BW 2.5" 1TB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State
Drive (SSD) $569.99

Motherboards that handle 64GB of RAM look to be generally under $400

Let's add $300 for case, PSU etc. and we're looking at ~$9000.

So even if the individual upgrades are badly priced (64GB of RAM for $800!),
the entire system is actually pretty fairly priced at the top configuration.
The tight integration of the parts, and I'm guessing sourcing directly from
the manufacturers rather than through 3rd party parts builders, probably cuts
lots of the BOM out. And there's no way Apple won't make a profit on these
ugly things.

------
lallysingh
From the article: "Going with these upgrade options, the Mac Pro with an
AppleCare service plan comes to $5,148, about half the cost of the most-
expensive computer you can configure. This is unquestionably an expensive
workstation, though considered in the context of competing products like those
from HP or Dell, you'll see that similarly specced PC workstations are in the
same ballpark (though these dual-socket workstations make true apples-to-Apple
comparisons more difficult, and it's harder to quantify the value of real
drive bays and PCI Express slots)."

Whenever I've looked at non-cheap machines, independent of OS (I'm often
flexible between macos and linux), the difference between an apple machine and
something from another major vendor, for as closely-comparable machines I can
find, is often a fairly small percentage. And considering the unique features
of the devices -- usually better (exterior) case design, MacOS, etc., it's
pretty reasonable.

------
bryanlarsen
If Apple is being true to form, the Mac Pro will be competitively priced, with
two important caveats:

1\. No option to use non-premium components. The two most obvious examples are
the fact that you can't replace the Xeon with an i7 or the FirePro with a
Radeon.

2\. The prices will change slowly or not at all over time. $400 for a RAM
upgrade might be reasonable now, but it won't be in a years time.

~~~
kps
When I bought my 2008 Mac Pro, it was actually slightly cheaper than any
equivalent name-brand PC workstation.

I still don't understand the target market for the new model, though. Who
wants multiple graphics cards but limited RAM and no disks?

------
beachstartup
we spend $10k on individual servers all the time, among other things.

to some people, and most businesses, $10k is not a lot of money. especially
for a capital good that can be purchased or leased without spending $10k of
cash.

for example, i can imagine upgrading an editing bay or scientific workstation
for $10k is kind of a no-brainer.

to put this into terms that people on HN can understand:

$10k buys you about 6 months of cc2.8xlarge on ec2 on-demand.

~~~
astrodust
Especially when you bill out the editing bay at $100/hr or more.

------
dignan
It seems to me that everyone complaining about needing to deal with PC repairs
has never had a business-class PC. The business and consumer support are
completely different beasts. For business products, at least HP and Dell will
send someone to you to fix it. These are competent techs who can do almost any
repair/replacement on the spot. As far as I know Apple does not offer this
level of support.

------
headgasket
That's about the price of the original mac512 with an external hard drive in
todays dollars. 1984 (Mac 2795 + 10MB hd 1200) when factoring for inflation
(2013) $9,009.01 [http://www.davemanuel.com/inflation-
calculator.php](http://www.davemanuel.com/inflation-calculator.php)?

------
patrickg_zill
The FirePro line is the most expensive of the graphics cards. Compare the
actual specs to desktop cards like the Radeon R9 series (which top out at $500
or $600 each retail) and you will see that it is far more likely that Apple is
taking those chips and using them.

~~~
astrodust
The benchmarks for these are tricky. "Pro" cards have more floating point
"double" performance, but most games only use the less accurate but faster
"single" mode.

~~~
hobbe80
If you buy this to play games (or rather - if game performance is where your
computer needs max out), you're probably a person with enough money to not
sweat a $10k computer purchase more than I mull over a fancy meal with the
missus. Now, if you're a 3D artist (maybe game designer?) this looks really
nice (caveat: not a 3D artist). So, designing fancy games - Mac Pro. Playing
said fancy games - anything from iPhone to home-built gaming rig will be more
worth it.

~~~
astrodust
While this system has a lot of GPU under the hood, many 3D applications aren't
properly leveraging OpenCL or are using CUDA (Nvidia). I'm hoping that this
pushes more towards OpenCL because of how much capability is there. Some
rendering engines for popular apps like Maya support CUDA exclusively which is
trouble. Still, nobody is building render farms out of Mac Pros.

Right now this is geared towards video editors and audio engineers where more
GPU translates directly into faster rendering and where you can never have
enough 4K screens.

------
velodrome
You can get almost 3 base model Mac Pros for that price.

------
bliti
Does the PC market offer a similar clone case as the one on the Pro?

~~~
csmuk
No we have better ones.

You know which we can replace bits of.

~~~
coldtea
So the kind that needs personal hassle?

I'll pass, I'm a professional in another field, not a PC mechanic.

~~~
subsection1h
Visiting an Apple store to have a part replaced is free if your time is worth
nothing.

~~~
coldtea
Or you know, I can send it and get it back. What kind of professional doesn't
have a backup machine or two?

Heck, a professional of the kind that needs a Mac Pro can also afford an
assistant to take to the Apple store...

Nor it's like checking the damage on my home-built PC, tinkering, ordering
parts and replacing them will take me less time...

------
lectrick
SteamOS on a Mac Pro:

The most elitist of elite gaming machines

------
lxwang
Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can
be answered by the word no."

~~~
quarterto
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5742893](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5742893)

~~~
phpnode
sorry quarterto, this is actually The Fourth Law of Hacker News -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4722251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4722251)

~~~
quarterto
Which by some fluke is exactly twice as old as my law!

------
tbarbugli
never

