I don’t understand why they announced the stand during the keynote at all. It’s not something to be proud of and it isn’t cutting-edge technology. They could have just put it for sale quietly and the outrage would have been far less.
I was somewhat surprised with their entire Mac Pro strategy. With a base tower configuration starting at $6k (about twice what I was expecting), they seemed to signal a shift in what they consider a “pro” user to be.
They’re pretty clearly chasing after the commercial, high-end computing market, but they’ve kinda left the high-end consumer market behind in some ways.
Still no definitive fix to the fly switch keyboards, lots of complaints about other design issues in MacBooks, basic spec bumps in mainstay products like the iMac. All while they continue to (somewhat unjustifiably) raise prices.
The new Mac Pro is the coolest piece of tech they’ve built in a while, and it’s completely unsuited for 99.9% of users. What’s the point in mass-marketing it? It felt like watching a marketing video to buy an airplane or something.
They said all along that the Mac Pro would be for users that the iMac Pro isn't powerful enough. Since the iMac Pro maxes out pretty high, a 3K base Mac Pro would make absolutely not sense as thats not even iMac Pro entry pricing but rather typical pricing for a consumer iMac.
The newest Mac Mini shares the same processors as the current iMac (21 in) and some of the same processors as the 27in version...and has user upgradeable RAM. It's not in the same league as the iMac Pro, but it's def comes close if not surpasses an iMac these days, and a non-upgraded iMac still ships with a spinning disc, where as the non-upgraded Mini's ship with SSDs...
> What’s the point in mass-marketing it? It felt like watching a marketing video to buy an airplane or something.
It's because sites like this have been complaining for years that Apple has left the Pro market behind. This was their response to that. And now this site is switching to complaining that Apple's definition of "Pro" is too "Pro" for us.
> switching to complaining that Apple's definition of "Pro" is too "Pro" for us.
If by too Pro you mean someone using an 8 core CPU with 32 GB of RAM ...
The higher end models might be great, with some genuine innovation in the GPU interface that to some will justify high prices. But I don't know who the target demographic for a $6k PC with those specs is supposed to be.
It’s the rich people who can afford not thinking more than twice to make the purchase. If that excludes almost everyone, thats fine. Apple is making a statement that they are still the premium of the premium
That may be, but their recent decision to no longer disclose per-unit sales for any of their products on earnings calls moving forward doesn't necessarily signal good times ahead.
Their revenue for the last 2 quarters is down from the same period a year ago, and there doesn't appear to be anything on the horizon that's going to catapult their earnings back up. iPhone sales have been in decline for a few years now.
They're banking that the margins of these new, higher-end products offsets the sales lost by shrinking their market. The problem with this strategy is that it isn't very sustainable and leaves them vulnerable to losing market share.
Microsoft keeps getting more serious about Linux compatibility, and if they ship a surface pro or something similar that can seriously compete with the MBP, things will get interesting.
Most tech professionals I know had lots of misgivings about Apple’s design decisions around the MBP. Mainly, shipping only with usb-c and the Touch Bar, which has been a total dud. Neither of those things were demanded by the market, but apple pushed them anyway. In the process of redesigning the MBP chassis, they introduced numerous design issues which plague them today. Apple baker in a bunch of incorrect assumptions that haven’t planned out for them. The incredibly high sales of refurbished pre-usb-c MBPs really drive this home.
The new Mac Pro, on the other hand, is very clearly designed for users that require massive parallelism and power in their work, which just aren’t most people. How many people need 20 cores? Most users weren’t complaining about the core count in 2016, they were complaining that Apple took a rock-solid product and introduced a bunch of regressions to it.
I have not yet seen any speculation about what a full spec mac pro might cost but I would not be surprised if it approaches 100k$. It can also connect to up to 6 screens for 5k$ which means this thing might go up to 130k$ in price, fully specced
The mac pro itself might have never been meant for everyone. Most of the people in the "pro" group didn't know or didn't care that they might only be on the lower end in terms of "proness" and asked for a new mac pro anyways. But I guess Apple considers them already well served with the iMac pro.
Previously I thought the iMac pro would be phased out as soon as a real mac pro is introduced but perhaps Apple will keep it around now.
A hundred thousand dollars? Where are you getting that from? It has got to be expensive, but $6k base ($12k with monitor and stand) to $130k fully specced seems exceedingly unlikely. Are the GPUs and 28-core Xeon that expensive? What component causes the sudden jump in price?
1.5 TB ECC RAM for a start. Then the 4 Vega II GPU cards. Add to that the Afterburner card, a terabyte or more of native SSD storage, and possibly more PCIe SSD storage through MPX slot. Yeah, I think you will hit that very easily!
Edit: I couldn't find a single 128 GB DDR4 ECC 2993 MHz DIMM, but the closest I found is the 128 GB DDR4 ECC 2400 MHz DIMM at 2249.99 a piece. Now imagine 12 of those, at higher frequency, with the usual Apple markup. That's already 30 to 40K alone.
I used the hp workstation configurator for their highest priced tier and added 28c Xeon and ram and single v100 and it came out at 56k. I assume the Vega II duo x2 at 28 tflop will be similar to 4x v100 each at 9k so going from there it’s already at 84k.
Add a little extra because it’s apple and I could see it pushing 100k
> What’s the point in mass-marketing it? It felt like watching a marketing video to buy an airplane or something.
That's exactly what this is. It may sell some units to professionals and high end consumers but it's main value is establishing Apple at the top of the consumer pyramid which works to move all their other products. I remember getting my import Alfa Romeo serviced at the dealer where they also sell Ferraris. It was fun except for paying the same hourly rates.
> With a base tower configuration starting at $6k (about twice what I was expecting)
Should part of the blame for the high price should go towards Intel? The 8-core CPU in the base Mac Pro looks like it might be an Xeon Gold 6244 [1][2] which costs $2925. Obviously Apple will be paying less, but half the cost is the CPU alone.
My $200 pivoting stand came with an entire screen for free.
Granted, it's not nearly as nice as Apple's stand. But I suspect the reception would have been a lot better if the narrative was "the $5000 screen comes with an ok stand, the great one is $1000 extra" instead of "lol, the $5000 screen is useless unless you buy a $120 Vesa mount plus some off-brand stand, or the $1000 official stand"
My $200, 6 year old stand came with one too, and it even includes the ability to raise and lower the screen, plus the 90° rotation. And wait, there’s more! It also pivots.
I'm not in the market for this kind of thing, but if I were (and iff the stand is actually superior to competitors') I could see some justification for buying it.
Though I don't own a Macbook, there's one aspect that I truly love about them: you can open the laptop easily with one hand. The vast majority of laptops I've come across require two hands. It's a rather minor detail, but as a result it smooths out an equally minor nitpick that I have with other laptops. For many, little details like that are worth the extra money.
For example: There's a Dell laptop to the side of my desk. Opening it one-handed causes the lid to open slightly, but then the base starts to rise. I need to either stick my hand inside a bit and wedge it open (which is a little more strenuous than I'd like) or use my other hand to pry it open (which feels fiddly and requires rotating my chair or adjusting my seating position).
I don't know enough about fancy monitor stands to judge Apple's stand, but generally: if I needed to perform work that required adjusting my monitor a few times a day, there would be a quite a bit of value in buying a monitor stand that makes the process somewhat easier.
I think the bigger concern is that, as far as we know, the Pro Display literally does not come with a stand. You can't even VESA mount it without the $200 addon. It'd be one thing if the $1000 stand was an upgrade from a basic static stand included in the box, but there's no indication that this is the case.
Its' $1000 monitor stand with magnetic connector (no screws) that replaces Vesa. It makes it easier to move expensive monitors around regularly.
It's sold for professionals who use it with $5000 Apple Pro Display XDR. It's 6K monitor with 1,000 nits brightness (1,600 nits peak). Typically reference monitor of that caliber sells for $30,000 - $40,000. (check the price for Sony BVM-HX310 31" 4K HDR)
They could have added $1000 for the monitor price and given the stand with the monitor. Then those who can afford $5000 but not $6000 would have suffered in silence.
WWDC was the wrong place to announce the 2019 Mac Pro, period. It’s not a developer machine, at least for people developing iOS and Mac apps.
A more appropriate venue would have been a special media event in, say, Los Angeles, amid all the high-end post houses and VFX shops that can actually justify investing in both the Mac Pro’s pixel throughput and the Pro Display’s reference accuracy.
The monitor stand is like a $99 hamburger on the menu. For the people rich enough to never care about the cost of a restaurant meal it’s a purchase, and for everyone else it’s a cue that this brand is absolutely top end prestigious and expensive.
Im counting the days until I see one in a rap video or all over rich kid Instagram.
But the pricing needs to be internally consistent for the brand to be taken seriously, whether as a luxury brand or otherwise. In other words, a $1k piece of metal with a couple of moving parts undermines the rest of their portfolio. It's one thing to have a uniformly expensive lineup like a watchmaker, and entirely different thing to price your most complicated offering (phone) and the dumbest one (metal piece) the same. Like what's the message here ?
The message is that Apple shit is so top of the line that even our monitor stand is an uncompromising work of art.
It’s really not that complicated, it’s a textbook luxury branding and pricing strategy. Ever seen a Restoration Hardware catalog? They sell painted tree stumps for $1000.
> it’s a textbook luxury branding and pricing strategy.
The problem is that this 10x overpricing strategy doesn't apply to their entire lineup, but that's not made explicit. As a result, people might mistakenly generalise it to their other products such as iPhones, leading people to think that their phones are also 10x overpriced and are actually only worth $100, thus diminishing its value.
I think the average person who is an iPhone owner can look at their phone and to this monitor stand and think "why do they cost almost the same?" easily.
Price is one thing that most people are quite sensitive about.
The poster above is trying to say that luxury branding has to have at least a veneer of justification for its pricing. The $1000 painted tree stump supposes its own value as a piece of art. A $1000 watch might cost $200 to produce, but it's jewelry - the whole point is you're paying for the pure aesthetic value of it.
The monitor stand has a nice appearance, but everyone understands that it's a mass-produced, functional product that can't justify its cost artistically or by virtue of materials and construction. The stand is also usually included with the monitor!
There's a clear message change. We've moved from "this is the cost of luxury" to "this is the cost we've greedily slapped onto a random part you need"
The difference between the two isn't vast- you have to pay attention to the nuance here.
I guess the stand is for different audience with audiophile-level fanaticism towards Apple products or for organizations that don't care about the price, but definitely not for mass market.
While the screen seems decently priced (though hard to tell before reviews), the base configuration of the new Mac Pro is at $6k at least twice as expensive as it has any right to be, and much more expensive than previous base models. And given how low-specced that base model is and how expensive Apple upgrade always are compared to normal market prices we can expect the Mac Pro to be at least twice as expensive as comparable PCs across the entire line.
The price for the phone likely has to be this low, though if this genuinely is a new strategy they might introduce a gold version or something like that. However getting the newest iPhone each year is already mostly a status symbol, while the monitor stand probably has a lifetime more comparable with a watch.
There's lots of $1000 phones now. As with most Apple phone changes, the other OEMs and users complain at first ("no more headphone jack!", the iPhone-X front screen bevel) then end up doing it themselves.
And let's not forget some go higher than the iPhones like the $2000 Samsung Galaxy Fold.
Also, Apple always makes older gen phones available if you're price sensitive -- the iPhone 7 (and 8) is available starting at $300 on their site for example.
> and for everyone else it’s a cue that this brand is absolutely top end prestigious and expensive.
Prestigious? Not really. There's one word which sums up a product like this: overpriced. Expensive doesn't describe if its worth it.
And given I seen some Louis Rossman videos recently: recent Apple hardware is overpriced as well. Its bug ridden which I wouldn't expect with regards to such price tags. And I say that as an owner of 2 MBPs (4 in total).
> The monitor stand is like a $99 hamburger on the menu. For the people rich enough to never care about the cost of a restaurant meal it’s a purchase, and for everyone else it’s a cue that this brand is absolutely top end prestigious and expensive.
That might make sense of the Mac Pro was a toy for the wealthy. But IIUC it's target audience is commercial production.
I would expect that market to eschew spending money for prestigious tools that their customers will rarely see.
> Im counting the days until I see one in a rap video or all over rich kid Instagram.
Also on the desk of every big YouTube content producer, who can also benefit from the power of the Mac Pro for editing video. And with "YouTuber" being the most desirable career for a lot of kids out there, there's a good chance that kind of product placement could bolster sales for lower-priced Apple products for years to come.
How can I NOT buy a ethernet cable that give me "an audibly better performance". I alway have been complain that my 10GbE is fast, but the audio fidelity is garbage. I am so thankful this exists.
In my darker moments I have considered designing things for it. Insulating layers made from woven hemp flax impregnated with powdered crystal, to avoid orgone buildup interfering with the latency, that kind of thing. Thankfully, I have avoided this impulse so far.
I imagine many will be using the Vesa mount in this market, so if they did what you recommend, then I imagine people would have been much more upset that they are paying for a 1K stand they will never use, which would have been even worse. From a PR perspective people might not have made that connection right away, but shortly after the event still would have been horrible reaction, since its one thing it itemized its another thing to charge 1K more for no extra value. Now what they should do is the same thing they do with iMac, is sell a version with the stand for 6K and one with vesa for 5200. Problem solved, no PR issue. The reason they didnt presumably is they have no idea how many want vesa vs not vesa so they may end up with a lot of unused inventory or not enough of one. And of course makes logistics for making and selling harder, etc, but I think had they known the reaction they may have considered it. They will probably ride it out but if it continues they will simply switch to that iMac method of selling it.
For that situation, i think they can market it as $6k monitor. For vesa, get the addon mount for $200. Basically, don't separately price the stand.
The way that its currently broken out is quite puzzling. As a fun conjecture, perhaps they are planning a range lower spec monitors and want to upsell the stand.
It's generated so much extra exposure for WWDC and their other announcements. Although they aren't pronouncing it, I'm sure their marketing department disagree.
Has that not been in Apple's playbook for years? Those in the industry know the $5k monitor is a good deal and they also know they don't need the stand (get the VESA adaptor) since they already probably have a multi-monitor stand. So for their actual target audience no one will bat an eye. But for those of us not interested in an expensive monitor the overpriced stand gives us something to talk about and keeps them in the news cycle.
Does anybody have to "excuse" the sticker price on luxury cars? You can obviously get cheaper (and likely more comfortable) 4-wheeled transportation instruments elsewhere, but that's hardly the point.
> there is nothing luxury avout the stand, it's essentially identical to any other stand
Some of the features that make it "luxury" in my mind are:
* Build materials / quality
* Small footprint
* Magnetic connector (no screws)
* Ease of adjusting height / rotating (according to Apple)
For a 32-inch, 16 lb monitor that may need to be moved around a lot and shared amongst multiple people, I can see how those qualities might be important enough to justify the price for some.
And if it's really identical to any other stand out there, can you show something comparable at a lower price?
They probably are also not be expecting to sell as many of these stands as other stand manufacturers, so their manufacturing costs could be significantly higher considering it uses a unique design.
A lot of luxury-priced cars also have little particularly luxurious about them. The expression "you pay for the badge" comes to mind, which is precisely what luxury branding is about: the value of a $1k stand is that you paid $1k for it regardless of practical considerations, just because you could.
Excatly. I never heard hate. Only laughts. "apple is doing a stupid apple thing"
It's actually good PR: everybody talk about it, but they also they it's a good quality monitor, just that apple is over pricing an accessory, which is a cheap way of making the luxury brand perceptuon stronger... Huge com win for very little effet.
Call it what you like. But I’m pretty sick of having to have the apple is stupid conversation at work. I get it, but it comes up far too often. It’s severely impacted my professional career due to prejudice from the wintel guys...who I also run circles around within Windows and Unix/Linux. But because apple released yet another expensive shiny I’ve got to take time out of my day to deal with this crap.
Apple isn’t going to sell a cheap display. If you want a cheap display go somewhere else. From their page about the display[1] a use case for this stand is to have “one on set and one in the studio” and move your display back and forth. Additionally Apple sells a VESA mount adapter for people who have “unique mounting setups for their displays”
There is almost certainly no one who might actually buy this display who is complaining about the price.
ITT: people who don't know how luxury branding works.
Without the stand, all headlines would have been on how Apple finally listened and produced a great MacPro - something only us geeks care about. Whereas this $1k-stand trolling generates mainstream headlines which reinforce the luxury-brand image that actually makes them the big money.
It's entirely possible that people will now buy this monitor even if they don't need it simply so that they can flaunt the "famous" $1k stand.
The articles are about how this hurts their PR. The threads may be full of people who "don't get it", but the key point is that the threads are full of them, providing strong evidence for the thesis. Your assertion is a little like Skinner blaming the children.
“People writing angry posts on the internet” is not Apple’s target market, it never has been. People like us are like a bull to Apple marketing’s matador: we run after the red flag so that the matador can do his job for public enjoyment.
> Veblen goods are types of luxury goods for which the quantity demanded increases as the price increases, an apparent contradiction of the law of demand, resulting in an upward-sloping demand curve. A higher price may make a product desirable as a status symbol in the practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. A product may be a Veblen good because it is a positional good, something few others can own.
I know you are joking, but this already exists. I can get a cheap table mount for two monitors for $40 from Amazon, or I can get a really nice one for anything from $500 to $2000 (HumanScale's configurator has some great options [1])
I predict something similar to the debacle with the AirPods and the lack of a 3.5mm jack in the iPhone. Everyone made fun of the decision at the time but the Veblen good effect asserted itself anyway and now it's a standard to be emulated and a product that insipres envy in many.
Likewise, this product will be hailed as a status symbol in a few months precisely because of its absurdity.
Apple will continue to be contemptuous of its consumers because it keeps being richly rewarded for it. I am not trying to be edgy by making this claim: it was all laid out more than a century ago by a cheeky Norwegian-American, and more recently by patio11.
The PR was intention. Apple is the greatest marketing company in modern history. That stand and the entire Mac Pro now has a perception of super high end. Where it has no compromises on quality and price. Genius yet again from Apple. Look at how much press it is generating for them. Right when iPhone was getting a bit stale in public mindshare.
If you care about aesthetic in a desktop, you buy an iMac.
This is for hardcore Apple customers who fondly remember the original G4/G5 "cheesegraters". It takes an old joke and brings it to its extreme consequences. "So you like cheesegraters, uh? Yo dawg..."
Btw, it's not for sitting on desks but under them; it even has wheels.
Apple did not want people to talk about other things introduced or not introduced at WWDC. With so much attention from non-developers for a developer event, they need to carefully handle expectations until the hardware event in fall, with its focus on the general public, will hopefully introduce the amazing new things everyone always expects.
This year was not a disappointment for sure but the things shown are incremental improvements at best.
Putting that stand out there will give the public something largely irrelevant to complain about and at the same time generate more attention for a specific niche product: the new mac pro.
And in doing so they avoid real criticism for all the other products that are so much more important for their success. Apple does not lose anything here
side note: anyone else remember when Tim Cook thanked everyone involved in the end and emphasized the overtime and weekends they worked through?
No idea what to make of this, does not sound like a normal thing to admit tbh as CEO. To me that sounded like a plea for something, perhaps to be more understanding and to wait until fall to see how everything plays out?
To me that sounded more of a message to his own workers, to be honest: “I know you work unhealthy hours, but you get to be a part of this! Take a bow!”
Which is a troubling message, normalizing exploitation, but is perfectly in line with contemporary executive-think.
