They deserve all the mockery they got for the $999 stand (and more).
However, my complaint about the new Pro and Display are not that they are overpriced (they're perfectly priced for what they are). But that there is no lower end option.
Even if they took the display in the 5k iMac and just made that a standalone thunderbolt display, charged $1,500 for it (even though I would've slightly grumbled), I would've ordered it on day one. But $5k for a display is just something I won't spend.
Same with the desktop. If they had reasonable defaults for $6k, then yes I absolutely would buy it (because of the amazing expandability, and I'm truly tired of laptops).
But the display is to me truly disappointing that they solved problems only a very very small sliver of pros asked for (pro photographers and film people), rather than a secondary class of pros (developers, etc). I don't need true reference-grade color for viewing webpages and code all day. But I would generally like a 5k or 6k display for more screen real estate.
Forgive my ignorance, but what's stopping you from buying a third-party screen and attaching that? Right now, I'm using a MBP with a Dell monitor. It would seem insane if the Mac Pro had a priority monitor interface.
>Take an iMac Pro, break it down, put its screen in a box (that’ll revive the Cinema Display we miss), add slots to the motherboard, put it in a vintage Mac Pro cheese grater case...
I think a lot of Mac faithful talked around this line like it would be an acceptable minimum, but they really wanted more than that, like "Oh, it'd be fine if they just made a tower, but what we really want is that trademark Apple Innovation!" But what they really wanted was just white-box parts in a PC case that they could swap out, not this insanely powerful, beautiful, kick-ass machine on wheels that costs more than your car. They just wanted a blessed hackintosh.
(edit - just speaking from personal experience and the people I've talked to. I don't know anyone who actually needs this new Mac Pro, but I know a few who want it.)
I think what people wanted was the pre-2013 Mac Pro. Where the base model cost half of this new one, and it was expandable enough that people are still using it.
I remain amazed at Apple's marketing. There's literally nothing "powerful" in this box that you couldn't plug into a Supermicro motherboard almost two years ago. You can make integration arguments or dither about Apple-specific devices or software all day. But as for "powerful"... this is a 14nm Xeon workstation board.
I agree with Snopes. Pronunciation is everything in Spanish. The word nova is not at all pronounced the same as no va, and a native Spanish speaker would not confuse the two. My personal experience after having lived in Central America with locals, not ex-Pats, is that accent and pronunciation are the key to speaking Spanish, not grammar.
It's "Philosophically True": It's true to the extent people need it to be to make a point or prove their philosophy valid, like the idea of the "tabula rasa"; we know, scientifically, that humans aren't blank slates at birth, but some people have a need for it to be true so their philosophy isn't disproven by mere positivism.
I keep hearing this argument over and over and it's frustrating. Yes, it does seem clear that Apple is targeting media studios with this Mac Pro, but that entirely misses the point about why so many people like me are upset.
Apple used to make what I considered just about the perfect machine for me. It was the cheese grater Mac Pro, and one sat under my desk until a few months ago when I gave up on Apple every refreshing that machine in a way that works for me, and I got a Mac mini instead. It's a fine machine, but there is not really an upgrade path for the internal components, the graphics processor is weak, and now I have a bunch of cables all over my desk for expansion.
The cheese grater Mac Pro used to be a little bit pricey for the actual performance you were getting, but it was worth it to spend a little more to get that thoughtfully designed machine that ran Mac OS. Now it just feels like anything in Apples product line that "is for me" just feels like a giant compromise. Sure Apple can do whatever they want with their product line, but that fact doesn't make the current situation any less frustrating for me and people like me.
The author doesn’t mention gaming in the article at all and I don’t think any person with decent knowledge of Mac products would assume the new Mac Pro would be a gaming machine.
What the author and many others are trying to convey is that Apple again has pushed out a premium product with mid to semi-high level components for a luxurious price — often out of reach for the lay consumer. If we take the common criticism of Apple and their products, especially the Mac Pro, it again comes down to them catering to a base but doing so by itemizing their product list. They know people in studios will use these products and pay what they must, so it’s simple: Studio A has old Mac Pro’s and just needs a new monitor, so they’ll buy the new 32-inch and put out some more pocket change for the stand that’s sold separately. But studio B has monitors and needs a new desktop, hence they’ll purchase a new Mac Pro w/o a screen.
In the end, these products will sell, not because of their future proof parts, but more so because it’s a new machine for that niche base who most likely are too deep into the Apple ecosystem to use a PC equivalent.
Because historically the old mac pro was a more than a 6000 dollar toy that only the rich and studios purchase. Apple is basically pissing on all of their old mac pro fans who are getting priced out by this update.
I think the "this is for studios" argument is just an excuse to make up for the fact that Apple completely missed the mark with this new refresh's price point. If Apple _really_ wanted to create a flagship desktop to appeal to studios, they would have not used the mac pro's name, they would have created a new brand for the SKU to reflect that its target audience is different from that of the mac pro.
That's how I felt watching the presentation. It very quickly became apparent this was not a machine for me. I don't work with multiple 4K video streams let alone any instrument mixing or 8K video.
He’s been fooled again. The $1000 stand is nothing more than an obvious distraction; everyone is talking about the great Mac Pro and the outrageously expensive stand, but not the very expensive Mac Pro and display.
On the one hand, this cat knows how to screw up marketing hardware/software ( Be, Inc! ). On the other hand, he's literally talking nonsense about a compute platform that is targeted at studios.
Can we get some vfx or game studio heads in here commenting? From what I've experienced in my career is many studios are run at a very low margin. Doubling the price of the Mac Pro would most likely have an effect.
There's a certain context here that may not be obvious. Gassée is generally seen as the person responsible for the Macintosh II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_II , the original PC-like (or indeed Apple II-like or S-100-like) modular Macintosh with a separate monitor and slots. From introduction of the original Macintosh II in 1987 through the rest of the '80s the whole Mac line was basically bifurcated between modular Macs in the Macintosh II line which were aimed at graphics and publishing professionals and were brutally expensive even compared to contemporary MS-DOS boxes, and all-in-one Macs with black-and-white (and that didn't mean greyscale) displays for everyone else who was willing to stick around. The squeeze didn't really even begin to ease up until the early '90s, AFAICT. I'm not sure to what extent Gassée was responsible for or fully supportive of those pricing decisions, but if that situation sounds pretty familiar right now, that's probably the reason that Gassée is purring about it here.
In case you were wondering, Jobs apparently hated those pricing decisions, and blamed them for the Mac's failure to win market share against the PC (and compatibles). In fairness to Apple's current management, the window of opportunity to do that is probably now long closed. OTOH the number of companies employing professionals who will feel they have to stick around for these kind of prices probably isn't nearly as large either nowadays. You certainly don't need Macs to run a Photoshop or desktop-publishing shop anymore.
I remember some years ago (2012?) we looked into using Macs instead of Windows machines and back then the Macs (Macbook and Mac Mini) were quite competitive price wise when you compared specs. I can accept some premium since the hardware is better quality but recently they seem to have jacked up prices a lot. The machines were also very practical with the connectors and upgrades they offered. This also seems to have gone away
Has anybody else observed this and when did the trend start?
Even until fairly recently many Mac models were price competitive with other premium models right at release. The problem was/is that Apple does not lower prices on a model over time, and the more recent problem where Apple let models languish for a long period of time.
Apple points to Intel and says they haven't released many huge changes in awhile, and that is true but Apple should have been lowering prices over time.
Apple probably thinks they have most users covered. Since the cheese grater, there has been a huge shift to laptops. If a user really wants a desktop there is the mini, iMac, iMacPro, and now MacPro. The MP is so far out in the pro realm though that Apple may have inadvertently opened a gap in their lineup between the iMacPro and MP. If they do something to fill that gap remains to be seen.
Apple called "Pro Users" bluff. The "pro user" that used to be served by the old Mac Pro was the same dope who gets the M-Sport BMW 3 Series, or the DSLR with the Kit Lens, etc. It's the rich dad "I want the best of X, but not the actual professional product, because I don't need it."
Other examples include Arc'Teryx clothing that is worn by VC's in Silicon Valley for wealth projection that will never see the austere environments that the clothing was designed for.
Apple made a true pro machine, and now the pro-poseurs are pissed.
BTW I am a pro-poseur, concerned with pro-image vs actual pro features. I desperately want an Apple monitor with speakers that docks to my MBP for around $1799.
The whole idea of "reference monitors" seems incredibly fishy to me. I've never heard of this and I highly doubt that studios are paying $42000 for monitors as was claimed at WWDC. Can anyone confirm that this is real and not just a framing tactic?
I handled tech for 'Hollywood' companies for years.
In a broadcast operations center, or a less-than-handful number of transfer houses, would monitors costing 10K+ be found.
Average cost of ingest bays would be minimal with 12" or less screens for doing a little QC on intake.
Edit bays would be dual screens costing 1-2K a piece from 1999-2010, then gradually less as LCDs matured. Color calibration was taken seriously, but not to a science level. 500 for a calibration device and run it 2x a year.
Money went to chairs/couches/desks, then other room aesthetics. Never spent more than 5K on a single workstation, and at that price point were nearly fully loaded.
Storage is where it gets steep now. Apple used to offer solutions, but they were baaaaad.
I still say, good for Apple releasing this gear. They employee a lot of bright people so this really can't be a fail. It sure looks pretty too.
It is true. Here [0] is a representative example, the only one I could find with a price. Correct color matters tremendously in film production, and getting accurate representation of that is quite expensive.
A friend of mine once owned a small film company, and I visited them a few times.
They had a guy called a 'colourist' - a specialist in color grading' [1] - and he had a screen which (subjectively) seemed to have an extremely good picture. I was assured it was very expensive.
Of course, there's still good cause for skepticism: Manufacturers will gladly co-opt any term to make their products sound better, as the wealth of 'studio monitor' speakers and headphones shows.
I think its just like 'reference' or 'studio' headphones. Ideally you wouldn't want the output device to 'colour' the reproduction of the underlying media, but in practice you'll see a variety of studios where products across all price points were used. Of course if you netflix the movie on an uncalibrated monitor that has poor color accuracy, then its all a wash anyway.
Don't know how true it is but when I was researching before buying a new TV, there were people who supposedly worked at movie studios that claimed to be using LG OLEDs as reference monitors.
I think there'd be very few places that could justify the cost of a 42000 monitor when current 4k TVs are measurably accurate after calibration.
This is such a great comment. I don't know why you are getting downvoted or at least its grey. You said it, I was thinking it, but too afraid to ask / felt stupid for not knowing. But all of the responses to this question are examples of $20,000-$30,000 not the $42,000 that you specifically reference. And there are people here claiming to be professionals saying that they indeed DO NOT use $42,000 highly specialized displays or even $20,000. Good point and BS meter.
It's real, and it's an awful workflow editing via "proxy" - imagine cleaning your apartment through grease-smeared glasses and you're only able to take them off and see your work when your guests are already knocking at your front door.
What pisses me off about Apple is that, if their marketing is to be believed, I should be directly in their target market.
I'm a techie with a lot of discretionary income who has creative ambitions. Also I'm still on way-out-of-date Windows 7 because I won't accept the spying that goes on in the newer versions. I love Linux but I'm unhappily tied to Windows at the moment only because one of my hobbies is playing music in Ableton, which is literally the only program keeping me on Windows.
So MacOS which I imagine to be a more polished Linux that supports Ableton could be great.
But then they release stuff like this and I realize that even though I'd dearly like to jump ship on Microsoft, I won't ever let myself be gouged like this and to be trapped in the kind of ecosystem where a product like this, at this price point, might be my only option. Call me a cheapskate but I do know how much the hardware costs, and won't pay that much of a premium for a shiny box that will be unsupported in a few short years when they're trying to shovel the latest hotness.
Instead I'm likely to investigate options of running Ableton in Virtual machines with GPU passthrough, a bunch of hassle and clutter with extra devices and audio mixers, etc, and spend the few thousand dollars I've saved on other stuff.
They clearly don't know how to satisfy a customer like me.
Well you are clearly not in the target audience. Are you using any of the software they are mentioning in their announcement presentation? This thing is meant for people that don’t pay for their Computer out of their own pocket. We have way more expensive servers installed for running EDA tools. Hell a single FPGA card by Xilinx can be more expensive than the base price. Same goes for the display, people spent 20k+ on such displays without flinching.
[+] [-] atonse|6 years ago|reply
However, my complaint about the new Pro and Display are not that they are overpriced (they're perfectly priced for what they are). But that there is no lower end option.
Even if they took the display in the 5k iMac and just made that a standalone thunderbolt display, charged $1,500 for it (even though I would've slightly grumbled), I would've ordered it on day one. But $5k for a display is just something I won't spend.
Same with the desktop. If they had reasonable defaults for $6k, then yes I absolutely would buy it (because of the amazing expandability, and I'm truly tired of laptops).
But the display is to me truly disappointing that they solved problems only a very very small sliver of pros asked for (pro photographers and film people), rather than a secondary class of pros (developers, etc). I don't need true reference-grade color for viewing webpages and code all day. But I would generally like a 5k or 6k display for more screen real estate.
[+] [-] scarface74|6 years ago|reply
So why not just by the LG display?
[+] [-] morley|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itsaidpens|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NightlyDev|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elagost|6 years ago|reply
I think a lot of Mac faithful talked around this line like it would be an acceptable minimum, but they really wanted more than that, like "Oh, it'd be fine if they just made a tower, but what we really want is that trademark Apple Innovation!" But what they really wanted was just white-box parts in a PC case that they could swap out, not this insanely powerful, beautiful, kick-ass machine on wheels that costs more than your car. They just wanted a blessed hackintosh.
(edit - just speaking from personal experience and the people I've talked to. I don't know anyone who actually needs this new Mac Pro, but I know a few who want it.)
[+] [-] kalleboo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajross|6 years ago|reply
I remain amazed at Apple's marketing. There's literally nothing "powerful" in this box that you couldn't plug into a Supermicro motherboard almost two years ago. You can make integration arguments or dither about Apple-specific devices or software all day. But as for "powerful"... this is a 14nm Xeon workstation board.
[+] [-] Amorymeltzer|6 years ago|reply
That's an urban legend: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chevrolet-nova-name-spanis...
[+] [-] voidmain0001|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msla|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rangibaby|6 years ago|reply
Apple makes an actual Pro tower with pro features: It’s too expensive!
[+] [-] jagger27|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markkanof|6 years ago|reply
Apple used to make what I considered just about the perfect machine for me. It was the cheese grater Mac Pro, and one sat under my desk until a few months ago when I gave up on Apple every refreshing that machine in a way that works for me, and I got a Mac mini instead. It's a fine machine, but there is not really an upgrade path for the internal components, the graphics processor is weak, and now I have a bunch of cables all over my desk for expansion.
The cheese grater Mac Pro used to be a little bit pricey for the actual performance you were getting, but it was worth it to spend a little more to get that thoughtfully designed machine that ran Mac OS. Now it just feels like anything in Apples product line that "is for me" just feels like a giant compromise. Sure Apple can do whatever they want with their product line, but that fact doesn't make the current situation any less frustrating for me and people like me.
[+] [-] docbrown|6 years ago|reply
What the author and many others are trying to convey is that Apple again has pushed out a premium product with mid to semi-high level components for a luxurious price — often out of reach for the lay consumer. If we take the common criticism of Apple and their products, especially the Mac Pro, it again comes down to them catering to a base but doing so by itemizing their product list. They know people in studios will use these products and pay what they must, so it’s simple: Studio A has old Mac Pro’s and just needs a new monitor, so they’ll buy the new 32-inch and put out some more pocket change for the stand that’s sold separately. But studio B has monitors and needs a new desktop, hence they’ll purchase a new Mac Pro w/o a screen.
In the end, these products will sell, not because of their future proof parts, but more so because it’s a new machine for that niche base who most likely are too deep into the Apple ecosystem to use a PC equivalent.
[+] [-] bsamuels|6 years ago|reply
I think the "this is for studios" argument is just an excuse to make up for the fact that Apple completely missed the mark with this new refresh's price point. If Apple _really_ wanted to create a flagship desktop to appeal to studios, they would have not used the mac pro's name, they would have created a new brand for the SKU to reflect that its target audience is different from that of the mac pro.
[+] [-] 27182818284|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tinus_hn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kraftman|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitcrusher|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lancesells|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itsaidpens|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwayEngineer|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] leoc|6 years ago|reply
In case you were wondering, Jobs apparently hated those pricing decisions, and blamed them for the Mac's failure to win market share against the PC (and compatibles). In fairness to Apple's current management, the window of opportunity to do that is probably now long closed. OTOH the number of companies employing professionals who will feel they have to stick around for these kind of prices probably isn't nearly as large either nowadays. You certainly don't need Macs to run a Photoshop or desktop-publishing shop anymore.
[+] [-] maxxxxx|6 years ago|reply
Has anybody else observed this and when did the trend start?
[+] [-] matwood|6 years ago|reply
Apple points to Intel and says they haven't released many huge changes in awhile, and that is true but Apple should have been lowering prices over time.
Apple probably thinks they have most users covered. Since the cheese grater, there has been a huge shift to laptops. If a user really wants a desktop there is the mini, iMac, iMacPro, and now MacPro. The MP is so far out in the pro realm though that Apple may have inadvertently opened a gap in their lineup between the iMacPro and MP. If they do something to fill that gap remains to be seen.
[+] [-] JeremyBanks|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monkin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itsaidpens|6 years ago|reply
Other examples include Arc'Teryx clothing that is worn by VC's in Silicon Valley for wealth projection that will never see the austere environments that the clothing was designed for.
Apple made a true pro machine, and now the pro-poseurs are pissed.
BTW I am a pro-poseur, concerned with pro-image vs actual pro features. I desperately want an Apple monitor with speakers that docks to my MBP for around $1799.
[+] [-] siidooloo|6 years ago|reply
The real announcements were the proress fpga, and dual chip mpx cards which most people don’t need and won’t buy.
[+] [-] throwayEngineer|6 years ago|reply
I'm starting to side with the big evil coporations, it's 2019 and these Marketing stunts are nothing new.
I forgive people for making 1 mistake, but repeating it, blame the human.
[+] [-] maxxxxx|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Areading314|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imperialdrive|6 years ago|reply
In a broadcast operations center, or a less-than-handful number of transfer houses, would monitors costing 10K+ be found.
Average cost of ingest bays would be minimal with 12" or less screens for doing a little QC on intake. Edit bays would be dual screens costing 1-2K a piece from 1999-2010, then gradually less as LCDs matured. Color calibration was taken seriously, but not to a science level. 500 for a calibration device and run it 2x a year.
Money went to chairs/couches/desks, then other room aesthetics. Never spent more than 5K on a single workstation, and at that price point were nearly fully loaded.
Storage is where it gets steep now. Apple used to offer solutions, but they were baaaaad.
I still say, good for Apple releasing this gear. They employee a lot of bright people so this really can't be a fail. It sure looks pretty too.
[+] [-] stuart78|6 years ago|reply
[0] https://pro.sony/ue_US/products/broadcastpromonitors/pvm-x55...
[+] [-] michaelt|6 years ago|reply
They had a guy called a 'colourist' - a specialist in color grading' [1] - and he had a screen which (subjectively) seemed to have an extremely good picture. I was assured it was very expensive.
Of course, there's still good cause for skepticism: Manufacturers will gladly co-opt any term to make their products sound better, as the wealth of 'studio monitor' speakers and headphones shows.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_grading
[+] [-] la_barba|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CharlesW|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomschlick|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nkristoffersen|6 years ago|reply
Examples: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?setNs=p_PRICE_2%7c1&Ns...
[+] [-] brokenmachine|6 years ago|reply
I think there'd be very few places that could justify the cost of a 42000 monitor when current 4k TVs are measurably accurate after calibration.
[+] [-] kgwgk|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nyjah|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itsaidpens|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brokenmachine|6 years ago|reply
I'm a techie with a lot of discretionary income who has creative ambitions. Also I'm still on way-out-of-date Windows 7 because I won't accept the spying that goes on in the newer versions. I love Linux but I'm unhappily tied to Windows at the moment only because one of my hobbies is playing music in Ableton, which is literally the only program keeping me on Windows.
So MacOS which I imagine to be a more polished Linux that supports Ableton could be great.
But then they release stuff like this and I realize that even though I'd dearly like to jump ship on Microsoft, I won't ever let myself be gouged like this and to be trapped in the kind of ecosystem where a product like this, at this price point, might be my only option. Call me a cheapskate but I do know how much the hardware costs, and won't pay that much of a premium for a shiny box that will be unsupported in a few short years when they're trying to shovel the latest hotness.
Instead I'm likely to investigate options of running Ableton in Virtual machines with GPU passthrough, a bunch of hassle and clutter with extra devices and audio mixers, etc, and spend the few thousand dollars I've saved on other stuff.
They clearly don't know how to satisfy a customer like me.
[+] [-] npunt|6 years ago|reply
That is... an understatement.
[+] [-] judge2020|6 years ago|reply
Sorry to disappoint, but Windows 10's telemetry is backported to Windows 7[0]. I guess you could have done something to remove these updates, though.
0: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/213183-once-more-with-...
[+] [-] orbifold|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] draw_down|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]