maxit

dysamoria said:

EsquireCats said:

Would you believe that any person goes to bed at night with concerns about the cost of the Mac Pro. Of course not, that is beyond silly.

The Mac Pro provides no guidance on future computer prices from Apple, or in anyway has an impact on the lives of ordinary people.

Then I guess I’m “beyond silly” and “not ordinary”, because yes, I’ve had concerns about this machine’s pricing all week! I’ve been trying to come up with some way, some justification for trying to buy Apple’s ONLY proper workstation offering. There’s just no way, but I can’t really move forward in my computer usage until I switch to something modern and NOT COMPACT.

I need a proper workstation. I’ve been waiting for a proper workstation for about ten years. I’ve been struggling to save for it all that time, so that I could have a proper Apple workstation, running Mac OS, instead of a disposable, compact, thermally-constrained all-in-one (or a box of PC/Windows voodoo).

So here we finally are: they announced it was available for sale on my birthday, which is already a time of year I hate. Yeah, I knew the price already, and I was already pissed, but this just felt like getting my face rubbed in it. And yeah, wise-asses, I know it’s not all about me, but I’m a human being with emotions like everyone else and Apple have pushed my damned buttons.

I don’t care what kind of justification you guys throw at this price point, it’s illogical fanatic’s apologetics. The complaint about cost would not be happening to this degree if Apple hadn’t dumped many of their own prior customers. The prosumers, hobbyists, small businesses, enthusiasts... anyone for whom a compact or all-in-one is the WRONG machine, and who still wants to run Mac OS on a legit Apple computer. Apple has ONE offering in this space and it STARTS at $6000!

The whole problem here is a self-inflicted PR injury on Apple’s part by leaving out an entire segment of the market that they used to serve. A large chunk of that market was dumped by Apple (I guess we’re irrelevant to their Wall Street aspirations). I’m not the only pissed-off person in that group, and we aren’t “a bunch of whiners”. This constant ad hominem BS slamming of people with legit critical commentary is utter fanatical nonsense and turns the media meme of “Apple cultists” into a reality.

I would have been able to buy a Mac Pro at the previous pricing (prior cheese-graters started at $2500, and the trash can at $3000); I’d have gone to $3500 for this one, but it’s utterly impossible for me to afford at $6000. This one is TWICE the cost of the last model, and NO, there’s no justification. Comparing it to prior insane pricing for Macs of the deep past does not make sense. Those were cases of technological pushes. Technology has moved on a lot since then. Not only is this technology much more a commodity, this machine isn’t even bleeding edge (as has been pointed out by several other commentators). This machine is not different enough from what is already on the market elsewhere (and what Apple used to offer) to demand this kind of pricing for the BASE MODEL.

And the way you guys dismissed the insane wheel pricing... If you’re not bothered by Microsoft’s insane pricing for Windows licenses, fine, but speak for yourself and don’t lay that nonsense on the rest of us!!!

I’m not a Pixar or an Adobe. Maybe I’m not ordinary either. I’m an artist struggling with poverty, while trying to find some way to advance myself in terms of my tools and my work (and maybe make a living off of something eventually). I want to buy ONE computer for MULTIPLE purposes, and I expect it to be capable of running full-tilt, for many years, without throttling or dying of thermal stresses (or both). I’m entirely WILLING TO SAVE AND SPEND a considerable amount of money for an Apple workstation, but Apple have boldly declared that my considerable expense isn’t considerable enough. Only corporations are worth Apple’s attention.

I’m now an abandoned segment of prior Apple customers and I don’t know WTF Apple expect us to do. Abandon Mac OS so we can have a proper workstation? Build Hackintoshes?? No thank you.

The mental gymnastics, excuses, ad hominem commentary, and sheer callous and blind arrogance on display here is utterly appalling. 

fred1 said:

I know it’s just me, but given all the issues recently I wish Apple would slow down and not release products until they’re sure there are no problems. Of course it’s strange that this issue with the X didn’t show up for over a year. 

macplusplus said:

Seeing an opportunity from Apple's public relations crisis, some competitors this week issued statements to say that they do not throttle the processing power of older devices.

That was not a publc relations “crisis” but an engineering and testing issue at first place. Slowness claims started with the release of iOS 11, and testing, locating and fixing the issue took until this date. Apple has identified the issue in adequate time and immediately communicated its findings and solutions. There is no “public relations crisis” at all, but some media outlets and trolls won’t stop and will continue to push to create an artificial crisis, even after that. As always, their efforts will be futile...

friedmud said:

I'll throw my 2 cents in here.

I work in massively-parallel (think: 100,000 core+ supercomputing), scientific computing.  We've purchased ~100 maxed out (~$7k) Mac Pro cylinders over the past few years for our workstation needs.

When the new Mac Pro was announced - we knew that the configuration we would want (28 core, ~128GB of RAM) would be more expensive than the $7k we've been paying.  We estimated anywhere from $15k to $20k.  It turns out that $15k is the number.

In the interim, we looked into switching over to Linux workstations with 32-core threadrippers.  We bought 10 machines like that for about $6k and gave them to our developers who felt like they wanted to switch to Linux.  It hasn't been pretty.  2 of the boxes have had hardware problems... and all have had significant downtime because of "Linux issues" (and these people are Linux experts... but, to this day, software upgrades on Linux STILL have a decent chance of breaking your system).

Now the new threadrippers are coming out... and the 64-core ones will be out soon enough.  Those look _super_ enticing... but we're not going to do it.  It's simply not worth the cost in lost productivity.  It only takes losing 50 (yes, really) hours to make up the $8k difference between these machines.  That's for machines that we know we will use for at least 5 years... so, anything more than 10 hours a year of downtime would make the Linux boxes more expensive (we almost never have problems with our cylinders and I expect it to be the same for these new Mac Pros).

Therefore: we just put in our upgrade request... we're going to (in phases over a couple of years) buy ~40 of these new boxes at $15k.  Yes, they are expensive... but for what we do they are simply the best option.

EDIT: And... all new hires will be receiving the $15k machines as well...

tenly said:

I don't have the time or energy to reply to all of you individually - so this comment is directed to all of those who have blindly sided with Apple's approach of bricking the phone in response to this type of "tampering".

First of all - you don't even know for sure whether bricking the phone in these circumstances are what Apple intended to do.  By calling it a "glitch", they are acknowledging that it is in fact NOT working exactly as intended.

As many of the smarter forum members have opined, there are a number of responses that could have been applied in this situation that are less severe YET STILL 100% SECURE!  But since you don't understand how any of this stuff actually works - or what needs to be protected - you blindly over react.  You're the same people that welcome "perceived security" over "real security" and probably think that all of the security measures in place at the airport actually make your flights more secure - even though they've been proven time and time again to be a waste of time and money whose ONLY value is to provide the PERCEPTION of security!

It's people like you - people that welcome extreme over reactions to perceived threats (real or not) that are going to be responsible for giving away ALL of our privacy and freedoms in the not so distant future.

Should Apple protect my data?  Yes!  Absolutely!  Should they do so by bricking my device?  ONLY IF NECESSARY!!!  And in this case - ITS NOT!!!  There are several levels of response/reaction that could be applied here that would protect your data while still allowing you to use your device!  If you lack the intelligence to know what those responses should be - just shut the hell up - or go ahead and demand a solution that protects your data APPROPRIATELY.  Don't pretend you know what the solution is and demand specific things when it's so very obvious you are responding solely out of fear and ignorance and that you don't have a clue what *should* be done.