I still want an xMac - the spiritual successor to the IIcx/IIci. Give me a mini tower that can hold a couple of hard drives and a couple of slots. Shouldn't be too hard!
It wouldn’t be hard at all. Apple could even save a few hundred dollars in parts cost.
But who would be willing to pay $5k for it, when the full size model is only $6k?
Mac Half Pro!
Implied in that is that it would have a base model at half the price. By half, I do not mean half the slots. Keep the 8 slots, just make them half length, well 7” instead of 12.5”. Then reduce the PCIe lanes in half to x8 instead of x16. The slots would be x16, but be electrically x8. Keep 4 at double width, keep the MPX power headers for 225+75 W power support. Use the Xeon W 2200 or a Core X platform. A base model with 6 cores, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB of storage, 4 GB Radeon Pro 580 could be had for $2500. MPX modules for Pro Vega II, dual 3.5” HDD,
I’d have a slightly ID than the 2019 Mac Pro, but taking out 5” of depth for a 18” x 8.5” x 11” sized tower would make for a nice and smallish desktop footprint. It would be a pretty good look on a desktop imo.
Of course, there would be people hoping for a $1000 tower, but it really doesn’t hurt today’s Apple to offer more models per product line. It’s the reticence that’s is hard to understand. Doing the high end tower (the Mac Pro is a workstation) would free them to take the iMac 27 down market, make it crazy thin, as they won’t need to outfit it with 95 W CPUs and 150 W GPUs anymore, while they would make more money on the high end tower, especially if they had a $1500 TB3 monitor.
I still want an xMac - the spiritual successor to the IIcx/IIci. Give me a mini tower that can hold a couple of hard drives and a couple of slots. Shouldn't be too hard!
It wouldn’t be hard at all. Apple could even save a few hundred dollars in parts cost.
But who would be willing to pay $5k for it, when the full size model is only $6k?
Mac Half Pro!
Implied in that is that it would have a base model at half the price. By half, I do not mean half the slots. Keep the 8 slots, just make them half length, well 7” instead of 12.5”. Then reduce the PCIe lanes in half to x8 instead of x16. The slots would be x16, but be electrically x8. Keep 4 at double width, keep the MPX power headers for 225+75 W power support. Use the Xeon W 2200 or a Core X platform. A base model with 6 cores, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB of storage, 4 GB Radeon Pro 580 could be had for $2500. MPX modules for Pro Vega II, dual 3.5” HDD,
I’d have a slightly ID than the 2019 Mac Pro, but taking out 5” of depth for a 18” x 8.5” x 11” sized tower would make for a nice and smallish desktop footprint. It would be a pretty good look on a desktop imo.
Of course, there would be people hoping for a $1000 tower, but it really doesn’t hurt today’s Apple to offer more models per product line. It’s the reticence that’s is hard to understand. Doing the high end tower (the Mac Pro is a workstation) would free them to take the iMac 27 down market, make it crazy thin, as they won’t need to outfit it with 95 W CPUs and 150 W GPUs anymore, while they would make more money on the high end tower, especially if they had a $1500 TB3 monitor.
You missed my point. People can want a $1,000 or $2,500 minitower, just like people can want a $200 or $500 MacBook Air or iPhone Pro Max. Nothing wrong with wishing for something at an 85% or a 60% discount, but its about as productive as wishing for a unicorn.
The 8 slot minitower you describe would save Apple very little. You can’t cut $500 in cost but $3,500 in price. The machine you describe is a $5,000 box.
You missed my point. People can want a $1,000 or $2,500 minitower, just like people can want a $200 or $500 MacBook Air or iPhone Pro Max. Nothing wrong with wishing for something at an 85% or a 60% discount, but its about as productive as wishing for a unicorn.
Yes, but that hasn’t stopped the wishing for over 20 years now. There’s definitely a niche of people who would buy it.
Something got Apple to develop a 2019 Mac Pro, and they even told potential customers about it 2.5 years ahead of time. Probably, some big production houses said they wouldn’t buy the iMac Pro, Apple felt that meant the end for them being in the video/audio production business if so, and that was not something they wanted to lose after letting it whither for 3 years. They also made the Mac mini more of a server machine, and something of a mobile video and audio production system, instead of retiring it as well.
So, they can change their minds, and their potential customers really should provide some mindshare that there’s more to computers then just AIO desktops and laptops.
The 8 slot minitower you describe would save Apple very little. You can’t cut $500 in cost but $3,500 in price. The machine you describe is a $5,000 box.
Every single piece of hardware that Apple sells, including upgrade options, comes with a built-in margin. You can subtract Apple’s various upgrade costs and that margin is still there. The rest educated guesses, and you can come from it a variety of ways.
It’s essentially an iMac Pro without the 27” display, 6 cores instead of 8, 16 GB of RAM instead of 32 GB, 256 GB storage instead of 1 TB, a 4 GB Radeon 580 instead of a Vega 56, and 10G Ethernet either would be an option.
Reduction in cost from the iMac Pro: 5K 27” display: $700 (LG 27 Ultrafine is $1300 with a TB3 dock) 6-core Xeon W 2235 instead of 8 core Xeon W 2145: $500 16 GB RAM instead of 32 GB: $400 256 GB SSD instead if 1 TB SSD: $400 4GB Radeon Pro 580 instead of 8 GB Vega 56: $400 No 10G Ethernet: $100
That’s $2500 off from the iMac Pro. The Xeon W 2200 series are up to half the cost of the Xeon W 2100 series in the iMac Pro, so there is reduced cost from that and going down to 6-core. The upgrade cost from the iMac 8 GB 580 to 8 GB Vega 56 is $450, and the proposed GPU here has half the memory. The rest are Apple’s own upgrade costs.
Or you can look at it through the lens of the 2013 Mac Pro. For the last 1.5 years, Apple sold the 2013 Mac Pro with a 6-core Xeon, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, and 2 FirePro D500 GPUs with 3 GB memory each (6 GB total). They sold it for $3000. The proposed Mac Half Pro has 1 less GPU. So, the proposed $2500 base model cost is reasonable here.
You missed my point. People can want a $1,000 or $2,500 minitower, just like people can want a $200 or $500 MacBook Air or iPhone Pro Max. Nothing wrong with wishing for something at an 85% or a 60% discount, but its about as productive as wishing for a unicorn.
Yes, but that hasn’t stopped the wishing for over 20 years now. There’s definitely a niche of people who would buy it.
Something got Apple to develop a 2019 Mac Pro, and they even told potential customers about it 2.5 years ahead of time. Probably, some big production houses said they wouldn’t buy the iMac Pro, Apple felt that meant the end for them being in the video/audio production business if so, and that was not something they wanted to lose after letting it whither for 3 years. They also made the Mac mini more of a server machine, and something of a mobile video and audio production system, instead of retiring it as well.
So, they can change their minds, and their potential customers really should provide some mindshare that there’s more to computers then just AIO desktops and laptops.
The 8 slot minitower you describe would save Apple very little. You can’t cut $500 in cost but $3,500 in price. The machine you describe is a $5,000 box.
Every single piece of hardware that Apple sells, including upgrade options, comes with a built-in margin. You can subtract Apple’s various upgrade costs and that margin is still there. The rest educated guesses, and you can come from it a variety of ways.
It’s essentially an iMac Pro without the 27” display, 6 cores instead of 8, 16 GB of RAM instead of 32 GB, 256 GB storage instead of 1 TB, a 4 GB Radeon 580 instead of a Vega 56, and 10G Ethernet either would be an option.
Reduction in cost from the iMac Pro: 5K 27” display: $700 (LG 27 Ultrafine is $1300 with a TB3 dock) 6-core Xeon W 2235 instead of 8 core Xeon W 2145: $500 16 GB RAM instead of 32 GB: $400 256 GB SSD instead if 1 TB SSD: $400 4GB Radeon Pro 580 instead of 8 GB Vega 56: $400 No 10G Ethernet: $100
That’s $2500 off from the iMac Pro. The Xeon W 2200 series are up to half the cost of the Xeon W 2100 series in the iMac Pro, so there is reduced cost from that and going down to 6-core. The upgrade cost from the iMac 8 GB 580 to 8 GB Vega 56 is $450, and the proposed GPU here has half the memory. The rest are Apple’s own upgrade costs.
Or you can look at it through the lens of the 2013 Mac Pro. For the last 1.5 years, Apple sold the 2013 Mac Pro with a 6-core Xeon, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, and 2 FirePro D500 GPUs with 3 GB memory each (6 GB total). They sold it for $3000. The proposed Mac Half Pro has 1 less GPU. So, the proposed $2500 base model cost is reasonable here.
Wanting and lobbying Apple for a cut-down Mac Pro is great, but you missed my point again; read what I wrote. As long as you realize it would be priced at $5k, fine. Wanting it for $1,000 or $2,500 is a fantasy.
Your comparisons to 27” iMac, it’s not a valid comparison as it bears almost no resemblance to what you want Apple to make you. If you want to figure out what your “half Mac Pro” might realistically sell for, start with the Mac Pro and figure out the difference in cost to Apple for the changes you propose.
Changing 8 full length slots to 8 half length slots saves Apple very little. The current case vs. a smaller case isn’t going to save Apple more than maybe $50. 16GB vs 32GB of memory saves them less than $50.
The only change you’ve proposed that saves Apple much money at all is using a different CPU. So the question is, given that Apple buys upwards of 20 million CPUs a year from Intel, how much would Apple save by buying an 8-core W-3200 series vs. an 8-core W-2200 series. Apple/Intel won’t tell us but can you imagine there would even be $300 difference?
That’s why your midtower would be priced at $5k (or more). Saving $300 to 500 in BOM cost doesn’t equate to a $3000+ cut in selling price.
Wanting and lobbying Apple for a cut-down Mac Pro is great, but you missed my point again; read what I wrote. As long as you realize it would be priced at $5k, fine. Wanting it for $1,000 or $2,500 is a fantasy.
Your comparisons to 27” iMac, it’s not a valid comparison as it bears almost no resemblance to what you want Apple to make you. If you want to figure out what your “half Mac Pro” might realistically sell for, start with the Mac Pro and figure out the difference in cost to Apple for the changes you propose.
Changing 8 full length slots to 8 half length slots saves Apple very little. The current case vs. a smaller case isn’t going to save Apple more than maybe $50. 16GB vs 32GB of memory saves them less than $50.
The only change you’ve proposed that saves Apple much money at all is using a different CPU. So the question is, given that Apple buys upwards of 20 million CPUs a year from Intel, how much would Apple save by buying an 8-core W-3200 series vs. an 8-core W-2200 series. Apple/Intel won’t tell us but can you imagine there would even be $300 difference?
That’s why your midtower would be priced at $5k (or more). Saving $300 to 500 in BOM cost doesn’t equate to a $3000+ cut in selling price.
Nope. I categorically think what you are saying is incorrect. Yes, it is true that going from full length PCIe cards to half length PCIe cards doesn’t save any money (I propose it as a way to segment it from the 2019 Mac Pro), but I didn’t take any money out for it.
What I took out of the iMac Pro was:
27” 5K display (probably $700 cost to an OEM) Downgraded from the 8-core Xeon W 2145 ($1113 MSRP) to a 6-core W 2235 (~$550 MSRP) Downgraded from 32 GB to 16 GB of RAM (Apple charges $400 for a non ECC upgrade from 16 to 32), Downgraded from 1 TB of to 256 GB SSD storage (Apple charges $400 an SSD upgrade from 256 GB to 1 TB) Downgraded from an 8 GB Vega 56 to a 4 GB Radeon Pro 580 (Apple charges $450 for a GPU upgrade from a Rad Pro 580 to a Vega 48) Downgraded from 10G Ethernet to 1G Ethernet ($100 upgrade option)
Didn’t remove the costs for the 2 speakers, video camera or the microphones in the iMac Pro, but this tower would have slots, so maybe a wash. Most of the prices are from Apple’s own upgrade costs, so the margin is already accounted for in the base option that these upgrades come from, and dollars to donuts, these upgrade margins are also built into the iMac Pro.
Then, Apple sold the base model 2013 Mac Pro for $3000. A machine you say would cost $5000 if the components were put in a box instead of cylinder, with one of the big components (a D500 GPU) removed from it. So, how was Apple able to sell the 2013 Mac Pro for $3000? The slots would cost a lot more than the custom slot (needed to support about 48 lanes of PCIe) and custom sockets (3 of them), a circular backplane board, and whatever assembly process was needed for the unified thermal core industrial design.
Look, it’s fine to say that Apple is making a choice of not selling such a machine and are offering the iMac 27 and iMac Pro for people looking for this level of performance, but it’s plain weird to say that they wouldn’t be able to sell such a machine for $2500, or even $3000. They’ve down it before: 2013 Mac Pro, all Mac Pros before 2013 had base models in this range. They are just choosing not to.
Agreed. VR and AR are going nowhere fast. All evidence shows it to be a perpetual fringe fad for those willing to suffer “not there yet” technology. Since there’s no real useful end product, “not there yet” isn’t good enough to make money on it on end users as consumer tech.
You're absolutely wrong with regard to VR. Sony has sold somewhere around 5 million PSVR headsets by now. If you've used one, you'd realize it's a game changer (literally), and it's a first-gen console model which isn't even as powerful as newer PC-based platforms. Second gen console headsets are going to be incredible.
Unlike the abysmal 3D modeling and rendering software packages on the market (a technology that isn’t there yet, but is good enough for hard core users to make fantastic art, games, and movies with, should they condition themselves to the abusive state of the software and its GUIs... or be paid enough to put up with it).
LOL what are you on about? None of the people I know who actually work in 3D talk like this. "Isn't there yet", my ass.
One criticism: “Machine Learning” and “AI” don’t exist. It won’t exist for a very long time, unless someone makes a monumental discovery in how brains work. Everything under the banner of AI/machine learning today isn’t remotely Artificial Intelligence. It’s cleverly written algorithms and scripting that uses monstrous amounts of statistical data to plot potential paths. Nothing learns, nothing is intelligent, and nothing can think, at this time, other than a living brain. We don’t even have quality text prediction or voice recognition.
Also 100% wrong. The lack of modeling human brains does not preclude AI & ML. I don't think you know what these terms mean.
Wanting and lobbying Apple for a cut-down Mac Pro is great, but you missed my point again; read what I wrote. As long as you realize it would be priced at $5k, fine. Wanting it for $1,000 or $2,500 is a fantasy.
Your comparisons to 27” iMac, it’s not a valid comparison as it bears almost no resemblance to what you want Apple to make you. If you want to figure out what your “half Mac Pro” might realistically sell for, start with the Mac Pro and figure out the difference in cost to Apple for the changes you propose.
Changing 8 full length slots to 8 half length slots saves Apple very little. The current case vs. a smaller case isn’t going to save Apple more than maybe $50. 16GB vs 32GB of memory saves them less than $50.
The only change you’ve proposed that saves Apple much money at all is using a different CPU. So the question is, given that Apple buys upwards of 20 million CPUs a year from Intel, how much would Apple save by buying an 8-core W-3200 series vs. an 8-core W-2200 series. Apple/Intel won’t tell us but can you imagine there would even be $300 difference?
That’s why your midtower would be priced at $5k (or more). Saving $300 to 500 in BOM cost doesn’t equate to a $3000+ cut in selling price.
Nope. I categorically think what you are saying is incorrect. Yes, it is true that going from full length PCIe cards to half length PCIe cards doesn’t save any money (I propose it as a way to segment it from the 2019 Mac Pro), but I didn’t take any money out for it.
What I took out of the iMac Pro was:
27” 5K display (probably $700 cost to an OEM) Downgraded from the 8-core Xeon W 2145 ($1113 MSRP) to a 6-core W 2235 (~$550 MSRP) Downgraded from 32 GB to 16 GB of RAM (Apple charges $400 for a non ECC upgrade from 16 to 32), Downgraded from 1 TB of to 256 GB SSD storage (Apple charges $400 an SSD upgrade from 256 GB to 1 TB) Downgraded from an 8 GB Vega 56 to a 4 GB Radeon Pro 580 (Apple charges $450 for a GPU upgrade from a Rad Pro 580 to a Vega 48) Downgraded from 10G Ethernet to 1G Ethernet ($100 upgrade option)
Didn’t remove the costs for the 2 speakers, video camera or the microphones in the iMac Pro, but this tower would have slots, so maybe a wash. Most of the prices are from Apple’s own upgrade costs, so the margin is already accounted for in the base option that these upgrades come from, and dollars to donuts, these upgrade margins are also built into the iMac Pro.
Then, Apple sold the base model 2013 Mac Pro for $3000. A machine you say would cost $5000 if the components were put in a box instead of cylinder, with one of the big components (a D500 GPU) removed from it. So, how was Apple able to sell the 2013 Mac Pro for $3000? The slots would cost a lot more than the custom slot (needed to support about 48 lanes of PCIe) and custom sockets (3 of them), a circular backplane board, and whatever assembly process was needed for the unified thermal core industrial design.
Look, it’s fine to say that Apple is making a choice of not selling such a machine and are offering the iMac 27 and iMac Pro for people looking for this level of performance, but it’s plain weird to say that they wouldn’t be able to sell such a machine for $2500, or even $3000. They’ve down it before: 2013 Mac Pro, all Mac Pros before 2013 had base models in this range. They are just choosing not to.
Like I said, there’s no point in comparing it to an iMac Pro, it’s too dissimilar. The machine your trying to turn it into doesn’t exist because Apple would lose money on it. Things like subtracting $400 for 16GB are invalid because the cost savings is less than $50 for Apple. They can’t drop $50 in cost and sell it $400 cheaper.
It’s invalid to “back in” to a lower priced, sub-entry level model from an existing entry level model by subtracting out the retail price of high margin upgrades. You’re trying to treat every part in the base model as if it has the same high margin that upgrades do. That’s not true in the least.
On the base model they earn a rather low margin, but they know not everyone will be buying the base model. So overall, they can make it up with customers who buy the high-margin options, like a $400 upcharge for 16GB—>32GB RAM that actually costs them less than $50.
Those options have large margins to make up for the relatively low margin of the base models. That 700% margin on the 16GB—>32GB RAM upgrade is one of the reasons they make 30% average gross margin on the aggregate of all the configs the they sell—entry level, slightly upgraded, maxed out—combined. Apple prices are such that, based on all the various BTO configs that are purchased for any given model as a whole, the overall target margin is met.
Maybe this will help. Using your logic, Apple could sell a 15” MacBook Pro for $1,799 if it were 8GB/128GB ($2,399 less $200 RAM downgrade less $400 SSD downgrade). But that’s not an available option, because Apple won’t sell you that config for that price—they’d lose money. But for $1,799 you can get a 13” MBP. It has a smaller screen, a much less powerful 28W CPU quad-core vs. a 45W hexa-core, Intel built in GPU vs. discrete GPU, etc.
If Apple were willing to sell you that 15” 8/128, it wouldn’t be $1,799, it would be more like $2,299. Because even at retail, the price difference of 8GB vs. 16GB is about $30, same for 128GB vs. 512GB SSD. (And when you buy tens of millions, you can be sure Apple doesn’t have to pay retail.) Apple can’t take a $60 savings in parts cost and knock $600 off the selling price.
Anyway if you want to legitimately compare the 2019 Mac Pro to your “half Mac Pro” start with the Mac Pro and make the (minimal) adjustments you’re proposing to find out how much cost it will save Apple. Then you can assign an estimated selling price. A minimal difference in cost will, perhaps unsurprisingly, result in a minimal difference in the selling price, as illustrated in our previous exchange.
re: comparison to the cylinder Mac Pro, the 8-core machine with 16GB and the dual D700 GPUs is $4,000. For that, you get:
8-core Xeon 16GB RAM/256 max 256 SSD Dual D700 GPUs (6GB/3.5 Teraflops) Thunderbolt 2 Gigabit Ethernet 450W power supply No PCIe slots Proprietary, essentially non-upgradable GPUs
(Realize that machine was $5,500 when introduced; Apple cut the price in 2017 basically because customers didn’t want what Apple was selling: a small Mac Pro with zero PCIe slots and little upgrade potential.)
For $6k, you’ll soon be able to get:
8-core Xeon 32GB RAM/1TB max 256 SSD Radeon Pro 580X GPU (8GB/5.6 Teraflops) Thunderbolt 3 10 Gigabit Ethernet
1450W power supply
7 open PCIe slots Upgradable GPUs
Is it a “good deal”? Is there $2k worth of value between the current 8-core Mac Pro and the soon to be-released model? For pros who want/need an upgradable, expandable Xeon workstation, yes. For those who don’t need it, most likely no.
Don’t forget that Apple has a relatively high cost structure. They’ve got 130,000 employees and they spend $1.5 billion per month on R&D. That has to be covered somehow. Also, don’t forget the cost of development of Catalina and future upgrades over the next 5-7 years. There’s also support and warranty costs that need to be accounted for. You might think there a lot of profit in a $6k Mac Pro, but there isn’t.
In any case, I’ve reached the limitations of my ability to convey this information. If you’re in college, a professor in economics or finance would be able to explain it better I’m sure. Or if there are some marketing or finance MBA-types at your company they might be willing to help you out as well.
Like I said, there’s no point in comparing it to an iMac Pro, it’s too dissimilar. The machine your trying to turn it into doesn’t exist because Apple would lose money on it. Things like subtracting $400 for 16GB are invalid because the cost savings is less than $50 for Apple. They can’t drop $50 in cost and sell it $400 cheaper.
It’s invalid to “back in” to a lower priced, sub-entry level model from an existing entry level model by subtracting out the retail price of high margin upgrades. You’re trying to treat every part in the base model as if it has the same high margin that upgrades do. That’s not true in the least.
On the base model they earn a rather low margin, but they know not everyone will be buying the base model. So overall, they can make it up with customers who buy the high-margin options, like a $400 upcharge for 16GB—>32GB RAM that actually costs them less than $50.
Those options have large margins to make up for the relatively low margin of the base models. That 700% margin on the 16GB—>32GB RAM upgrade is one of the reasons they make 30% average gross margin on the aggregate of all the configs the they sell—entry level, slightly upgraded, maxed out—combined. Apple prices are such that, based on all the various BTO configs that are purchased for any given model as a whole, the overall target margin is met.
Like I said before as well, Apple’s products are margined at every component level. They aren’t going to give you a deal on RAM $/GB just because it comes with 32 GB in the base model. Every GB of that 32 GB of RAM is margined, just like it is indicated in the upgrade prices. They aren’t giving the buyer a deal on the 32 GB of RAM in the base model iMac Pro.
It most certainly is a graduated margin that will scale with the DRAM density and DRAM performance they end up using, basically a power of 2 due to fabrication processes, but 32 GB of ECC RAM will cost the same if it is an upgrade option from a $2500 base model or if it came standard in a $5000 model.
DRAM prices (or NAND prices) change in accordance to supply-demand constraints, so Apple adjusts it when they have to, and I would have to be careful to always use upgrade prices in consistent time frames. Today, 16 GB to 32 GB RAM upgrade costs the same if it is for a Mac mini, MBP, iMac. And it is non-ECC RAM.
Maybe this will help. Using your logic, Apple could sell a 15” MacBook Pro for $1,799 if it were 8GB/128GB ($2,399 less $200 RAM downgrade less $400 SSD downgrade). But that’s not an available option, because Apple won’t sell you that config for that price—they’d lose money. But for $1,799 you can get a 13” MBP. It has a smaller screen, a much less powerful 28W CPU quad-core vs. a 45W hexa-core, Intel built in GPU vs. discrete GPU, etc.
If Apple were willing to sell you that 15” 8/128, it wouldn’t be $1,799, it would be more like $2,299. Because even at retail, the price difference of 8GB vs. 16GB is about $30, same for 128GB vs. 512GB SSD. (And when you buy tens of millions, you can be sure Apple doesn’t have to pay retail.) Apple can’t take a $60 savings in parts cost and knock $600 off the selling price.
Apple sold a MBP15 at $1800 from 2010 to 2012. It had Intel processor graphics and lower RAM and storage. People bought it.
If Apple wants to, they could sell a MBP15 at $1800 today by removing the Touch Bar ($300), removing the discrete GPU, going to lower end 4-core, and going to 8 GB RAM. Basically a MBP13 system with a 15.4” display. A lot of people would buy it over the MBP13 because the larger display is what they value most. They do it for segmentation reasons, or upsell reasons, but that’s a product line choice, not that they can’t do it and can’t make profit from it.
I’ll ask you the question is in reverse. If the component costs are so low, how is it that they are charging the prices they for their based models? You are saying 8 GB of RAM and 500 GB of NAND storage is something like $60. How is it that the MBP15 base model costs $2400? What is making up the remaining $2340?
Anyway if you want to legitimately compare the 2019 Mac Pro to your “half Mac Pro” start with the Mac Pro and make the (minimal) adjustments you’re proposing to find out how much cost it will save Apple. Then you can assign an estimated selling price. A minimal difference in cost will, perhaps unsurprisingly, result in a minimal difference in the selling price, as illustrated in our previous exchange.
re: comparison to the cylinder Mac Pro, the 8-core machine with 16GB and the dual D700 GPUs is $4,000. For that, you get:
8-core Xeon 16GB RAM/256 max 256 SSD Dual D700 GPUs (6GB/3.5 Teraflops) Thunderbolt 2 Gigabit Ethernet 450W power supply No PCIe slots Proprietary, essentially non-upgradable GPUs
(Realize that machine was $5,500 when introduced; Apple cut the price in 2017 basically because customers didn’t want what Apple was selling: a small Mac Pro with zero PCIe slots and little upgrade potential.)
For $6k, you’ll soon be able to get:
8-core Xeon 32GB RAM/1TB max 256 SSD Radeon Pro 580X GPU (8GB/5.6 Teraflops) Thunderbolt 3 10 Gigabit Ethernet
1450W power supply
7 open PCIe slots Upgradable GPUs
Is it a “good deal”? Is there $2k worth of value between the current 8-core Mac Pro and the soon to be-released model? For pros who want/need an upgradable, expandable Xeon workstation, yes. For those who don’t need it, most likely no.
There are good reasons why the 2019 Mac Pro cost more than the iMac Pro or the 8-core 2013 Mac Pro. The Xeon W 3200 series processors in the 2019 Mac Pro have 6 memory channels and 64 PCIe lanes off the CPU. Intel charges a lot more for this over the Xeon W 2100/2200 series which have 4 memory channels and 48 lanes of PCIe. Likewise, the Core processors are further defeatured with only 2 memory channels and 24 lanes (varies with model) of PCIe. Every bit of those differences are margined, by Apple, by Intel, by the logic board manufacturer. Nothing comes at cost.
I don’t understand why you are making this comparison, really. Aren’t you just saying Apple can sell a Mac Pro with lessor features than the 2019 Mac Pro base model for less? And, you forgot to mention the 2013 Mac Pro with 6-cores, 2 D500 GPUs, 16/256 GB RAM/NAND for $3000. Are you saying that Apple sells the 2013 Mac Pro, from 2017 to 2019, at a loss?
What I am reading from you is that if you put the components of the 6-core 2013 Mac Pro at $3000 in a rectangular box with open slots will cost $5000. Really don’t understand it. HP, Dell, Lenovo, whoever, are all selling 6-core Xeon W 2100 CPUs, 16 GB ECC RAM, 256 GB SSDs, and some low end 4 GB workstation GPU card between $2500 to $3000. How are they able to do it? They are all margined component-wise to what Apple would do. And the successor Xeon W 2200 processors are cheaper than the Xeon W 2100 series, due to AMD, so future machines will be cheaper.
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Implied in that is that it would have a base model at half the price. By half, I do not mean half the slots. Keep the 8 slots, just make them half length, well 7” instead of 12.5”. Then reduce the PCIe lanes in half to x8 instead of x16. The slots would be x16, but be electrically x8. Keep 4 at double width, keep the MPX power headers for 225+75 W power support. Use the Xeon W 2200 or a Core X platform. A base model with 6 cores, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB of storage, 4 GB Radeon Pro 580 could be had for $2500. MPX modules for Pro Vega II, dual 3.5” HDD,
I’d have a slightly ID than the 2019 Mac Pro, but taking out 5” of depth for a 18” x 8.5” x 11” sized tower would make for a nice and smallish desktop footprint. It would be a pretty good look on a desktop imo.
Of course, there would be people hoping for a $1000 tower, but it really doesn’t hurt today’s Apple to offer more models per product line. It’s the reticence that’s is hard to understand. Doing the high end tower (the Mac Pro is a workstation) would free them to take the iMac 27 down market, make it crazy thin, as they won’t need to outfit it with 95 W CPUs and 150 W GPUs anymore, while they would make more money on the high end tower, especially if they had a $1500 TB3 monitor.
Something got Apple to develop a 2019 Mac Pro, and they even told potential customers about it 2.5 years ahead of time. Probably, some big production houses said they wouldn’t buy the iMac Pro, Apple felt that meant the end for them being in the video/audio production business if so, and that was not something they wanted to lose after letting it whither for 3 years. They also made the Mac mini more of a server machine, and something of a mobile video and audio production system, instead of retiring it as well.
So, they can change their minds, and their potential customers really should provide some mindshare that there’s more to computers then just AIO desktops and laptops.
Every single piece of hardware that Apple sells, including upgrade options, comes with a built-in margin. You can subtract Apple’s various upgrade costs and that margin is still there. The rest educated guesses, and you can come from it a variety of ways.
It’s essentially an iMac Pro without the 27” display, 6 cores instead of 8, 16 GB of RAM instead of 32 GB, 256 GB storage instead of 1 TB, a 4 GB Radeon 580 instead of a Vega 56, and 10G Ethernet either would be an option.
Reduction in cost from the iMac Pro:
5K 27” display: $700 (LG 27 Ultrafine is $1300 with a TB3 dock)
6-core Xeon W 2235 instead of 8 core Xeon W 2145: $500
16 GB RAM instead of 32 GB: $400
256 GB SSD instead if 1 TB SSD: $400
4GB Radeon Pro 580 instead of 8 GB Vega 56: $400
No 10G Ethernet: $100
That’s $2500 off from the iMac Pro. The Xeon W 2200 series are up to half the cost of the Xeon W 2100 series in the iMac Pro, so there is reduced cost from that and going down to 6-core. The upgrade cost from the iMac 8 GB 580 to 8 GB Vega 56 is $450, and the proposed GPU here has half the memory. The rest are Apple’s own upgrade costs.
Or you can look at it through the lens of the 2013 Mac Pro. For the last 1.5 years, Apple sold the 2013 Mac Pro with a 6-core Xeon, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, and 2 FirePro D500 GPUs with 3 GB memory each (6 GB total). They sold it for $3000. The proposed Mac Half Pro has 1 less GPU. So, the proposed $2500 base model cost is reasonable here.
That’s why your midtower would be priced at $5k (or more). Saving $300 to 500 in BOM cost doesn’t equate to a $3000+ cut in selling price.
What I took out of the iMac Pro was:
27” 5K display (probably $700 cost to an OEM)
Downgraded from the 8-core Xeon W 2145 ($1113 MSRP) to a 6-core W 2235 (~$550 MSRP)
Downgraded from 32 GB to 16 GB of RAM (Apple charges $400 for a non ECC upgrade from 16 to 32),
Downgraded from 1 TB of to 256 GB SSD storage (Apple charges $400 an SSD upgrade from 256 GB to 1 TB)
Downgraded from an 8 GB Vega 56 to a 4 GB Radeon Pro 580 (Apple charges $450 for a GPU upgrade from a Rad Pro 580 to a Vega 48)
Downgraded from 10G Ethernet to 1G Ethernet ($100 upgrade option)
Look, it’s fine to say that Apple is making a choice of not selling such a machine and are offering the iMac 27 and iMac Pro for people looking for this level of performance, but it’s plain weird to say that they wouldn’t be able to sell such a machine for $2500, or even $3000. They’ve down it before: 2013 Mac Pro, all Mac Pros before 2013 had base models in this range. They are just choosing not to.
LOL what are you on about? None of the people I know who actually work in 3D talk like this. "Isn't there yet", my ass.
Also 100% wrong. The lack of modeling human brains does not preclude AI & ML. I don't think you know what these terms mean.
8-core Xeon
16GB RAM/256 max
256 SSD
Dual D700 GPUs (6GB/3.5 Teraflops)
Thunderbolt 2
Gigabit Ethernet
450W power supply
No PCIe slots
Proprietary, essentially non-upgradable GPUs
(Realize that machine was $5,500 when introduced; Apple cut the price in 2017 basically because customers didn’t want what Apple was selling: a small Mac Pro with zero PCIe slots and little upgrade potential.)
For $6k, you’ll soon be able to get:
8-core Xeon
32GB RAM/1TB max
256 SSD
Radeon Pro 580X GPU (8GB/5.6 Teraflops)
Thunderbolt 3
10 Gigabit Ethernet
Upgradable GPUs
Is it a “good deal”? Is there $2k worth of value between the current 8-core Mac Pro and the soon to be-released model? For pros who want/need an upgradable, expandable Xeon workstation, yes. For those who don’t need it, most likely no.
Don’t forget that Apple has a relatively high cost structure. They’ve got 130,000 employees and they spend $1.5 billion per month on R&D. That has to be covered somehow. Also, don’t forget the cost of development of Catalina and future upgrades over the next 5-7 years. There’s also support and warranty costs that need to be accounted for. You might think there a lot of profit in a $6k Mac Pro, but there isn’t.
In any case, I’ve reached the limitations of my ability to convey this information. If you’re in college, a professor in economics or finance would be able to explain it better I’m sure. Or if there are some marketing or finance MBA-types at your company they might be willing to help you out as well.
DRAM prices (or NAND prices) change in accordance to supply-demand constraints, so Apple adjusts it when they have to, and I would have to be careful to always use upgrade prices in consistent time frames. Today, 16 GB to 32 GB RAM upgrade costs the same if it is for a Mac mini, MBP, iMac. And it is non-ECC RAM.
If Apple wants to, they could sell a MBP15 at $1800 today by removing the Touch Bar ($300), removing the discrete GPU, going to lower end 4-core, and going to 8 GB RAM. Basically a MBP13 system with a 15.4” display. A lot of people would buy it over the MBP13 because the larger display is what they value most. They do it for segmentation reasons, or upsell reasons, but that’s a product line choice, not that they can’t do it and can’t make profit from it.
I don’t understand why you are making this comparison, really. Aren’t you just saying Apple can sell a Mac Pro with lessor features than the 2019 Mac Pro base model for less? And, you forgot to mention the 2013 Mac Pro with 6-cores, 2 D500 GPUs, 16/256 GB RAM/NAND for $3000. Are you saying that Apple sells the 2013 Mac Pro, from 2017 to 2019, at a loss?
What I am reading from you is that if you put the components of the 6-core 2013 Mac Pro at $3000 in a rectangular box with open slots will cost $5000. Really don’t understand it. HP, Dell, Lenovo, whoever, are all selling 6-core Xeon W 2100 CPUs, 16 GB ECC RAM, 256 GB SSDs, and some low end 4 GB workstation GPU card between $2500 to $3000. How are they able to do it? They are all margined component-wise to what Apple would do. And the successor Xeon W 2200 processors are cheaper than the Xeon W 2100 series, due to AMD, so future machines will be cheaper.