Yeah see I was confused because electrically the chipset should technically support PCIe 3.0. Apparently it's not fully validated on that chipset, even if it is technically possible. I don't know how they have it wired up, but I suspect that at least for the moment they have dedicated every possible lane to something. Also do note that usb3 isn't native on these. It's a discrete chip.
Can you explain that to me please? What's the difference between native and discrete? Isn't a discrete chip making the USB port talk natively?
I typed up a longer response, but it rambled too much. I meant intel didn't implement usb3 support in the chipset. They are very conservative on changes to chipsets on anything tied to servers and workstations, typically only doing major updates once every two cycles. Recall that they slipped a generation behind already, although they went more aggressive on core counts. The initial rumors on Ivy were that it would stop at 10 cores.
I typed up a longer response, but it rambled too much. I meant intel didn't implement usb3 support in the chipset. They are very conservative on changes to chipsets on anything tied to servers and workstations, typically only doing major updates once every two cycles. Recall that they slipped a generation behind already, although they went more aggressive on core counts. The initial rumors on Ivy were that it would stop at 10 cores.
I don't know if your first write-up would make it clear to me, but this certainly does - thanks much.
Why the truth hurts about your precious Apple company. Their products are way overpriced and you know this yourself. Stop playing the white knight and listen to the truth once.
Why the truth hurts about your precious Apple company. Their products are way overpriced and you know this yourself. Stop playing the white knight and listen to the truth once.
You can see what their profit margins are:
2013
net sales $171b
net income $37b
That makes their net profit margin just under 22%
Dell 2013
net sales $57b
net income $2.4b
net margin just over 4%
HTC 2012
net sales $9.6b
net income $560m
net margin just under 6%
Samsung 2013
net sales $217b
net income $29b
net margin 13%
It's not that Apple is overpricing the products, their costs are high and they like to maintain healthy margins. 22% is healthy but hardly excessive. If they dropped net margin by around 10% to match Samsung, that takes a $650 phone down to $561. That's still an expensive phone. Plus Samsung got to leech off Apple's R&D costs.
I expect the Mac Pro to have higher margins though. This year they may have factored in the build costs of the US factory and R&D. Perhaps at a later date, the price will drop back down and that helps maintain demand too.
This year should see a decent update as it will move to DDR4 (with up to 128GB more widely supported), possibly up to 14-cores and new AMD GPUs with much faster double precision performance.
I'd bet that there are a huge number of pros who've decided to wait until they can order a full system, i.e. Mac Pro + upgraded Apple monitor. I have no idea what's taking so long. Maybe Apple really is waiting for 4K panels to drop.
I think if you add in those potential orders, shipping times will be back to months.
It's not that Apple is overpricing the products, their costs are high and they like to maintain healthy margins. 22% is healthy but hardly excessive. If they dropped net margin by around 10% to match Samsung, that takes a $650 phone down to $561. That's still an expensive phone.
Apple makes computers also. Although we cannot know the exact prices for everything, we know them for RAM and storage. And compared to what you can find in retail they are outrageous even today. And let's say that RAM is not really an issue because it is often user accessible. What about SSD? In the 256-1000 GB range the retail price is usually about $0.5/GB. In the Apple Store it is about $1/GB. Not 20% higher, not 50% higher but 100% higher.
It's not that Apple is overpricing the products, their costs are high and they like to maintain healthy margins. 22% is healthy but hardly excessive. If they dropped net margin by around 10% to match Samsung, that takes a $650 phone down to $561. That's still an expensive phone.
Apple makes computers also. Although we cannot know the exact prices for everything, we know them for RAM and storage. And compared to what you can find in retail they are outrageous even today. And let's say that RAM is not really an issue because it is often user accessible. What about SSD? In the 256-1000 GB range the retail price is usually about $0.5/GB. In the Apple Store it is about $1/GB. Not 20% higher, not 50% higher but 100% higher.
Tim Cook stated that the margins on the Mac line were lower than their iOS line. The upgrades could have higher margins but I'd still expect 3rd parties to have unhealthy margins on their products. Apple's RAM prices aren't too bad these days.
Their SSDs are expensive but the cheap retail SSDs are using TLC NAND, Apple uses MLC. The Samsung 840 Pro would be the comparison ($0.74/GB) (Apple buys the SSDs from Samsung). Apple charges $300 to go from 256GB to 512GB and $800 to go from 256GB to 1TB so somewhere between $0.96-1.17/GB. They charge $1.56/GB on the entry Air to go from 128GB to 256GB. It lowers based on how much you buy. At the cheapest rate, they are 30% higher than one of the cheapest SSD manufacturers. This is their typical markup on components.
It would be nice of them to cut those prices down but they'd still be expensive if they did that. Say they matched $0.74/GB for the 1TB upgrade, it becomes $568 vs $800, it's better but still a pricey upgrade and they might not make any profit on that.
This is true if you stay within the 8-16 GB range. For example, the upgrade of the iMac 17" to 16 GB of RAM costs €137.99 in Crucial and €200.00 in the Apple Store. This is about 46% more expensive in the Apple side. I will admit it is not that bad. But going to 32 GB, will cost €275.98 in Crucial and a whopping €600.00 in the Apple Store. This is 117% more expensive! Fortunately, the iMac RAM is user accessible.
Regarding SSD's, I understand that they will be expensive even if Apple goes into unhealthy margin territory. The solution to this issue is to make internal storage more easily accessible to the user, like they did with RAM in some of their models. The majority of customers will still pay the Apple price for upgrades, but for the few of us preferring to do the upgrade for themselves, it will make a big difference. Everyone will be happy then.
This is true if you stay within the 8-16 GB range. For example, the upgrade of the iMac 17" to 16 GB of RAM costs €137.99 in Crucial and €200.00 in the Apple Store. This is about 46% more expensive in the Apple side. I will admit it is not that bad. But going to 32 GB, will cost €275.98 in Crucial and a whopping €600.00 in the Apple Store. This is 117% more expensive! Fortunately, the iMac RAM is user accessible.
What's the latency on that RAM from Crucial? Same as Apple?
What's the latency on that RAM from Crucial? Same as Apple?
Crucial list their RAM as CL=11. Same value for the more expensive OWC's memory, which moreover adds "Meets and/or Exceeds Apple/Intel Specifications".
Comments
Thanks for that.
There are some good posts on the 40 lanes in this thread, including from you:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/161376/teardown-of-apples-new-mac-pro-reveals-socketed-removable-intel-cpu/160
Yeah see I was confused because electrically the chipset should technically support PCIe 3.0. Apparently it's not fully validated on that chipset, even if it is technically possible. I don't know how they have it wired up, but I suspect that at least for the moment they have dedicated every possible lane to something. Also do note that usb3 isn't native on these. It's a discrete chip.
Neither does Anand:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013/8
Can you explain that to me please? What's the difference between native and discrete? Isn't a discrete chip making the USB port talk natively?
Can you explain that to me please? What's the difference between native and discrete? Isn't a discrete chip making the USB port talk natively?
I typed up a longer response, but it rambled too much. I meant intel didn't implement usb3 support in the chipset. They are very conservative on changes to chipsets on anything tied to servers and workstations, typically only doing major updates once every two cycles. Recall that they slipped a generation behind already, although they went more aggressive on core counts. The initial rumors on Ivy were that it would stop at 10 cores.
I don't know if your first write-up would make it clear to me, but this certainly does - thanks much.
Apple is in it for making tons of money and nothing else.They could care less about their customers.
-1
Shut up.
Why the truth hurts about your precious Apple company. Their products are way overpriced and you know this yourself. Stop playing the white knight and listen to the truth once.
You can see what their profit margins are:
2013
net sales $171b
net income $37b
That makes their net profit margin just under 22%
Dell 2013
net sales $57b
net income $2.4b
net margin just over 4%
HTC 2012
net sales $9.6b
net income $560m
net margin just under 6%
Samsung 2013
net sales $217b
net income $29b
net margin 13%
It's not that Apple is overpricing the products, their costs are high and they like to maintain healthy margins. 22% is healthy but hardly excessive. If they dropped net margin by around 10% to match Samsung, that takes a $650 phone down to $561. That's still an expensive phone. Plus Samsung got to leech off Apple's R&D costs.
I expect the Mac Pro to have higher margins though. This year they may have factored in the build costs of the US factory and R&D. Perhaps at a later date, the price will drop back down and that helps maintain demand too.
This year should see a decent update as it will move to DDR4 (with up to 128GB more widely supported), possibly up to 14-cores and new AMD GPUs with much faster double precision performance.
The 2-3 weeks wait means nothing.
I'd bet that there are a huge number of pros who've decided to wait until they can order a full system, i.e. Mac Pro + upgraded Apple monitor. I have no idea what's taking so long. Maybe Apple really is waiting for 4K panels to drop.
I think if you add in those potential orders, shipping times will be back to months.
Apple makes computers also. Although we cannot know the exact prices for everything, we know them for RAM and storage. And compared to what you can find in retail they are outrageous even today. And let's say that RAM is not really an issue because it is often user accessible. What about SSD? In the 256-1000 GB range the retail price is usually about $0.5/GB. In the Apple Store it is about $1/GB. Not 20% higher, not 50% higher but 100% higher.
Tim Cook stated that the margins on the Mac line were lower than their iOS line. The upgrades could have higher margins but I'd still expect 3rd parties to have unhealthy margins on their products. Apple's RAM prices aren't too bad these days.
Their SSDs are expensive but the cheap retail SSDs are using TLC NAND, Apple uses MLC. The Samsung 840 Pro would be the comparison ($0.74/GB) (Apple buys the SSDs from Samsung). Apple charges $300 to go from 256GB to 512GB and $800 to go from 256GB to 1TB so somewhere between $0.96-1.17/GB. They charge $1.56/GB on the entry Air to go from 128GB to 256GB. It lowers based on how much you buy. At the cheapest rate, they are 30% higher than one of the cheapest SSD manufacturers. This is their typical markup on components.
It would be nice of them to cut those prices down but they'd still be expensive if they did that. Say they matched $0.74/GB for the 1TB upgrade, it becomes $568 vs $800, it's better but still a pricey upgrade and they might not make any profit on that.
Apple's RAM prices aren't too bad these days.
This is true if you stay within the 8-16 GB range. For example, the upgrade of the iMac 17" to 16 GB of RAM costs €137.99 in Crucial and €200.00 in the Apple Store. This is about 46% more expensive in the Apple side. I will admit it is not that bad. But going to 32 GB, will cost €275.98 in Crucial and a whopping €600.00 in the Apple Store. This is 117% more expensive! Fortunately, the iMac RAM is user accessible.
Regarding SSD's, I understand that they will be expensive even if Apple goes into unhealthy margin territory. The solution to this issue is to make internal storage more easily accessible to the user, like they did with RAM in some of their models. The majority of customers will still pay the Apple price for upgrades, but for the few of us preferring to do the upgrade for themselves, it will make a big difference. Everyone will be happy then.
What's the latency on that RAM from Crucial? Same as Apple?
What's the latency on that RAM from Crucial? Same as Apple?
Crucial list their RAM as CL=11. Same value for the more expensive OWC's memory, which moreover adds "Meets and/or Exceeds Apple/Intel Specifications".
Where can I see Apple's RAM rating?
One wouldn't expect it from this site, but they do have a good page on the subject:
http://guides.macrumors.com/Buying_RAM
It's an often-overlooked spec when comparing RAM prices with what Apple charges.
http://macperformanceguide.com/mbpRetina2012-speed-memory-bandwidth.html
If not interested, it is great site, maintained by a great guy.