I still can't believe people are complaining about the price. I swear not one of you has ever worked in a business that relies on computers to get work done (specifically creative work). Especially if you've got a deadline to meet for a client or they want to see a demo in person.
What business doesn't rely on computers to get work done these days?
Of course people need basic computers for work. But most businesses don't require high-end workstations to get their work done. Those that do wouldn't balk at the price of this machine.
CON: Apple has redefined what a "pro" user is by making a workstation specifically for organizations like Pixar. They left out pretty much every indie app developer, and that's a real shame. I still own a cheese grater Mac Pro. It was pricey but I could afford one. I can't afford this new one.
I find it hard to believe that devs ever need that kind of power.
Who/what are enthusiasts? Are they so-called professionals or not? I’m struggling to understand why an iMac Pro or a Mac mini wouldn’t meet their requirements.
An iMac (not) Pro is a glued shut throwaway that will cook itself under heavy-duty use. It also has the problem of a built-in mic and camera that cannot be disconnected. Yes, that is an issue for many people and commercial customers.
The Mac mini is a nice computer with two big problems- integrated graphics and it has to be taken apart in order to upgrade the memory.
The new design is interesting, but I want to see how much heat this beast throws off and how loud the fans are. My cheesegrater is dead silent and stays quite cool even when under a significant load. Any laptop or the Mac mini will spool up and the fans are quite loud. I own one of the new Mac minis ( 3.2Ghz i7 and 16 GB 2667 MHz DDR4) and something as simple as transcoding video spools up the fans to be very noisy. I have been researching eGPUs and am not impressed by what I see relative to cost.
Apple does not need to reinvent the wheel- there is quite a market for a headless Mac that runs from about $2000-4,000 that can take standard cards and can be user upgraded for memory. Let BTO scale from i7-i9 Desktop grade up to the Xeon class CPUs. A simple case- not a styling exercise- will suffice.
CON: Apple has redefined what a "pro" user is by making a workstation specifically for organizations like Pixar. They left out pretty much every indie app developer, and that's a real shame. I still own a cheese grater Mac Pro. It was pricey but I could afford one. I can't afford this new one.
The new Mac mini doesn’t work for indie developers?
You assume that I'm implying that Indie app developers have no options from Apple. I didn't write that. I wrote that it's a shame that Apple left out so many legitimate pros with the new Mac Pro. At one time they had a modular pro machine on the low end that we could afford. That is no longer the case. If you can figure out how to add an I/O card to a Mac Mini let us all know.
Just for context, my first Mac was a 33mHz Quadra 950 with a 400 MB hard drive, 16 Mb ram and 1Mb vram for $7500 ($9600 when it first came out)
The IIfx maxed at $10,970 which is almost $22,000 in today's dollars, started at half that which is still twice as much as this box.
lols at people freaking out over $5K computers. My Mac Plus with external floppy, ImageWriter II and accessories was almost $4K in 1987 dollars. Almost $700 for a 40mb (megabyte!) external SCSI hard drive... yeah, people are spoiled!
Yea, but usually in electronics the price declines over time even as performance improves. For example, I just bought an LG 4k OLED HDTV for $329 that would have easily cost a couple of thousand maybe 2 years ago. Looks nice and works well with the Apple TV 4K.
Apple has stubbornly kept prices high from cell phones to Macs. In laptops and iMacs in recent years they have been guilty of selling last year's technology at tomorrow's prices.
CON: Apple has redefined what a "pro" user is by making a workstation specifically for organizations like Pixar. They left out pretty much every indie app developer, and that's a real shame. I still own a cheese grater Mac Pro. It was pricey but I could afford one. I can't afford this new one.
Indie app developers don’t need this machine. A standard iMac, Mac Mini, or iMac Pro will do the job perfectly well. When it comes to pro audio and video, this machine is the beast it was meant to be.
Developing for Apple means a very tiny selection of options. Certainly some of their other machines will suffice, but they still have no modular pro machine for an audience they once served. Likewise, Apple only has a single $5000 display with a separate $1000 stand. It's insane. And the sounds from the audience and speed at which they shifted to showing macOS is evidence that a majority of the dev community also feels left out. It's a shame.
Just for context, my first Mac was a 33mHz Quadra 950 with a 400 MB hard drive, 16 Mb ram and 1Mb vram for $7500 ($9600 when it first came out)
The IIfx maxed at $10,970 which is almost $22,000 in today's dollars, started at half that which is still twice as much as this box.
lols at people freaking out over $5K computers. My Mac Plus with external floppy, ImageWriter II and accessories was almost $4K in 1987 dollars. Almost $700 for a 40mb (megabyte!) external SCSI hard drive... yeah, people are spoiled!
It doesn't matter how much logic one uses. The kiddies on this forum doing all the whining were most likely not born yet during these days or were still in diapers. Add to that the entitled free-for-all that the Internet has allowed people to believe that everything should be free, or practically free that anything costing any kind of money is blasphemous and/or greedy.
CON: Apple has redefined what a "pro" user is by making a workstation specifically for organizations like Pixar. They left out pretty much every indie app developer, and that's a real shame. I still own a cheese grater Mac Pro. It was pricey but I could afford one. I can't afford this new one.
The new Mac mini doesn’t work for indie developers?
You assume that I'm implying that Indie app developers have no options from Apple. I didn't write that. I wrote that it's a shame that Apple left out so many legitimate pros with the new Mac Pro. At one time they had a modular pro machine on the low end that we could afford. That is no longer the case. If you can figure out how to add an I/O card to a Mac Mini let us all know.
What sort of I/O card are you looking for? Between TB3, USB and Ethernet, there are tons of expansion possibilities on the latest Mac mini.
CON: Apple has redefined what a "pro" user is by making a workstation specifically for organizations like Pixar. They left out pretty much every indie app developer, and that's a real shame. I still own a cheese grater Mac Pro. It was pricey but I could afford one. I can't afford this new one.
I find it hard to believe that devs ever need that kind of power.
They want things like a modular design to make customization and future upgrades possible, which keeps machines in-use longer. They need power for compilation speed, rendering, and increased development cycles. They want display options from Apple that aren't $6000 to start.
I guess the idea is that you make that $6K initial investment, and you can expand from there -- add RAM, add storage, add graphics power. This is not unlike the old Mac Pro. You don't have to buy the Apple display.
Some of you have apparently lost perspective on how much actual "Pro" equipment costs these days. My brother is a news photographer -- his camera body alone costs over $30K, and he goes through them every few years. This is not a new thing -- quality primary equipment is expensive, no matter your field. The XDR display is an example -- equivalent displays are pricey -- that $43K comparison price wasn't a joke.
For me, I want the XDR display. It's something I can use. Apple is going to sell a lot of those.
If you’re a Fortune 100 company... it’s going to be great!
Quality tools are expensive. Do you need a tool this powerful? If so, great, here it is, you can do your job and produce value with it. If not, it's not for you, and that's fine. The iMac Pro, iMac, and Mini are great options for desktops.
Uhhhh... yah. They designed a Mac Pro for Pixar and maybe 5 other massive design houses. What about the other 98% of content creators? Where is the Mac for the small business that makes up 98% of the market? The freelancers who need a solid machine that they can upgrade over 7 years. iMac isn’t it.
This is looks like a fantastic machine - but it misses the mark for what the average pro user has been asking for.
Why wouldn’t the iMac or iMac Pro meet their needs?
CON: Apple has redefined what a "pro" user is by making a workstation specifically for organizations like Pixar. They left out pretty much every indie app developer, and that's a real shame. I still own a cheese grater Mac Pro. It was pricey but I could afford one. I can't afford this new one.
The new Mac mini doesn’t work for indie developers?
You assume that I'm implying that Indie app developers have no options from Apple. I didn't write that. I wrote that it's a shame that Apple left out so many legitimate pros with the new Mac Pro. At one time they had a modular pro machine on the low end that we could afford. That is no longer the case. If you can figure out how to add an I/O card to a Mac Mini let us all know.
What sort of I/O card are you looking for? Between TB3, USB and Ethernet, there are tons of expansion possibilities on the latest Mac mini.
One example would be ethernet upgrades. I have a cheese grater with built-in gigabit. I can add a card to give it 10 gigabit ethernet. The problem is that machine is from 2008 and Apple won't even let me run Mojave when it actually works if you upgrade the wifi/bluetooth module. Oh yeah, you can swap that out too.
Just for context, my first Mac was a 33mHz Quadra 950 with a 400 MB hard drive, 16 Mb ram and 1Mb vram for $7500 ($9600 when it first came out)
The IIfx maxed at $10,970 which is almost $22,000 in today's dollars, started at half that which is still twice as much as this box.
lols at people freaking out over $5K computers. My Mac Plus with external floppy, ImageWriter II and accessories was almost $4K in 1987 dollars. Almost $700 for a 40mb (megabyte!) external SCSI hard drive... yeah, people are spoiled!
It doesn't matter how much logic one uses. The kiddies on this forum doing all the whining were most likely not born yet during these days or were still in diapers. Add to that the entitled free-for-all that the Internet has allowed people to believe that everything should be free, or practically free that anything costing any kind of money is blasphemous and/or greedy.
It's called a debate. It's a place where people share conflicting ideas and opinions. It's OK not to agree without resorting to name calling. That's usually an indication of immaturity or a bad counter-argument. Let's keep it classy and listen to each other.
I guess the idea is that you make that $6K initial investment, and you can expand from there -- add RAM, add storage, add graphics power. This is not unlike the old Mac Pro. You don't have to buy the Apple display.
Some of you have apparently lost perspective on how much actual "Pro" equipment costs these days. My brother is a news photographer -- his camera body alone costs over $30K, and he goes through them every few years. This is not a new thing -- quality primary equipment is expensive, no matter your field. The XDR display is an example -- equivalent displays are pricey -- that $43K comparison price wasn't a joke.
For me, I want the XDR display. It's something I can use. Apple is going to sell a lot of those.
From what I've read, no one (including me) is against the expensive pro machine. We understand that there are reasonably wealthy professionals that buy machines like this. We're disappointed that the majority of pros were left out with regard to this machine, especially when Apple used to have cheese grater options for us.
It's called a debate. It's a place where people share conflicting ideas and opinions. It's OK not to agree without resorting to name calling. That's usually an indication of immaturity or a bad counter-argument. Let's keep it classy and listen to each other.
You can call it a "debate" if you want. People try to pass off their opinions as fact, or they're under the false belief that their needs is what the market should be. Wrong in every way.
I didn't insult anyone in particular. It's more or less a general opinion of many people are nowadays. If you find something in my general post that offends you, grow some thicker skin.
It's called a debate. It's a place where people share conflicting ideas and opinions. It's OK not to agree without resorting to name calling. That's usually an indication of immaturity or a bad counter-argument. Let's keep it classy and listen to each other.
You can call it a "debate" if you want. People try to pass off their opinions as fact, or they're under the false belief that their needs is what the market should be. Wrong in every way.
I didn't insult anyone in particular. It's more or less a general opinion of many people are nowadays. If you find something in my general post that offends you, grow some thicker skin.
Yah... "people"... hundreds of thousands of them... trying to pass off their opinions and false beliefs about their needs... wrong in every way... You did it!! you exposed the masses for what they are... *clap clap clap*
Comments
The Mac mini is a nice computer with two big problems- integrated graphics and it has to be taken apart in order to upgrade the memory.
The new design is interesting, but I want to see how much heat this beast throws off and how loud the fans are. My cheesegrater is dead silent and stays quite cool even when under a significant load. Any laptop or the Mac mini will spool up and the fans are quite loud. I own one of the new Mac minis ( 3.2Ghz i7 and 16 GB 2667 MHz DDR4) and something as simple as transcoding video spools up the fans to be very noisy. I have been researching eGPUs and am not impressed by what I see relative to cost.
Apple does not need to reinvent the wheel- there is quite a market for a headless Mac that runs from about $2000-4,000 that can take standard cards and can be user upgraded for memory. Let BTO scale from i7-i9 Desktop grade up to the Xeon class CPUs. A simple case- not a styling exercise- will suffice.
For example, I just bought an LG 4k OLED HDTV for $329 that would have easily cost a couple of thousand maybe 2 years ago. Looks nice and works well with the Apple TV 4K.
Apple has stubbornly kept prices high from cell phones to Macs. In laptops and iMacs in recent years they have been guilty of selling last year's technology at tomorrow's prices.
"Apple releases a computer that starts at $12,000, and you'll need to pay $1000 just for a stand for the screen."
Followed by:
"AAPL shares plunge after Apple introduces a computer that looks like a cheese grater and costs $12,000"
Some of you have apparently lost perspective on how much actual "Pro" equipment costs these days. My brother is a news photographer -- his camera body alone costs over $30K, and he goes through them every few years. This is not a new thing -- quality primary equipment is expensive, no matter your field. The XDR display is an example -- equivalent displays are pricey -- that $43K comparison price wasn't a joke.
For me, I want the XDR display. It's something I can use. Apple is going to sell a lot of those.
It was the same with Mac Pro 2010 + 2012 which used to have PCI 2 while PCI 3 was already standard.
You did it!! you exposed the masses for what they are... *clap clap clap*