100% of professionals are looking for a powerful computer that they can upgrade/expand over time. 99.99% of professionals did not ask for this extremely expensive specific video editing computer. 99.99% of professionals will not buy this extremely expensive specific video editing computer. Therefore - the Mac Pro is in every way overpriced for the professional market.
Pointing to the .02% of professionals who might want this and making an argument in their support while ignoring pretty much the entire market... that's a stretch.
Nope.
It is overpriced for you, and that's fine. It is not overpriced when compared to equivalent Windows Workstation machines, which is what this article is all about.
That depends upon how you define equivalent and doesn’t take into consideration that that so called equivalent machine is also overpriced. Careful shopping will turn up better hardware at lower prices. The real question is the expense of upgrades that are again grossly overpriced especially in comparison to equivalent retail offerings. Apple often charges 4X the price of retail RAM with the same specs and does so across all of its platforms. In this regard the Mac Pro is no different.
Frankly this article seems to be more about conditioning people to accept Apples ripoff pricing. Instead AI should be taking Apple to task over the greedy price structures it uses. I’d suggest a purchase of a Thread Ripper (the newly released stuff) based system and a head to head comparison to really see how well the Mac Pro holds up.
AI posted an article about where to get and how to install third party RAM on the Mac Pro to avoid paying Apple for outrageous RAM prices. Why would a pro do that? As a consumer I would easily consider that. But not a pro working for an agency.
100% wrong. We bought RAM from reliable sources other than Apple all the time and this was at a pretty big post facility with lot's of big clients. Just because you work pro doesn't mean you want to waste money. Nor do the people you work for want you to waste money. I was the facility manager and spent a lot of time trying find the cheapest deals on everything I bought. We had probably 30 Macs total, and half of those were Mac Pros. I bought RAM from MacRamDirect all the time. They actually sell RAM that is the exact same sticks Apple sells and installs but for a lower price. By that I mean EXACT - as in the same manufacturer, same specs, same everything.
People need to stop trying to fit people who work pro into some sort of neat little box. There isn't one.
Most of that $53,000 price point is in 8TB of flash memory and 1.5TB of RAM. Apple's RAM price alone is $25,000. Another $10K can go to two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo cards, sold for $5,600 individually. Tack on a massive 8TB SSD, a 28-core...()
Nitpicking here: when talking about tech, I think it's imperative to be accurate (exempli gratia, the difference between Gb and GB is eight-fold).
This article states the maxed-out Mac Pro has 8TB of flash memory. It doesn't. And I don't think it's a typo; it's stated twice.
100% of professionals are looking for a powerful computer that they can upgrade/expand over time. 99.99% of professionals did not ask for this extremely expensive specific video editing computer. 99.99% of professionals will not buy this extremely expensive specific video editing computer. Therefore - the Mac Pro is in every way overpriced for the professional market.
Pointing to the .02% of professionals who might want this and making an argument in their support while ignoring pretty much the entire market... that's a stretch.
Please define "professionals". Per Craig, their most populous professional users are developers, who are quite covered already with iMac 5K, iMac Pro, and MBPs. This work station isn't for devs, it's for a sub-set of users who need maximum power. These were the people who had been whining on these forums about needing to abandoned Mac because there weren't beefy-enough workstations.
Craig highlights, maybe unknowingly, the issue with the Mac Pro, it is designed for a tiny subset of their pro market. This isn’t the machine for many of the developers looking for something better than a Mac Mini. The problem is Craig and apparently the rest of management, doesn’t recognize this truth.
As for what market it may have we will see in the near future if the machine gets reasonable updates. If it goes 3-5 years without a effective update we will know that Apple targeted the wrong niche.
Most expensive Mac Pro processor, Xeon W-3275: 10,903.
AMD Threadripper 3970x: 16,660.
Mac Pro obsolete before it even shipped.
Yep! Intel has failed miserably to keep their lead, they are no longer the go to vendor for performance. AMD is driving it’s success hard into former Intel strongholds. If some of the rumors about the next Zen revision are true they will only move farther ahead of Intel.
At least we can rejoice and be thankful this premium priced Mac "Pro" has USB-A like the iMac "Pro," which is the very port that Mac Pro pricing defenders in this forum mercilessly lambast in other threads as being "totally unnecessary" when they argue with all their might that "it has no place on the MacBook Pro." LOL. Apple continues to show the world why USB-A is still relevant now at the end of 2019 and going forward! And no, my argumentative comrades, Apple doesn't "grudgingly add" anything. They tend to rather merciless remove features (e.g., the SD card slot on the MBP). USB-A was clearly added by Apple to the 2019 Mac Pro after much contemplation. And their final decision was thankfully rooted in practical reality. That ubiquitous USB-A port isn't going away anytime soon. As such it would have been great to eliminate a dongle on the rather large 16" MBP which has space aplenty to accommodate it, but therein lies the rather inconsistent definition of what defines "Pro" in Apple's lineup.
At the end of the day, the Mac Pro is NOT "made only for" certain types of people. Those silly and insensitive "it's not made for you" arguments fall flat, as they should. Apple doesn't discriminate when it comes to earning money. They sell to whomever has the cash to pay for it. And since most of us lack Mac Pro levels of cash, in light of how comparatively-affordable those Mac Pros and G5 towers were in the past, some of us cannot help but mourn the lack of an upgradable Mac tower priced for The Rest of Us. Oh well. We can look forward to finding a 2019 Mac Pro on EBAY for a much more palatable price 10 years from now. I just wish I could time warp then and back! :-)
Do you know what's irrelevant?
Your profile picture. That was one of the biggest failures.
Asking a G4 cube for "right" design...
Well, hello to you too, argumentative comrade. :-)
The G4 Cube was not a design failure as much as a marketing failure, in my opinion. Consumers (not me, but many) used their wallets to say, "it doesn't give me enough value for the money." They didn't buy it in droves, and ultimately Apple killed it. But even to this day it is a wonderful OS 9 machine and lovely to behold. It runs OS X Tiger quite well too. I still have one at home and at the office sitting next to a 5K iMac. It's great for accessing older disk images and software that newer Macs will no longer recognize. The sheer beauty of the machine inspires my creative side to this day. It really is a marvel in my eyes and that is why I've used it as my profile pic for more than a decade. It's Steve Jobs influence on industrial design at its finest. I used to be quite active in the CubeOwner forums too and loved modding the machine (VRM upgrade, accelerator, case fan, etc.) Some call it flawed. I call it great!
100% of professionals are looking for a powerful computer that they can upgrade/expand over time. 99.99% of professionals did not ask for this extremely expensive specific video editing computer. 99.99% of professionals will not buy this extremely expensive specific video editing computer. Therefore - the Mac Pro is in every way overpriced for the professional market.
Pointing to the .02% of professionals who might want this and making an argument in their support while ignoring pretty much the entire market... that's a stretch.
Please define "professionals". Per Craig, their most populous professional users are developers, who are quite covered already with iMac 5K, iMac Pro, and MBPs. This work station isn't for devs, it's for a sub-set of users who need maximum power. These were the people who had been whining on these forums about needing to abandoned Mac because there weren't beefy-enough workstations.
Craig highlights, maybe unknowingly, the issue with the Mac Pro, it is designed for a tiny subset of their pro market. This isn’t the machine for many of the developers looking for something better than a Mac Mini. The problem is Craig and apparently the rest of management, doesn’t recognize this truth.
As for what market it may have we will see in the near future if the machine gets reasonable updates. If it goes 3-5 years without a effective update we will know that Apple targeted the wrong niche.
As @StrangeDays pointed, wouldn't the iMac 5K or iMac Pro fit the bill for developers that are looking for a machine better than a Mac Mini but not as beefy as the new Mac Pro? Having said that, maybe one way Apple can go is re-purposing the trash-can Mac with iMac Pro guts and allowing user-upgradeable SSD storage & RAM.
This article is kind of missing the point of much of the criticism of this machine.
When people said "I want a Mac Pro", some people meant a machine like this, but many meant "I want a 2000$-4000$ tower Mac that I can configure with a lot of flexibility for my specific needs, and upgrade in the future". Clearly, this is not that machine. That's fine for the people who wanted what this machine actually is, but it's not fine for the people who were probably the majority of people asking for a machine like this.
So saying "it's actually worth 6000$" is a meaningless response to the people who wanted a 2K-4K machine. Which they can get when they get a Windows machine, by the way. Which many of them will, because this is now the second time that Apple promised its pro customers that they understood their needs, and then built something that only works for a small minority of them.
The following $2905 workstation is equivalent to the $5999 Mac Pro both in terms of performance and in terms of using all workstation-class components:
$460 - Supermicro MBD-X11SPI-TF-O motherboard
$749 - Xeon W-3223 $100 - Noctua NH-U12S DX-3647 CPU cooler $200 - 32 GB DDR4 2666 ECC RAM $525 - AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 8GB $280 - Dune Pro case with a cheese grater $160 - Samsung 970 Pro NVMe SSD 512GB $231 - Seasonic Prime Ultra 850W 80+ Titanium PSU $200 - Windows 10 Pro -------------------- $2,905
That is not "just a $400 i9 processor jammed in a machine with a plain-as-day Northbridge, a few PCI-E slots, and a couple of I/O options". It is a bona fide workstation, with the same CPU, server-grade ECC RAM, workstation GPU that slightly outdoes the one in the Mac, etc.
Granted, the article said that build-your-own rigs could come in less expensive, but the authors seemed to imply that such builds would not really be comparable to a Mac Pro because they are made from consumer-grade parts. In any case, there's the equivalent+ custom workstation.
The component hardware quality may be the same -- no such implication was made that it wouldn't be. But, from a support standpoint, it isn't equivalent. From a labor of assembly standpoint, it isn't. Way fewer PCI-E and one whole X16 slot on yours. Four fewer RAM slots on yours. Zero Thunderbolt 3 on yours as far as I can tell. Louder. Weaker power supply. You do get more SATA slots, and more USB-A. And, like we said in the article, add more money for Windows for Workstations.
You want to do this? Go nuts. It's probably perfect for what you want to do. But, it isn't equivalent to the Mac Pro in every measure, and falls very short on several key metrics, like most comparisons with part pickers.
With the new AMD chips out along with the x570 chipset, which brings PCI-E 4.0, the Mac Pro is already obsolete and over priced!!
This article is kind of missing the point of much of the criticism of this machine.
When people said "I want a Mac Pro", some people meant a machine like this, but many meant "I want a 2000$-4000$ tower Mac that I can configure with a lot of flexibility for my specific needs, and upgrade in the future". Clearly, this is not that machine. That's fine for the people who wanted what this machine actually is, but it's not fine for the people who were probably the majority of people asking for a machine like this.
So saying "it's actually worth 6000$" is a meaningless response to the people who wanted a 2K-4K machine. Which they can get when they get a Windows machine, by the way. Which many of them will, because this is now the second time that Apple promised its pro customers that they understood their needs, and then built something that only works for a small minority of them.
Actually there ar some truths to this article and alot of fanboy stuff too though... example..
Users have balked, and cracked jokes at the $400 Apple chooses to charge for wheels, yet don't think twice -- or even consider -- the $309 Microsoft charges for the operating system on a Windows workstation.
We talking about some freaking wheels vs and operating system in this case. Sounds like a fa boy talk.... I am sure someone is gonna try to reverse my comment on me. And can try but you will only prove my point even further.
I can't help but to think that the writer missed the idea in Apple's pricing. The trick per say. See a windows workstation has myriads of options of accessories to pair with it that can be found at many price points. But to buy a Mac you can't just pair it with any old monitor. The lower price for the desktop is about Apple knowing their reputation for overpricing is becoming a known trait. The trick here is that instead of the desktop they chose to hike the price elsewhere. Because they know the enclosed ecosystem they built.
So yep... 400 for wheels and $100 for a stand. Mind you isnt the material only what... aluminum? Well it used to be expensive...... not anymore. Rather it's the cheapest metal actually. So you spend that much for wheels that costed how much to make? I'll bet that metal guy on YouTube could recreate those wheels for much less.
So yeah the HP costs more but due to having a more open ecosystem where people can opt to buy accessories from somewhere else at a lower price.
Now there are a few aspects where things fall even price wise.
Apple is playing a smart game that many after reading this still won't understand... lol... But I do think it's a smart play.
This though is worth the use of the word Pro. I can't say that about the iPhone though despite Apple's efforts to make the phone look Pro by pushing that word everywhere when iPhone is the subject. Some are just too blinded to see that. There is nothing really pro about an iPhone. It makes a smartphone easy to use for NON-PROS.
This computer though is nice. Too much $ though for me. Performance seems cool but I haven't seen anyone really test the thing out yet. (If anyone on YouTube has test it out in a real test let me know. I wanna see that video. Last one I saw was a recording studio test which didn't even put a dent.
1) You missed the point of the compare. People are including the wheels in maxed-out lists, but they aren't including Windows in price picker compares. 2) You absolutely can pair a Mac with any old monitor. I am typing this to you on an Acer 4K display. The Pro Display XDR isn't a required purchase. 3) The RAM, PCI-E, and SATA on this machine are absolutely standard. So, you can buy accessories from somewhere else at a lower price. This is addressed in the article.
Actually there ar some truths to this article and alot of fanboy stuff too though... example..
Users have balked, and cracked jokes at the $400 Apple chooses to charge for wheels, yet don't think twice -- or even consider -- the $309 Microsoft charges for the operating system on a Windows workstation.
We talking about some freaking wheels vs and operating system in this case. Sounds like a fa boy talk.... I am sure someone is gonna try to reverse my comment on me. And can try but you will only prove my point even further.
I can't help but to think that the writer missed the idea in Apple's pricing. The trick per say. See a windows workstation has myriads of options of accessories to pair with it that can be found at many price points. But to buy a Mac you can't just pair it with any old monitor. The lower price for the desktop is about Apple knowing their reputation for overpricing is becoming a known trait. The trick here is that instead of the desktop they chose to hike the price elsewhere. Because they know the enclosed ecosystem they built.
So yep... 400 for wheels and $100 for a stand. Mind you isnt the material only what... aluminum? Well it used to be expensive...... not anymore. Rather it's the cheapest metal actually. So you spend that much for wheels that costed how much to make? I'll bet that metal guy on YouTube could recreate those wheels for much less.
So yeah the HP costs more but due to having a more open ecosystem where people can opt to buy accessories from somewhere else at a lower price.
Now there are a few aspects where things fall even price wise.
Apple is playing a smart game that many after reading this still won't understand... lol... But I do think it's a smart play.
This though is worth the use of the word Pro. I can't say that about the iPhone though despite Apple's efforts to make the phone look Pro by pushing that word everywhere when iPhone is the subject. Some are just too blinded to see that. There is nothing really pro about an iPhone. It makes a smartphone easy to use for NON-PROS.
This computer though is nice. Too much $ though for me. Performance seems cool but I haven't seen anyone really test the thing out yet. (If anyone on YouTube has test it out in a real test let me know. I wanna see that video. Last one I saw was a recording studio test which didn't even put a dent.
1) You missed the point of the compare. People are including the wheels in maxed-out lists, but they aren't including Windows in price picker compares. 2) You absolutely can pair a Mac with any old monitor. I am typing this to you on an Acer 4K display. The Pro Display XDR isn't a required purchase. 3) The RAM, PCI-E, and SATA on this machine are absolutely standard. So, you can buy accessories from somewhere else at a lower price. This is addressed in the article.
Ok see my point actually... you missed the point... sure you can get whatever you want but Apple is betting on their fan factor that the accessories will be bought for fan factor reasons... one being bragging rights. & continuity. The process is very often when one switches to any Apple device to then like what they bought then start switching everything else to Apple devices.... I speaking from a salesman perspective who sees this alll the time. Usually starts with the iPhone.... next my customers many will start asking about the iPad or a Mac cause after having the phone they either want more of it in a bigger screen or want an easier experience when using their computer in relation to their phone...
I see quite often... I just saw a diehard Android fan who would talk about Apple like a dirty dog... but they got Robbed for their S10 plus...(he had no insurance) he ended up finding a $100 deal on a iPhone 6s and now likes the phone & wants to switch everything else over now.... haha.. This effect is what I am referring to...
Actually there ar some truths to this article and alot of fanboy stuff too though... example..
Users have balked, and cracked jokes at the $400 Apple chooses to charge for wheels, yet don't think twice -- or even consider -- the $309 Microsoft charges for the operating system on a Windows workstation.
We talking about some freaking wheels vs and operating system in this case. Sounds like a fa boy talk.... I am sure someone is gonna try to reverse my comment on me. And can try but you will only prove my point even further.
I can't help but to think that the writer missed the idea in Apple's pricing. The trick per say. See a windows workstation has myriads of options of accessories to pair with it that can be found at many price points. But to buy a Mac you can't just pair it with any old monitor. The lower price for the desktop is about Apple knowing their reputation for overpricing is becoming a known trait. The trick here is that instead of the desktop they chose to hike the price elsewhere. Because they know the enclosed ecosystem they built.
So yep... 400 for wheels and $100 for a stand. Mind you isnt the material only what... aluminum? Well it used to be expensive...... not anymore. Rather it's the cheapest metal actually. So you spend that much for wheels that costed how much to make? I'll bet that metal guy on YouTube could recreate those wheels for much less.
So yeah the HP costs more but due to having a more open ecosystem where people can opt to buy accessories from somewhere else at a lower price.
Now there are a few aspects where things fall even price wise.
Apple is playing a smart game that many after reading this still won't understand... lol... But I do think it's a smart play.
This though is worth the use of the word Pro. I can't say that about the iPhone though despite Apple's efforts to make the phone look Pro by pushing that word everywhere when iPhone is the subject. Some are just too blinded to see that. There is nothing really pro about an iPhone. It makes a smartphone easy to use for NON-PROS.
This computer though is nice. Too much $ though for me. Performance seems cool but I haven't seen anyone really test the thing out yet. (If anyone on YouTube has test it out in a real test let me know. I wanna see that video. Last one I saw was a recording studio test which didn't even put a dent.
1) You missed the point of the compare. People are including the wheels in maxed-out lists, but they aren't including Windows in price picker compares. 2) You absolutely can pair a Mac with any old monitor. I am typing this to you on an Acer 4K display. The Pro Display XDR isn't a required purchase. 3) The RAM, PCI-E, and SATA on this machine are absolutely standard. So, you can buy accessories from somewhere else at a lower price. This is addressed in the article.
Ok see my point actually... you missed the point... sure you can get whatever you want but Apple is betting on their fan factor that the accessories will be bought for fan factor reasons... one being bragging rights. & continuity. The process is very often when one switches to any Apple device to then like what they bought then start switching everything else to Apple devices.... I speaking from a salesman perspective who sees this alll the time. Usually starts with the iPhone.... next my customers many will start asking about the iPad or a Mac cause after having the phone they either want more of it in a bigger screen or want an easier experience when using their computer in relation to their phone...
I see quite often... I just saw a diehard Android fan who would talk about Apple like a dirty dog... but they got Robbed for their S10 plus...(he had no insurance) he ended up finding a $100 deal on a iPhone 6s and now likes the phone & wants to switch everything else over now.... haha.. This effect is what I am referring to...
I got your point, and am completely aware of the halo effect. I agree that it is a big factor around consumer-levels, but it is less so here, and has always been so in this rarified air of Workstation pricing, vendor notwithstanding. Regardless of vendor, Apple, Dell, Lenovo, or whoever, big shops will buy first-party RAM, and first-party accessories to simplify support. Smaller shops won't. In regards to monitors, the XDR is very competitive to monitors of that grade, and is cheaper than a wide array of them -- and we didn't even talk about that in this piece. I'm curious what the attach rate will be, but I'm expecting to see mostly third-party monitors connected to the Mac Pro out in the field, in much the same vein that it was mostly third-party monitors connected to nearly every Mac Pro and G5 tower.
Cut for length and clarity in this article is the difference between R-DIMM and LR-DIMM ECC memory, and price differences at higher capacities. At those higher capacities, Apple's pricing is about equivalent to what's available on the market.
The following $2905 workstation is equivalent to the $5999 Mac Pro both in terms of performance and in terms of using all workstation-class components:
$460 - Supermicro MBD-X11SPI-TF-O motherboard $749 - Xeon W-3223 $100 - Noctua NH-U12S DX-3647 CPU cooler $200 - 32 GB DDR4 2666 ECC RAM $525 - AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 8GB $280 - Dune Pro case with a cheese grater $160 - Samsung 970 Pro NVMe SSD 512GB $231 - Seasonic Prime Ultra 850W 80+ Titanium PSU $200 - Windows 10 Pro -------------------- $2,905
That is not "just a $400 i9 processor jammed in a machine with a plain-as-day Northbridge, a few PCI-E slots, and a couple of I/O options". It is a bona fide workstation, with the same CPU, server-grade ECC RAM, workstation GPU that slightly outdoes the one in the Mac, etc.
Granted, the article said that build-your-own rigs could come in less expensive, but the authors seemed to imply that such builds would not really be comparable to a Mac Pro because they are made from consumer-grade parts. In any case, there's the equivalent+ custom workstation.
I think I've heard this argument for every pro mac computer since the G4. This point of view always relies on the reductionist argument that the computer is a pile of parts from a bunch of manufacturers. that the machine just comes into existence by designing and testing itself. (Oh and let's hope the reader ignores all the missed parts and Apple specific technologies included.)
It's a bit like saying your DIY jet is the same thing as Boeing's if you pop over to Pratt & Whitney and buy all the same parts.
Here's the deal -- we have a code of conduct, linked at the bottom of the page. So, read it before you post. Also, you can argue all you like about what you feel, and what you like, but if it's apparent you haven't read the article, your comment will not remain.
Why would a pro do that? As a consumer I would easily consider that. But not a pro working for an agency.
I am a pro and i pay for all my own hardware. You are totally wrong to assume I would not install my own RAM to save money! Just because I'm a freelancer doesn't mean i will throw money away for the hell of it! You have obviously NEVER run your own business.
Yes, the pricing of this device is outrageous. Take a trip back in time and you will hear Steve telling you that for $2000, you can get a full editing machine to cut a full featured film; a fraction of the cost of an AVID. Now fast forward to today and YES!, this machines cost is stupid. First, there is no real reason for the maxed out specs unless you are an engineering running fluid dynamics software or other research computing. Mind you, half of this type of software does not run on Mac OS, including a lot of AI development. This machine is nothing more than trying to compete in the bragging arena. You can get a better PC for less money and without looking like a cheese grater. Sorry, but I Am a Mac guy and this is super dumb and overpriced.
Yes, the pricing of this device is outrageous. Take a trip back in time and you will hear Steve telling you that for $2000, you can get a full editing machine to cut a full featured film; a fraction of the cost of an AVID. Now fast forward to today and YES!, this machines cost is stupid. First, there is no real reason for the maxed out specs unless you are an engineering running fluid dynamics software or other research computing. Mind you, half of this type of software does not run on Mac OS, including a lot of AI development. This machine is nothing more than trying to compete in the bragging arena. You can get a better PC for less money and without looking like a cheese grater. Sorry, but I Am a Mac guy and this is super dumb and overpriced.
I don't feel like you actually read the article. We aren't comparing the maxed out specs, we're comparing much lower price points to Windows workstation price points.
Don't conflate "I don't need this, or some of the features, so I don't want to pay X" with "this is too expensive for what you get." The former varies person to person, the latter is absolutely not true and by far, we are not the only ones saying that.
Workstations have always been expensive. The Mac Pro is no exception to that rule, and Windows workstations are priced similarly to the Mac Pro.
First of all, those machines come with 3 years of on-site warranty (and for a hundred or so more, that can be bumped to 5 years of on-site next business day).
Second, no company ever pays the website price. It's typically lower (15% to 30%), even for a single unit purchase.
Comments
People need to stop trying to fit people who work pro into some sort of neat little box. There isn't one.
This article states the maxed-out Mac Pro has 8TB of flash memory. It doesn't. And I don't think it's a typo; it's stated twice.
Okay, I'll stay calm and carry on. Thank you.
The G4 Cube was not a design failure as much as a marketing failure, in my opinion. Consumers (not me, but many) used their wallets to say, "it doesn't give me enough value for the money." They didn't buy it in droves, and ultimately Apple killed it. But even to this day it is a wonderful OS 9 machine and lovely to behold. It runs OS X Tiger quite well too. I still have one at home and at the office sitting next to a 5K iMac. It's great for accessing older disk images and software that newer Macs will no longer recognize. The sheer beauty of the machine inspires my creative side to this day. It really is a marvel in my eyes and that is why I've used it as my profile pic for more than a decade. It's Steve Jobs influence on industrial design at its finest. I used to be quite active in the CubeOwner forums too and loved modding the machine (VRM upgrade, accelerator, case fan, etc.) Some call it flawed. I call it great!
When people said "I want a Mac Pro", some people meant a machine like this, but many meant "I want a 2000$-4000$ tower Mac that I can configure with a lot of flexibility for my specific needs, and upgrade in the future". Clearly, this is not that machine. That's fine for the people who wanted what this machine actually is, but it's not fine for the people who were probably the majority of people asking for a machine like this.
So saying "it's actually worth 6000$" is a meaningless response to the people who wanted a 2K-4K machine. Which they can get when they get a Windows machine, by the way. Which many of them will, because this is now the second time that Apple promised its pro customers that they understood their needs, and then built something that only works for a small minority of them.
2) You absolutely can pair a Mac with any old monitor. I am typing this to you on an Acer 4K display. The Pro Display XDR isn't a required purchase.
3) The RAM, PCI-E, and SATA on this machine are absolutely standard. So, you can buy accessories from somewhere else at a lower price. This is addressed in the article.
I see quite often... I just saw a diehard Android fan who would talk about Apple like a dirty dog... but they got Robbed for their S10 plus...(he had no insurance) he ended up finding a $100 deal on a iPhone 6s and now likes the phone & wants to switch everything else over now.... haha.. This effect is what I am referring to...
Cut for length and clarity in this article is the difference between R-DIMM and LR-DIMM ECC memory, and price differences at higher capacities. At those higher capacities, Apple's pricing is about equivalent to what's available on the market.
It's a bit like saying your DIY jet is the same thing as Boeing's if you pop over to Pratt & Whitney and buy all the same parts.
Here's the deal -- we have a code of conduct, linked at the bottom of the page. So, read it before you post. Also, you can argue all you like about what you feel, and what you like, but if it's apparent you haven't read the article, your comment will not remain.
Don't conflate "I don't need this, or some of the features, so I don't want to pay X" with "this is too expensive for what you get." The former varies person to person, the latter is absolutely not true and by far, we are not the only ones saying that.
and I even doubt it could be (or maintain) 2.5x.