MacPro

elijahg said:

I've never liked it when companies use their existing products to directly advertise at you. Apple did it with Sherlock in OS 8.6, it didn't go down well and was promptly removed - likely at the behest of Jobs. Again this is down to falling sales, which could be fixed overnight if Cook would suck it up and drop prices.

k2kw said:

Putting Amazon Music on Echo is like the HomePod waiving a white flag of surrender.

To me it seems this may well be the case, but it also seems to prove Cook would rather give up on a product than drop its price. I have a HomePod and it is good; the sound is excellent, but it certainly isn't without flaws - looking at you Siri. Even if Siri was perfect, isn't worth its asking price. Knock £100 off and they'd sell like hot cakes. 

What baffles me is the criticism of HomePods' Siri.  Given most of us with HomePods have Watches, iPhones, iPads and Macs to ask Siri questions why on earth does it even matter if HomePods have Siri?  The sole reason is surely to ask for music and she is excellent at that.  

lorin schultz said:

sirozha said:

I do agree that the true Pro-level machines can cost whatever price Apple wants to charge, as they are means of production for highly paid occupations. 

I accept that pro level machines cost more than consumer-oriented versions. What I don't understand is why the difference is increasing so much, so quickly.

I use my MacBook Pro in my work. When I bought it, two years ago, it cost just over CAD$5,000 after AppleCare and taxes. The equivalent today (same amount of RAM, staying with an i7 instead of upgrading to the i9, Radeon graphics instead of upgrading to the Vega, same amount of storage) costs CAD$6225. That's an increase of 25% in two years!

The new machine doesn't offer anything that will increase my earning power and thus offset the extra cost. That difference comes directly out of my pocket.

A pro user has to accept the price of suitable tools being higher than consumer goods, but costs still have to be justifiable and make economic sense within the context of running the business. Current prices are making that a lot harder for those who prefer Apple's tools.

Just a thought ...  Did your house go up in value over the last few years?  Does a car cost more than the same car a few years ago?  

StrangeDays said:

Considering how much faster the AW4 is over 3, I cannot imagine buying or recommending the 3 anymore. 

In theory but (and this is my only complaint) my old 2 and my wife's 3 both will respond immediately to '10 minutes' and the timer starts instantly.  With my shiny new 4 nine times out of ten responds with 'wait ... I'm working on that.' and nothing happens, this can happen five times in a row. As the cook in the house, this is proving to be most annoying, by the time I get really pissed off and shout at the watch I've ruined dinner.

AppleInsider said:

Apple has always made you pay a lot for its newest and best Macs, and, believe it or not, the 2018 lineup isn't even close to the most expensive Apple has ever been. AppleInsider takes a look back at Apple's Mac pricing over the last three decades.

Fun article and absolutely true.  I've remarked on this many times over the years as certain folks harp on about the 'Apple Premium'.  Costs today of the high-end Macs are a fraction of their former prices.  The new iMac Pro is the first Mac for a long time to approach those levels.

I would add that back in the days of the likes of the mighty Mac IIfx there were virtually no home purchases of Apple equipment from any of the seven Apple dealerships I had at one time or another.  A typical sale ranged from a single Mac with a LaserWriter, PageMaker etc. for about $10k to a large sale which would be several hundred thousand dollars which included a bunch of Macs, calibrated monitors, GPUs, extra RAM, larger drives, networked storage, and a few LaserWriters as proofing devices and perhaps a color scanner and often a 2400 d.p.i. typesetter.  Tons of software and many training days for dozens of staff.  The clients were printers, newspapers, graphic design companies, hospitals, universities, schools and so on.  I honestly cannot recall a single private home purchase in those years other than from those  ordering for their own company, as in 'deliver all those there and this one here.'

We had high street locations so we did get people that wandered in of the street to look and my staff was trained to be very friendly and nice but tactfully let visitors to our showrooms know the cost of entry. In was a standard line to say, 'why not let us do a presentation to the company where you work, perhaps you can get your hands on one that way?'   In fact, many a large sale to a company started from the interest of such an individual who did exactly that.

I remember back in the late 70's early 80's we Apple Dealers had a list of countries we were banned from selling to such as Russia.