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dndlnx

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 9, 2010
332
0
Wanting to sell mine, to help pay for another computer (no, not the new model). But I am apprehensive about the timing. A quick glance at eBay, in general bids on the MP seemed a little...slow.

Maybe people are just tense right now, speculating what will happen with the new revision. They might not be buying, new or used?

Or perhaps my observation is off?
 

phoenixsan

macrumors 65816
Oct 19, 2012
1,342
2
Seems to me.....

if Apple makes some big splash with the rumored new Mac Pro, the market for used/past revisions can depress in some extent. Same thing happen with the Retina introduction in the MBP market. But there and know, potential buyers can appear. For me, not always the shiny and newer are the best options. And then, are buyers with needs, but budget constraints. So maybe you are best served "feeling" the market, IMHO.


:):apple:
 

dndlnx

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 9, 2010
332
0
I'm afraid some people aren't sure, if the Mac Pro will "be relevant anymore". In the past, Apple workstations were always in huge demand on eBay.

It will probably subside once Apple makes the new release. But that could be forever...
 

goMac

Contributor
Apr 15, 2004
7,662
1,694
It will probably subside once Apple makes the new release. But that could be forever...

Even if Apple makes a new release, it's not going to get any better. Auctions are slow because all the Mac Pros are old at this point.

I don't think the new revision will do anything to help prices, if anything it will just depress them more because there will be a newer machine available.
 

philipma1957

macrumors 603
Apr 13, 2010
6,365
251
Howell, New Jersey
you need to hold it.

why it runs snow
it runs lion
it runs mountain lion
it runs windows 7
it runs windows 8
it runs linux.

the new mac pro will not do all of that.

once the new mac pro comes out you have a niche product.
load it with snow on a drive
lion on a drive
mountain lion on a drive and windows 7.

set it up to be a quadruple booter and it will sell at a premium in comparison to todays price.
 

phoenixsan

macrumors 65816
Oct 19, 2012
1,342
2
+ 1

you need to hold it.

why it runs snow
it runs lion
it runs mountain lion
it runs windows 7
it runs windows 8
it runs linux.

the new mac pro will not do all of that.

once the new mac pro comes out you have a niche product.
load it with snow on a drive
lion on a drive
mountain lion on a drive and windows 7.

set it up to be a quadruple booter and it will sell at a premium in comparison to todays price.

Perfectly said.....! And I second this post.

:):apple:
 

goMac

Contributor
Apr 15, 2004
7,662
1,694
you need to hold it.

why it runs snow
it runs lion
it runs mountain lion
it runs windows 7
it runs windows 8
it runs linux.

the new mac pro will not do all of that.

once the new mac pro comes out you have a niche product.
load it with snow on a drive
lion on a drive
mountain lion on a drive and windows 7.

set it up to be a quadruple booter and it will sell at a premium in comparison to todays price.

Aside from Snow, I don't see why a new Mac Pro couldn't run all of those.

Snow Leopard is the best version of OS X, but it's quickly becoming obsolete. Some of the software I use no longer runs on it. As that happens, Snow Leopard becomes of less and less value.
 

PowerPCMacMan

macrumors 6502a
Jul 17, 2012
800
1
PowerPC land
You can be sure Apple will program into the firmware not to allow any installs of anything prior to Mountain Lion.. Thats a bet I am sure will come true. At that point, bye bye snow leopard.. Then the only recourse we will have is Parallels or Vmware Fusion.


Aside from Snow, I don't see why a new Mac Pro couldn't run all of those.

Snow Leopard is the best version of OS X, but it's quickly becoming obsolete. Some of the software I use no longer runs on it. As that happens, Snow Leopard becomes of less and less value.
 

Tesselator

macrumors 601
Jan 9, 2008
4,601
6
Japan
"Snow Leopard is the best.."

I call total BS on that. Compared to either Lion or ML it's slow! It's antiquated in that about 1/4 of the software I wanna run can't run on it and requires a newer version - and that ratio is growing larger every day... What on Earth would inspire anyone to say such a thing besides some odd form of technoluddism? It's quantifiably untrue. <shrug>
 
Last edited:

MacProFreak

macrumors regular
Feb 14, 2013
124
8
If a new Mac Pro with all the hardware goodies everyone is salivating over really becomes reality, you can bet Mountain Lion will be caged and African Cheetah will be released and soon our current towers will become dead file paper weights. :eek:
 

phoenixsan

macrumors 65816
Oct 19, 2012
1,342
2
If a new Mac Pro with all the hardware goodies everyone is salivating over really becomes reality, you can bet Mountain Lion will be caged and African Cheetah will be released and soon our current towers will become dead file paper weights. :eek:

African Cheetah....are you kidding me?:eek: I tought Mac OS X 10.9 will be called Sabretooth or Thundercat or Aquatic Cat.... (just playing).

But if the new Mac Pro sees the light of day, is a revolutionary design and 10.9 come in time (whatever is called....:D) and with real improvements plus eye candy, I can see the escenario you are foretelling/painting.....:(

:):apple:
 

goMac

Contributor
Apr 15, 2004
7,662
1,694
You can be sure Apple will program into the firmware not to allow any installs of anything prior to Mountain Lion.. Thats a bet I am sure will come true. At that point, bye bye snow leopard.. Then the only recourse we will have is Parallels or Vmware Fusion.

Which, as software begins to require Lion and Mountain Lion, becomes a non issue anyway.
 

ActionableMango

macrumors G3
Sep 21, 2010
9,612
6,907
OP, there is a lot of pent-up demand for a new Mac Pro model. I wouldn't be surprised to see a plethora of used models hit Ebay when a truly new MP is released. So selling now is probably better than later.

OTOH, if Apple does something drastic with the MP, people may be clamoring to buy existing models.

Aside from Snow, I don't see why a new Mac Pro couldn't run all of those.

If the new MP comes with Kepler Nvidia or AMD 7000 series, those drivers are only available in ML, so SL and L will both be out of the picture.
 

thekev

macrumors 604
Aug 5, 2010
7,005
3,343
OP, there is a lot of pent-up demand for a new Mac Pro model. I wouldn't be surprised to see a plethora of used models hit Ebay when a truly new MP is released. So selling now is probably better than later.

I agree, especially given that a lot of the talk about what can be upgraded revolves around things that were cost prohibitive or unavailable in 2009. You have a pretty broad range of Mac Pro owners. Some of them would have purchased based on X86 or X86 + gpu performance. Aging hardware isn't going to continue to attract those people. Their other aspect is that they have a larger amount of bandwidth available and dedicated to PCI lanes and internal SATA bays. Why would demand for a model rise significantly later on and outpace the supply of those that become available due to future purchases? People asked whether the 17" macbook pros would appreciate in value due to discontinuation. I haven't seen any signs of that either.
 

deconstruct60

macrumors G5
Mar 10, 2009
12,257
3,860
Wanting to sell mine, to help pay for another computer (no, not the new model). But I am apprehensive about the timing. A quick glance at eBay, in general bids on the MP seemed a little...slow.

At least in the USA, Best buy just dumped their inventory.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1555637/


Amazon price matched. Unless the price you are selling was substantially below those, folks could be "new" (eligible for Apple care) rather than your used (and older?) model.

Second, Apple sells refurb through eBay.

https://www.macrumors.com/2013/03/0...-offers-better-deals-than-apple-refurb-store/

buy used or indirectly through Apple with 1 year warranty? Again unless there is substantive pricing separation it is likely to impact both supply and demand. Apple has to be siphoning off some bidding activity from other sellers on eBay.

The other issue have is that 2008 Models went on sale in March 2008.
For folks who upgrade every 4-5 years on company policy, they are also punching out this spring. Price is a factor of supply and demand. Buyers should know that more older models are coming. If they aren't in a hurry they'll hold for now, which pragmatically increases supply.


There may be some upside in the EU Markets which are cut off from "new" Mac Pro flow, but most other places the pragmatically available supply is going up.


There is has always been a ready market for the deeply discounted Mac Pro due in part to some folks who are really in the xMac market. They don't need top end performance and put far more value on form over performance function ( "It has gotta be a box with slots" ). That market is gradually growing softer because more are gong the hackintosh route than a couple years back. Similarly, what Apple offers instead of a hackintosh ( mac mini, iMac) are increasing better for the same or slightly higher price. Again new/Applecare versus no warranty... demand will suffer. Apple didn't do xMac in part because folks who wanted them could get them; just not as "new".

Finally, there is an issue of age. 2006-7 Mac Pros are technically eligible for Apple's Vintage and Obsolete harward list. OS X 10.8 doesn't run on them so defacto it isn't much different from a software perspective. Those boxes should be moving much slower now. That is becoming the "boneyard" and want to live the past crowd looking for those machines. Demand will slow.


P.S. I wouldn't count on Snow Leopard being a key selling point that has deep traction much longer. 10.8 is better than 10.7. 10.8.3 just dropped and fixed lots of bugs. The "make it look like iOS because the iOS guy "ran" the GUI direction" is gone. I fully expect 10.9 to be much closer to what most folks who grumbled about 10.7 wanted. At least the forward looking folks.

The "snow leopard is the best" is largely going to be the "I want to live in the past" crowd. For example, folks with PPC only apps that were abandoned by their developers long ago. Those folks tend to be price sensitive. "If it ain't broke don't buy anything" tends to be their mantra. They aren't going to be high activity bidders either.
 

Supermacguy

macrumors 6502
Jan 3, 2008
418
728
And Snow Leopard is "The XP of OS X".. or maybe Leopard was.

Snow Leopard was a big improvement over regular Leopard. I think Snow will be the OS that "hangs on" for a long time. I see no big improvements on Lion on my 1,1, and I can't run ML. Snow has the more classical UI and doesn't do wonky auto-save and auto-restore.
 

goMac

Contributor
Apr 15, 2004
7,662
1,694
10.8 is actually pretty decent. There are still some annoyances (server version is still awful, Messages can be a bit buggy, Address Book has an awful UI), but it improves most of the experience to back what it was in Snow Leopard.

I'm hoping 10.9 continues the trend and finally flushes out issues like the Address Book UI.

Not to mention there are things 10.8 can do that 10.6 can't (iCloud saving, better graphics drivers, way better Active Directory support.) The only thing I really miss from 10.6 is Rosetta.
 

PowerPCMacMan

macrumors 6502a
Jul 17, 2012
800
1
PowerPC land
Where is active directory on OS X? I have never seen it.. I thought Active Directory was a Microsoft term in Windows?

Not to mention there are things 10.8 can do that 10.6 can't (iCloud saving, better graphics drivers, way better Active Directory support.) The only thing I really miss from 10.6 is Rosetta.[/QUOTE]
 

dndlnx

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 9, 2010
332
0
OTOH, if Apple does something drastic with the MP, people may be clamoring to buy existing models.

This is what I'm sort of hoping for. Right now bids are pitiful, they're going for $800-1000 tops.

2.93 Ghz Xeon
16GB ECC DIMMs
Radeon 5770
Applecare until late 2013

I would expect around $1500 at least, but right now people are paying G5-like prices from just last year. For first generation "Core" Xeon / Nehalem workstations. :(
 

Macsonic

macrumors 68000
Sep 6, 2009
1,706
97
This is what I'm sort of hoping for. Right now bids are pitiful, they're going for $800-1000 tops.

2.93 Ghz Xeon
16GB ECC DIMMs
Radeon 5770
Applecare until late 2013

I would expect around $1500 at least, but right now people are paying G5-like prices from just last year. For first generation "Core" Xeon / Nehalem workstations. :(

As far as I know you may be able to sell it for $1500-$1600 as your unit still has AppleCare and the Radeon 5770. The price range of $800-$1000 usually goes to the 2008 2.8ghz Mac Pro, usually with signs of wear and scratches If your Mac Pro is in Mint condition, like new, that helps in getting sold. Nice photos of the interior and exterior helps attract bidders too.
 
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