not sure why you're trying to argue with me here as I am in agreeance with what you are saying
You agree except where you do not.
I'm just evidencing that their current strategy has some gaps in it at the lower end.
I guess it depends on what you mean by gaps, but there is no question that Apple has always had a limited number of SKUs with which it covers the market. Lower end customers should either buy iMacs, iMac Pros or Mac Minis. Those who need more performance should buy the new Mac Pro.
if you're looking for a workstation at the lower/mid tiers, than Apple's offering is ridiculously priced for the performance and features.
The iMac Pro fits that niche (if you need more than 64GB or ECC RAM, the Mac Mini otherwise).
it's only once you get into the higher end performance optiosn that the pricing starts to be more reasonably in line with performance in comparison to the rest of the market.
Apple’s price for the Mac Pro tracks Dell’s price for their 7920 workstation from the low end to the high end.
Just pointing that out, and explaining why that would be.
That is where we have the biggest disagreement. Were Apple to produce a lower spec machine for an even smaller niche market, you argue they could sell it for $3,000 or less. You base this on BoM costs for gamer PC systems using commodity motherboards. Your argument is wrong on three fronts:
- Apple has never shipped (and likely never will ship) a commodity motherboard. That means that Apple gets no design savings from such a low spec system.
- Building such a low spec machine would cut the size of the potential for both that machine and the current machine, amortizing sales over these smaller markets raises costs for both machines (potentially pricing both out of the market).
- Apple has no design expertise with AMD processors, meaning they would be starting from scratch. Given it seems likely that this is going to be the last generation of systems with x86-64 processors, that is a giant cost all of which would need to be amortized over this single machine.
What I think would actually make more sense for Apple and customers is o split the "mac pro" line in 1/2.
Taking one small niche market and making two smaller ones? Apple has access to its own historical sales data as well as reasonable reliable general market data. Your argument seems to be that there is a much larger market that is currently buying Windows or Linux machines that would switch if they could get this mythical mid-spec machine and would be willing to pay a premium for it. That is where we fundamentally disagree. I believe that most of the sales of such a unit will come from people who otherwise would have bought a different Mac (either moving up from a Mac Mini, over from an iMac/iMac Pro or down for the new Mac Pro). That means it mostly adds cost without adding a lot of sales.
bringin in the mythical Mac X. a consumer focused mid-ranger that hits a much more appropriate price to performance ratio for the non-workstation class market.
Please quantify the size and origins of this market? Are you expecting gamers and tinkerers to switch from Windows/Linux to macOS (without fundamental changes to the market like actually having AAA game titles all being available)? Based on what you and others were saying, the previous generation Mac Pro hit that price point. While Apple may have made a mistake with the 2013 Mac Pro, part of the reason they felt it was reasonable was based on sales, service and interview data that showed:
- Almost no one (under 1%) added any cards to their machines.
- Almost no one upgraded the graphics card (over the life of the machine).
- Most of the machines sold were at least one or two up from the bottom, and many were close to maxed out.
that said, I've said it in all my posts. the new Mac Pro is the workstation machine that workstations users are looking for and brings the features, expansion capabilities, and performance levels that many do need.
Here we agree.
i'm not discounting, or saying what you're saying is wrong. Only that from a price to performance perspective, you can absolutely get far better value than what Apple is able to offer because of the costs they have associated on paper to this device.
I am not talking about a allocating sales overhead, I am only talking about direct design and manufacturing costs (and a weighted cost for macOS). You can get better raw price performance with someone else, because they have a totally different structure and mostly build low end, low margin systems. Apple has only a small number of low margin products and they exist because they add substantial value to their ecosystem (AppleTV comes to mind). You are correct that today, AMD is winning the performance war with Intel, but given their track record, I would not have bet that would be true in 2017, when the design was moving through the pipeline. That would have been a much cheaper CPU, but given that they would not have been able to use any of their existing design infrastructure, the cost savings would have been dwarfed by the design cost additions.
those costs being allocated as part of the pricing is IMHO a mistake. if Apple ended up having so much overhead to releasing this machine that the low end models require a $3000 premium on price. Than there is a fundamental problem in cost allocation.
Just the direct and basic indirect costs bring this product to that price point.
I don't think a company like Apple is going to be the lowest price point. That would be unreasonable because yes there are other costs associated with any product release. you're not telling anything that anyone doesn't know.
Ok, what price premium would you expect gamers and tinkerers to pay to have a machine that runs an OS with very few AAA games and way less support for most every expansion card? People who want macOS and consider the ecosystem to be valuable, complain about paying any premium for Apple gear, why would people who see no benefit to it be willing to pay
anything for it?
What I'm saying is that if Apple here is barely breaking even on those costs which force them to have price points that are 2x that of retail price points of the parts themselves, than there's a serious problem in Apple's ability to deliver based on their overhead.
The only part that substantially cuts the cost of a system is the CPU. Unfortunately, that adds so much design cost (if they build their own motherboard), or software development cost and loss of UX control (if they used someone else’s motherboard), that there is no net savings.
Especially when you can get custom built PC's already pre-built from a few manufacturers with the performance / parts I listed for 2-3k cheaper than the Mac Pro.
Those PC makers (or assemblers) do not have to pay for support at retail stores, instructions in actual English (and 50-100 other languages), any software development (they either use Linux or Windows, the cost of neither of which is built into their prices). They do not have to worry about long term support of their systems,
etc.
so again: the Reasons WHY Apple is charging 2x the price isn't the point I'm trying to make. I'm just trying to point out that regardless of those reasons, they're still coming in at a high premium that will be hard for those looking for that specific segment to stomach. Apple will have to justify to users why $2000-$3000 price premium offers them compelling value.
The answer is pretty simple for users - there is an ecosystem they like and from which they feel they receive value. That is why I think that gamers and tinkers will not pay any premium as they either do not understand the value of the ecosystem, or actively dislike it.
To me, as a consumer and not apple investor, or fanboy, is not sold on the excuses you are providing, because those excuses don't provide me, the consumer any value.
I am curious what benefit you think one would get from a machine built with commodity parts (like motherboards) running an OS that is not focused on gamers or tinkerers?
The Sum of the parts do not equal what they're selling. Essentially, by having such high engineering and BOM costs downloaded to the consumer, Apple may have priced themselves too high for that specific segment. This is what I mean by over-engineering. they've designed a solution for the highest end, that pushes the lowest end costs up higher than what would be generally considered reasonable for that performance segment.
Have you considered the possibility that the segment you describe is not a segment that exists in any meaningful way for Apple to serve? There is a reason that Apple has never sold a commodity motherboard, and that is that, for what makes Apple “Apple” to its customers, it needs to be able to deliver a cohesive experience. Some people have complained that Apple does not have enough innovative features, or is not moving fast enough. Selling rebadged ASRock system, is not going to help them fix that - it will just lower the value of the brand and will make everyone question how much the other machines are worth.
But AMD with Ryzen 3 generation has absolutel leapfrogged Intel in just about all metrics. Part of their Zen2 architecture, and additional node process changes (on 7um I believe, with 5um coming soon). Where intell has been stuck on the larger process for a few years and haven't had any core design changes (they've essentially released the same chips for the last 3 gens)
It is true that once again AMD is ahead of Intel. Unfortunately for them, it came at a time when it seems clear that Apple is already preparing to move to their own A-series processors. With no design experience, it would be a big enough undertaking to switch to AMD were to want to do it for the long term. Given that it would only be for one or two generations it would make little sense.
by catching up on IPC with Intel, Zen2's lower cost. Lower TDP's, Higher core counts, unlocked CPUs, PCI-4.0 support. It's almost impossible to match their performance and features with intel in the time being. And where Intel does match in performance/ features, they come in at significantly higher prices.
One additional reason I did AMD in that comparison is for feature sets as well. unlike intel, ALL RyZen chips are Unlocked multiplier, and ECC compatible.
All your statements about AMD’s current family are true. The problem is that AMD has been here before and has rarely been able to maintain this advantage (mostly due to intel’s size). They tend to be able to focus only on either the server market or the desktop market, but not both. This time I am not sure where it will end, as it looks like intel may have given up on the desktop market. However, I am not sure it matter to Apple as it does not seem that X86-64 is their future architecture.
It is funny that you mention the unlocked multiplier as that is only important for overclocking, something that a company like Apple that spends so much energy qualifying its parts would never do (or support), while it is a big deal for your tinkerer market. That pretty much defines the kind of system that Apple would never build or support.
