Sony loses money on every console they sell...they make money on accessories and games.
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Apple's User-Installable Mac Pro SSD Kits Now Available With Up to 8TB of Storage for $2,800
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Except Newegg doesn't make the SSD's. Some manufacturer that DOES have to cover R&D expenses makes them. And they sell them to Newegg at even LOWER PRICES than what we pay. So your argument completely is invalid. Samsung has R&D costs. Crucial has R&D costs. Western Digital has R&D costs. Yet their products reach the consumer has a fraction of the price that Apple sells (basically) the same thing for. That was his point.
@PickUrPoison
"If the people in the target market are willing to pay the price, who are you to say it’s overpriced? Apple’s killing it, selling 300+ million devices a year. That’s not because customers find Apple’s products overpriced, it’s because they find Apple’s prices good value for money.
Feel free to complain that product(s) are too expensive for you, but that’s a you problem, not an Apple problem. As long as Apple provides it’s actual customers (as opposed to many MR forum complainers) with products they value, Apple can continue charging prices that reflect that value.
If you don’t want to pay Apple’s prices, feel free to buy something else 🤷♂️
PS How much do you think Newegg would have to charge for that 1TB SSD if they had to cover $1.5 billion a month in R&D expenses?"
Apple is simply hugely marking up a product that was already designed for them - probably by Samsung. Other than initially testing the SSD configuration when designing and assembling the 2018 Mac Pro, Apple incurred almost no upfront R&D cost for the part.
And since, as you've said, that Apple sells some 300+ million devices annually, (the vast majority of which are iDevices and not actual macOS computers), Apple could/should be able to easily sell all of their additional add-on or replacement accessories at a much more reasonably price point due to the fact that they buy almost all of thier product parts in such large numbers that they can, and do, negotiate a substantially lower large volume cost for them.
To your point that folks keep buying Apple products (and parts) regardless of their excessive markups is precisely WHY they continue this type of price gouging. An entry level 7,1 Mac Pro that sells well over 5k (including tax) and only comes with "proprietary" 2x128GB Nand modules, along with one of the cheapest/weakest Graphics cards that Apple was able to source tells you everything anyone really needs to know about Apple's "Value" ethic. The huge mountain of cash Apple is currently sitting on comes right out of the pockets of their overpaying, but still loyal and enthusiastic consumers.
One born every day!
"If the people in the target market are willing to pay the price, who are you to say it’s overpriced? Apple’s killing it, selling 300+ million devices a year. That’s not because customers find Apple’s products overpriced, it’s because they find Apple’s prices good value for money.
Feel free to complain that product(s) are too expensive for you, but that’s a you problem, not an Apple problem. As long as Apple provides it’s actual customers (as opposed to many MR forum complainers) with products they value, Apple can continue charging prices that reflect that value.
If you don’t want to pay Apple’s prices, feel free to buy something else 🤷♂️
PS How much do you think Newegg would have to charge for that 1TB SSD if they had to cover $1.5 billion a month in R&D expenses?"
Apple is simply hugely marking up a product that was already designed for them - probably by Samsung. Other than initially testing the SSD configuration when designing and assembling the 2018 Mac Pro, Apple incurred almost no upfront R&D cost for the part.
And since, as you've said, that Apple sells some 300+ million devices annually, (the vast majority of which are iDevices and not actual macOS computers), Apple could/should be able to easily sell all of their additional add-on or replacement accessories at a much more reasonably price point due to the fact that they buy almost all of thier product parts in such large numbers that they can, and do, negotiate a substantially lower large volume cost for them.
To your point that folks keep buying Apple products (and parts) regardless of their excessive markups is precisely WHY they continue this type of price gouging. An entry level 7,1 Mac Pro that sells well over 5k (including tax) and only comes with "proprietary" 2x128GB Nand modules, along with one of the cheapest/weakest Graphics cards that Apple was able to source tells you everything anyone really needs to know about Apple's "Value" ethic. The huge mountain of cash Apple is currently sitting on comes right out of the pockets of their overpaying, but still loyal and enthusiastic consumers.
One born every day!
Again, you miss the point.
I have iPhones, a shuffle, iPad Pro and a normal iPad. These things I find value in. You can’t find a better value proposition than Apples A10 and following generations. They’re the best in the world at what they do.
Their computers/PC are a farce. I get it, they’re optimized, they’re streamlined they’re engineered to work with Mac OS (Until recently....) but they’re a horrible value. Money isn’t the issue with me as a consumer for tech. I just got a new bleeding edge gaming PC and with a 240 hz monitor and that setup was significantly more pricy than the iMacs I was referencing.
Not one die hard Apple fan can say with a straight face that it’s worth gaming on a Mac. No one is going to buy a Mac Pro to try and compete for that purpose.
I have iPhones, a shuffle, iPad Pro and a normal iPad. These things I find value in. You can’t find a better value proposition than Apples A10 and following generations. They’re the best in the world at what they do.
Their computers/PC are a farce. I get it, they’re optimized, they’re streamlined they’re engineered to work with Mac OS (Until recently....) but they’re a horrible value. Money isn’t the issue with me as a consumer for tech. I just got a new bleeding edge gaming PC and with a 240 hz monitor and that setup was significantly more pricy than the iMacs I was referencing.
Not one die hard Apple fan can say with a straight face that it’s worth gaming on a Mac. No one is going to buy a Mac Pro to try and compete for that purpose.
Your concern is of course appreciated, but this isn’t actually a problem for anyone, right?
Of course it is!
Having to have another Mac (and they don't necessarrily say what sort of "Mac" is required here), is a major pain in the ars as it applies to anyone who's recently purchased one of these overpriced/overdesigned 'workstation' desktops that wants, or needs to just simply replace/upgrade their $5k++++ Mac Pro 7,1's default onboard (default 256GB (2x128gb Nand modules) with a more 2020 'modern' 1TB++ SSD..or in hyper Apple speak: 2x proprietary, controllerless Samsung Nand modules.
And if you really don't believe that ponying up $500++ for a couple of bare nand modules and then requiring another Apple computer, along with the appropriate Thunderbolt 3 cable could be a bit of: a problem", well then, I would bet that you probably work, or could have a direct financial interest in the Big 1.5 Trillion A....
1) Component costs aren’t that big a portion of sales price. Apple could get all the components for free and they’d still have to charge maybe $700 for that $1,000 iPhone.
2) If you don’t understand why an entry level Mac Pro comes with minimal CPU, GPU, RAM and SSD, there are people here who will be glad to explain it to you. Hint: customers have different requirements.
3) Prices are high because Apple’s costs are high. They’re a huge company with huge overhead. If Apple sold you a $1,000 iPhone for $800, they’d just be breaking even.
4) You think Apple customers buy Apple because they’re suckers? Feel free lol 🤷♂️
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It’s not a problem for the target market. This is not your grandma’s computer.
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I swear to god, this argument sure doesn't get boring (sarcasm) after being on this forum for almost two decades, and see it played out over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. (Note: missing about 5 million "and overs")
🙄
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I pointed this out over on the reddit apple sub and was laughed out of the room. Apple will make this transition as quickly as possible I think. Heck, the rumors are like three years old which is plenty of time to design the entire line. Leaving it to linger leaves developers developing for two architectures and that's not a good thing.
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Where's the link to Apple's announcement? I found the instructions here.
Uninstall and install SSD modules on Mac Pro
Instructions for uninstalling and installing SSD modules in Mac Pro tower.support.apple.com
Yeah, I don't get it. You could already upgrade the storage yourself.
Awesome - good news, after many said "it's impossible to manually upgrade the main SSD in T2 based Macs". Cool, one less reason to buy Apple Care if you can replace on your own some of the components that may die at some point. With that out of the way, there's nothing left you need to the computer into the Apple store for unless the mainboard dies, which is pretty unlikely.
It's usually RAM, Video Cards, SSD's or the PowerSupply that goes if they kick out. Everything but the PSU has a direct replacement you can order ASAP if needed yourself.
This is better news than people are giving it credit.
It's usually RAM, Video Cards, SSD's or the PowerSupply that goes if they kick out. Everything but the PSU has a direct replacement you can order ASAP if needed yourself.
This is better news than people are giving it credit.
Marketshare is decreasing, not increasing.
Mac shipments grow slightly, but Apple's PC market share shrinks [u] | AppleInsider
Apple's market share in the global PC market shrunk slightly in the third quarter of 2019 compared with last year, according to Canalys, despite the company seeing a year-on-year increase in Mac and MacBook shipments.
....Apple isn't doing any R&D on 1TB SSDs or any other SSDs. Apple is reselling them from people who are at a SIGNIFICANT mark up compared to every other reseller.
Oh, I'm not so sure. I don't remember Apple's previous chip migrations -- and there's been a few now, over the years -- working that way.
A move to ARM is mostly being driven by the low end, not the high end. Especially now that they have a full sized desktop in the lineup again that can accommodate power-hungry Xeons better than the trashcans could. The laptops will come first I think -- and perhaps Mac mini, and some of the iMacs (but maybe not iMac Pro).
Because Mac Pro need DFU’ed using Apple Configurator from another Mac. All T2 Macs are like this."Note: Software reinstallation requires a second Mac running Apple Configurator 2 and a USB-C cable."
I have to say, the Mac Pro's motherboard is pretty sleek. After doing my first Ryzen 5 build with an MSI B450 ATX board, all black would've been worked nicely with my Phanteks P360X case.
Apple didn't put an M2 slot in the board? Thought there was one... although, those speeds are pretty sweet. Blows my spanner volume setup out of the water over SATA. It was a cool video.
Makes me wish Apple would have some type of expansion options (outside of Thunderbolt 3) for the Mac mini, or some entry level "cube" before the Pro.
Apple didn't put an M2 slot in the board? Thought there was one... although, those speeds are pretty sweet. Blows my spanner volume setup out of the water over SATA. It was a cool video.
Makes me wish Apple would have some type of expansion options (outside of Thunderbolt 3) for the Mac mini, or some entry level "cube" before the Pro.
What did I miss? Who’s been advocating for a Xeon workstation for gaming? You think that’s the Mac Pro’s purpose? If you do, you’d be the only one I know who thinks so.
Dear God who would buy a Mac for PC gaming.
I don't know if anyone told you but gaming isn't the only use for desktop computers. If that's your use then I would have to agree they're a horrible value for the money. Why would anyone in their right mind buy a Mac Pro for a gaming PC... I can understand if it's your work PC and you install a game to play for when you're bored but to buy it for that purpose is just silly. Buy a Windows PC for gaming.
I did not realize this. Very interesting. I learned something today.
Well, the 6,1 went 7 years without a single update (apart from dropping the entry-level model and re-shuffling) so that would hardly be surprising
Really, arguments about pricing notwithstanding, that's the main reason why pro users are likely to disregard Apple - the last two Mac Pros have been left to whither for years (the old Mac Pro tower was actually discontinued in Europe ~2011 because Apple couldn't contrive to fit a fan guard to meet a regulation that had been pending for years...) and then belatedly replaced with a radical (and more expensive) re-think that demanded a major workflow change and re-tooling. Not much action on the iMac Pro front in the last year or two, either.... So what? Someone hand Apple a violin. If that means that Apple has to sell a 1TB SSD module for 2-3x the price of a comparable, top-end 1TB M.2 NVME stick (which is more complex as it includes a controller) then that's Apple's problem, not the consumers.
Of course, the only reason that Apple would put up with a "reduced" 20% margin is if having all of their own retail stores, buying up lots of tech companies, designing their own processors etc. means that it is 20% of a much bigger pie then they'd have otherwise.
We're talking retail prices here - someone has designed, BOM'd, manufactured, tested, distributed, warehoused, promoted, advertised, billed, delivered etc. that M.2. stick too, and been paid for it - in fact, Apple should have saved on that process by having so many of those steps "in house" and eliminating an army of middlemen.
Yes. $300 for 1TB of SSD (including controller) is expensive. $600 for 1TB of SSD (without a controller) is overpriced.
To be fair, HP, Dell, whoever will also gouge you for branded BTO upgrades but - certainly when you're talking about tower PCs and workstations - at least you have a choice of using standard parts, and their base configs are usually more generous.
Apple have plenty of expensive products (MBPs) quite a few reasonably-priced products (iPads, even the 5k iMac provided you want $1000 worth of display built in, use external storage and buy your own RAM), then there's the Mac Pro itself - which seems to be the first personal computer ever designed up to a price so you can argue over whether it is overpriced or just over-specified and over-engineered.
...and Apple decided not to use M.2. slots. A major point of integrating all sorts of functionality into the T2 chip should be to reduce costs - there's little practical advantage to the user, especially on a tower system that you're not going to leave on the train - if it ends up costing more then either Apple are trousering the savings or they've miscalculated.
Oh and about those Xeons, it’s not like those aren’t Broadwell and Haswell generation Intel. So great to blow 5 figures on CPU’s like that.
Apple is using Cascade Lake and Skylake-based Xeons in the Mac Pro and iMac Pro, respectively. If your complaint is that they are still 14nm, then tell me where the 10nm parts are that Apple should be using? What are the CPUs Apple supposed to be using? Don’t waste my time with AMD prattle, because Apple isn’t going to use AMD, ever.
Even a 1TB is $600. 😐
I replaced my old 8 year old iMac with a 1TB SSD last year for $155 (SSD drive with the bracket)
I replaced my old 8 year old iMac with a 1TB SSD last year for $155 (SSD drive with the bracket)