Is the Mac Pro WAY overpriced?

[gugucom]

You should know that this is impossible.

How do you figure that? Conventional marketing wisdom tells you that a product being cashed out (like the Mac Pro undoubtedly is) will be disbanded or sold. Surely what we see in pricing isn't typical for a cash cow strategy. They would try to keep volume up if they wanted to milk cash for a longer time. Pushing prices dramatically and allowing volumes to drop is usually a clear indicator for a product being sucked out.

 

[TheStrudel]

Conventional marketing wisdom also suggest that due to the profits  pulls in on pro software, they won't just abandon or sell FCS, Logic, and Shake along with a product line that makes them a fair amount of profit. Margins and movement may not be as high on the Mac Pros, but once development is finished, the highest cost on producing pro software is the monstrously large paper manuals (which they might also phase out).

Killing the Mac Pros is tantamount to halving sales on three software product lines. Not prudent.

 

[Dr.Pants]

Let's look at it this way -

Apple has an ENTIRE lineup of computers - at the top of it sits the MacPro and all of its professional applications.

And towards the bottom there is the iMac and Mini lines (as well as the laptops ), which one has the option of bundling with any number of watered down products - FCE, Logic express, etc.

So, Apple phases out the MacPro. Now there is no reason for ANY professional applications to consider OSX as a viable platform. Without any professional applications, nothing "consumer" will improve; indeed, cutting the Pro line will be a death knell to OSX as an OS. Sure, Adobe can expand its base where Aperture and Final Cut are, but will become less enamored to write code as professionals would either move to other platforms or what Apple workstations were still around would eventually erode.

 

[gugucom]

There is surely some hope. After all the Apple TV and the XServe are still around. I doubt they have ever made money for Apple.

But if you realistically look at real Pro products (not counting MBP) Apple probably does les than 5% sales with those.

 

[TheStrudel]

5% is a ton, though. And according to the guys at Axiotron, if  can't sell a million, they just don't bother. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that TV and Xserves are million-sellers. $1 million in profit is still profit.

 

[gugucom]

The way things go nowadays the fate of products get decided in development resource allocation conferences. Jobs and budgets get shoved towards the high rollers. If you show 22% sales decline as desktop in Apple do life is hard. iPhone does 600% increase at the same time.

 

[TheStrudel]

True in most situations. But Jobs and  have themselves stated that they keep team sizes small, have they not?

 

[nanofrog]

True in most situations. But Jobs and  have themselves stated that they keep team sizes small, have they not?

Meh... Just because the team is kept small, doesn't mean the budget is as well. CPU development comes to mind.

 

[gugucom]

As long as they keep the analysts happy the old style engineers will probably be alllowed to keep a playground. I would be happy if it turns out that way. Just keep in mind that now make 99% of their profit with consumer products. In the long run it will change the values of the company.

 

[Tesselator]

Meh... Just because the team is kept small, doesn't mean the budget is as well. CPU development comes to mind.

I know app development cases. $1.5m per year per pro-app is not at all unreasonable. And that's ONLY the human resource factor.

 

[Tesselator]

Ah, I so loved my Amigas...reminds me, I still need to hook up my SyQuest 88mb and get some stuff off it. lol. I have an SGI Indi in my "old school" collection still.

Kewl! All the SGI gear I ever owned was sold soon. It kept it's value way past it's usefulness. I remember rendering a simple object in Soft Image on the Indy took 20 times longer than a single Dec Alpha 533 released the same year. The indy wanted an hour while the Dec was like, less than 3 min. Still, they sure were neat looking and SGI 21" monitors were very nice. Indigo and Indigo2 were similar cases. Still VRML was a blast to play with on those boxes!!! I still miss teaching in a room full of Visual Workstation 540's. That was fun!

It would be interesting to run some figures on a Mac Pro versus an Onyx2 with a Geometry Engine for Infinite Reality.

 

[nanofrog]

I know app development cases. $1.5m per year per pro-app is not at all unreasonable. And that's ONLY the human resource factor.

So about 20 people or so?

You should have cleaned it up before you snapped the pic.

 

[Toronto Mike]

Let's look at it this way -

Apple has an ENTIRE lineup of computers - at the top of it sits the MacPro and all of its professional applications.

And towards the bottom there is the iMac and Mini lines (as well as the laptops ), which one has the option of bundling with any number of watered down products - FCE, Logic express, etc.

So, Apple phases out the MacPro. Now there is no reason for ANY professional applications to consider OSX as a viable platform. Without any professional applications, nothing "consumer" will improve; indeed, cutting the Pro line will be a death knell to OSX as an OS. Sure, Adobe can expand its base where Aperture and Final Cut are, but will become less enamored to write code as professionals would either move to other platforms or what Apple workstations were still around would eventually erode.

Pearls of wisdom.

 

[Ploki]

I know app development cases. $1.5m per year per pro-app is not at all unreasonable. And that's ONLY the human resource factor.

so can someone explain to me why they ditched logic (last update was may 2008, i call that "ditching" something).
the only thing im waiting for is a BIG SURPRISE with snow leopard and at least logic 8.1...
i dont care for features, some bug ironing would be nice.

 

[Tesselator]

So about 20 people or so?

You should have cleaned it up before you snapped the pic.

A project manager, A designer, A lead, Between 8 to 15 coders, a docs guy or two, and marketing guys divided up between the apps however they do it - yeah. That's minimum. I suppose it's a little bigger for the FCP Suite and probably just about that for something like the iWork suite, etc..

The pic is from Wiki.

 

[Tesselator]

so can someone explain to me why they ditched logic (last update was may 2008, i call that "ditching" something).
the only thing im waiting for is a BIG SURPRISE with snow leopard and at least logic 8.1...
i dont care for features, some bug ironing would be nice.

If they're smart they budget each app or suite individually and separately based on seats, profits, and projections. If they're lagging on Logic it's either the budget is too low from low sales, they're rewriting the app, or they're writing is contingent/conditional on something that hasn't been released yet. But one year, while a tad long, is not a "ditching" - unless they announced such a thing. If everything was working against them a 3 to 5 years spread is possible - and they can still officially/actively be developing it. It's not completely unheard of.

Why? Are there outstanding bugs in the current release that people are waiting for fixes on?

User feedback, requests, and bug reports, can help them to make more expedient decisions. So if you're worried or concerned e-mail them and have all the other users you know e-mail them as well. That kinda stuff really/actually makes a big difference.

 

[nanofrog]

A project manager, A designer, A lead, Between 8 to 15 coders, a docs guy or two, and marketing guys divided up between the apps however they do it - yeah. That's minimum. I suppose it's a little bigger for the FCP Suite and probably just about that for something like the iWork suite, etc..

Too many, and everyone's stepping over one another, making things far more difficult ... Definitely the case in hardware. It always makes me think of the "Too many cooks in the kitchen..." bit.

The pic is from Wiki.

Wiki?!? You mean you didn't snap your own when you had the machines?
What a lazy bum...

User feedback, requests, and bug reports, can help them to make more expedient decisions. So if you're worried or concerned e-mail them and have all the other users you know e-mail them as well. That kinda stuff really/actually makes a big difference.

This really does make a difference with professional products. Even better, make a phone call, as this sort of input is invaluable for the designers. Sometimes you can even get freebees out of it, as a way of showing thier appreciation of your time.

 

[MattInOz]

A project manager, A designer, A lead, Between 8 to 15 coders, a docs guy or two, and marketing guys divided up between the apps however they do it - yeah. That's minimum. I suppose it's a little bigger for the FCP Suite and probably just about that for something like the iWork suite, etc..

The pic is from Wiki.

Plus the QA team and the in house testers, who co-ordinate and organise the out of house testing program.

Factor in that for most human resources then the support systems around them like floor space, power, air-condition, the pay lady will equal the amount paid to the team as well.

 

[gugucom]

So where does that take us in our asessment of the alleged over pricing?

Are the Mac Pro customers refusing the new deal in significant numbers? What do you make of the fact that 2009 March quarter desktop sales went down 22% in volume and only 4 % in unit numbers compared to the previous year? Is this due to customers shifting from Mac Pro to Mac mini? I personally know of a guy who did this.

 

[planethitsradio]

I went the other way, I went from Mac Mini to Mac Pro. If you want to get something accomplished without waiting 10 years, you go with a MP.


I can convert my NRG audio disc images (yes, damn NRG, so I have to use Windows to mount properly) to 320kbps mp3 44.1 high quality at 300X, compared to about 35X with the Mini.

Let's say I paid a hefty tag (around 7k) but I got everything I wanted to do done and now I can enjoy my time more often cause I have a blasing fast Mac to get it done in!

 

[Ploki]

Why? Are there outstanding bugs in the current release that people are waiting for fixes on?

User feedback, requests, and bug reports, can help them to make more expedient decisions. So if you're worried or concerned e-mail them and have all the other users you know e-mail them as well. That kinda stuff really/actually makes a big difference.

i sendout every crash report.
it has bunch of stupid bugs that are really really annoying... one for example:
when you hit logic's ram addressing limit it crashes without a warning, and if you happen to have a project saved like that you have to disable the plugin, reopen it, resave it, etc etc..
file naming is just awful! if you have a filename longer than i dont know how much, 32? characters, it changes the reference to it to "This was my filena#F4092398.wav" INSIDE logic but it doesnt change the "This was my filename that is nice.wav" on the filesystem, meaning you will have to relocate the file each time you run the project. no problem, if you have 2, but what if you have 500, and logic ads a number for each cut, making this scenario not so easily avoidable.

midi recording, it record-unarms the track if you click on the recording audio track, and stops recording your midi although you still are in "Recording" status.
this is ANNOYING, because it literally means "you cant touch ANYTHING", so doing a live performance and mixing during it is actually impossible...
and ive tried everything in environment to bypass that, and checked all the preferences... its just stupid

thats just a few. i still love logic and enjoy using it but some of those bugs are just stupid..
the problem is that alot of these were reported (FILENAMING!!) even in Logic7 and still arent sorted out.
im really expecting something bigger, i dont know, first "intel only" logic version, a big minor update (8.1) or considering the late DAW trend (2 cubase version in 2 years), perhaps even a major update (though i dont want it, i want a bugfix )

 

[Tesselator]

• Too many, and everyone's stepping over one another, making things far more difficult ... Definitely the case in hardware. It always makes me think of the "Too many cooks in the kitchen..." bit.
  
  
• Wiki?!? You mean you didn't snap your own when you had the machines?
  What a lazy bum...
  
  
• This really does make a difference with professional products. Even better, make a phone call, as this sort of input is invaluable for the designers. Sometimes you can even get freebees out of it, as a way of showing thier appreciation of your time.

• I agree to a point. There's something about a 3 or 4 man team where they all have a good sense of design and are the original creators. Unfortunately there's usually too many "control" issues for company like Apple to deal with in a structure like that. Plus they'd need a HIGHLY motivated group of folks for docs and marketing - which is really rare. Everyone wants to "process" data instead of create it.
  
• The 320's and 540's were in a classroom, not my home. It never occurred to me to take pics. I think besides for the annual school promotional materials, there's one shot of me at school - and it's me sitting in the student lounge counseling a group of off-camera students on the merits of working for large studios like Pixar and ILM.
  
• Yup.

• Plus the QA team and the in house testers, who co-ordinate and organise the out of house testing program.
  
• Factor in that for most human resources then the support systems around them like floor space, power, air-condition, the pay lady will equal the amount paid to the team as well.

• Yeah, fortunately or unfortunately, the bulk weight of real beta-testing has been shifted to end-users in most of the large productions. Most companies with multiple large to semi-large developments going on, force their developers to do some alpha testing as is typical anyway, run a more focused debugging program toward the last months just before release and then give it to us. These days with publicly available commercial softwares there usually are no beta testers - only maybe a beta coordinator. This is why crashes will send in a dump with a comments section for you to fill out. We are the beta testers.
  
• Oh yeah, there's lots more: equipment, office space, insurance, upper management, lower support, packaging, distribution, sales, financial management, etc.. I'm just naming the central product development nucleus. Many of the other aspects are shared between any number of developments.

So where does that take us in our asessment of the alleged over pricing?

It remains the same. That's all internal management and should be transparent to the end users. We're not given any details about that anyway and everything I'm saying here is just an educated guess. It could be close or it could be WAY off. I've just been on the inside of a few small and medium (almost large) productions under several different vendors and am drawing from that - along with what little research I've done on hierarchal company structures of other software vendors.

But we don't actually need to consider any of this when assessing the price|value ratio for ourselves. They either get it all right or they don't. We either need the product and are willing to pay the prices being asked or we don't and aren't. And it's either in-line with other offerings of same or similar type or it's not. The Ballywood and Indian software startups are really making this aspect a bit difficult - it should normalize with time tho.

i sendout every crash report.
it has bunch of stupid bugs that are really really annoying... one for example:

...i want a bugfix

I hear ya. I wonder if the auto-created bug reports serve the same purpose? Not really sure. I guess they do to some degree for sure. <shrug> Anyway there's some formula I keep hearing from marketing types that says every contact represents xx% of the userbase almost automatically. So by contacting them you're already carrying quite a lot of weight just by default - which if we're aware of can be used to our advantage in cases like this.


.

 

[UltraNEO*]

Disclaimer: I'm not trying to start a flame war. I'm just genuinely confused as to why Mac Pros cost so much.

Mac Pro:
Quad core 2.66ghz
3gb RAM
640gb HDD
GeForce GT 120
Cost: $2899 CDN

Dell XPS 435:
Quad core 2.66ghz
12gb RAM
1tb HDD
Radeon HD 4850
Cost: $1699 CDN

I honestly don't get it. What am I missing? Surely there's more to the price difference than a nicer case and the ability to (legally) run OSX...?

Don't wanna offend you.. but that's cheap!!

I don't think the you can really compare the MacPro Workstation with a cheap ass thing like the Dell XPS. Isn't the series more comparable with the entry range MacMini? And what is it with wannabe Mac users constantly comparing the two systems? Are they just stoopid?

 

[Ploki]

I hear ya. I wonder if the auto-created bug reports serve the same purpose? Not really sure. I guess they do to some degree for sure. <shrug> Anyway there's some formula I keep hearing from marketing types that says every contact represents xx% of the userbase almost automatically. So by contacting them you're already carrying quite a lot of weight just by default - which if we're aware of can be used to our advantage in cases like this.

I SWEAR i didnt know its going to be updated TODAY. ;D

 

[iMacmatician]

so can someone explain to me why they ditched logic (last update was may 2008, i call that "ditching" something).
the only thing im waiting for is a BIG SURPRISE with snow leopard and at least logic 8.1...
i dont care for features, some bug ironing would be nice.

You were saying?