If theyre not paying any more for the computer, why would they care what they don't use?
Perception, amongst other things.
secondly, these towers have room for lots of drives... I doubt many people just chuck what's in there, most just add to them I imagine.
It depends on what one is planning to use the machine for.
For example, if you're going to be building a RAID, the drive that comes with the machine is probably effectively useless, because you don't know what brand/model it will be until it arrives .. upon which time you might no longer be able to buy the same exact Model# (and this assumes that its the size you want).
Actually, the hardware meets his demands - - its just that he doesn't want to pay that much for it.-hh
You're right, in a sense. The mac pro could meet my demands, but in order for it to do so, I would have to upgrade the computer in several ways, pushing the price well north of 3000, because Apple is still refusing to do mid-life refreshes of Ram, HD and Graphics.
"North of $3K" is still showing price sensitivity that is disproportionate to the typical business environment for a non-commodity appliance. When you consider that the typical Pro who's going to be using a machine like this is going to be earning around 6 digits, it doesn't make business sense to niggle about an extra few $K here or there in helping him be most productive.
The dilemma is in trying to translate what's typical for Enterprise into personal use ...
the short answer is that you don't. The general truism that applies to workstation class PCs (including the Mac Pro) is the
Law of Diminishing Returns. In short, the first 80% of performance comes easy and cheap ... but its that last 20% that causes the costs to go up, and up in a highly disproportionate fashion: you can easily DOUBLE your cost and only gain 10%. That's life on the leading edge.
{desktops in decline}
This is neither here nor there.... Desktops are in decline because the average user (web + email) values portability over power and expandability.
On the contrary: it is highly relevant, since why should a business enterprise make a big investment in a new product if the forecast is that they'll never make a return on said investment? Yes, this often does lead into a vicious circle.
{buy used}
That doesnt make sense either, since the debate here was never with the CPU's, but with the unwillingness to shell out a minimum of $2799 for a computer that will undoubtedly be upgraded out of the box.
Try reading it all again: you're saying that you don't need all the horsepower and you want to pay less (particularly since you anticipate upgrades).
Considering that you can get a 1G Mac Pro for ballpark $1500, that provides plenty of room for RAM & HD upgrades
while also paying significantly less than $2800...
please explain to me how that's not a viable option?
I have yet to see someone with a mac pro in their signature on here, that is using a stock 2gb of ram, OR a stock 320gb harddrive. That tells me that the base configuration is aiming too low.
No, its telling you that the readers here know that buying certain upgrades on a BTO from Apple is usually a poor value, so they've not done so.
Primary market smrimary market... can anyone PROVE what the primary market is, and/or needs? It doesn't matter! What does matter, is that when you buy a professional computer, you presume that it will come with professional grade components. Discontinued GPU's don't qualify. There are many professionals who depend on decent graphics processing - and you could say that the BTO options cover that, but what sense does it make to cripple the offerings?
The facts of the matter are that the GPU market is being pushed by games.
If you wish to disagree, please convince me otherwise with published benchmarks that quantitatively illustrate the benefit of your super-fancy mega-frames-per-second GPU in how it makes a difference in relevant calculations in Pro/E or LS-Dyna.
Primary market smrimary market... can anyone PROVE what the primary market is, and/or needs? It doesn't matter! What does matter, is that when you buy a professional computer, you presume that it will come with professional grade components
Incorrect. Business is all about 'right-sizing', which means not buying BMW's when Hondas will do...particularly when you're putting 100 of them out on the floor. However, when there is the business need for a piece of big iron, they'll pay that - - but only so long as its not been gold-plated. As such, the items that you probably think are necessary for you (probably to have a great gamer box) are a non-starter. I'll remind you of the above: build your business case for what business applications need a $300 GPU card, let alone a $1000 one: by how much does the better GPU card make PRO/E and LS-DYNA run more productively?
Basically I see many people justifying the Mac Pro, based on two assumptions: a) It works for what I do, so if it doesnt work for you, then too bad. b) It was good value at one time, and thats just how apple is.
Both of these arguments are illogical, since what I'm suggesting is that apple start with a base 4gb ram, and 500-750gb drives with merely decent video cards, for the equivalent price. It doesn't affect anyone who would have already bought, to see apple maintain their profit ratio at a more constant level.
Your "solution" doesn't work, since I'll be griping about a
'wasted 750GB drive'. Unfortunately, a 500-750GB drive is too small for what I'll be doing with a Mac Pro, unless OS X 10.6 makes it really easy to move user accounts & Apps off the boot drive.
The broader reality is that the ways that "little guy" Apple controls cost is through 'bulk' quantity contracts, so as to gain lower unit prices. This invariably has its cost, particularly when technologies advance faster than the sales, and one ends up with a big old pile of hardware that no one wants. Check out the history of the 'combo' optical drives in Mac laptops for an example.
And what is the hesitation that apple users here seem to have, with apple going after a broader market?
High End Workstations aren't a "broader" market, particularly considering that in industry, the serious work is done by a cluster. The one that we have at work cost over $300K, since when we were doing the LS-Dyna runs on high-end Xeon PCs, each modeling run was taking 40+ hours to turn around.
What I think you've missed is that laptops now satisfy the Pareto Principle (80-20 rule). As such, one doesn't have to generally "sacrifice power" in order to gain portability, as was the case ten years ago. As such, for most people, a laptop has enough horsepower for their general needs, so they're able to have one machine to do everything ... instead of two, such as it was a few years ago.
Yes I'm aware that stability, warranty and all the rest of that factor into business purchases, but the comparison to hackintoshes and all the rest is just a dollar comparison, not a purchase comparison. If I wanted to, I WOULD go and build one, no hesitation there. That's not the solution I'm looking for.
What you're struggling with is simply the VALUE paradigm, most likely because you're getting hung up on cost.
For example, in very round numbers, consider the lifecycle difference of a $1000 increase in the purchase price of your hardware: over a conservative lifespan of 4.16 years (50 months), its only an extra $20/month...and if this is a professional business setting, it only needs to improve productivity by 7 minutes ... PER MONTH ... in order for it to pay for itself.
FWIW, I think we've already wasted this month's 7 minutes in this thread.
-hh
