Mac Pro's $400 Wheels Have No Locks to Prevent Rolling

[H2SO4]

Is it an oversight or simply not needed?
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stupid analogy, average people aren’t buying a Mac Pro.

Apple confirmed plans to begin offering feet and wheels as a "customer installable kit" in the future. Suggests to me it’s an oversight.

 

[nylonsteel]

yeah 400 bucks is a lot for casters
go to any mega home improvement store and get a clue on how best to stop wheels for your own situation
hyper cpu needs vectoring reverse thrusters for 400 buck extra

 

[jlinear]

Available soon: Genuine Apple Mac Pro wheel chocks for $150/pr.

 

[Wackery]

Half wheel, half normal stand?

 

[Lancer]

For that price they should have BT controls with brakes and power to park it under your desk!

 

[DanBig]

Just take the front two wheels off replacing them with the flat feet. What do you mean you don't have them? Not a very modular system if you can't swap the feet out!

The other approach is Apple have a Mac Pro Wheel recall !! Replacing the two front ones with ones with built-in friction brakes!

 

[sracer]

$400 upgrade and no locks? Why does Apple continue to spit in the face of their consumers?

two reasons...

First, Apple's customers love Apple far more than they value their money.

Second, this allows for the $800 "Pro wheels (with locks)" option to be sold.

 

[cmaier]

I still don’t understand where people think their Mac Pro is going to go?
If you’re processing film on a mountain perhaps remove the optional wheels.
If it’s on a desk don’t fit the optional wheels.
If it’s on an office floor it’s unlikely to go for a jog taking your monitor with it.
Aside the stupid price for a totally optional extra what exactly is the issue?

Nobody is interested in your logic. It’s much more fun to imagine scenarios where your Mac Pro is doing NASCAR around your home office
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The Cube didn't have a "feature" where it could literally roll off your desk and ruin your investment, tho.

True. It self-destructed and ruined your investment by cracking.

 

[Schizoid]

could you buy and attach three wheels, then at least it may roll around in a circle...

 

[Gilligan's last elephant]

There’s only one Apple. Since it is singular, “has” is correct.

(By the way, I fully get that the British treat collective singular as plural. It’s fun to bicker about, and there is no right or wrong. But don’t get me started on “maths” )

But there is a right way here.
Apple as an organisation are not a singular entity.
Other examples to show how wrong this assumption of singularity is,

The newly married couple is wanting to thank you all

FC Barcelona is going to win the cup.

😁

 

[markosb]

No worries, the next firmware update will lock the wheels, then the vicious cycle continues.

 

[trainwrecka]

Yeah, totally agree. Instead of keeping the product line simple, and charging premium but fair prices as under Jobs, they’ve done the opposite.
They now have a silly complex product line and the majority of it is hugely overpriced.
And buggy software to go with it.

How would you simplify the lines while bringing prices down? Not sarcastic, genuinely curious. I took a look at some of the lines, and they seem simple enough. The exception might be the iMac Pro, as it was a stand in for the Mac Pro.

 

[adamjackson]

I honestly don't see a scandal here. The Mac Pro didn't ship with wheels and everyone freaks out and now that you realize they're incredibly smooth wheels, you're freaking out but how many of you are Mac Pro buyers? Most people don't need wheels. you're never going to roll the computer around.

 

[cmaier]

I honestly don't see a scandal here. The Mac Pro didn't ship with wheels and everyone freaks out and now that you realize they're incredibly smooth wheels, you're freaking out but how many of you are Mac Pro buyers? Most people don't need wheels. you're never going to roll the computer around.

Who was freaking out about lack of wheels? The product was announced with a wheel option, we all knew there was a wheel option, and the product has been shipping with wheels for those who paid for the wheel option.

Why are you inventing a narrative?

 

[Eagle_Eye]

Why would you want a desktop computer with wheels? Usually it's used as a stationary item, on or under your desk. If you like a computer that's movable, you buy a laptop.

 

[newdeal]

Honestly at $400 Apple is still likely losing money on these. Not many people buy mac pros. Even fewer will buy wheels for them. Unless they are a standard part if Apple had to design and manufacture these things the r and d would actually be kinda high

 

[baryon]

How easy would it be for a 3rd party to release their own wheels? With locking of course.

 

[doctor-don]

On the Apple store site for the Mac Pro, I don't see much about the wheels except Optional wheels make Mac Pro easy to transport across the set or from one studio to another. No diameter, nothing about how the wheel replaces the foot. It might be possible to remove the feet and replace them with 2" Stem Casters, Heavy Duty Swivel, 4 for $20. 3/8" stem. Lock on each wheel.

 

[baryon]

Honestly at $400 Apple is still likely losing money on these. Not many people buy mac pros. Even fewer will buy wheels for them. Unless they are a standard part if Apple had to design and manufacture these things the r and d would actually be kinda high

Of all the things one could R&D, wheels certainly don't seem like the most costly thing to develop. Certainly not $400 per set. $100 would be a "not cheap but hey it's Apple" price. $400 is a "let's order them and hope the boss doesn't notice and then we can race them down the corridor" price.

 

[ssgbryan]

Apple has become such a sad and pathetic company. I've been a die hard Mac user since the Centris/Quadra 650 and recently I'm seriously contemplating moving off the platform. I'm so tired of waiting just one more year until they take Mac users seriously again. All the apps I'm using are available on Windows, too, and some even on Linux. I deeply, deeply hate Windows, but considering the current total rip-off that Apple is pulling on us it's just too much.

You aren't the target customer for Tim Cook's Apple. They haven't been a computer company for a long time now. They are a luxury electronics company that dabbles (poorly, imo) in computer hardware and software.

 

[crsh1976]

I honestly don't see a scandal here. The Mac Pro didn't ship with wheels and everyone freaks out and now that you realize they're incredibly smooth wheels, you're freaking out but how many of you are Mac Pro buyers? Most people don't need wheels. you're never going to roll the computer around.

Regardless of price, the uproar is it's a half-baked add-on unworthy of Apple's legendary attention to design.

So no, most of us are not would-be Mac Pro buyers, but that doesn't make the wheel set ok by any stretch.

 

[Phone Junky]

... Apple's customers love Apple far more than they value their money.

This says it all.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

I don't judge anyone. I flirt daily with the idea of divorcing Apple once and for all. I have built many insanely powerful and stable PCs (not to mention I had zero issues with them), yet I still come crawling back with my tail between my legs. There's just something about macOS. I am embarrassed to admit that I have very much succumbed to the "cult". The eco system and expert Apple psychologists have managed to get a firm grip on us that dared enter their world. I really do want to leave Apple behind for a lot of reasons. One main reason being principle alone. I think they do some really unethical things, and not only that, but knowingly do it and could care less. I have tried a number of PC laptops, don't laugh, but it's the dang MBP trackpad that keeps me hanging on. Why is it that no PC company can create a decent trackpad that can even touch the MBP?! Anyway, here I am with you all wanting to leave and bitching about Apple while holding out my wallet in the other hand. LOL

I totally get it. One thing I liked about using a MacBook Pro to do PC support was that I could hook an infected drive up to it, and pull data off, and not walk away with an infected system. That's likely gotten more risky with polymorphic and cross platform evils, but I would have to explain why I was using an Apple notebook to work on a clients systems.

They just work... (Except when they don't, but we know that)

I actually got a few clients to deploy MacBooks for their traveling sales and engineering people. There are definite benefits to using a system with a very low market share. Relative immunity from the crap that nukes PC's.

 

[cmaier]

Honestly at $400 Apple is still likely losing money on these. Not many people buy mac pros. Even fewer will buy wheels for them. Unless they are a standard part if Apple had to design and manufacture these things the r and d would actually be kinda high

If it took one mid-level engineer-year to design, they would need to sell 1000 sets or so to break even.

And they didn’t take that much engineering - the wheel is a pretty understood concept.

 

[hugodrax]

Since launch, Apple's Mac Pro has been the butt of jokes because of some of its expensive add-ons, such as the option to purchase wheels for an additional $400.

As pointed out by MKBHD in a review published this morning, those super pricy wheels have no locking mechanism, which could be major problem if a wheel-equipped Mac Pro is placed on a desk or a slick floor.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1232708514625310721

In a demonstration video, MKBHD shows the Mac Pro rolling freely on a slick floor because of the lack of wheel locks.

Those who want to secure their wheeled Mac Pro models will need to use some kind of stopper to prevent accidents, though no lock won't be an issue on many surfaces as long as the Mac Pro is on the floor.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1232741968851038208

Right now, wheels have to be purchased as a $400 add-on when ordering a Mac Pro for the first time, but in a recent technical overview of the Mac Pro, Apple confirmed plans to begin offering feet and wheels as a "customer installable kit" in the future.

Article Link: Mac Pro's $400 Wheels Have No Locks to Prevent Rolling

I need to order this wedgepro but cant find it on the apple site, is this slated for a later release?
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I totally get it. One thing I liked about using a MacBook Pro to do PC support was that I could hook an infected drive up to it, and pull data off, and not walk away with an infected system. That's likely gotten more risky with polymorphic and cross platform evils, but I would have to explain why I was using an Apple notebook to work on a clients systems.

They just work... (Except when they don't, but we know that)

I actually got a few clients to deploy MacBooks for their traveling sales and engineering people. There are definite benefits to using a system with a very low market share. Relative immunity from the crap that nukes PC's.

That low marketshare excuse only goes so far. #1 Especially knowing that those who own a MacBook are of a higher networth target and would be more valuable than the guy with a 300 dollar windows laptop.

There are more than enough Apple workstations and laptops (we are not talking some rare platform with only 4000 machines in the world) to make them a viable target.

OS X is a more secure operating system by design VS windows.