New Mac Pro is Quieter Than iMac Pro, Has Optional Wheels, and Was Kept in Top-Secret 'Stealth Enclosure'

[atomic.flip]

Too expensive. Already started building my own.
Chassis is $79.99 at the Container Store "Silver Sunny Kitchen Trolley" (wheels included)

This literally made me LOL (thank you!)
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The people who complain about the entry-level specs clearly are not pros. Dead giveaway.

Give me a break. 22 years of experience in the technology industry and as a partner overseeing business development and technology selection for a prominent enterprise technology consulting firm I can tell you that no one is eager to blow a wad on hardware anymore.

Why even bother with a single server or desktop when you can spin-up limitless virtual machines to do the same work in the cloud?

This “Pro” device is a throw-back to a market that has long since moved on. And if it is to appease “enthusiasts” who are also professionals then the price point should be more reasonable.

PS: even the major film studios are moving production offshore as quickly as possible and by no means are those production houses running out and buying these machines in droves. Besides, the actual CPU is a fraction of the equation needed for efficient video editing. The graphics cards today do the brunt of the processing via things like CUDA on the Nvidia platform and equivalents on AMD etc.

 

[Pcar17]

Yup. I always refer to this MacRumors thread to show you what the Mac Faithful always do,.

Priceless....thanks for posting that link!

 

[kis]

I think that the iMac Pro is why the Mac Pro is priced so ridiculously for what you get.

If only Apple would build this with "for mere mortals" components.

This thing is for the HIGHEST-OF-ENDS Video Pros.

The old cheese grater was scalable in all areas, including price.

Hopefully Apple will still build the prosumer machine of our dreams (which basically was the old Mac Pro).

It's simple: a Mac that you can put your own (full size) graphics card, SSD and RAM in it that's not insane like this is.

We wanted a nice Mercedes, not a Bugatti Chiron, as cool and powerful as it is.

While I don’t think the new Mac Pro is overpriced, trying to sell this to photographers is going to be one hell of an uphill battle. Video companies: sure. Photographers: way too expensive and complete overkill

 

[handsome pete]

The people who complain about the entry-level specs clearly are not pros. Dead giveaway.

Please enlighten us on who these "pros" are.

 

[bushman4]

Looks Great. Stats prove that out. Price could be a bit cheaper

 

[handsome pete]

Everything costs so much more today than it did 5 years ago.

The higher cost associated with this new Mac Pro model has virtually nothing to do with inflation.
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it's not about how many production studios there are shooting 8K. It's about being as fast as possible, even if you're not editing 8K.

When people bill out $200/hour or doing client work, you want that butt in the seat to be as efficient as possible or you're going to be sitting there twiddling thumbs waiting for a progress bar. If you can save 30 hours of rendering time, which is easily possible even on modest workflows or Cinema 4D, you've easily made that $6K investment back.

The only thing we can't get back in this world is time. I can think of a lot worse ways to spend $6K on if you're a business owner.

If it's about being as fast as possible then it's looking like the entry level $6K model is poor value. You will likely be able to achieve "faster" more affordably. To truly take advantage of what this new machine can do, it's going to require further investment beyond the base specs which will quickly increase the cost. And that's fine for these facilities that have the money. I'm just targeting the $6k model here.

As for saving this hypothetical 30 hours of rendering, most are not going to tie up a production machine for that amount of time when they will likely have a render farm to send to.

 

[Detektiv-Pinky]

System drive is different than "storage". Your system drive has the OS and apps. "Storage" has your projects, your video footage.

4 TB is huge for an SSD system drive based on the competition. All the Windows and Mac computers I have ever encountered have had 512 gig SSD system drive, MAX.

I have two 10 TB external RAID drives for "storage" on my 2013 Mac Pro. The OS and apps launch lightning quick on its 256 gig SSD system drive.

Does your RAID storage also come on wheels?
To me the wheels on the Mac Pro imply that somebody envisioned it to be used as a mobile toolbox. To bad when this fancy and expensive toolbox can only hold a paltry allen wrench and a tape measure...

 

[Te0SX]

Was the $3,000 markup also kept top secret? Base model is really only worth about that much.

Linus Tech Tips already did the breakdown of the parts (Price starts at 11:10)

So yeah... it's a $3,000 markup.

Stop believing everything you see by these youtubers without making your own research. Linus has a big error on CPU price tag, the proper price for CPU that comes with Mac Pro is ~3000 dollar.

 

[bpeeps]

There’s a fair few of us who wanted a Mac Pro that had Nvidia support and a base model that wasn’t so heavily marked up. Ever since the first Mac Pro, the entry level prices have been around the 3K mark. They’ve just priced out a huge market of designers, photographers, animators and videographers in favour of large companies and studios.

And priced them in with their iMac and iMac pro offerings.

 

[ksec]

Stop believing everything you see by these youtubers without making your own research. Linus has a big error on CPU price tag, the proper price for CPU that comes with Mac Pro is ~3000 dollar.

Nah, we figure that one out, and it is pretty much a $750 Parts. Even lower than what Linus put-on his list.

May be, just May be the upgrade pricing of Mac Pro wont be as crazy as other Apple Products.

 

[Coarseman]

Wheels are cool, but can you Ollie it?

 

[Mike MA]

I can only afford a screw

But this will be well designed and priced too, don't bother!

 

[ChrisMoBro]

And priced them in with their iMac and iMac pro offerings.

A lot of these people (myself included) have invested in decent monitors and just want a Mac without a screen. Before you say it, no a Mac Mini isn’t good enough. It has no discrete GPU and it thermal throttles. I think this is a massive mistake by Apple but I’m happy using my custom built PC.
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Stop believing everything you see by these youtubers without making your own research. Linus has a big error on CPU price tag, the proper price for CPU that comes with Mac Pro is ~3000 dollar.

It costs $1,199. Stop making things up just to justify the insane Apple Tax.

 

[FamVR]

Linus? Really? Let me tell you something; we won't be earning anything with a hackintosh. it's like being an actor with bad teeth. Seriously.

 

[kis]

Well, for that price I can literally get a semi-decent used car. But I suppose if Apple added a 999$ electric motor for those wheels, I could drive to work on a cheese grater.

 

[femike]

People are making jokes about the Mac Pro because there no user-upgradable headless mac for people who want normal performance at a price for the masses. This Mac Pro is for the 0.3%'s . Combined with highly priced laptops this is not going to grow macOS adoption at all.

However I do like the design. I just hope they can make a mac like this for the average person as well catering for the miniscule market they are aiming for here.

 

[FamVR]

Well, for that price I can literally get a semi-decent used car. But I suppose if Apple added a 999$ electric motor for those wheels, I could drive to work on a cheese grater.

LOL so you get to your office, in your semi-decent car, but will have nothing to work with.

Listen. If I make an offer for work that costs us literally three days of aggonizing frustration, on the trash can Mac Pro, while only getting paid for a single day, or a single day of joy with the new Mac Pro. What would you do? Buy a car, or a real workhorse that helps you make up to 1K per hour?

 

[theluggage]

The people who complain about the entry-level specs clearly are not pros.

The complaints are from people who just want a proper, customisable and upgradeable 'prosumer' desktop computer that can legitimately run MacOS - something which Apple stubbornly refuses to offer.

Apple demoed a 28 core monster with a fancy quad Vega II GPU setup not (currently) available on a PC and a custom FCPX accelerator without giving a clue as to how much it cost. Then they announced a $6000 system with worse specs than the iMac Pro. Maybe you didn't notice the bait and switch (although they almost messed up and broke the spell when they announced the $999 display stand).

The bottom line for those of us not working on Pixar's latest with a bottomless budget is still that Apple just doubled the entry price of a Mac Pro.

Meanwhile, we'll see what the True Pros actually think when they get their hands on the machine (if they're allowed to speak) - but by the time this actually comes on the market, other 28-core Xeon systems will be available, as, probably, will AMD Vega II cards, while the "afterburner" and extra connectors to route DisplayPort to the onboard TB3 controller sound rather like solutions to problems that Apple have created by embracing Thunderbolt-for-video and eschewing NVIDIA.

 

[Pressure]

You can easily do 8K editing right now. RED Dragon at 8K is about 250MBps, last I checked. That’s at 3:1, not 5:1 compression.

Thunderbolt 3 RAID drives read about 2,800 MBps, so the 250 per stream for 8K is not a big deal.

The limitation is not the read speed of the media but the decoding by the processor. There is no hardware support for decoding 8K RAW in any current processor.

 

[theluggage]

Listen. If I make an offer for work that costs us literally three days of aggonizing frustration, on the trash can Mac Pro, while only getting paid for a single day, or a single day of joy with the new Mac Pro. What would you do?

Well... unless I was irrevocably committed to FCPX or Logic Pro for some reason, I'd have dumped the trashcans 2 years ago when the lease ran out and Apple showed no sign of updating them, and I'd be running the exact same pro software under Windows and/or Linux on a boring black box with dual Xeons and the NVIDIA GPUs that, for better or worse, seem to be the best supported by pro media software.

What I'm not going to do is tell you to go away and come back in 4-6 months time when the new Mac pro might actually be available (in quantity - ISTR the trashcan and iMac Pro weren't really on the shelves until January) and hope that my cashflow/credit situation at the time is up to buying/leasing $$,$$$$ worth of kit.... because, yeah, 'it will pay for itself in saved hours' is a perfectly good theory if you have the luxury of copious cashflow or perfect credit. That's for those lucky people who actually control their own budget and don't have to fight with a bean counter for every stapler.

 

[chrono1081]

Please post a link to an online build of a computer with similar specs that is $3k cheaper. Everything I've done come out to about $3k MORE expensive than what Apple is offering.

I'd love to see someone actually do this too. I've specced from a few companies and the closest I got was HP coming in around $1200 more.

The problem is people aren't comparing spec for spec when they do this, they make excuses like "Oh well I didn't use Xeons because non-Xeon chipX is the same" No, no its not, it's not going to hold up under insane amounts of usage over many years. Or they'll spec non-ECC RAM.

My guess, based on what's happened in the past, is that Apple managed to get a chip subsidy on the Xeons, its how they undercut everyone when the 2010 was introduced.
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I totally applaud Apple for making no compromise, spared no expense Mac Pro.

The new Mac Pro is also totally not the right Mac for me, the software developer. I hope Apple will follow up new iMac Pro, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and 27" display, with configurations ideal for software developers.

I would love a "half sized" version of the new Mac Pro. I'd definitely use the crap out of the new Mac Pro but its not in my budget. A half sized one would be utterly fantastic though.

 

[NufSaid]

Linus should thank Apple because he loves clickbaiting with Apple headlines.

I knew when I saw this announcement that the line would be "who needs this" and "overpriced". Sure for someone wanting to edit a vacation photo but some people work for a living on these beasts and time is money - sometimes even a 10% gain in speed results in MASSIVE gains in $$$$.

Think video editors and commercial photographers.

 

[shaunp]

Was the $3,000 markup also kept top secret? Base model is really only worth about that much.

Linus Tech Tips already did the breakdown of the parts (Price starts at 11:10)

So yeah... it's a $3,000 markup.

That's what the old cheese grater did so well - it appealed to the small business and power user community with a low entry point, but would also scale to the needs of the workstation market. The new one doesn't do this and Apple need a lower entry point product to cover this market that isn't an iMac as these customers would never buy an iMac.

 

[NMSUballa]

Was the $3,000 markup also kept top secret? Base model is really only worth about that much.

Linus Tech Tips already did the breakdown of the parts (Price starts at 11:10)

So yeah... it's a $3,000 markup.

I like how he states there is a $3000 markup but then ends the video with....”I’m going to buy one.”
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That's what the old cheese grater did so well - it appealed to the small business and power user community with a low entry point, but would also scale to the needs of the workstation market. The new one doesn't do this and Apple need a lower entry point product to cover this market that isn't an iMac as these customers would never buy an iMac.

Why wouldn’t they buy an iMac or iMac Pro?

 

[shaunp]

That was just Parts picking cost. i.e The same maths as Linus did, how much would it cost if you were to buy the same parts and assemble it yourself assuming your time is free.

Turns out it isn't really a Rip Off. As the internet has been crying about. You are only paying a few hundred more, for better build quality, craftsmanship, better component selection than you could buy yourself, support, assembly etc.

And the same goes to that Pro XDR Monitor. Assuming it is as good as it is listed, $5K is actually not expensive. I couldn't even find a single monitor that is as good for less than $4K, and they all look very ugly.

It's not a rip of at all, and actually represents good value - for a workstation. However there's plenty of customers out there who don't need a workstation, they need a computer that enables some internal expansion but runs on a core i7/i9 and doesn't scale anywhere near as high as the Mac Pro. Sadly Apple expect these customers to buy an iMac, but an iMac is not the product they want.
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But have they really? Pro photographers, for example, spend $2,000+ for quality lenses... and have gear kits that easily go $20k and up. I imagine it's similar for a lot of other pros. Can't see this being very out of line. People saying entry level Mac Pro prices used to be $3,000 forget to account for inflation. Everything costs so much more today than it did 5 years ago.

I'm a pro photographer and the Mac Pro is overkill for my needs, but an iMac is too limiting. Not in terms of performance, but in it's form factor. A product that sits between the Mini and the Pro that's not an all in one, would suit my needs perfectly. And not every pro photographer has £20k's worth of kit, as we don't always need it. It depends on what you photograph so to assume 'we have £20k's worth of photo gear, so a £6k+ computer would be fine' is incorrect. The computer like the camera and lenses is a tool and has to come at the right price.