One gets economies of scale based on the quantity of parts for specific projects, not just by being big.
So you don't think that ordering the components for 50 million iPhones a year from Foxconn would get Apple any leverage when they ask for a quote for 100,000 PCIe motherboards? Okay...
Meaning that your xMac is likely to incur more support cost (the questions that hobbyists have are more complex and take more time),
...and those hobbyists are far more likely to look up or figure out the answers for themselves without bothering support. If they do call support (which is usually the last resort) they're more likely to have sensible questions with all the relevant details to hand and all the stupid possibilities eliminated. If you've ever done time supporting users you'll know that the
real hard work is when you're asked "I clicked on the thing and it said error" and it takes 20 delicately-phrased questions to find out if they're even using the software you're supporting.
...that's one of the hidden costs of alienating hobbyists/power users: they're often the front-line support for their family, friends and colleagues, not to mention the ones people ask "what computer should I buy".
all that design cost needs to be absorbed by the product itself and cannot be shared with the high volume mobile products
All
what design cost? Newsflash: since 2006 desktop Macs are just generic x86 hardware - apart from the T2 chip (unnecessary in a desktop anyway), which is existing tech developed for the iPhone/iPad. Even if Apple develop their own motherboard, its all based on established reference designs from Intel/AMD. No I'm
not saying that the R&D will be zero, but it will be a tiny fraction of something like the iPhone (miniaturised and custom made from the processor up) or even an ultrabook like the Air.
Every product should absolutely ”pull its weight” in Apple Retail.
Yeah, because those $5k XDR displays and $30k Mac Pro configs are just going to be walking out of your local Apple store...
Apple serves the bulk of his mature and declining business (desktop/laptop computers) very well with its iMac
Did you not get the memo?
PC sales grew last quarter, while Mac sales fell. Apple have had a 10 year honeymoon while their biggest competitor, MS, worked through the Vista/Windows 8 fiasco and the teething problems with Windows 10. Hence all of that intensive publicity we've seen from Apple targeting Windows 7 users who MS are no longer supporting... er, no, wait, I must have missed it.... but, hey, the most expensive of their laptop models now has a working keyboard and a sensible base SSD/GPU spec, and they've just launched a super-expensive, 5-digit-price machine aimed at a tiny minority who are committed to ProRes video or orchestra-scale Logic Pro, so that will help...
When Apple last made a tower, their own studies, as well as those done by others, showed that fewer than 1% of people ever installed a PCI or PCIe card, and an even smaller number upgraded their graphics card. That was a large part of why the Mac Mini was built in the first place.
Funny, because the Mac Mini was released in 2005 (initially to provide a relatively cheap entry-level Mac), yet the PCIe Mac Pro tower continued until 2013, since when the trashcan has been acknowledged by Apple as a mistake and (criticisms aside) the Mac Pro tower has been re-instated
with even more PCIe slots than before (one of the justifications for its high price).
Of course, one might suspect that the real reason for the Mac Pro is because Apple is getting into the TV/Film production industry and it would be embarrassing if they had HP or Dell logos on their end credits... The Mac Pro/XDR display is
perfect for the executive who wants to "view rushes" in their corner office...
Again, IBM has now done two separate studies of TCO for Mac systems vs. Windows PCs. The first determined that the TCO for Mac systems was an average of $535 less than the comparable Windows machine (even though the Windows machines were all much cheaper upfront).
Yes, that's all good... except people, even businesses, don't do accounting in terms of TCO. Even for a "sole trader" business, capital equipment (computer hardware) and "cost of doing business" (support, maintenance, consumables) have to be separated for tax purposes. Often (your jurisdiction may vary) the costs are immediately 100% tax deductible while all you can deduct for the capital outlay is annual depreciation - so its actually
more efficient to have more of the TCO coming from support/maintenance. That's one reason why businesses often lease equipment rather than owning it - but that just passes the capital vs. costs balancing act upstream to the leasing company.
...any sizeable business will have separate accounts and management for purchasing, support and labour costs, each independently trying to make efficiency savings. All these "the $50k Mac Pro will pay for itself" arguments come from a minority of users who must be in a very privileged position when it comes to making their own budget decisions. Most of the human race have to justify the purchase price of their kit.
Part of the reason is that many of these “lower priced“ machines get that way by installing bloatware, covering their machines in advertising stickers, shipping trial versions of software, etc., and other things that make users dislike them.
I'm not talking about Apple making $300 economy towers thrown together from whatever components are cheap this month (yeah, Dell et. al. only make a profit on those if you buy an extended warranty and a Monster HDMI cable). I'm talking about the sort of PC that you can have custom-built for $3000-$5000 that typically comes with a
nice case, brand-name components and a clean Windows install. Looking at one at the moment (from a reputable firm who I've dealt with for years): £5500, so about the same as the base Mac Pro, but that's with a
28 core Xeon W-3175X processor, twice as much SSD, twice as much RAM and a comparable, but newer, WX 7100 GPU... (and that includes the £220 Windows 10 license, so yes those poor programmers at Microsoft get paid) all in a premium Fractal Design (they're good) case.
So, no, it doesn't support 1.5TB of RAM (which would also need a M-series CPU costing 2-3x as much) or 8x8-lane PCIe slots - but that's the point: the MP makes you pay for those whether you need them or not. It's not that the Mac Pro is
over priced its that it is
over specified in a way that means the $6k option gets you 1/6 of a $36,000 computer rather than 100% of a $6000 computer.
...and, of course, the same site will sell me a Core, Core X or Ryzen system for substantially less if I don't feel the need for the magic Xeon woo-woo.
Thing is, you can waffle on about R&D, the cost of the retail chain and the need to build giant flying-saucer-shaped buildings with designer door knobs in California as much as you like, but its all excuses. If Apple can't make machines at
credible price/spec points c.f. PCs (which
doesn't just mean 'cheaper') then that's Apple's problem to fix, and anybody who
can leave Mac
will.
Again, as has been pointed out before, there is a cost to designing and building a totally new machine.
...and, as has also been pointed out before, a Xeon, AMD or Core X tower PC is not a totally new machine, and while the potential sales are a fraction of something like the iPhone,
so are the development costs. Unless you insist on designing a bit of modern art with nano-machined dust intakes and re-invented $400 wheels.
People keep banging on about how only a minority of people want desktop/modular macs... then defending the Mac Pro which is aimed at
a tiny minority of that minority...
Would you explain what their motivation is for cancelling the pre-trash can Mac Pro is?
They thought the Trashcan was a good idea.
4 years later they had a press conference in which they were forced to admit that it wasn't.
So they not only un-canceled the Mac Pro tower, but replaced it with a
parody of the old "cheese grater" and turned the expandability up to 11, hence pricing out many potential buyers and limiting the sales to 1% of the (according to you/them) 1% of users who actually wanted even 1 PCIe slot.
(or perhaps it was just worth it to make sure that Toy Story 5 still has an Apple logo in the end credits).
