Why are Mac Pro's so expensive?

[Tutor]

1

Whenever I compared Mac Pros to PC Xeon workstations I came away concluding that there wasn't a significant price difference.

I've found that all workstation system retailers began charging out-the-nose prices for the base system as well as addons, particularly beginning with the introduction of Intel's Xeon pricing structure in 2009. Thus, in 2009 I first learned to do the addons myself. Then later in 2010, I learned that to get the systems that I truly needed, I had to start from scratch. Fortunately, building a system from scratch provides the greatest customization ability and now that I've been building them for a while, I have a formula for doing it that takes just a couple of hours to put one together that has everything that I need - no more and no less, and runs the way that I want it to.

2

My approach was to buy a refurb Mac Pro and add desired upgrades (memory and hard drives) in the aftermarket.

Ditto, all of my Mac Pros are refurbs. I don't foresee me every paying the premium for that new prebuilt system smell. My upgrades to refurbs are, however, very broad.

3

Beyond hardware, I have found value in the Mac OS and the customer support that Apple provides (US based and available in under five minutes; a different world from what I experienced with HP and Dell).

Also ditto, but my Mac refurb machines are old in computer/processor years and the Great Recession dictated that I learn how to extend their value and, thus, Apple support is much less valuable now.

4

My Mac Pro experience has been positive and the overall value proposition has been excellent.

A final ditto, but see 1 and 2, above.

 

[B.LI]

It's the name/reputation of Apple, like comparing a 'Designer' bag with an any other bags

 

[jesushavemercy]

It has the price of a handmade machine in US

 

[snberk103]

So .... do you actually work with your Mac Pro? ....
sigh...

Yes. Some of us make our Mac Pros even more expensive than they were originally because of our perceived need to continue to tweak them for speed because of the nature of the work that we do on them and ever increasing client demands for faster turnaround times for projects. .....

My apologies. I was tired and grumpy when I posted. I was rude and I apologize.

 

[nanofrog]

I've found that all workstation system retailers began charging out-the-nose prices for the base system as well as addons, particularly beginning with the introduction of Intel's Xeon pricing structure in 2009.

The enterprise market has always had higher markups than consumer systems. And it was actually worse if you go back to things like Silicon Graphics, Sun, ... workstations (based on MIPS, SPARC, Alpha ... RISC CPU's, not AMD or Intel).

In the case of Apple's pricing on their workstations, between 2006 -08, they were actually cheaper than other vendors in most cases (particularly 2008, due to the "sweetheart" deals they were getting from Intel).

Sometimes buyers could get a good deal over the phone from PC vendors (made them cheaper than the MP), but this is declining from my more recent purchase requests (more common for phone quotes to match the web pricing now). Volume purchasing however, they're still willing to make deals.

Now, the 2009 and 2010 base SP MP were/are much higher than their PC counterparts (~$1k USD for the same W3630 CPU), but the rest are still within a couple of hundred of their PC counterparts for their respective CPUID's.

Where mistakes are made by members, is when some will take a DP system, and use a single processor in it (seen this with the Dell T5500 for example).

Options from vendors have always been high. But some companies want a single source of contact for hardware problems, so there is a market for those expensive options (saves money on the IT end). Budget minded users, are better off going with 3rd party sources for their upgrades (trade-off = must deal with multiple sources of contact when there's a hardware problem).

It's the name/reputation of Apple, like comparing a 'Designer' bag with an any other bags

For their consumer models, absolutely. But the price differences are small for most of the MP models (see above, as the base SP Quads are an exception).

It has the price of a handmade machine in US

LOL.

Unfortunately, they're made in China. CTO orders might be finished in other countries such as the US and Ireland, but the main part of the systems are already assembled in China before those facilities receive them (case, logic board, PSU, ODD at the very least).

 

[munkery]

Macs are premium business class hardware and most PCs are not.

Compare the cost per spec of premium business class PC hardware to the equivalent Mac and there is no significant difference.

 

[Tutor]

My apologies. I was tired and grumpy when I posted. I was rude and I apologize.

No apology needed because I did not interpret it as rude, but only as a question/post spurred by curiosity. That's why I responded as I did. I've owned Macs at all times since the mid 1980's and am still curious about how others use and modify them. I have (still working and being used) Mac classics (such as Quadras, IIc's, a IIfx, as well as multiple G3's, G4's and G5's), Commodore classics (such as the a 500, 2000s, 3000s and a 4000 {with a Video Toaster card, running the original Lightwave 3d software}), and an Atari TT040 {with the original Sound Tools/Pro Tools external card}. They all currently assist in music making, cartoon/2d animation and video production chores. There has been some great Mac (and Atari and Amiga) hardware and software for content creation in the past and their value still endures 20+ years later. PC's came later to the party, with much of their initial content creation software migrating from Apple, Commodore and Atari systems.

And "yes", they were also expensive - at least to me at that time.

 

[zap2]

It's too bad that Apple got rid of the "prosumer" PowerMac G5 in the mid to late 2000s. It was a great computer for those who like to upgrade, need speed, but don't have massive amount of cash or otherwise want a high end machine but not server specs.

 

[lewdvig]

XEONs, server chipsets, ECC RAM, 1000 watt server grade PSU, really high quality cooling fans, and a massive think aluminum enclosure.

That might not cover all of the cost differential, but it is a big chunk.