#1

wait, so can we talk about how bonkers the new Mac Pro is here, or better for a different thread?

As an aside, f*** a monitor with a (required?) proprietary stand sold separately for $1000. oof

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Which MacBook should I buy?
#2

Actually you can buy the VESA mount adapter and mount it to other stands (the adapter is only $200)

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#3

ha! truu - just saw that.

Seems insulting as a consumer tbh - I mean, maybe the ā€˜proā€™ markets these are aimed at (like, big $ video editing houses) could use these, but still a drag from my perspective, and yet another nail in the coffin of Apple not being for artists anymore (though still crossing my fingers that iā€™m wrong about this!)

#4

The biggest demographic of their Pro consumers are developers from my understanding, then video

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#5

Insulting? Really? Why so? It seems to me that these machines are so highly specā€™d that a consumer would have no need for this. The only piece of this that seems odd to me is the cost of the monitor stand, but OTOH, if you were planning on having these mounted, then paying for the stand would seem unnecessary. Perhaps the VESA mount should have been included?

In terms of the pure shiny GAS, yes, Iā€™d really like a Mac Pro, but I certainly donā€™t need one.

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#6

Yeah I canā€™t imagine many of those stands will be sold. I picked up the LG made 4k screen from the Apple store last week. Cost me about 70% the cost of the new stand, and came with a VESA mount in the box :+1:

I feel like this ultra high-end positioning is the likely only way Apple can do ā€œbigā€ computers and spin a decent profit. Assuming they perform well itā€™s nice that they have a halo-car equivalent again too.

#7

The monitor stand thing feels kinda wrong, even if itā€™s just a psychological thing. Iā€™d prefer to have everything in the box if I put down a lot of money. Maybe in the future theyā€™ll have more monitors and theyā€™ll all work on the same stands / mounts?

#8

The new Mac Pro definitely is not for artists. Itā€™s obviously aiming at the high-end Video/Movie market (those who need 8K and stuff like that). This is supported by the fact that they also sell their own accelerator board for video number crunching. They might also aim for the high-end 3D/CGI/Special FX market, though Iā€™m not sure how much foothold Apple has in that sector.

What I feel disappointed about (but to be honest, itā€™s not like I was expecting any different) is that thereā€™s a certain lack of intermediate solutions. What if Iā€™d wanted decent performance but nothing crazy like whatā€™s in the new Mac Pro, but I also wanted a more flexible, expandable and future-proof thing. The Mac Mini and the iMac Pro both offer very good performance for what I do, but they lack the easy expandability and they might not age well. Also the iMac is one of those all-in-one solutions where you just have to accept it as it is (but what about if I want a different display?).
What about a Mac semi-pro with some i7 processor, decent GPU, and expandable everything? Thatā€™s the thing missing for me. But I guess Iā€™m part of a small minority here.

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#9

I canā€™t believe that they donā€™t include Logic.

#10

Iā€™m with you. I do not need all the extreme horse power, but I would like a flexible desktop for multi tracking my gear. I currently work on a 15 inch touchbar MBP, but I would love to have a desktop with the same specs just for music.

#11

20 words of the most expensive cheese grinder. (sorry, never been a mac person and people ogled over it today at the office, and for a second I really thought it was a kitchen appliance) :money_mouth_face:

#12

I disagree with the looks. That lattice pattern is ridiculous.

But $12k for a professional workstation isnā€™t unheard of. The display isnā€™t mandatory (try a 4k Dell display if you can bear the thought). Not a bad deal for future-proofing a music- or sound-post studio. My guess is video production and post-production businesses wonā€™t see it as expensive at all. Neither would anyone with a mac-specific compute farm / machine room.

Is it semipro too? I think so, but you have to treat it as a forward investment.

Guess the question is how steep is the base cost. I wonā€™t be surprised if a tower like the new Mac Pro lasts a decade without much showing its age (basing this on my 2013 hackintosh experience).

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#13

A product starting at 6K (excluding cost of monitor) does not really fall into the ā€˜semiā€™ pro category, imo. 4K would be on the edge, but 6K is a really high entry cost.

#14

why these particular figures?

#15

When reading Internet forums I always wonder what people think we developers do :slight_smile:

Anyway - no - there isnā€™t a cat in hells chance I could justify something like this for development. Unless you were somehow doing machine learning on your desktop rather than in the cloud then it would be stupid luxury. I work on a mid range 2018 Mac mini (which to my mind gives me a bit of expandability and a decent amount of power - Iā€™ll definitely be plumping for a large external SSD when I have the money but in terms of grunt itā€™s not slowing me down at all) Perhaps game developers might feel differently I guessā€¦

This processing power is absolutely needed for video work though - if you are crunching though 4k or 8k video then a machine like this will make a significant difference to your day to day

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#16

The base model was announced to be 6000.

#17

why are you repeating what I said to me, Im confused

itā€™s definitely overkill for most developers but Iā€™m sure there is a niche that would use it, people are becoming more adverse to using cloud computing for certain things

#18

yeah i mean why is specifically $4k just about OK but $6k isnā€™t?

#19

Iā€™m annoyed this doesnā€™t include any sort of path forward for NVidia support. The one area Iā€™ve worked in that requires serious horsepower is 3D and VFX, and GPU rendering with Octane or Redshift is miles better and more responsive. But those tools are NVidia specific, as are a lot of machine learning tools.

Seems strange to me that Apple would leave that on the table. A Mac Pro stuffed with high end NVidia cards would be a solid investment for a freelancer or small shop - youā€™d get access to modern rendering tools without having to move to a PC workstation.

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#20

As someone who came up in the era of Silicon Graphics and Intergraph workstations, this thing seems like a blast from the past.

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