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New Mac Pro Available for Online Orders

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Re: New Mac Pro Available for Online Orders

#51
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ever tried to edit 4K video? Real time editing is very important to post-production studios and when you are adding effects, rendering etc in a time sensitive environment - and you are a Final Cut person - then this is a great tool. This is not for your average dev or photo person, this is legitimately a 'Pro' machine aimed at very small a subset of Apple customers who actually mean quite a bit to the company. It…

But then, wouldn't you want a beefier machine? 64Gb of RAM seems a bit on the low side for such tasks. I would also think having multiple disks would be a pretty important feature (so you can stripe them for speed...) A single SSD? Really?

I'd imagine the intent with storage is to use the Thunderbolt ports to connect to a storage device (probably one with hardware RAID) that takes up far more physical space than is available inside the Mac Pro chassis itself and has far larger capacity / redundancy that they couldn't fit into the form factor reasonably.

Re: New Mac Pro Available for Online Orders

#53
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then, wouldn't you want a beefier machine? 64Gb of RAM seems a bit on the low side for such tasks. I would also think having multiple disks would be a pretty important feature (so you can stripe them for speed...) A single SSD? Really?

For video editing, proc and gpu are actually the important parts once you hit a certain point with ram and disk. Think about it, 4K videos in raw form are about 15gb per minute so you need a threshold of swapping and loading with ram and disk that allows you to move data in and out fast enough so the editing can be done in ram but you experience no lag as the user. With disk in PCIe and a good controller you are gett…

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for your explanation :)

Re: New Mac Pro Available for Online Orders

#54
post #38
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That chip retails for $2,795, so not really that out there.

Apple doesn't pay retail. Also, that $3,000 is above the cost of the base CPU.

For this kind of niche chip they probably more or less do. It's mostly workstation-focused, and the Xeon workstation market is _tiny_. It's not like this is a Haswell i5 and Apple is buying 10 million of it; I'd be surprised if they're buying over a thousand of the 12 core per month.

Re: New Mac Pro Available for Online Orders

#56

I don't get it. Who is the market for these, and why?

Well, this is the problem. Back in the day, it was pro graphics and video, and developers. Today, well, it's still nice for the pro video and 3D people, but you don't need it for photoshop, and certainly not for development. It's doomed to become ever-more niche as computer capabilities grow.

Re: New Mac Pro Available for Online Orders

#57
post #21
post #5

Dunno why, but I've always felt Apple (and others too) seem to chintz out on the 'upsell' portion. I just configured a new Mac Pro for $13k, and I still need to tack on another $69 for a trackpad. WTH? Couldn't they say - "hey, you're buying a machine for over $5k - would you like a complimentary mouse or trackpad with this?" EDIT: yes, I do know why. It feels stingy. That's why.

If you are contemplating buying a $4K computer, I don't think a free mouse is going to be the piece that makes your decision.

It's not about the purchasing decision, it's about goodwill after the sale. When I sold retail electronics, after I closed a decent sale, id throw in something small for free at the very end. Even if it was a $10 mousepad (cost of $3) on a $3k sale, it made people happy! And on a selfish note, made me a lot of ongoing sales and excellent customer relationships.

Re: New Mac Pro Available for Online Orders

#58
post #21
post #5

Dunno why, but I've always felt Apple (and others too) seem to chintz out on the 'upsell' portion. I just configured a new Mac Pro for $13k, and I still need to tack on another $69 for a trackpad. WTH? Couldn't they say - "hey, you're buying a machine for over $5k - would you like a complimentary mouse or trackpad with this?" EDIT: yes, I do know why. It feels stingy. That's why.

If you are contemplating buying a $4K computer, I don't think a free mouse is going to be the piece that makes your decision.

That's a textbook rational response. However, it doesn't address the emotional side of this kind of purchase.

Many people don't know the specs and other technical details of what they're buying. They don't really know, or have no way to tell, if they're getting good silicon value for their money.

However, they're keenly aware of the emotions surrounding this machine and its corporation: How much it will fascinate them, fascinate others, how much it will support them and their efforts, how reliable and comforting it will be, who it will put them in touch with, etc.

These people don't perceive themselves as making a capital purchase with an anticipated return; rather they perceive themselves as entering into a business _relationship_. They expect this relationship to address their emotional appetite.

Logical appetites are based on comparisons like "dollars per GHz." Emotional appetites are based on evaluations such as, "I'm taking care of you, are you taking care of me?" After paying a bunch of money, the emotional appetite expects "to be taken care of."

PP has latched onto the idea of a free gadget as a way to be emotionally taken care of. To him/her, this anticipation of his/her needs validates his/her emotional decision. To him/her, getting nickeled and dimed annihilates, or at least attenuates, the valence of the emotional response.

Buyers with diminished emotional response, who are additionally tone-deaf, ignorant or otherwise ill-equipped to evaluate the technical/capital qualities of their purchase, have little left to stand on.

At best, forcing them to consider the purchase from a perspective which concentrates on different features, facilitates their own insecurity.

So, for a technical company looking to profit off their buyer's emotional insecurity, it would make sense to simulate an emotional entity.

Of course, no one really cares that much, and PPP is simply producing outrageous examples as a diversion from a theoretically more worthwhile pursuit, but I hope my wisdom helps someone, somewhere, someday.

Re: New Mac Pro Available for Online Orders

#59
post #33
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video editors, recording engineers, anyone who needs a super powerful desktop that runs os x and has a big budget for such things. I am baffled as to why apple went with such bespoke / underpowered hardware. It would have been relatively simple to update the internals of the existing mac pros and add thunderbolt 2 support.

The budget isn't even that insane. I'm actually in the market for a new machine in the month or two. By the time I spec a 27" iMac up to where I'd want to be (Fusion Drive, i7 processor, graphics upgrade) it's close to 3 grand anyway, so making the jump to the base Mac Pro and just using my existing monitor isn't an insane jump.

Honestly, I'm of the opinion that I'd be better off decoupling my display anyway, and a base model Mac Pro is perfect in terms of power for me. And it looks pretty. I like having a workstation, and this is a hell of one!

Re: New Mac Pro Available for Online Orders

#60

I don't get it. Who is the market for these, and why?

You ever tried to edit 4K video? Real time editing is very important to post-production studios and when you are adding effects, rendering etc in a time sensitive environment - and you are a Final Cut person - then this is a great tool. This is not for your average dev or photo person, this is legitimately a 'Pro' machine aimed at very small a subset of Apple customers who actually mean quite a bit to the company. It…

Can't you use a render farm instead?
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