I have had to give up on the Mac Pro line, or will, soon, priced way out of my needs, and it seems, no longer a user friendly product as the older Mac Pro’s were… Even refurbished current Mac Pro’s run anywhere form $40K down to near $20K… I’d hoped for some sanity, flexibility for a user accessible unit… Not happening…
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That sounds totally crazy. I looked at the Apple site where one configures a Mac Pro. Sure, if you are building a server the prices can go that high, but even with your most exceptional future possibilities you won’t need a server. The problem isn’t that Mac Pro pricing has gone crazy, it is that Mac Pro capabilities have gone crazy, and the pricing followed. How many $$$ is it worth to you to never wait 3 seconds extra?
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Heh, it’s not worth more that the ~$2K I’ve set as a mushy limit, the couple added ports of the mini pro have sort of made the decision, made more difficult since we can’t change/replace, add any additional RAM as a DIY thing, like I’ve been able to do in the several earlier macs, order them light, add third party RAM or HDs later…
The Mac Pros have priced them way beyond casual users, even refurbs are still way beyond… Need a corporate buyer, project, subsidy to even consider them… Interesting, but not seriously considered…
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Blame (or thank, your call) the memory architecture of the M-class systems that Apple is designing. As a guy in the industry the choices they made have some great benefits to the system as a whole. Power consumption, performance, memory sharing with GPU, etc. In honesty the only drawback is the lack of upgradability.
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I see it as their decision to hit the commercial/industrial side of the market, and not us hobyists, DIY’rs, or maybe pro-sumers as the earlier cheese-graters and earlier Macs were presented for. I’ve no complaint as far as this, my current 2012 Mac Pro, other than it’s been blocked at the older OS system, Mojave. And after a while other software begins to also be blocked out, so when I begin to see occasional glitches, kernel panics, it makes me nervous with the safety of the Tb of data aboard, so it led me to move along, ordered a Mac Mini Pro, be here in a couple weeks…
I do watch the announcements, presentations of the new Macs, Pro’s are delayed, but I don’t expect to see any in my interest range coming, so went for the Mini Pro, should be fine…
I wish them well, I am a shareholder of a nice chunk of AAPL, but, I do miss the early DIY access…
weco
There are 2, maybe 3, separate things here:
- The essential architecture of the M-series requires the memory to be “tightly coupled” to the various processors. This cannot be accomplished with external memory, hence, no external (external to the processor SOC) memory expandability in this architecture.
- Apple has found that the standard consumer, and even the prosumer, overwhelmingly buys laptops and a few buy all-in-one desktop units. Therefore “pro” models are almost always directed at the true pros, and maybe later, almost as an afterthought, a lower end one is made for consumers or prosumers.
- Pro units sell FAR fewer numbers than laptops/all-in-ones so it is natural that they get lowest priority schedule-wise.
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I can see this, and it has bent my perspective enough to make me let go of my DIY days, and scoot along… I’ve had several earlier Macs, beyond the initial Fat Mac, they allowed me to order bare bones, later or concurrently buy non Apple memory or graphics cards. And, still working, both of us, actually, there was more disposable income to go for extras, LaserWriter IInt, had two of them for a while, other color printers, etc… MacWorld was a shopping spree of everything from memory to books and a chance to meet a lot of the folks that were making things happen in those times… Fun times, User Group times, more meeting of the folks making things happen, even sat in on a meeting with one of the founders of Photoshop as we studied desktop publishing… Several folks from the various user groups broke out into theie own businesses, good to see… Some were the real pro-sumers, some started repair shops or publishing enterprises… Interesting times… Now, what to do with all the stuff collected over the years? Likely be recycled at some point…