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Apple called "Pro Users" bluff. The "pro user" that used to be served by the old Mac Pro was the same dope who gets the M-Sport BMW 3 Series, or the DSLR with t

• itsaidpens 7y ago
  Addendum - I'm a marketer so I always see things through the lens of the expression of self. I totally sympathize with wanting a pro-lite Mac tower... but it won't happen. Try a Mac mini with an eGPU.
  • fooey 7y ago
    Yeah, those eGPU's that are all dead because Apple refuses to allow Nvidia to ship new drivers... That'll solve it.
    • itsaidpens 7y ago
      https://www.apple.com/ca/shop/product/HM8Y2VC/A/blackmagic-egpu?afid=p238%7CsF9EJrKLw-dc_mtid_1870765e38482_pcrid_204238781435_pgrid_45491873498_&cid=aos-ca-kwgo-pla-btb-3pp--slid-----product-HM8Y2VC/A-CA https://www.apple.com/ca/shop/product/HM8Y2VC/A/blackmagic-e... ?
      • fooey 7y ago
        What I'm talking about is Apple flat out refusing to update their Nvidia drivers, so Nvidia powered eGPU's won't work with Mojave https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/14/video-nvidia-support-was-abandoned-in-macos-mojave-and-heres-why https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/14/video-nvidia-supp... It's been a stalemate for months and months now
        • clhodapp 7y ago
          1) Apple definitely should get on those Nvidia drivers. Nvidia hardware has a lot to offer and is very ahead in a lot of areas. Also, sooner or later supplier-constraining themselves is going to hurt Apple and their users. 2) Obviously there will be specific cases that call for Nvidia (or the advanced asics that Nvidia are putting out), but for most of the actual set of professional users that would do their work on a Mac, there's not really anything wrong with AMD's current GPU lineup. Their Vega cards generally do pretty decently on media production benchmarks.
        • sbuk 7y ago
          > Apple flat out refusing to update their Nvidia drivers It’s a little more nuanced than that. The link you provide goes into a little of the politics. In short, Nvidia have messed Apple around in the past, providing them with a batches of faulty processors that Nvidia refuses to acknowledge and suing them over mobile gpu design. Would you want to do business with a supplier that had done that?
          • javagram 7y ago
            Those past events were over a decade ago. Somehow, apple managed to be ok with signing NVIDIA’s drivers until now. In general having your PC platform provider refuse to sign drivers because they have a grudge from a decade ago is concerning - what’s the next important tool they might pick a fight with and ban? Imagine if Microsoft refused to sign NVIDIA or ATI’s drivers because they had some dispute over a part in the MS Surface product line?
  • jclardy 7y ago
    I currently use a Mac Pro with eGPU for mobile development, it is super fast and near silent (Unless the GPU is being pushed.) Even still, I'd much prefer a $2-3k Mac Pro-lite tower with i7/i9 CPU options, a few RAM slots and half the PCIe lanes of the $6k mac pro. But that is never going to happen.
• deleted 7y ago
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• coldtea 7y ago
  >Apple made a true pro machine, and now the pro-poseurs are pissed. Well, there are also tons of people working professionally with video, audio, etc, that don't have the money to fork for a $6K starting price machine, but would like to work on a fast, extensible, desktop machine and a good external monitor by Apple. The iMac comes with lackluster extensibility and a monitor that can't work as an external display 4-6 years later when you upgrade machines. The Mac Mini is a mini-PC with even less extensibility. Those people are still very much professionals. In that, they have clients, make a living from working on their computers, and could very much use faster e.g. rendering time, or the ability to run more VST plugins, or more complex 3D scenes, etc, to make their work easier. They are very pro, and very many. They just aren't high-end Hollywood studios, or the art department of Nike level pro. And they still could very much use something more pro than an iMac/MBPr but less high end than a $6K starting price workstation. Not only are these people not "the same dope who gets the M-Sport BMW 3 Series, or the DSLR with the Kit Lens" posers, but many of us have started building $3K-$4K dollar PC based workstations, where we run Premiere, Cubase, Creative Suite, etc, because Apple won't cater to our market. Or will only sell us a $4K iMac machine with no capability to upgrade internal SSDs, glued RAM, a built-in not-reusable screen, and no ability to use our own pick of e.g. a high end Nvidia video card. So there's that. Is it ok that they are now shunned? The traditional Mac Pro of yore, catered to those exact people.
  • itsaidpens 7y ago
    The total addressable market for the niche you described would generate less revenue for Apple than Lightening cables. Also, I think you're wrong about the iMac Pro. And the fact that you're complaining about a FOUR to SIX year lifespan? I don't even expect a car to last 6 years in any meaningful shape.
    • coldtea 7y ago
      >The total addressable market for the niche you described would generate less revenue for Apple than Lightening cables. The total addressable market for that will be much larger, and with higher margins, than the current "Mac Pro". In fact, when they did their publicity thing in 2017, the paid lip service of catering to that very crowd. Heck, they bothered to engineer a $999 stand that doesn't even fit the high end market for their new Mac Pro, and you consider the market of Pros looking for an extensible $3K-$5K tower Mac lacking? Laughable. >And the fact that you're complaining about a FOUR to SIX year lifespan? I don't even expect a car to last 6 years in any meaningful shape. That's so wrong, I don't even know where to start. 1) Tons of pros use a 4 to 6 years old computer (or more). Even more so when the computer is extensible, and can be upgraded in e.g. 3 years with faster/larger SSDs/GPUs more memory and so on. 2) Not all pros are super-rich. Someone in the $100K+ bubble might not understand how the other half lives, but among pro users, creatives are the canonical struggling group, and the one that could really use a powerful and extensible mid-range (sub $6K) Mac Pro. 3) Tons of people would be fine to use a 4 to 6 year old monitor, or more, if it's a screen of the iMac quality. The fact that they paid good money for the iMac and can't use the screen as a screen, or that Apple doesn't serve one, is not just crappy for that crowd, but also a very bad move for the environment.
• Dirlewanger 7y ago
  If Apple successfully called the pro-poseurs' bluffs, wouldn't that mean that they met (and surpassed) their expectations instead of going over their heads and missing them altogether?
  • itsaidpens 7y ago
    They did not meet pro-poseurs expectations. They met actual professionals expectations.
    • jasonlotito 7y ago
      Well, some professionals. Others, no. What they want is a expandable pro machine like the iMac Pro without the screen. They want a taller Mac mini. They want something that you can build on. They aren't any less professional. They just have a different use case. The best Apple has to offer is a Mac Mini. Let's make that clear. The next step up from Mac Mini is the Mac Pro. There is NO in between. That's a pretty big gap.
      • pwinnski 7y ago
        From Apple's perspective, it seems clear that the in-between is the iMac Pro. It might not meet your needs for whatever reason, of course.
      • erichocean 7y ago
        Maybe Apple could make something in between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro. How about—and I'm just spitballing here—they call it a "Mac"?
    • randyrand 7y ago
      I’m not so sure. Real professional computers start at $30k plus for the base model. Please take a look at the SGI workstations of old. A $6k computer does not deserve the ‘Pro’ moniker. /s
      • jpalomaki 7y ago
• alkonaut 7y ago
  I’m not very interested in a Pro machine but I want an enthusiast machine and a most-performance-for-the-buck machine and an expandable machine. Basically an iMac with a discrete screen and desktop hardware in a reasonably large box. Something that can run the Intel CPU:s that are actually sensibly priced such as the 8700K. So many hoped the bottom line Mac Pro would be cheaper bevause is no Mac ProSumer. Apple appear to have decided that the best (in terms of enthusiast performance per dollar) segment of desktop computer simply doesn’t have high enough margins and would cannibalize on iMac and MacPro sales where margins are much higher. And who can blame them? If Apple made a 2019 tower with 8700K/32GB/GTX1560 and sold it at $2k it would sell a lot but every sale would cost one MacBook Pro, iMac or MacPro sale.
  • brokenmachine 7y ago
    >If Apple made a 2019 tower with 8700K/32GB/GTX1560 and sold it at $2k it would sell a lot but every sale would cost one MacBook Pro, iMac or MacPro sale. Leaving the Apple prison is also an option.
    • zepto 7y ago
      Not really a prison then.
      • brokenmachine 7y ago
        That's precisely my point, that it wasn't even listed as an option.
    • alkonaut 7y ago
      Not for a lot of apple devs it isn't (To develop for Apple you need a mac). And remember this was presented to a room full fo apple developers at WWDC. Basically saying "you aren't getting a machine this time, we made one for creative professionals. Of which there are none here". That explains the gasps at the prices.
      • brokenmachine 7y ago
• mortenjorck 7y ago
  Your 3-series buyer who spent $3k on a 2013 Mac Pro to occasionally open Lightroom is a market segment that will gladly spend $6k on a 2019 to do the same. This is the market segment that buys a RED camera for home movies and then sells it on eBay because it turned out to be too complicated to use. But a Hollywood-caliber Mac is no more complicated to use than a consumer Mac, and will likely do well in this market. The people upset over the 2019 Mac Pro are the ones who just wanted a modular Mac like the PowerMacs of 15-20 years ago. The image-conscious buyers likely aren’t nearly as price-sensitive as you imagine them to be.
• mamcx 7y ago
  Interesting, I was not aware I was not a "pro user" Thankfully, the 6.000 price tag educate me! -- P.D: Pro is NOT a price.
  • simonh 7y ago
    There are still iMac Pros and MacBook Pros available for much less than $6k.
    • mamcx 7y ago
      I already have a Mac mini that I bought because the Mac Pro was no yet available when my old iMac die. But is a good option for Pros?? No. My brother, at my right at 3 meters from me, laugh in how pathetic and anemic is the Graphic card in the mini. Also, it have 20GB Ram for what I must pay (sorry, I recheck: for much less) upgrade the anemic start at the mini to at least 16GB that is already low for me (I need to integrate ERP software and run Mysql, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, firebird, windows, docker and more). I also need to buy an external drive to put at least 1TB SSD. I already pay to upgrade to 512 SSD internal. I already constrained in hard drive space. I buy an extra Synology. The mini no the iMac (I have one before) is a sufficient alternative. Is what I can afford and makeshift extra cables and enclosure to match what my brother have (it work on 3d and photography). And then, what extra magical thing for Pros this machines do? Apart of raw power, OSX are just decent Unixes, but have null of the extra capabilities of Amiga or BeOS, just to name ones...
• randyrand 7y ago
  /r/gatekeeping
• namelosw 7y ago
  I'm not a "Pro User" but I really want a not too shabby Mac which is not Hackintosh at a reasonable price, for years. I have to switch to PC from Mac when I want to play video games, or working with Scala, etc. Even with high-end MBP. I still like macOS most, although it freezes often because of the scheduler. Compare to Linux the rendering is far better and it's less time consuming to make everything work. Compare to Windows it's still a POSIX system. And the consistent behavior like Emacs/Bash style shortcut in Cocoa is really neat. I actually don't need Xeon and ECC memory, but I do need i9 and GTX2080, with memory and SSD pluggable so I won't throw it away 2 yrs later.
  • chrisseaton 7y ago
    Why do you need to switch to a PC to work with Scala?
    • namelosw 7y ago
      Intellij with Scala is pretty resource consuming. It's not freezing slow but on my MBP it's a little bit laggy and noticeable. It's distracting when I keep noticing the latency so I switch to PC to have a smoother experience.
• bane 7y ago
  The god honest truth is that what many users really want for desktops is the incredibly range, freedom and customization of the PC enthusiast hardware ecosystem and MacOS. Not specifically high-end power. "Professionals" spend thousands of hours with their tools and the tools need to fit their personal quirks as that allows them to feel the most productive. A handful of hardware offerings that Apple prefers won't allow for it and the market is too small and too long tail for Apple to even care. The custom hardware market lets pros assemble specifically the things they need to be productive and to rebuild at will whenever their work needs it. The Mac Pro is a good shot in the kind of direction that pros need, but it really will only intersect with a percentage of users.
  • deleted 7y ago
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• amluto 7y ago
  I, like a lot of HN readers, am, in fact, a professional computer user. But many pros have different requirements. For example, I have no use whatsoever for a fancy GPU — I want something barebones that works well on Linux. Anything from Intel fits the bill. A good chunk of memory and lots of CPUs are important, though. Pros’ needs vary.
• hi5eyes 7y ago
  tbf arcteryx is worn by lots of people in uni/college too
  • Fnoord 7y ago
    I don't know about uni/college in USA or America but in The Netherlands brand clothing starts at high school. And nearly all brand clothing is bullshit because you pay to advertise a brand, and wear it. It is a silly status symbol. You might argue that Apple is the same. Personally, I'd say that the popular alternative (Android/Windows) is just you paying with your privacy.
    • hi5eyes 7y ago
      [deleted]
      • thinkingemote 7y ago
        Brands work on a number of levels. For fashion you would have the designer stuff, then the expensive mall stuff then a cheaper garment but which only features a huge logo. It's aspirational for many. The brand becomes more important than the quality. Thus it's about the spectacle rather than reality, hence why people may label all of it as bull. Its why there are so many counterfeit stuff for fashion and accessories. My analysis doesn't work for IT or electron ics on the whole though. Except perhaps headphones?
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
• ksec 7y ago
  >I desperately want an Apple monitor I continue to not understand why people want this. There is nothing of value that Apple provide over other brand assuming same QA. You are only buying it for the brand. And you will be paying double the price for it. This is unlike a router where Apple said they don't provide any value, well they do, not just the ease of use but the Security and Software update, privacy stand of not selling out its users. There is little software or differentiation in Monitor. I am not against the idea, I just doubt there are many on the market willing to spend $1000 on a monitor when it could be had for less than $600.
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • retSava 7y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if that would be the next step - monitor content analysis for ad targeting. There are already mouse and keyboard drivers (logitech iirc) that report back to the mothership, and smart TVs (vizio iirc) that analyze the content on screen for the same reason. All hidden in a long EULA with barely positives as selling points to get the user to enable/install/use it. (sure, I use the smarts of my tv, mostly for streaming youtube on it, so it's not always entirely doubtful) Not far fetched to see this in a computer monitor either.
  • AnthonBerg 7y ago
    I disagree. Each time I have replaced my development laptop, I have on occasion attempted to spec a fully equivalent machine from other vendors. I have not been able to do that. I factor in the quality of the keyboard and monitor, and durability of the hardware. I also factor in spec-for-spec identical hardware – equally fast RAM, SSDs, CPUs (including equivalent cache and e.g. virtualization features). Even without assigning a price to the ability to run my preferred working environment macOS, the Apple hardware has come out ahead price-wise. This is given that I make efficient use of the hardware. When comparing Apple’s new pro monitor, it should be compared fully. The color space, contrast, and color resolution on it are top-class. I wouldn’t need it for programming so it would be a waste. For those who do need it - for, say, film editing - I understand that it’s a pretty good deal.
• C1sc0cat 7y ago
  Actual pros would probably prefer a 28 core W-3275 or even the M version in a suitably tricked out full size case. The entry level mac pro is using the slowest Cascade Lake Xeon to hit that price point as well as very limited memory and disk.
• _ph_ 7y ago
  I don't want a "Pro" machine. I do want a desktop machine. That is, a top of the line desktop processor, a full sized desktop graphics card and the ability to access the memory and storage. My only interest in a Mac Pro was, that up to 2013 it was the one Apple machine offering the feature set. Looking back I really regret not buying into the old cheese grater. While the old Mac Pros were expensive for the feature set I listed, they were still somewhat affordable at a $2-3k starting price. Doubling the starting price to $6k completely moves it out of the prosumer space. Also out of the reach of all professionals who barely can keep their business alive. (There are few photographers left who make real money for example).
• mantap 7y ago
  This is an absurd argument to make on this website of all websites. I sit at a desk all day and write code. Am I not a professional? How many tech companies are going to be buying $6000+ computers for their software engineering professionals? (Once you add upgrades it will be more like $10-20k) What this professional wants is a 9900K (I'm not cheeky enough to ask for AMD), 64GB-128GB memory, support for M.2 SSDs and my choice of nvidia graphics card.
• saati 7y ago
  I think you are onto something but got it all backwards, apple went full in on the rich dad crowd, they will shell out the 6k for a machine they don't need and isn't worth that price anyway gladly because the more it costs the better display of wealth it is.
• MuffinFlavored 7y ago
  > M-Sport BMW 3 Series are you saying that the M-Sport 3 series is close enough in price to almost always justify upgrading to the actual M3, and that this Mac Monitor is expensive, but not the best money can buy on the market?