Mac Pro 2019

The hardware looks great, but unsurprisingly is not cheap. Speaking of not cheap, though—one thousand dollars for a hinged display stand that contains no electronics or anything else whatsoever?! Absurd. (What am I missing there?)

It is quite funny to try to sell a display without stand and VESA adapter. They could’t drill the VESA holes directly into the enclosure?

I’m sure OWC is overjoyed at seeing the new Mac Pro.

I was really disappointed by today's Mac Pro announcement over two years of waiting. Heck, I actually bought a discounted refurbished 2013 Mac Pro in April 2017 a few days after Apple announced its plans to release a new Mac Pro in the future, since it signaled Apple's rededication to pro users. Unfortunately, this announcement showed that my definition of what a pro user is and Apple's definition differ.

Make no mistake, the 2019 Mac Pro is an impressive machine. It is user-serviceable, upgradeable, expandable, and powerful. But at a starting price of $5,999, it is also unaffordable for all but certain professional users who absolutely need macOS running on top-of-the-line hardware in order to perform computationally expensive tasks as quickly as possible. It's a wonderful machine for these people, and I'm very glad that Apple has rededicated itself for meeting these needs.

However, there is a class of traditional Power Macintosh and Mac Pro user that is disappointed by this announcement: those who want user-serviceable, upgradeable, and expandable Macs at reasonable prices. For over two decades Apple sold entry-level Power Macintosh and Mac Pro models to such users at the $2,500-$3,000 price point (when adjusted for inflation). They were too expensive for casual users but were priced within reach for enthusiasts, power users, developers, and other people who wanted a reasonably powerful Mac that featured the same user-serviceability, upgradeability, and expandability that was (and still is) commonplace in the PC market. However, ever since Tim Cook has become the CEO, there has been a marked move away from user-serviceability, upgradeability, and expandability. The 2013 Mac Pro still preserved user-serviceability and upgradeability at the traditional Mac Pro price point, but at the cost of expandability. Currently there are no current user-serviceable, upgradeable, and expandable Macs in Apple's lineup that cost under $5,999. To me, the Mac Pro seems like a concession made to Apple's customers in the media industry but while also doubling-down on non-user-serviceable machines for the masses, including enthusiasts, power users, and developers. As a long time Mac user, this is the latest disappointment in a long string of disappointments I've dealt with since Tim Cook has become CEO.

It's an impressive piece of kit. And if there's enough of a market willing to pay these prices that Apple can make money on it, more power to them. There are probably still enough video and photo professionals sufficiently locked in to the ecosystem to make it worth Apple's gamble. And after all, even if they lost a billion dollars on the Mac Pro, they would hardly notice it.

But I'm having a hard time imagining what new business, without any sunken software or training costs to consider, would sign up for paying the Apple tax - which only seems to be increasing over time.

LOLOLOLOLOLOL.

Pros: "Apple hasn't updated the Mac Pro in years and the old trash can design is terrible. WTF?"

Apple: "You want a tower? Here. It's $6,000. Go fuck yourself."

And that $5,000 monitor? What is this, 1998?

Including only 256 GB SSD for $6,000 is insulting. 4 TB should be the minimum on a Pro machine. $6,000 for 4 TB wouldn't have seemed like such a joke.

Only 4 TB3 and 2 USB-A ports? Like.... THE $800 MAC MINI? For $6,000 they could have thrown in a couple more USB-A ports and a couple more TB3 ports, no? I mean isn't that the point of a Pro machine, that you're likely to have a BUNCH of stuff plugged into it and you definitely don't want to deal with dongles and hubs if at all possible? (I will freely admit, I'm not the target demographic for their Pro desktops and never have been).

I'm sure that people who are in multimillion dollar industries (like advertising, VFX, music studios) won't have problem paying $6,000 -- actually probably $7,000+++ once you configure it to actually be useful. But what about the rest of the "pros" who do need something more than an iMac Pro (or Mac Mini) ? Are they screwed, or does Apple's lineup now have "something for everyone" ? Honest question.

Michael, I doubt the internal storage is user-upgradable. The new website touts the storage as 'protected by T2', so I imagine it'll be like the newest Mac Mini, where it's tied to the T2 and can't be upgraded. If so, so much for "greatest performance, expansion, and configurability yet". But at least there are PCI slots, so, yeah, perhaps OWC can help.

But yeah, the price is insane. The 'Apple tax' of late is out of this world.

@Michael Tsai: "I’m also not exactly sure what the situation is for internal storage. It looks like there are two slots, but I don’t know whether they are proprietary or can be upgraded after purchase."

It's T2 based storage, so they are definitely proprietary. From the way it's presented in the tech specs, I'd say you can upgrade after purchase, as long as you buy the storage from Apple, same as the Imac pro but without having to go to a service centre to have the computer taken apart.

@linguae: "Currently there are no current user-serviceable, upgradeable, and expandable Macs in Apple's lineup that cost under $5,999."

People who care about user serviceability, upgradability, and expandability (and I count myself as one such) are dinosaurs. Apple today is dedicated to providing computational boxes that get your work done without your needing to think about what's inside the box. It doesn't help that the market for desktops is evaporating as more and more people switch to laptops for all situations.

Another thought on storage:

This thing has scads of PCI-e slots. If you don't like the storage options Apple sells, buy a third party SSD PCI-e card and Bob's your uncle.

Well, the Mac mini with the i7 is a lot of computer, and fills the (affordable) headless semi-pro slot fairly well. I waited to see what the Pro would look like before biting on the mini, but guess I shouldn't have.

Quick note: You can set your Mac to allow booting from a non-T2 controlled hard drive, so as long as you don't mind losing T2 encryption, your Pro will have loads of storage upgrade options.

It's a nice machine. I regret that at six large I won't even dream of buying one. 😉

The asking price is absurd, especially with only 256GB for storage. 4TB NVMe SSD (2x2TB in RAID-0 from Intel) is going for under $400 right now.

To linguae's point about Apple abandoning the 'enthusiasts-with-a-reasonable-budget' segment, I just priced out a comparable AMD Ryzen 3000-based system. 12-core CPU, 32GB RAM, RX 590, 256GB NVMe SSD, quiet cooler and case, Windows 10 Pro license. Total cost would be less than $1,600. Apple's message to enthusiasts couldn't be clearer: If you don't have big bucks for our big margins, we don't want you here, go to Windows.

Also, modularity and upgradability aren't just for enthusiasts. I kept my family's 2007 MacBook running for years by upgrading the RAM and swapping out the HDD for an SSD. That helps with lower cost-of-entry and makes Macs accessible to a wider range of incomes.

I guess the time has finally come that I need to look seriously at switching platforms. :(

Since the Apple ][ I've never owned a non-Apple computer, I guess it's time to checkout linux or FreeBSD...

Chris wrote: "I guess the time has finally come that I need to look seriously at switching platforms. :("

I'm actually feeling the opposite today, despite how much bickering I've done about Apple in the past year. I have also been fearing that I might have to leave the Mac for another platform (after nearly 30 years) but today's announcements have mostly reassured me that Apple more or less know what its problems are (in both hardware and software). And while I'm not so thrilled about their higher prices across the board -- e.g. Macbook Pro and iPhones -- compared to just 5 years ago... for the first time I feel like being "behind the curve" is fine. My next iPhone will probably be either an XS or whatever the low end is of the phones that come out later this year (whichever of the two seems like the best value, upgraded from my 8 Plus). Heck I might not even get a new iPhone this year, which will be the first time I've gone more than 2 years without upgrading (a better camera is really all I care about). When my 2014 MBP dies, I'll probably replace it with a Mac Mini and use my iPad as a remote screen since I rarely take my MBP away from home anymore (and by then, iPadOS + keyboard will probably fill most of the gap for my traveling needs).

As much as I wish that Apple had done most these things (announced today) 2 years ago, I'm glad that it seems they're finally back on track.

Now just fix the damn MBP keyboard :)

@Ben G
Honestly I'm considering that route too, but the one thing I don't like about that approach is the uncertainty about how long older hardware will be supported. Any PC I build today will be supported pretty much indefinitely, or at least as long as the hardware is useful.

And while I agree that Apple said a lot of the right things today, it remains to be see if they will follow up those words with solid software, or if the same quality problems will keep getting worse.

If the Mac mini had a discrete GPU, I'd seriously consider it, but as it stands, a Thunderbolt enclosure for my hackintosh's GPU would cost more than the GPU itself...

It looks like Mac OS 10.15 will support any 2012 MBP or newer. So if they knock a year of devices off every year that Mac OS has a major upgrade (e.g. 10.16 next year will support 2013 and newer MBP), then I'm fine with that. I'll be ready to upgrade in 2-3 years from now if my 2014 MBP hangs on that long. Although I'd be a bit screwed if I wanted to stay with MBP instead of moving to a Mini, because then I'd have to ask myself (in 2021) "What MBP do I upgrade TO?" if I wanted to buy a used one since the 2016-2019 MBP have terrible keyboards.

I noticed two SATA (or eSATA or whatever) ports on the motherboard. How you would power a drive plugged in to them, I don’t know.

This looks like a pretty great machine, overall. I find the case design a bit questionable (sure, it disassembles like a Cube, that's cool, but also, this means you probably can't mess with the hardware without moving the Mac around, because who puts a Mac like this in a place where there's room above it to pull up its case). But jeez, the price is just a punch in the face of everybody who has stuck with Apple in hopes that they'll eventually release a professional desktop computer again. This is clearly intended to be bought by corporations, not by people.

Maybe they'll make an actually affordable one next year?

@Glaurung: "People who care about user serviceability, upgradability, and expandability (and I count myself as one such) are dinosaurs."

I don't think that is entirely true. I think there are a ton of ordinary users out there currently suffering from full SSD:s, like owners with MBA and 128 GB or less SSD. I bet a lot of those are happy with the performance and don't want to buy a new computer but are constantly nagged about running out of storage space, and that they would love to just upgrade the storage to a larger size.

@Lukas Yeah, it looks like before you slide the top off you’ll have to unplug everything. I was hoping for something more like the blue-and-white G3s where that wasn’t necessary, and you could just open it in place under your desk.

>I was hoping for something more like the blue-and-white G3s

These were great cases. I still have one of them, because I think they could make a pretty decent PC case with a bit of modding.

@remmah: “We don't want you here, go to Windows”

This. Absolutely this.

And you know what? They’re absolutely right too.

Rule #1 of Business: Get yourself customers. Rule #2: Sack the ones that are more trouble than they’re worth. Rinse, repeat. If I was in their place, I wouldn’t want your high-maintenance low-reward asses either.

The only reason Macs still exist is to serve as feed pump for the iOS ecosystem, which is where Apple makes its actual money. They need to keep control of their foundations in order to control their destiny, which means doing just enough to keep professional tool vendors like Adobe and Autodesk on-board as those tools are essential prerequisites to iOS content creation, but anything more than that is a dilution of brand and general waste of effort.

That the new Mac Pro is aimed solely at that audience and no-one else is a hopeful sign that post-Jobs Apple might finally be re-finding its focus. Design your market, then design the product to fit that market; none of this “make some things and hope somebody buys them” crap of recent years.

Now, if they’d just sort the dire reliability of their recent “pro” laptops (which is what most of the rest of their professional customers should be on now)…

@Adrian B: “I bet a lot of those are happy with the performance and don't want to buy a new computer…”

1. These are NOT the profit-generating customers that Apple wants, or should want. Toss them to the competitors; let them fight over the scraps.

“…but are constantly nagged about running out of storage space”

2. “Ordinary users” should NOT be running out of local storage, because all their unique data should already be replicated safely and securely in Apple’s cloud storage, and all their non-unique data (movies, music, TV shows, books, etc) should all be streamed on deman from Apple’s online services, with local storage serving at most as temporary cache. So if ordinary users are running out of local space, it’s because A. this system isn’t working right [yet] and/or B. they’re too fricking cheap to buy new hardware every few years [in which case see #1].

@Has "A. this system isn’t working right [yet] and/or B. they’re too fricking cheap to buy new hardware every few years [in which case see #1]."

Other possible explanation: Apple sucks at providing a decent storage capacity in the minimum configuration of their products. e.g. 16GB iPhones when you dare to take photos (and even worse when Live Photo is enabled).

@has: Not all of us are good little consumers who dutifully behave only in ways that maximize corporate profits. Some of us still like to keep data on our local device. Some of us still get our music by ripping CDs and get our movies by ripping blu-rays. Scandalous, I know. Horrible crimethink. I am sure we will all be sent to re-education camps in the very near future.

That said:

@Adrian B: Your comment about running out of storage: there are these things called external drives. While I agree that the base storage amount on most Macs is too little for my needs (500gb is more right for me most of the time), If I was willing to delete a bunch of games and comics and suchlike that I am unlikely to actually want to play/read/watch this year or next year, I'd be fine with a 256gb SSD. That's because I have a cheap and capacious external drive, on which I keep everything I don't actually want to have instantly handy.

@Glaurung: “Not all of us are good little consumers who dutifully behave only in ways that maximize corporate profits.”

Please see #1 above, and repeat after me: “Apple is not my friend. I am just a revenue stream. Apple is not my friend…”

@Glaurung: “Your comment about running out of storage: there are these things called external drives.”

Dunno about anyone else, but I’ve had a bunch of problems in the last year with external drives getting irreparably corrupted if I forget to unmount them before unplugging [TimeMachine? CoreStorage? FileVault?]. Something to keep in mind.

Another option would be a NAS (https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/mac/best-nas-drives-mac-3674321/); basic models nowadays are cheap as chips. Won’t protect your data if your house burns down, but a bit more convenient and flexible than a dumb HDD. Plus, of course, there’s rival clouds like Dropbox and OneDrive that offer auto-sync apps for the Mac. No idea how well/poorly third-party storage integrates with iDevices, but I’m guessing folks here are Mac old-school so aren’t too worried about that.

> The only reason Macs still exist is to serve as feed pump for the iOS ecosystem

It's not like Jobs hadn't told us that this was exactly what he was going to do before he even got back to Apple. "If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth — and get busy on the next great thing."

Shame on us for not listening to what he said to us.

@has: ”These are NOT the profit-generating customers that Apple wants, or should want.”

I totally understand your main "Apple is not your friend" point, although I would hope that there was enough value in keeping those customers as well, for the long term. Maybe for lock-in, or for growth of Apple eco system and what not. I'm just not that cynical to think that such a thing couldn't exist even in a profit driven company.

(Just like I would hope that it is in Apples interest to keep the [good old-fashioned] Mac business alive and well even when the profit is absolutely dwarfed by the iPhone business.)

@has: ”’Ordinary users’ should NOT be running out of local storage, because all their unique data should already be replicated safely and securely in Apple’s cloud storage…”

I get that point as well, but my anecdotal evidence says it's a real issue for many people. It could be because ”A” as you point out or maybe because Apple has been selling products with user-unfriendly storage option as base product. I know from experience of managing iPads with 16 GB for kids, that the cloud system is not enough when popular games are larges than 1 GB (yes, a future system that only streams games and apps would solve that but we are not there yet).

And besides that, sometimes you just want to keep things local. And I would say that these customers are ”too fricking cheap” because these days a lot of people struggle to afford even the base line of Apples products.

@Glaurung: ”Your comment about running out of storage: there are these things called external drives.”

Yeah, welcome to dongle hell, I live there constantly and I hate it.

It's just not reasonable to expect ordinary users who just throw their MBA in the backpack to be able to handle external drives well. And even if they could, they just wouldn't because it's such a hassle.

> it is in Apples interest to keep the [good old-fashioned] Mac business alive and
> well even when the profit is absolutely dwarfed by the iPhone business

Investing into the Mac platform is an opportunity cost. It's difficult to hire qualified hardware and software engineers. They cost a lot. So you want to get as much revenue out of each one of them as possible. If they can either work on a new iPhone, which will sell 100 million at 1000$, or a new Mac Pro, which will sell maybe 100K in the same timeframe at 6000$, you'd be a fool to tell these people to work on the Mac Pro, even if it is technically profitable to do so. And maybe you also need to create new markets, given that the watch isn't doing *that* well, the iPad is below initial expectations, and phone sales are going down, so maybe you want them to work on your AR glasses or your car or TV, where the potential market is huge. Or something entirely different. Fancy overpriced headphones from the guy who assaulted Dee Barnes, that's where you want your hardware engineers! I don't know, I'm not Tim Apple.

This is the reason why, if you are a professional Mac user, you need to really consider whether you want to be an opportunity cost for a company like Apple, or the main market for a smaller company that caters exactly to people like you. You know, the kind of company that Apple used to be in the 90s. Maybe find a company like 90s Apple, a company that actually values your business, and buy from them.

@Lukas: You are most certainly correct. As a long-time Mac user I firmly believe that Mac users were better served back when the Mac made up most of Apple's revenues than today where the Mac only consists of about 10 percent of Apple's business. The success of the iPhone and the death of Steve Jobs were the worst things to happen to the Mac.

We need a champion of desktop personal computing again, like the pre-iPhone Apple used to be. We need a new operating system and computing ecosystem that is devoted to serving the needs of desktop personal computer users who want to be in control of their software, their hardware, and their data. A new operating system is needed because as of today macOS is still the gold standard, with Windows 10 and the desktop Linux experience not meeting the macOS standard. I would love to see a new operating system emerge that truly realizes the vision of Xerox PARC while integrating the innovations in technology that have occurred since then. I would love for this to happen, and I'm quite willing to make it happen.

@linguae: Yeah, I think a lot of us Mac-centric indies and enthusiasts will eventually have to find a new home base, but I'm not entirely sure where that will be.

Building a new desktop OS from the ground up is a monumental undertaking... I'm not sure the existing indie community has enough low-level experience to build something brand new (if we weren't already busy trying to make ends meet). The existing OS vendors have first-mover advantages and network effects that are decades long. The most I could imagine a small community making is a new desktop environment for a Linux or BSD.

The bottom line though is that I'm no longer really enjoying using macOS. And it's hard to remain interested in making one's own software when the day-to-day interactions with the OS are increasingly frustrating.

@has said: "They need to keep control of their foundations in order to control their destiny, which means doing just enough to keep professional tool vendors like Adobe and Autodesk on-board as those tools are essential prerequisites to iOS content creation, but anything more than that is a dilution of brand and general waste of effort."

@has I guess Apple is thinking like this. But I bet it will be detrimental to them in the future. If they don't make decent and morally priced hardware, what motivation do the developers have to develop for them despite their platform advantages? There will come a time where lines will be crossed? What happens if Apple continues with their faulty keyboards for the next 5 years, all the while insisting there is no issue with them all and all the while running a repair program in parallel to account for the "very small number of users" who have issues? What happens if the next Mac Pro is priced even higher than now because they introduced a damn touch bar on the top of the case?

Lines will be crossed as many lines have already been crossed for many. Many of my colleagues who were Apple fans refused to buy the obscenely priced MacBook Pros and moved on to Windows and Linux. The moment they moved, they realized they did not need those expensive iPhone XSs as well. Some of them sold and moved to the Pixel lines and some of them will change when the contract is up. It all starts from a small ripple, until it becomes a giant wave. Ask Nokia.

Apple, in its current form, is detrimental to the industry. They are the captains of producing sealed notebooks, glued keyboards and they will end up carving out the Earth hollow. I was at the store the other day to get my keyboard repaired. the third time and noticed quite a few of them were there as well. I drove 40kms to get to the store, another 40kms to go back. The keyboard took 5 days to repair, so another 80kms. In all, I drove 160 kms to get my keyboard repaired. Forget the gas expenses for a minute, think about the green house gases my car emitted on the way to the store and back. While many might think it is not a big deal but small things add up. I bike to work on a Brompton thinking "One less car!". In 3 months, 4 others joined me! But companies like Apple will screw it all up. They will say: "oh, our store runs on solar energy" but who cares if your designs and products are the most toxic to our environment?

Regarding the OS, it is high time for people to band around a Linux distribution and pay for it. Even if there are a 100,000 developers willing to pay a 5$ monthly fee to have a resilient OS and apps developed for it, it should be enough to address the livelihood of at least 2 dozen Linux developers. I am a nobody but I wish somebody with enough recognition and influence in the Linux community would get this rolling. I will be the first to sign up! Donations don't work anymore. I have seen quite a few distributions fade away waiting for donations to pour in.

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