Apple's Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR can be ordered starting December 10

mongeese

Posts: 643   +123
Highly anticipated: Apple’s email has been sent and the date is locked: you’ll be able to shell out $5,999 for a Mac Pro with 256 GB of storage, $4,999 for a monitor without a stand, and $999 for the stand in question on December 10. Wait, that’s not why everyone is excited?

Announced at Apple’s WWDC back in June, the new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR are Apple’s re-entry into the high-end professional workstation market, where money is no object and only the very best is just good enough. The Mac Pro starts at six grand for an octa-core Xeon, 32 GB of memory, an AMD Radeon Pro 580X and yes, 256 GB of SSD storage. It can be configured up to a 28-core Xeon, 1.5 TB of memory, four Radeon Pro Vega II GPUs and however much storage you might need, but with those specs, you could be shelling out $50,000.

The Pro Display XDR is an extreme monitor with a 6016 by 3384 resolution, 10-bit color, a million-to-one contrast ratio, 1000 nits sustained and 1600 nits peak brightness. The optional stand also looks fantastic, with never-before-seen features like 12 cm of height adjustment.

While the December 10 date just-sorta-kinda-maybe squeezes into Apple’s "coming this Fall" timeline, it’s unlikely the Mac Pro will ship in time for billionaires to gift it this Christmas with so many configurations available.

When it does arrive, however, it’ll be fascinating to see how it stacks up compared to the tech released since its announcement, like Zen 2-based Threadripper.

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Yeah, I'd rather spend half of that on a far superior PC capable of far more, and save the thousands over the cost of a MAC product. Same with that ridiculous stand. A grand for a monitor stand.....LMFAO. Apple sheep really will pay for anything.
 
Thank you Apple, from housewives, how thoughtful...

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Now if this came with the new 24 core Threadripper (which you can build for less than half the price) it might be an interesting product. Instead it is another sad sign of Apple's Mac business decline...
 
Yep ... the chese grader is always the FIRST thing I think of when I see that. I wonder if the performance is as bad as Limburger smells???
 
Now if this came with the new 24 core Threadripper (which you can build for less than half the price) it might be an interesting product. Instead it is another sad sign of Apple's Mac business decline...

Apple just hit their highest price ever . . . a sure sign of a business decline /s
 
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It's a purpose designed video editing station which is mostly useless in its base config. The question is whether the CTO options have any performance advantage over TR-based solutions, and that will only be answered by software. What software takes full advantage of 2-4 GPUs and does it work better than similar software on the Windows side?
 
Ah still comments from people mentioning “Apple sheep” and “you can get so much more performance on a Windows machine” etc.

The ignorant will never learn. This machine could have a quarter of the raw performance than a Windows machine and you’d still get your work done quicker and easier.

These Apple Sheep have an awful lot of money on average don’t they!
 
Ah still comments from people mentioning “Apple sheep” and “you can get so much more performance on a Windows machine” etc.

The ignorant will never learn. This machine could have a quarter of the raw performance than a Windows machine and you’d still get your work done quicker and easier.

These Apple Sheep have an awful lot of money on average don’t they!

We should get Steve on Hardware Unboxed to do a video comparing his new Threadripper machine with the Mac Pro except how would they get a Mac Pro to text since nobody wants to buy one?
 
We should get Steve on Hardware Unboxed to do a video comparing his new Threadripper machine with the Mac Pro except how would they get a Mac Pro to text since nobody wants to buy one?
It would be very difficult to compare them, you could compare a workflow but that would involve changing more than just the hardware and operating system.

A good example of a comparison is how my mates dual core MacBook Air runs rings around my quad core Ryzen 5 (3500u) when video editing. Despite his system having half the silicon the software more than makes up for it. Final cut runs smoother on his machine than either resolve or premiere pro runs on my Ryzen machine and he has a better time. Not to mention photos he imports appears on his flows without needing to be imported.

People just don’t get it, people buy macs for their software support, not the raw performance the hardware inside is capable of. It’s a complete solution, not a commodity.

For many users out there a windows based TR machine won’t be as good as these macs because these machines run a different OS. Now if you could could compare two macs, one with TR and one with Xeon then of course Tr would win. But Apple don’t make them.
 
It would be very difficult to compare them, you could compare a workflow but that would involve changing more than just the hardware and operating system.

A good example of a comparison is how my mates dual core MacBook Air runs rings around my quad core Ryzen 5 (3500u) when video editing. Despite his system having half the silicon the software more than makes up for it. Final cut runs smoother on his machine than either resolve or premiere pro runs on my Ryzen machine and he has a better time. Not to mention photos he imports appears on his flows without needing to be imported.

People just don’t get it, people buy macs for their software support, not the raw performance the hardware inside is capable of. It’s a complete solution, not a commodity.

For many users out there a windows based TR machine won’t be as good as these macs because these machines run a different OS. Now if you could could compare two macs, one with TR and one with Xeon then of course Tr would win. But Apple don’t make them.

That's one of the reasons why the new Mac Pro is so bad. Apple could pick anything so they picked overpriced and slow Intel CPUs. They are already behind. They could have just picked the 24 core Threadripper for their own Mac since they are building the thing.
 
These computer are not for home users. this is for companies to buy for their animation workers. if it make them 5% more efficient than it pay for itself.
 
That's one of the reasons why the new Mac Pro is so bad. Apple could pick anything so they picked overpriced and slow Intel CPUs. They are already behind. They could have just picked the 24 core Threadripper for their own Mac since they are building the thing.
Have you look at the lead time for Apple to design these things? Its about 2 years! I have no idea why this is the case but frankly:

TR's been moving too fast
Apple's very familiar with the Xeon platform
Overpriced is simply not a problem for the Mac Pro

However Apple should get off their butts and design an all AMD Mac Pro as they already have a working relationship with AMD for GPUs. $400 Million in cash, just do it.
 
Ah still comments from people mentioning “Apple sheep” and “you can get so much more performance on a Windows machine” etc.

The ignorant will never learn. This machine could have a quarter of the raw performance than a Windows machine and you’d still get your work done quicker and easier.

These Apple Sheep have an awful lot of money on average don’t they!
*laughs in hackintosh*
 
That's one of the reasons why the new Mac Pro is so bad. Apple could pick anything so they picked overpriced and slow Intel CPUs. They are already behind. They could have just picked the 24 core Threadripper for their own Mac since they are building the thing.
It’s not bad though. The CPU is but one component within the solution that Apple offer with the Mac Pro. It will do your work quicker than anything else for certain workloads. So you sure you can spend less on a TR windows workstation but it won’t do the job you need it to do if you were going to be buying a Mac Pro. It depends on your workflow.

I think if AMD continue to dominate then Apple will switch to them, it makes sense. But AMD are very new at dominating the CPU space, I imagine Apple just haven’t had the time to develop anything with TR inside it, or maybe they get a good deal with Intel, who knows.

You need to look at the big picture. Compare it to a race car, you can buy a faster engine now but the rest of the car - the suspension, the brakes, the chassis, transmission etc is just as important if you want to win races. Apple sell the whole car and not just the raw performance the engine (CPU) inside it offers. Like, you can buy an American muscle car with a very powerful engine in it but it would probably still lose a race to a Japanese or European car with a much less powerful engine but has been built better as a complete race car.
 
It’s not bad though. The CPU is but one component within the solution that Apple offer with the Mac Pro. It will do your work quicker than anything else for certain workloads. So you sure you can spend less on a TR windows workstation but it won’t do the job you need it to do if you were going to be buying a Mac Pro. It depends on your workflow.

I think if AMD continue to dominate then Apple will switch to them, it makes sense. But AMD are very new at dominating the CPU space, I imagine Apple just haven’t had the time to develop anything with TR inside it, or maybe they get a good deal with Intel, who knows.

You need to look at the big picture. Compare it to a race car, you can buy a faster engine now but the rest of the car - the suspension, the brakes, the chassis, transmission etc is just as important if you want to win races. Apple sell the whole car and not just the raw performance the engine (CPU) inside it offers. Like, you can buy an American muscle car with a very powerful engine in it but it would probably still lose a race to a Japanese or European car with a much less powerful engine but has been built better as a complete race car.
They could get a first tier manufacture like gigabyte to make an amd threadripper board to their specification it would probably take a few months. Apart for the Apple Bios and the T2 chip (if it has one) there is nothing special about apple hardware.
 
They could get a first tier manufacture like gigabyte to make an amd threadripper board to their specification it would probably take a few months. Apart for the Apple Bios and the T2 chip (if it has one) there is nothing special about apple hardware.
I agree, it’s not even Apple hardware. Apple are selling their operating and software and bundling hardware made by other manufacturers. They don’t make any of the components really aside from the T2 chip. Of course looking at performance numbers from the hardware then Apple would do better to sell threadripper in their solutions than Xeon. Although we don’t know what Apple pays for the Xeons so it might not be better for them, users don’t buy Apple products for the Xeon, they don’t care what’s inside they just want the software. In the same way it could be argued that Apple could give users more if they bundled Nvidia graphics chips in their solutions rather than Radeon but Apple clearly have a good deal with AMD for their GPUs.

However Apple did manage to dramatically improve their iPhones and iPads and are currently well in front of the competition when they started designing their own mobile CPUs and I believe Apple are working on replacing Intel, AMD etc with their own components in the future. It could be interesting to see what sort of performance that could deliver. They have already acquired Intel’s modem tech in a clear strategy to start making their own 5G chips.
 
The Mac Pro was a total failure with hardly any sales, and Apple is about to continue that tradition. We thought they were going back to common sense but they failed again. Can't wait 5 more years for Apple to fix the new Pro for another one. I'm officially done with Apple for good. My last Mac pro bought, will be my last Apple computer. Stuff it Apple.
 
The Mac Pro was a total failure with hardly any sales, and Apple is about to continue that tradition. We thought they were going back to common sense but they failed again. Can't wait 5 more years for Apple to fix the new Pro for another one. I'm officially done with Apple for good. My last Mac pro bought, will be my last Apple computer. Stuff it Apple.
I didn’t think it was a failure at all. It was a very good solution, providing things you can’t get anywhere else.

Maybe Apple products just aren’t for you ?.
 
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