back to article How much cheese does one person need to grate? Mac Pro pricing unveiled

Apple's Mac Pro turned up on the company's website this week and, yep, it's eye-wateringly expensive. However, the shrieking over the price of the fully loaded cheese-grateresque device would be to miss the point. It is aimed squarely at the professional workstation market for which the £22,500 ($30,000) 1.5TB RAM option is …

  1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    I'll have two for Christmas...

    On second thoughts, I'll pass on both this and the Dell. $135K is verging on obscene.

    Looking at the iThing with my Engineers hat on... It does seem to have been well engineered but all those holes. A dust magnet almost as good at shiny black plastic surfaces.

    1. eldakka

      Re: I'll have two for Christmas...

      On second thoughts, I'll pass on both this and the Dell. $135K is verging on obscene.

      I don't know, back inthe 80's ad 90's, things like SGI workstations could easily cost $100k. And these things fill the same market segment role as those SGI, Sun, HP, DEC Alpha and others high-end workstations of yesteryear.

      But then, I never bought one of those either.

  2. Duncan Macdonald
    Flame

    Underpowered ?

    A fully specced system (2 x AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo, 1.5TB RAM, ProRes PCIe card, 28 core Xeon CPU 8TB SSD) is likely to be pushing the PSU hard - the 1.4KW is a peak rating - the max continuous power is 1280 Watts. A 2kW PSU would be a better option for a system with 2 AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo cards (each card has a TDP of 475 Watts).

    Icon for the PSU in a fully configured system ================>

    1. katrinab Silver badge
      Flame

      Re: Underpowered ?

      1.5kW is the maximum you can plug into a US domestic socket, or 1.8kW for things like hairdryers that are only used for short periods. In Europe, we can get 3kW, which is enough to keep my house warm in winter.

      1. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

        Re: Underpowered ?

        Some homes have 20 Amp outlets, though usually only in the kitchen. Businesses will have 20A outlets. (T-shaped neutral slot)

        1. Joe Gurman

          Re: Underpowered ?

          20 A circuits (and NEMA 5-20R receptacles in the wall outlets) have been pretty much standard in the US for office construction for some time. Or at least they were at the place I worked at for 39 years. I suspect the great majority of the new Mac Pros sold will end up in places with 20 A receptacles.

          And that pricey display stand? I also suspect that well over 50% of the new displays sold will end up in editing consoles.

  3. Jay Lenovo
    Angel

    Not just over-priced rollers

    My goodness ...a rackmount option!

    I think this breaks one of their rules on avoiding business functionality.

    1. Sgt_Oddball

      Re: Not just over-priced rollers

      Having seen a pair of G5 powermacs back in the day rackrounted at an editors gig it seems like a sensible option if you're using it to drive displays, desks and more so during a music gig having something you can put in a rolling rack.

      Outside of the music scene, possibly video editors/3D animators?

      Pretty sure there's a surprising market for the kits.

      Still, for this money I'd rather just buy an actual server if it's to be rack mounted.

  4. katrinab Silver badge
    Happy

    Drop the wheels

    If you drop the £360 wheels you will get it a lot quicker. I’m not really sure why anyone would want wheels on a computer case, but they are an optional extra and maybe someone wants them.

    1. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: Drop the wheels

      " but they are an optional extra and maybe someone wants them."

      They'll get specc'd into some contract somewhere from a government mob and earn Apple several executive bonuses.

    2. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: Drop the wheels

      Back in the day... (and showing my age), there were some MicroVax and PDP-11 Models that were designed for the office that had wheels. Made them easy to move around without lifting.

      The Original MicroVax case of this type also had a wooden top for sitting on but that never made it into production (AFAIK).

      1. GlenP Silver badge

        Re: Drop the wheels

        Commonly known as the K-9* MicroVAX. A great piece of kit in its day. Unboxing sometimes meant literally cutting the box front and folding down to form a ramp.

        Several of the PDP-11s I worked with in my first role were on wheels, we used them for various monitoring equipment so it was useful to be able to move them easily.

        *Dr Who reference for any youngsters.

      2. theblackhand

        Re: Drop the wheels

        "Back in the day... (and showing my age), there were some MicroVax and PDP-11 Models that were designed for the office that had wheels"

        From experience, the MicroVAX wheels weren't that great - hardly built up any speed riding them down car park ramps when we were....ummmm....decommissioning them.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Drop the wheels

          The PDP11 wheels worked but weren't much different from an office desk drawer unit.

      3. Annihilator

        Re: Drop the wheels

        I suspect that the sheer strength of the fans meant that chocks needed to be placed under each wheel to prevent it propelling across the office floor...

    3. macjules

      Re: Drop the wheels

      Ah, but is it £360 per wheel? I think we should be told.

      1. katrinab Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: Drop the wheels

        No. £360 for 4. £90 each.

        1. Sgt_Oddball
          Go

          Re: Drop the wheels

          For that sort of money I'd expect them to be on full roller bearings, balanced and capable of wheeling the mac upto at least 15-20mph whilst carrying an adult male...

          Should beat the pants off a standard office chair freewheeling down the office, and if it doesn't then I'd demand a refund and invest in a wheelie board.

  5. DilbertDonkey

    Use

    Genuine question...other than people with more wonga than sense do these devices have any genuine use?

    1. b0llchit Silver badge
      Alert

      Re: Use

      Yes, they are called "status objects" and are primarily used to compensate shortcomings elsewhere...

    2. CountCadaver Silver badge

      Re: Use

      3D work will push even these hard, Keyshot as an example, more firepower you can throw at it the better, also 4K or 8K video editing stresses a machine quite hard.

      Might be something to consider in about 15 years on the secondhand market, currently I'm running a used HP Z600 workstation with dual Xeon X5670s, 48GB DDR3 RD-DIMM, 256GB SATA SSD, 3TB HDD, only let down being the AMD HD6770 GFX thats showing its age badly. Total it cost me sub £500 (and possibly sub £400), covers my needs for basic 3d rendering, large photo editing, its quiet, solidly built and interior is well laid out, just could do with another HDD bay internally (only has 2, despite numerous SATA connectors)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Use

        But for 3d they are unappealing due to the lack of nvidia support by apple.

        And you can do very well with a threadripper pc, I'm willing to put money on the newest 64 core one coming soon being faster for 3d than any of these xeon options and for a lot less money.

        1. doublelayer Silver badge

          Re: Use

          That may be, but the original question was whether they have any point. They may not be the best machine out for video editing, but it's conceivable that someone could use it for that. In addition, a lot of video editors are attached to Apple equipment and software. I'm not saying they need to be, but if they are, this could be the machine they're looking for. It's certainly overkill for anything I do, but that's because I can offload tasks that need a lot of CPU or GPU power, as I rarely need to have so much power right at my fingertips.

          1. AMBxx Silver badge

            Re: Use

            Maybe it's one of those rare situations where a cloud server by the hour would be more economical? Anyone done the maths?

            My tiny PC with 32 GB RAM is starting to hit limits with PowerBI design, I'm seriously looking at just an Azure VM for the 10-12 hours per week I need it.

            That's assuming you don't want the status symbol.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Use

              For the high-end Mac systems I have worked with, we struggled to keep them fed with 10Gbps networking and 16Gbps fibre channel for shared storage - putting them in the cloud wouldn't be an option.

              In addition, a lot of the workflows for video production are down to what the creatives are comfortable with - saving a few thousand dollars on hardware and leaving the creatives struggling to learn PC versions of tools for a few weeks will likely cost you more, although infrequent updates from Apple have made some companies seriously consider the pain.

            2. katrinab Silver badge
              Flame

              Re: Use

              Uploading terrabytes of raw 4k or 8k video recordings to The Cloud in order to turn it into a movie would take a long time.

        2. jason 7

          Re: Use

          Already done with Ryzen.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXg9sMuGxB0

      2. 89724102172714182892114I7551670349743096734346773478647892349863592355648544996312855148587659264921

        Re: Use

        The trouble with high spec second hand machines is when the boards die (they tend to go first), replacements are are rare as hen's teeth

        1. jason 7

          Re: Use

          That's why you buy up old Dell/HP Xeon workstations. Easy pickings on Ebay.

        2. Sgt_Oddball

          Re: Use

          I've found the power supplies to be a weakness rather than the boards.

          Junked my last Dell because it cost more for a new PSU (proprietary twin motherboard connections for the 2 cpus) than a secondhand HP dual cpu rack mount (with much superior twin platinum psu's with hot swap that still cost less than the dell machine).

          Shame but the rack mount has been much better overall with better cpus, 4 times the drives and an actual SAS array rather than sata. So worthwhile in the long run.

          1. Annihilator

            Re: Use

            "Junked my last Dell because it cost more for a new PSU (proprietary twin motherboard connections for the 2 cpus) than a secondhand HP dual cpu rack mount (with much superior twin platinum psu's with hot swap that still cost less than the dell machine)."

            I suspect if you can be bothered then it's pretty easy to retrofit a standard PSU and re-use the old plugs, either in a permanent or Heath Robinson configuration. Different scenario I'm sure, but I managed to string out an old Shuttle XPC while I built up a replacement when the custom PSU died (£120 replacement cost).

            1. Sgt_Oddball

              Re: Use

              I would but the machine when I junked it had cost an almighty £68.75 by that point. Of which I've still managed to recoup £40 or so selling the ram and cpus so it wasn't worth my time to jury rig it.

              New server cost £42 and one of its two cpus had more grunt than the last one altogether. Even for the option of twin hex cores should I fancy it. Also has remote management, 4 gigabit network ports and an internal sd card reader for vmware making it much easier to stuff in the basement. (I've so far spent about £300 on ebay parts but 30 odd sas drives can be hit and miss and I did have to solder wires for the 2nd 8 disk drive bay)

        3. 89724102172714182892114I7551670349743096734346773478647892349863592355648544996312855148587659264921

          Re: Use

          After years of sharing the same space as noisy computers, I value silence and the likes of Dell cannot easily be shoehorned into soundproofed cases, they also don't easily accommodate fanless PSUs

      3. TheCynic

        Re: Use

        Just drop a Radeon 570/80 8Gb card in it.

        It's what I did with the lads machine

      4. Annihilator

        Re: Use

        Genuine query - where did you purchase such a thing? Ebay?

        1. tcmonkey

          Re: Use

          That's where I got my Dell equivalent from. They're generally not too obscenely expensive off the back of the 3-year lease agreements that a lot of businesses have. And even 3 years old they will still absolutely cream conventional consumer gear.

        2. CountCadaver Silver badge

          Re: Use

          ebay on an auction

          machine came with dual X5550s, 24GB RAM, NV250 gfx, the HP coolers (as they are decent) which cost me £200-£300 (I forget the exact figure), it has the latest board revision that lets me use the 5600 series hexacore chips

          Into it went - existing GFX from old PC (the 6770, cost £40 a few years back used), 48GB RAM (used) - £40 delivered, 2 matched X5670s - £120 from ebay used, 3TB HDD - £90 (less perhaps), 256GB Kingston SSD £50 at the time (the mrs acquired the Samsung SSD I'd bought for this)

          I think I also put a cheapo USB3 card into it also (something like £10 or £20)

          Whats next? New GFX card and maybe an NVMe SSD.....

          (wife's machine is a Z620 - single quad core Xeon, came with 8GB RAM, upgraded to 32GB (again used memory from eBay) Samsung 256GB SSD, another 6770 GFX card (£20 or £30 from eBay) 2TB HDD think that again was £400-£550 all in)

          They were popular CAD machines so there's usually a lot for sale on eBay along with Z400s, Z800s, Z420s, Z820's at varying price points

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Use

      I use COMSOL multiphysics, and its primary demands are bus speed and RAM. 64GB once you venture into 3D modelling goes very quickly and I have a model that filled a 4TB swap file! Of course performance dies the second you go out of RAM. The idea of being able to vaguely approach running in RAM is appealing, for such large models otherwise get dumped onto a compute cluster at one of our university partners. £40k isn’t bad at all versus hiring in consultants and facilities at £1000/day?

      The licensing for running on single CPU locked license is also much cheaper than that for a cluster too, for the cluster mode assumes you will have multiple users.

    4. MJB7

      Re: Use

      High end "creative" types (graphics designers, architects, animators) have been used to paying six figure sums for their workstations for decades.

      Depending on exactly what they are doing, it may not be worth switching to PC just to get slightly cheaper hardware (if equivalent hardware *is* cheaper). The retraining costs could be significant, and the loss of morale from forcing people to switch from their favourite toy would probably be even larger.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Use

      there are two uses / usages I can see:

      1. free media coverage (APPLE! APPLE! APPLE!) and a talking point (as if there was nothing more important in life) - and clearly it works :)

      2. there's at least one idiot in the world with money to spend, "because it's there", so this will cover the cost of putting that "product" on their website

    6. rg287

      Re: Use

      Genuine question...other than people with more wonga than sense do these devices have any genuine use?

      Yes.

      * If it's not a business expense then you don't need it.

      * If you have to ask "do I need it for my business?" then you don't need it.

      For the people with heavy-duty 4/8K macOS-based 3D graphics or video-editing workflow, this is what they have been crying out for. Early benchmarks show some configurations will render out 8K faster than realtime. That's basically unheard of (without a £60k Dell) and - for the price-point - reduces a 25minute render job to 4 minutes. For people developing assets in hundred-million-pound projects, time is money - more money than £35k. They're bringing competition to that market sector and not before time.

      As for the screen. That £5k screen is competing with reference monitors that can cost £30k. Again, if you have to ask what the point of it is, you're not the target market. Some of the top-end examples aren't even available for sale. Dolby's monitors for HDR mastering are leased.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Use

        I used to find apple fanbois annoying, but the anti-apple fanbois are worse. I grew up on Atari, Amiga, Windows and Apple but never felt compelled to trash another brand just for existing.

        1. vgrig_us

          Re: Use

          It's a lot more than "just existing" - it's about apple screwing over repeatedly every business that ever relied on macos hardware/software. Once you account for that, this new cheese grader attempt is nothing but trash worthy.

          Examples why one should never rely on apple in business: xserve, macos server, old Mac pros, trashcan Mac pros, final cut - that's just from my own experience.

        2. BGatez

          Re: Use

          How about for cheating their customers with generally way overpriced and shoddily implemented products? For no real diagnosing of hardware problems, insisting on absurd repair costs or total replacement for things requiring 20 minutes and a $100 to fix from a real technician?

        3. TVU Silver badge

          Re: Use

          To be fair though the purchase costs of both the Apple and HP equivalents are more like ransom money than prices.

    7. HelpfulJohn

      Re: Use

      Yes.

      BOINC and GIMPS.

      BOINC, https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ , for bragging rights and to "help Humanity" and GIMPS https://www.mersenne.org/ to "help Humanity" and possibly Win Big Prizes.

      The more RAM, CPU and GPU you can chuck at those two the better your odds of curing cancers, unwrapping proteins, finding neutron starts, decoding Alien Spam, mapping the Galaxy, finding Mersenne Primes or just heating your house.

  6. Claverhouse Silver badge

    The weird thing from the specs link, is that people who afford all this need those hideous pre-installed 'apps' shown at the last.

    I lost all icons from my linux boxen years ago, keeping only the theory in the divine WIMP paradigm [ which I shall never stray from, however the loons demand we shout at our computers or wave our arms about ], and have no idea why people who do far more serious and intense computing than I need these childish helps like apps, tiles, icons etc. .

    1. NightFox

      Just guessing, but do you drink real ale and have an old MGB that you spend most of your weekends working on?

  7. MachDiamond Silver badge

    Going nuts

    Apple is one of the most expensive places to buy memory and storage from. The base machine is a chunk of change, no question. If you can use the horsepower on a regular basis, the cost isn't so bad. Just buy memory and drives on the open market. Displays too. Apple has sold some very nice monitors, but it's not that hard to find one that competes for far less money in a slightly less sexy case.

    If you buy a computer to be a toy, you write the cost off as entertainment. If you buy a box to surf the web and check email, cost is something to look hard at. If you are creating video, animation or other highly compute intensive tasks, it's very easy to justify a pretty high price tag if the machine is shaving hours from every work week by not having to stare at some annoying spinning ball.

    1. Lord Elpuss Silver badge

      Re: Going nuts

      Wasn't that kind of the point of the article though, that the pricing here is in line with the market? I guess it could be done cheaper if you source directly from a chip-only vendor, but in a professional environment it often works out cheaper to source from one supplier because then if it breaks you can say 'Oi, machine broken, you fix' rather than sucking up expensive person hours trying to get agreement on which vendor is responsible and ending up doing the pluggy clicky bit yourself.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Get a good supplier then

        In a previous job we supplied MACs for a customer (installed with XP, because it was all about the looks) and supplied Kingston (IIRC) RAM to make up the paltry 1-2GB they came with as standard.

        We could sell them the Kingston RAM at half the cost of the official Apple price and still make a 100% mark-up on it. Customer was happy as they still only had to deal with one supplier.

        As we didn't have the volume to get a discount from Apple, the RAM helped make it viable.

    2. Lazlo Woodbine

      Re: Going nuts

      I think the £360 casters are a perfect example.

      A set of casters for a rack rated for 500kg cost around £70, so why are Apple's casters over 5x the price?

      1. fidodogbreath

        Re: Going nuts

        A set of casters for a rack rated for 500kg cost around £70, so why are Apple's casters over 5x the price?

        It's barely a rounding error in the price of a complete system. Companies buying a computer in that price range will probably pay their price for the wheels rather than cobble a cheaper set from the industrial supply outlet onto the bottom of a brand-new expensive machine.

  8. Joe Gurman

    Finance

    In the US, at least, Apple is offering 6% cash back (versus the normal 3%) on all purchases of Apple kit with the Apple Card through December 31. US$3K off a US$50K purchase price is nothing to sneer at. You could probably buy three Series 5 Apple Watches with titanium cases for that.

    1. Lord Elpuss Silver badge

      Re: Finance

      "You could probably buy three Series 5 Apple Watches with titanium cases for that."

      I know this isn't your point but I had a look at the titanium Apple Watch the other day in the Apple store, and I have to say I completely fail to see why anybody would buy it. Aluminium I understand because it's a decently priced entry level, stainless steel makes sense because it looks and feels like a 'real' watch rather than a smartwatch, but titanium? It's four times as expensive as the aluminium version, optically it's nigh-on identical, and the weight saving is also negligible on the wrist. The only reason for having it is so you can take it off and show the 'Titanium' engraving to your friends.

      Ceramic is also a weird one. Yes it looks different and anybody fully up to speed on the latest Apple devices will understand that you must have a big wallet - but to everybody else it looks like a cheapie Chinese knockoff; you'd spend your life explaining that yes it's real and yes it was actually rather expensive. Which could become wearing very quickly.

      1. David Shaw

        Re: Finance

        I've been looking (briefly) at the titanium and the ceramic from the point of view of extreme Nickel sensitivity, some family members can't tolerate some of the early gold coloured alu models, nor some fitbit watches. I think a (approx) half-priced 'Refurbished Apple Watch Series 4 GPS + Cellular, 44mm Silver Aluminium Case' with its ceramic back sensor might be better than the extravagant costly 'showoff' exotic material watches....at least with the series 5 watch they have starting to show the time, all the time!

        Oh, and I'm typing this from an old-style £5k Mac Pro (Mid 2012) 3.33 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon Cheese Grater, it is still very functional for a desktop, is now maxed out to >8Terabyte storage.

        i don't think I'll be immediately ordering the new cheese grater, it's reasonably priced at just £4582 (exVAT) for the stock entry version (no display) (or display stand)(or wheels) but the main problem is that they can't get it to Leeds before xmas

        1. Lord Elpuss Silver badge

          Re: Finance

          "Oh, and I'm typing this from an old-style £5k Mac Pro (Mid 2012) 3.33 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon Cheese Grater, it is still very functional for a desktop, is now maxed out to >8Terabyte storage."

          If you're using this a significant number of hours a day, it might be worth working out whether power consumption is a reason to upgrade; a modern system could provide the same performance using far less energy. Obviously the bigger the system and the more intensive the use, the more this becomes a factor; for day to day email and so on it's a non-issue.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Under the desk

    One does not simply plonk their new Mac Pro under one's desk. Oh, no

    1. W.S.Gosset

      Isn't that from Lord of the Rings?

      "One does not simply work over Mac d'or"

    2. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: Under the desk

      Not unless it's some designer desk that cost at least four figures itself.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Missed Oppotunity

    This is a missed opportunity for Apple. The Mac Pro makes sense at the high-end when comparing against other workstations, but at the low-end it's just overpriced for what is a very mediocre spec. If you spec it out to say 16-core, 96GB RAM, 2TB SSD and a reasonable graphics card, not that entry level nonsense, then it's around £12k, which is £8k more than it should be for the kit on offer. I know the engineering of the product does add to it's value, but it's over-engineered for most buyers of the old Mac Pro and the price reflects this. That was the beauty of the old one, it started at a low enough price (2.5-3k) but could scale reasonably well if you needed it to. Apple have made a beautiful case that costs a fortune, but those who can afford it won't care, they will just stick it under a desk.

  11. trevorde Silver badge
    Trollface

    Pointless

    as there's no software for Mac. All the best software is on Windows or Linux.

    [see icon]

    1. vtcodger Silver badge

      Re: Pointless

      You're expecting a $50,000 status symbol to actually do work? How naive.

      There's a rumor that linux will usually run fine in a VM on Macs. Assuming that Apple doesn't prevent you from running VMs on these monsters for some nutty reason.

      Not an issue for me. I am not, never have been and probably will never be, Apple compatible.

      1. katrinab Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: Pointless

        You can indeed run linux on a VM. Also, most of the things you can get for linux can also be found in the BSD ports collection, so can be installed natively on Mac.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Pointless

        The time saving in avoiding yells of "BOB, THE COMPUTERS BROKEN" because of Windows update hell for the 200th time is well worth the Apple tax on machines not being driven by me. If we look at the MacBook Pro, a similar specced laptop from another brand isn't far different on price.

        The weak link is Apple don't really do entry level hardware; a real missed opportunity. The badly overpriced, unchangeable iMacs are bloody awful things; and there isn't so much an entry level laptop now either. The MacMini just about fills (filled?) that role.

        I have a G5 quad sat in my junk room. Despite it's age, Logic Pro and Photoshop are rather nice to use on the platform. It is of course limited by the aged OS and hardware at this point, but still way more than any rank amateur ever needs for photos or audio hacking - can't justify the CS subscription but I can justify a 20-quid copy of a mega-powerful package from 10 years ago that will work as long as the hardware keeps going. My daily driver is an i7-6700K with Linux Mint, and the work-issued laptop is a Lenovo P50 with Win7.

        There is much upside from having competition in the market alone. The workstation just happens to be outside of your needs. I wouldn't knock it for that. Get some experience of these systems in the right niches and you might find you'll appreciate the competition.

        Of course, if all you want is Outlook, Word and Excel; a 300 quid T470 and perpetual subscription to WaaS & OaaS is probably more your cup of tea. Can't stand that myself! O2010 was the last release I'll use by choice, and then, I have swapped to LibreOffice wherever possible.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Apple famously doesn't include one in the box

    and how much for the box?

    1. SVV

      Re: Apple famously doesn't include one in the box

      If you have to ask how much the box is, you can't afford one.

  13. Dedobot

    Thanks to Apple's neglecting the desktop segment, RED, ARRI workflows moved to Windows. That's will be the last Mac pro. The problem is not the hardware's price, but it inconsistency and broken software. Decade ago editors installed new mac os a week after the realise without any concerns, now you must be crazy to do it.

  14. jnewco81

    Well

    At least I feel a bit better about dropping almost £3k on a new iMac.

    1. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: Well

      Then Apple's marketing department has failed! You're supposed to feel inadequate about your puny iMac, and ready to drop ten times as much on a Mac Pro.

      Then next year they show you the new shiny and expect you to haemorrhage your wallet yet again.

    2. Tim99 Silver badge
      Gimp

      Re: Well

      I weakened on Black Friday and paid <AU$3000 for mine to replace an 8 year old iMac that I originally bought as a retirement present - It seems very fast, but the software looks a bit tacky. I don't expect to buy another desktop computer...

  15. Gil Grissum

    Apple is crazy. Macofalltrades.com all day.

  16. jonnycando

    Just a thought.....

    Perhaps I might find the now obsolete trash can model at a fire sale price now that these are available.....or not....

  17. c1ue

    Look on Ebay

    There are Mac Pro Tower desktop boxes that are decade plus old but sell for $1000 still.

    I recently processed a 2006 era Mac Pro Tower: 10 GB Ram, 500 GB HD - owner said it was bought for US$12K.

    So none of this surprises me, if the target market is the graphics/video editor.

  18. razorfishsl

    Take a look at the BULL SHIT "APPLECARE"

    "extend your coverage to three years from your AppleCare+ purchase date and add up to two incidents of accidental damage coverage, each subject to a service fee of $99 for external enclosure damage, or $299 for other repairable damage, plus applicable tax."

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