It doesn't come close to an iMac or an iMac Pro.
It's because sites like this have been complaining for years that Apple has left the Pro market behind. This was their response to that. And now this site is switching to complaining that Apple's definition of "Pro" is too "Pro" for us.
If by too Pro you mean someone using an 8 core CPU with 32 GB of RAM ...
The higher end models might be great, with some genuine innovation in the GPU interface that to some will justify high prices. But I don't know who the target demographic for a $6k PC with those specs is supposed to be.
They're banking that the margins of these new, higher-end products offsets the sales lost by shrinking their market. The problem with this strategy is that it isn't very sustainable and leaves them vulnerable to losing market share.
Microsoft keeps getting more serious about Linux compatibility, and if they ship a surface pro or something similar that can seriously compete with the MBP, things will get interesting.
Is features.
Apple was already "expensive" but somehow reachable. Now, the Mac line is more and more out of reach for anyone without deep pockets.
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I could have understand (somehow, still out my reach for a machine >3000) if the Mac Pro was > 10 cores, >= 32 GB, >= 1TB SSD, Vega or Nvidia > 1080
ie: just buy and is already a top of the line (or, what you will do with a base (old) Mac Pro to get to middle config)
Most tech professionals I know had lots of misgivings about Apple’s design decisions around the MBP. Mainly, shipping only with usb-c and the Touch Bar, which has been a total dud. Neither of those things were demanded by the market, but apple pushed them anyway. In the process of redesigning the MBP chassis, they introduced numerous design issues which plague them today. Apple baker in a bunch of incorrect assumptions that haven’t planned out for them. The incredibly high sales of refurbished pre-usb-c MBPs really drive this home.
The new Mac Pro, on the other hand, is very clearly designed for users that require massive parallelism and power in their work, which just aren’t most people. How many people need 20 cores? Most users weren’t complaining about the core count in 2016, they were complaining that Apple took a rock-solid product and introduced a bunch of regressions to it.
This is a homer car made of money.
The mac pro itself might have never been meant for everyone. Most of the people in the "pro" group didn't know or didn't care that they might only be on the lower end in terms of "proness" and asked for a new mac pro anyways. But I guess Apple considers them already well served with the iMac pro.
Previously I thought the iMac pro would be phased out as soon as a real mac pro is introduced but perhaps Apple will keep it around now.
Edit: I couldn't find a single 128 GB DDR4 ECC 2993 MHz DIMM, but the closest I found is the 128 GB DDR4 ECC 2400 MHz DIMM at 2249.99 a piece. Now imagine 12 of those, at higher frequency, with the usual Apple markup. That's already 30 to 40K alone.
Add a little extra because it’s apple and I could see it pushing 100k
That's exactly what this is. It may sell some units to professionals and high end consumers but it's main value is establishing Apple at the top of the consumer pyramid which works to move all their other products. I remember getting my import Alfa Romeo serviced at the dealer where they also sell Ferraris. It was fun except for paying the same hourly rates.
Should part of the blame for the high price should go towards Intel? The 8-core CPU in the base Mac Pro looks like it might be an Xeon Gold 6244 [1][2] which costs $2925. Obviously Apple will be paying less, but half the cost is the CPU alone.
[1] https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/192442/...
[2] https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/xeon_gold#5200.2F6200-Ser...
They’re pretty clearly chasing after the commercial, high-end computing market, but they’ve kinda left the high-end consumer market behind in some ways.
Still no definitive fix to the fly switch keyboards, lots of complaints about other design issues in MacBooks, basic spec bumps in mainstay products like the iMac. All while they continue to (somewhat unjustifiably) raise prices.
The new Mac Pro is the coolest piece of tech they’ve built in a while, and it’s completely unsuited for 99.9% of users. What’s the point in mass-marketing it? It felt like watching a marketing video to buy an airplane or something.