Even some of the less-premium lines have significantly improved in the last half-decade. A family member recently got a Dell Insperon and I was very surprised at the build quality.
In today's market you buy a MacBook for macOS and a logo. You just happen to get a decent laptop bundled with those.
That said, you'll have to make some sacrifices at the $500 range. At that price point, I always tell people to just get a used, high-end laptop instead of a new, crappy one.
Admittedly they can be obscured by the sea of consumer laptops.
Now the build quality sucks but the price increased.
Also, I will not use Windows until they stop all involuntary telemetry collection. So if said amazing laptop also supports a Linux with great interop, perfect trackpad function etc., like macOS does - I'll eat my own hat. Please and thank you.
I'm a fan of the XPS in particular. The base models for the XPS are only a couple hundred cheaper USD less than a base MacBook Pro, but MacBooks dramatically increase in price for minor spec improvements so the XPS gives you much better performance value at the high end.
> So if said amazing laptop also supports a Linux with great interop, perfect trackpad function etc., like macOS does - I'll eat my own hat.
Last I checked, macOS runs on Darwin, not Linux. Do you mean you're installing Linux on a MacBook?
So it's not good enough for me to provide examples that support my claim. I have to find examples that also meet your own criteria.
If you want a high-end Linux book, I would suggest an XPS. They have a "Developer Edition" that ships with Ubuntu. It's cheaper than a MacBook, but not by a huge margin. I can't attest to the Linux experience on non-developer-edition models.
At any rate, I’m not here for an OS flame war, but power to you if you think that a Dell XPS running Ubuntu is:
a) comparably smooth to using a macbook and
b) is available at a “fraction” of the price.
In the meanwhile I’ll go back to my skeptical perch and wait for a true challenger to emerge (which seemingly may never happen based on history, sadly).
I just think much of the market has caught with Apple in terms of build quality - especially in light of recent issues surrounding the touch bar and keyboard - so I don't think the Fiat/Audi analogy was a good one for the modern laptop market.
I figured the new Mac Pro was priced as such along with that monitor and stand as to spit in the faces of the fans that had been badgering Apple for years over the debacle that the Mac Pro had become. As in, Apple said fine, but you aren't the customer we want and you cannot afford it. Then again I am not even sure Apple wants any of that market, the machine by looks and its monitor seemed tailored made for influencers. that monitor stand was just a shark jumping moment if ever.
Seriously though, while the modular portion is an interesting take it is a convoluted method to deliver the upgrade path people wanted but worse it traps people to Apple which of course benefits Apple.
FWIW, custom configurations of iMacs are US assembled too. For the EU I think that work is done in Ireland.
But yeah, it's crazy expensive.
[0]: https://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/4K-8K/ [1]: https://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/view-all-pci... [2]: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/programmable/product...
Their crazy expensive monitor is another example. There simply isn’t something equivalent in the industry. It’s probably the best monitor for its niche application.
Base price doesn't really matter to the buyers of these machines anyway, they're not consumer products. These are being used by professionals who generate revenue way in excess of what the computer costs, and stuff like enterprise support contracts (where you can have a replacement machine at your desk ASAP if yours dies, because otherwise you're losing money by the second) matters much more to them.
The articles you linked are just dumb clickbait using the logic of consumer product pricing where it isn't applicable.
Apple: Xeon W, 8 cores, 3.5GHz, 32GB RAM, 256GB SSD, $5,999 [1]
Dell: Xeon W, 8 cores, 3.7GHz, 32GB RAM, 256GB SSD, $3,466 [2]
[1] https://www.tomsguide.com/us/mac-pro-2019-specs-price,news-3... [2] https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/workstations-isv-certif...
It's list price is $4,420.29 which is still about $1500 off. But that comes with Windows that supports 4 cores so you would need to upgrade to the 4+ cores one thats another $100 so more like $1400.
So basically $1400 is the difference between a top tier Dell and a top tier Apple. Still a fairly large margin, but after a certain number the amount matters less. People who are buying $4500 computers typically don't care about spending another $1000.
Also if you go via a Dell sales rep you easily get 10% extra off that "sales price" for low volume buyers and if you are a large volume buyer you can easily get as much as 50% off the list price even for high ticket value items.
At Dell/HP/Lenovo meanwhile half their products are "on sale" the same way that furniture stores have "sales" - its "sale" price is basically it's real price.
When you're talking about numbers like that for individuals, 15% is a lot. Even businesses would care about a 15% increase in costs
It's actually a "Pro" product.
The iPad Pro doesn't have any TB ports and the Macbook Pro and iMac Pro only have 4 each so I think 12 is simply unnecessary for the "Pro" moniker in addition to greatly exceeding most people's requirements.
Maybe if Mac Pros were designed for animation studios or something niche, the pricing would make sense.
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/06/is-the-new-mac-pro-hands-...
If I were to guess the reason for the difference, I'd notice:
- Your Dell has a SATA SSD, the Mac Pro has an NVMe SSD
- Your Dell has no wifi/bluetooth, the Mac Pro has WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0
- Your Dell has 1 gigabit Ethernet, the Mac Pro has 2x10 gigabit Ethernet
- Your Dell has no Thunderbolt 3 ports, the Mac Pro has 8
- Your Dell doesn't come with a keyboard and mouse, the Mac Pro does
- Your Dell doesn't have any equivalent for Apple's T2 chip or Afterburner card
Although the Gizmodo one doesn't have a lot of these, either. Most of the price difference seems to have to do with yours being a Precision 5820 and Gizmodo's being a Precision 7920. I'm not sure exactly what the difference is here, but it might have something to do with expandability?
If you're not concerned with expandability, the iMac Pro seems to have better specs for a lower price, and may be a fairer comparison.
Dell can add an NVMe SSD, wifi, bluetooth, 2x10 gigabit ethernet, and a keyboard and mouse. Those increase the price by $400. Dell will do two thunderbolt ports for $70, so 8 would be $280.
So unfortunately the things you've listed only explain $680 of the price difference.
Mac: 1.4 KW supply, 2933MHz memory (with 12+ core), 24.5 MB cpu cache, 2.6GB/2.7GBbytes/sec SSD R/W (encrypted), Afterburner ProRes and ProRes Raw available, crazy quiet, radical thermal management, ...
Dell: 0.95 KW supply, 2666MHz memory, 8MB cpu cache, 500K/300Kbytes/sec SSD R/W, ...
Apple has designed fully custom I/O controller chips for things like SSD interfaces and the Afterburner MPX modules that have some insane specs. Simple top line specs just don't tell the whole story.
Current Imac Pros are already getting 2.4GB/3GBbytes/sec SSD RW. Even the current macbook pro gets 1.7GB/1.4GByte speeds. Nonetheless, if these high impact details don't matter to you, don't buy it. No big deal. Just don't oversimplify the comparison. Of course, we haven't even mentioned the OS differences...
That means the Mac has 8 cores, 3.50 GHz, 16.5 MB cache, 2666 MHz memory [1] while the Dell has 8 cores, 3.70 GHz, 11 MB cache, 2666 MHz memory [2].
So the Mac has slightly more cache, while the Dell has a slightly higher clock speed.
I'm not sure I understand how the availability of accelerator cards that aren't fitted in either machine is relevant to a price comparison?
[1] https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/193739/... [2] https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/126707/...
No evidence a difference in graphics cards accounts for the price difference.
[1] https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+Pro+58... [2] https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?id=3719
I used these guides:
https://hackintosh.gitbook.io/-r-hackintosh-vanilla-desktop-...
https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/wiki/faq#wiki_wifi_compa...
The only thing I haven't been able to solve/fix is I can't use software that depends on WiBu Codemeter[1] - some sort of piracy prevention. This includes stuff like newer versions of Antares AutoTune, and other audio production software. WiBu installs a third-party kext, which doesn't play well with my audio interface for some reason (RME, also installs a third-party kext) - causes a lot of pops and clicks or dropouts until I uninstall WiBU. If anyone has any suggestions on workaround for this, please respond here!
PS: after losing my system too many times in the past, now I keep a mirror image backup of all my systems in case I break something... Esp. with hackintosh it is just too easy to lose a system.
An maxed out z8 is $50k - but that is way over what most people need, or you can do with a Mac Pro
If you look at other manafacturers - you can get insane performance for much cheaper.
2 x AMD Epycs (64 cores per CPU, 128 cores / 256 threads in the box) 1TB RAM 2x2TB SSD 2 x Quadro RTX 6000
Is $38,000. It is not even in the same sport, let alone league as the mac pro
12 x https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=128GB+D...
Uhhh
"When you look at how much the components inside the base Mac Pro actually cost, you'll be shocked at Apple's profit margin. But when you understand why Apple is charging you so much cash, you'll just be angry." [0]
"The top-end Mac Pro could cost $45,000" [1]
[0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/deconstructing-the-base-mac-pr...
[1] https://www.techradar.com/news/the-top-end-mac-pro-could-cos...