The Mac Pro is a statement.
The best Apple products are pricy but come with enough premium polish that they feel worth it.
I love my MacBook Pro: I like the underutilized Touch Bar andhow fast the computer runs.
Photo: Alex Cranz (Gizmodo)
And I adore the multitude of Thunderbolt ports.
Likewise, theiPad ProandiPhone XSare expensive devices that feel like theyre worth their price tags.
But other devices arent worth itchiefly the MacBook andMacBook Air.
Photo: Alex Cranz (Gizmodo)
Theyre middling devices with outdated hardware that makes their inflated prices seem obscene.
The Mac Pro, starting at $6,000 (!)
feels like it could easily be slotted in the latter categoryOverpriced and underpowered.
Photo: Alex Cranz (Gizmodo)
So the Apple tax appears, at a glance, absolutely outrageous.
After doing the math in my head, I found myself gobsmacked.
Zoom in on some details, and that price starts to make sense.
Photo: Alex Cranz (Gizmodo)
The back of the Mac Pro is devoid of ports compared to a typical Windows machine.
(Another two Thunderbolt 3 ports reside on the top of the unit.)
Thats remarkable because Thunderbolt 3 ports dont often come in desktop motherboardsespecially consumer ones.
Photo: Alex Cranz (Gizmodo)
You have to go to the pro side of the market to find them.
Same with the whopping 8 PCIe slots on the Mac Pro.
Youre more likely to find that in a pro workstation built by Apple rivals likeHPand Dell.
Photo: Alex Cranz (Gizmodo)
The average gamer or consumer looking to dip their toes into video doesnt need all that flexibility.
We dont need that shit.
You and I will never, ever need 1.5TB of RAM.
But someone working with medium format digital images or an 8K video project?
And that doesnt include the extra Thunderbolt 3 ports, or capability to support 1.5TB of RAM.
Its not just about the specs of the machines and the IO throughput.
Its the little things that make me think that the Apple premium might be worth it.
The case felt cool to the touch.
That strikes me as potentially impressive.
The custom card Apple built is designed to accelerate the ProRes codec fancy film editors use.
It seems, on the surface, incredible as it allows computers to handle 8K footage without a stutter.
But we still dont know a whole lot about the Afterburner itself.
Very few details that were given about it during the keynote, Sag said.
We do know about the GPUs offered.
The Radeon Pro 580X found in the base model is, on paper, pretty wimpy.
It uses the oldPolaris architecturefirst introduced in 2016, and the 8GB of DDR5 RAM seems paltry.
We shouldnt count that 580X out though.
I keep thinking about the MPX Module that Apple packs each GPU into.
Theres potential to eke more performance out of the old GPU via the MPX module.
With the Mac Pro, you wont just go buy a GPU card and drop it in.
(Im sure you, theoretically, could.)
Im not sure of a lot of things.
Particularly given the demos I witnessed.
Correction 6/4 4:57pm EST : This piece previously listed the comparable rig from Dell as selling for $9,000.
The wrong CPU was selected in that build.
Choosing a comparable CPU drops the price to $6,300which is still more than the Mac Pro.
We regret the error.
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