All new MacPros are quads!!

[egbert]

Wait, did you call me 'sir'?? Ill have your head in a vice!!!!!

Well, good Sir, I think you may find that my protruding ears could make that rather more difficult than you might otherwise expect.

[BONES]

The big difference with Apple is they don't differentiate between business and personal customers.

And that is good.

No, you have it arse-about. Apple treat everyone like a consumer, they don't have anything that approaches professional-level support. Without reading the whole article, I think Dell have it right. You click on as a business customer and you get offerred service levels appropriate to your needs. Click on as a home user and you get different tailored offers.

I "prefer to believe" it because someone else helpfully did some research that indicates it to be the case. Why exactly, looking at that data, would you *not* prefer to believe it?

Because his comparisons have a fundamental flaw which biases them towards Apple. He takes the Apple spec as the baseline, so you don't need to pay for any extras from them and you don't get to make economies on better value PC parts. e.g. The new MacPro only offers 500Gb HDD's in their 2nd through 4th slots. These drives are still very expensive, around 3 or 4 times the price of a 320Gb equivalent. That means I can buy 3 x 320Gb drives for my PC and save more than a grand on slavishly having to match the Apple's 500Gb, yet I still end up with 20 times more disk-space than I need. Same with graphics cards, I can get by very nicely with a QuadroFX 1400 for under a grand but to match Apple you need to spec a $3000 FX4500.
That what killed the laptop comparison, I wanted 1680x1050 screen resolution. I could get that in a medium-priced 15.4" from Dell but I had to go up to the 17" MacBookPro, instantly doubling its price by comparison. A fair comparison might be to spec out three different requirements - one for a family who play games and surf the 'net, one for a hobbyist like most of us and another for serious multi-media type work. Then take those spec's and build computers. So the requirement wouldn't be 2 x 500Gb SATA 3Gb drives but around a terabyte of high-speed storage or graphics for running 3D modelling and digital compositing applications, rather than QuadroFX4500 graphics.

I didnt' get his argument. With Apple you're at the whim of the guy you bought it from? Only for warranty repair. I doubt that the on-site repairs Bones is talking about are the warranty type. He probably pays for them. You can pay someone for Apple suport too. Maybe not Apple itself.

When you buy a Dell Precision laptop you get 3 years of next day, on-site parts and labour standard. When you buy a MacBookPro you have to take it back to the guy you bought it from to get it fixed. He'll look at it and then ship it back to Apple if it requires more than a reboot. How long do you think you'll be without it?
If I want to pay a few hundred extra I can have my Dell support extended to anywhere in Asia where I travel. So if my M90 krapped out on me today, here in Taipei, someone would be out to fix it tomorrow, so I might miss one appointment. If it was a MacBookPro I would have to wait until I got home next week and hope Harry knew what the problem was when I fronted up to his shop. In the meantime I would have to cancel the rest of my appointments here and in Hong Kong. Mind you, if I was forced to use a MacBookPro I would have to travel with a workstation anyway as it wouldn't be able to run my software, even if there was a Mac version.

[whyterabbyt]

The new MacPro only offers 500Gb HDD's in their 2nd through 4th slots. These drives are still very expensive, around 3 or 4 times the price of a 320Gb equivalent.

No they're not, usually anyways. They're about twice the price of a 320Gb drive. Apple are charging a premium for 500Gb drives though. They're charging £270 for them in their store when you can get them for £150-£170.

[BONES]

I can get a 320Gb Barracuda 7200.10 for Au$183, Apple are charging Au$659 for a 500Gb, that's 3.6 times more f**king expensive. I don't make this shit up, its the product of careful and thorough research, much like the new barebone I just picked up for considerably less than a 500Gb HDD from Apple. I'll get my new workstation built for under Au$2000 now, and I may never need another computer again. Yeeeee-haaaaa!!!

[whyterabbyt]

I can get a 320Gb Barracuda 7200.10 for Au$183, Apple are charging Au$659 for a 500Gb, that's 3.6 times more f**king expensive. I don't make this shit up, its the product of careful and thorough research

I was differentiating between what Apple are charging for a 500Gb drive, and what the street price of a 500Gb drive actually is, and pointing out, for those who miught have misinderstood, that regular store-bought 500Gb drives are not '3 or 4 times more expensive' than 320Gb drives. The prices for a 500Gb drive here work out around $400 AUD I believe.

Apple's price for additional hard drives and memory is always significantly higher than street prices. Even the education pricing works out 20-25% higher than retail.

[ianscott111]

I don't know about other people, but what BONES fails to realize is that I'm not getting a Mac to get the most powerful computer around. I'm getting a Mac so I can continue using Logic. My old computer, a Dell Inspiron 8200 has started to completely fall apart (motherboard has started to fall apart, DVD drive refuses to read DVDs). Dell Support isn't being helpful at all - even after I tell them what the problems are, they ask me to go over some steps which don't tell me anything, and then try to get me to do the same thing over again. Since I need a new computer anyways, I figured that might as well get a Mac, as I would like to have continued support of Logic, in case anything ever happened (especially to the dongle). After using Logic for the past 6 years, I have no intention of learning another sequencer just so I can say that I have the most cost-efficient system. The convenience of continuing to use Logic is more than worth any price difference there would be between two similar systems.

To BONES: If Orion Platinum suddenly decided to stop supporting PCs and only made products for Macs, I'm sure you would continue to use what works for you. However, after about 4 years, your computer started to fall apart, would you learn a new sequencer, or would you decide to get a new computer on which your preferred method of working worked on?

[BONES]

The prices for a 500Gb drive here work out around $400 AUD I believe.

Well, at the same on-line store as the 320's they are Au$495 or Au$505, depending on model, which is still near as dammit to 3 times the price, making my 3 to 4 times claim well within the bounds of reasonableness and accepted rounding practice.

I don't know about other people, but what BONES fails to realize is that I'm not getting a Mac to get the most powerful computer around. I'm getting a Mac so I can continue using Logic.

Which is perfectly acceptable, although it is green-lighting Apple's treatment of Emagic and its customers. You know what happenned to Shake, don't you? How long do you think it will be before they do the same to Logic? This is definitely not a company I would be buying software from. But if it makes you happy, go right ahead, just don't try and tell me you're not paying a considerable premium for the privilege [that's a general "you", not a specific one].

My old computer, a Dell Inspiron 8200 has started to completely fall apart (motherboard has started to fall apart, DVD drive refuses to read DVDs). Dell Support isn't being helpful at all - even after I tell them what the problems are, they ask me to go over some steps which don't tell me anything, and then try to get me to do the same thing over again.

You really can't fix your own computer? Seriously? A new DVD drive is about 40 bucks.

After using Logic for the past 6 years, I have no intention of learning another sequencer just so I can say that I have the most cost-efficient system. The convenience of continuing to use Logic is more than worth any price difference there would be between two similar systems.

Good luck with that, I hope it works out OK for ya.

To BONES: If Orion Platinum suddenly decided to stop supporting PCs and only made products for Macs, I'm sure you would continue to use what works for you. However, after about 4 years, your computer started to fall apart, would you learn a new sequencer, or would you decide to get a new computer on which your preferred method of working worked on?

That would entirely depend on the circumstances. Mind you, there are two improtant caveats here. Firstly, I couldn't care less if Rich stopped developing ORION tomorrow. In fact he could have stopped 3 years ago and I would be perfectly content today and for the foreseeable future. Secondly, audio tasks do not in any way, shape or form dictate any aspect whatsoever of what kind of PC I buy/build which means, in short, that I would most assuredly stop using ORION and find something else if it moved exclusively to Mac. No question about it.

[Borogove]

Because his comparisons have a fundamental flaw which biases them towards Apple. He takes the Apple spec as the baseline, so you don't need to pay for any extras from them and you don't get to make economies on better value PC parts.

Okay, we're going around in circles then. The only question I was trying to address wasn't "which machine is better for Borogove" or "which machine is better for Bones", but "does Apple overcharge for what they deliver".

My conclusion is "yes for RAM, not egregiously (and sometimes not at all) for complete systems". I don't see why the additional data of "the systems aren't a perfect fit for Borogove or Bones" should make me suddenly disbelieve the pricing conclusions.

[ianscott111]

BONES: What DID happen to Shake? I've heard of that program, but never really knew what it does.

[chrisj]

BONES: What DID happen to Shake? I've heard of that program, but never really knew what it does.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shake_%28software%29

[Bonteburg]

Every time I see this thread on the sidebar I think it's some kind of slur
"All new MacPros are quads!!"

Marco

[whyterabbyt]

Well, at the same on-line store as the 320's they are Au$495 or Au$505, depending on model, which is still near as dammit to 3 times the price, making my 3 to 4 times claim well within the bounds of reasonableness and accepted rounding practice.

$183/$495 = 2.7 = nearly three = 'between three and four"

Erm, okay. At a difference of 1.3 from the upper value of 4 you're within 35% of your upper boundary, so we'll just round that down, and, hey, within the bounds of reasonableness and accepted rounding practice, you're talking bollocks.

[whyterabbyt]

BONES: What DID happen to Shake? I've heard of that program, but never really knew what it does.

Apple bought it, droppped the price of the Mac version so it was chaper to be a Mac and Shake than a Shake license for either Windows or Linux, eventually cancelled the non-Apple ports, and have now effectively EOL'd the Apple port as well.

Basically they stripmined a competitor in the compositing market, then dumped the product.

[BONES]

Well, at the same on-line store as the 320's they are Au$495 or Au$505, depending on model, which is still near as dammit to 3 times the price, making my 3 to 4 times claim well within the bounds of reasonableness and accepted rounding practice.

$183/$495 = 2.7 = nearly three = 'between three and four"

Erm, okay. At a difference of 1.3 from the upper value of 4 you're within 35% of your upper boundary, so we'll just round that down, and, hey, within the bounds of reasonableness and accepted rounding practice, you're talking bollocks.

The acceptable practice is to round up if the value is equal or greater than .5. I belive both 2.7 and 3.6 qualify, particularly in the context of "3 or 4", which is precise only to within a tolerance of around 33% in the first place. Jesus H. Christ, how hard is it for you to add up!?!

Every time I see this thread on the sidebar I think it's some kind of slur
"All new MacPros are quads!!"

That would only be true if it read ""All new MacPros owners are quads!!" [and it would be believable, too].

My conclusion is "yes for RAM, not egregiously (and sometimes not at all) for complete systems". I don't see why the additional data of "the systems aren't a perfect fit for Borogove or Bones" should make me suddenly disbelieve the pricing conclusions.

No, you're just not getting it. Leave your's or my requirements out of it. How do you think the comparison would go if you started with a BOXX workstation as the benchmark and tried to price a Mac to match it? When you start with one system as the benchmark its the other that must make all the accomodations. That's why the only fair comparison is to start with neutral spec's and then build and price both. And the only "real-world" test is to use your own requirements as the benchmark, or else I don't see any point in even bothering.

BONES: What DID happen to Shake? I've heard of that program, but never really knew what it does.

This is the important bit from Wikipedia:

Shake 4.1 was released on 20 June 2006 and was rebranded as a companion for Final Cut Studio; as such, its price was dropped from $2999 to $499.
At the same time, Apple also announced that they would end support for Shake, as they begin work on the next-generation software, rumoured to be known as codename Phenomenon.

So they bought an application that was the undisputed industry-standard in visual effects for film and flushed it down the toilet when they realised that no-one was going to buy their hardware to run it, even though the Mac version was half the price of the Linux and discontinued Windoze versions. If they were really working on a replacement there is no way they would rip the heart out of the price of the current product because no-one is going to stump-up 2 and a half grand when/if the replacement arrives and the're certainly not going to try to develop and market the new product for $500. They did it purely to poison the market for their competitors, the biggest of whom happens to be the company I work for, and indeed, the product I work with for them. There announcement could not have come at a better time fo rus, just a few weeks before we started shipping Version 2.0 of TOXIk. there ar ea lot of very unhappy Shake users ou tthere right now. I also know people who know people who work there and Apple are laying off developers which makes me think that waht they are working on is not going to be a replacement for Shake but somethign much more aligned to their other products and on a smaller scale.
So you had better hope that enough people are as uncaring about Apple's corporate thuggery as you are, or they'll kill Logic in favour of Garageband.

Basically they stripmined a competitor in the compositing market, then dumped the product.

Nothing Real were never a competitor, Apple acquired them for the same reasons they acquired Emagic - to force people to buy their over-priced computers.

[geekboy]

I believe they are reworking the Shake technology so that it is more GPU-based, like Motion. Apple has "Core" technologies (CoreGraphics, CoreAudio, etc.) that do a lot of cool things in real time. The CoreGraphics stuff relies on "high-end"/prosumer video cards.