Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00Good morning!
00:06So yesterday Apple announced their new Mac Pro.
00:09And the setup that they've showcased, like the example workstation that they've built
00:13and put on their website and shown on media pictures, is a $12,000 setup at the base price.
00:20Like the starting price to get everything that you see in that photo, the screen, the
00:24stand, and a base model Mac Pro is $12,000 USD.
00:30It is super expensive.
00:32And when you compare that to like the last Mac Pro they offered when they had the trash
00:36can and whatever monitor they had available back then, the cinema display, that was like
00:41a $5,000 setup.
00:42So this is a lot more expensive than it used to be.
00:44But the moment I heard that price tag, like $6,000 for an 8-core desktop and then another
00:49$6,000 for a display, it just did not sit right with me.
00:53But over the past 24 hours I've come to the realization that that system is not for me.
00:59I want it to be.
01:00I really wish Apple was making a quote-unquote professional system for people to make YouTube
01:04videos.
01:05But the reality is it's built for a completely different class of user.
01:09It's built for people that are comfortable dropping like $20,000 or $30,000 on these
01:13workstations and that's who these products are for.
01:16So I think one of the biggest reasons why myself and a lot of other content creators
01:21and even publications are a little bit confused at this price tag is because the hardware
01:26has changed a lot over the past four or five years.
01:28Like five years ago, hardware was separated into kind of two main categories, consumer
01:33stuff and then professional stuff.
01:35And the consumer stuff was like two, maybe four-core CPUs and whatever goes with that.
01:40And then the professional grade stuff was like four to, I don't know, 16, 18, sometimes
01:45even 20-core CPUs.
01:47They were very expensive, but that's what separated the two kind of classes of hardware.
01:52But regular consumers back then would sometimes buy professional grade stuff for better performance
01:56because you couldn't get more than four cores with the consumer grade stuff.
02:00So over the past couple of years, we've seen a huge improvement in hardware from companies
02:05like Intel and NVIDIA to the point where you can get equal and sometimes even better performance
02:11with the consumer grade stuff now than you can with the professional like Xeon grade
02:15stuff.
02:16So if you look at that price tag, it is weird that a company is selling an eight-core desktop
02:21system for $6,000 where you can buy like a 16-core Threadripper system for half the price
02:26or less.
02:27And the fact that it has an Apple logo on it just paints a target on its back.
02:31It's easy to make fun of and Apple has a track record for having some pretty overpriced products,
02:35but the reality is with this system, these are just very expensive to produce and they're
02:39not meant for people like you and I.
02:41They're meant for people that can actually make use of the type of hardware that's in
02:45it.
02:46So speaking of that hardware, it is running some very powerful stuff.
02:49The CPU in the base model is already a $3,000 CPU from Intel.
02:53It's not something that I would ever make use of, but for the right user, that it's
02:56what it's there for.
02:57You can bump it up to a 28-core CPU, which is bonkers.
03:01But the hardware in here is very configurable and very powerful, and it's something that's
03:05quite different from anything that Apple's offered in a really long time.
03:09It's pretty configurable.
03:10You're not going to get as many options as like a Windows-based workstation, but the
03:14whole product feels like they did a good job with what professionals want Apple to
03:17do.
03:18It's an expensive system, but it's an Apple system.
03:20So they made a pretty different focus with this product than their regular consumer lineup,
03:25right?
03:26It's clearly geared towards some very heavy workflows, but it's also quite different
03:29in aesthetics.
03:30It's perforated all over.
03:32It doesn't look particularly sleek.
03:33It has a very industrial look, and the truth is, if that product did not have an Apple
03:39logo on it, like let's say, I don't know, let's say Xiaomi made this case and put it
03:42out on the market, people would probably call that thing ugly.
03:46The whole cheese grater front is something that just doesn't look very Apple for 2019.
03:50Now, with that heavily perforated front, you get something that no other system has in
03:55the Apple ecosystem.
03:57That case allows a huge amount of air to flow through the system, which something like a
04:00sleek regular Mac-looking product wouldn't be able to do.
04:03So I'm glad they went with that perforated design.
04:05It's not the most visually appealing, but it was the right choice.
04:09And I also want to talk about the screen real quick.
04:11In the presentation, when they were just showcasing the product and talking about its
04:15features, I was trying to guess what that thing would cost.
04:17And I thought it'd be like $2,000, maybe $2,500 at most.
04:21It ended up being $5,000, plus another $1,000 for the stand.
04:25And I remember thinking like, that's insane, like who's going to buy that?
04:28And then they compared it to these reference monitors, these like $30,000 or $40,000 pieces
04:33of equipment.
04:34And I'm not going to pretend like I know anything about them.
04:35I've never seen a studio monitor in my life.
04:38But looking at the specs, there's some crazy stuff going on.
04:40They have a contrast ratio of a million to one, which is something we never see outside
04:45of OLED panels.
04:46They've built this thing with a regular LCD, well not a regular LCD, but with an LCD that
04:51they've tweaked and modified to produce a crazy high quality image at what seems like
04:55a fraction of the price of its competitors.
04:57And again, it's for a market that's not me, right?
05:00It's for professionals that need consistency between the screens and that's what these
05:04products are for.
05:05That's who these products are going to be sold to.
05:08But I really wish I could be someone that could make use of it, just for the interest
05:12of that technology.
05:13Because I'm someone who shoots in 5K, I don't use ProRes, like that whole product lineup
05:17is not built for me.
05:18I'm not someone who would ever use ECC memory.
05:21So for the people that are interested in this stuff, you now have what seems like a really
05:26good option for the professional workstation.
05:28Okay.
05:29Hope you guys enjoyed this video.
05:30Thumbs if you liked it.
05:31Subs if you loved it.
05:32See you guys next time.