No sooner had Apple announced the new Mac Pro 2019 and people were complaining about the high price, and in some cases the much maligned Mac Pro ‘Trash Can’ had been sainted and was now the pro Mac of choice. It’s funny (as in odd, not hilarious) that people have been pleading with Apple to make a pro Apple Mac that’s fit for the 21st century but they want it to have a prosumer, if not consumer price tag.
Here’s the point about the new Apple Mac Pro 2019 - if the price bothers you then it's probably not for you.
Can you imagine someone who owns a cookie company moaning about the price of the machine they need to get to improve production? Or even closer to home an architect complaining about the price of the software needed to draw plans and technical specs for their work. No business spends money like water, at least not those who want to maximise profits, but at the same time businesses have to make large financial investments to get better returns. This new Mac Pro is the stuff of CAPEX, where large organisations make planned long term investments into items that will be regarded as essential plant that is written off in the books over several years.
The new Mac Pro is aimed at professionals like large post houses, design agencies or games designers, not the average creative professional. The very fact that Apple has included so many PCIe slots should indicate that, mostly because in a world of more powerful native processing and Thunderbolt connectivity, the only businesses that need this kind of stuff really do NEED it and can’t rely on what 90% of Mac users can.
We’ve already discussed it on the team and for most of us the mighty Mac mini will suffice for our work. Check out our review to see how well the Mac mini performs.
With the new Mac Pro announced at WWDC 2019 there is now a Mac for every creative, be that a MacBook Pro, a Mac mini, iMac or the new Mac Pro. Some of us will continue to use the machines we have. Russ still loves his Mac Pro Late 2013 Trash Can and has no plans of replacing it any time soon, if he does then for him the Mac mini will perhaps be his Mac of choice.
This Mac is not designed as some the next Instagram or Facebook posing machine, although there’s no doubt some will want to use it as such. One person joked ‘when people say they can’t justify the investment what they mean is their wife/husband won’t let them buy one.’ The new Mac Pro is meant to be a power house for those who need massive track counts or need to work in the highest possible resolution video formats and that kind of power comes at a cost.
For the rest of us there are plenty of Macs that will do just fine - it may mean you lose a social media pissing contest, but in the grand scheme of things as we’ve said on many occasions before profit is what you don’t spend and you can get a powerful Mac for 90% of creative audio needs for less than £3000.