Are you sure? It seems like the same money could buy an equivalent, if not better spec, PC and still have some left over...
Apple will never satisfy my lust for cheap, powerful hardware
- Thread starter strawman
- Start date
Attempts to replicate the interior hardware in a BYO come up competitive or slightly north of $5k.
Granted, right now the biggest chunk is the price of the 5k display itself AND the obstacle of somehow being able to find an equivalent Vega card selling at or near it's actual MSRP. Stupid cryptominers.
[DOUBLEPOST=1513273259,1513272897][/DOUBLEPOST]...that's only one of many, many BYO comparisons floating out there right now, btw. There are plenty.
--Patrick
Ah yes, the "If we have to get exactly the same hardware" then yes it's competitive.
So if you want exactly that hardware and configuration, then you're going to spend a lot.
If you want something that is competitive, however, you don't have to spend this much. A $650 motherboard and a $1,200 monitor may be equivalent to what's in the imac pro, but you can get the same effective performance with slightly less expensive parts - albeit with some tradeoffs - since 5k monitors have definitely dropped recently, and if you can make do with a PCIE 10Gb ethernet card and a few other small differences you should be able to cut the cost by several hundred dollars.
Honestly, though, might as well get two 4k monitors rather than one 5k. Even cheaper. And who's going to use the iMac pro without secondary monitors anyway? So you should include the cost of additional apple displays.
At any rate, on the price/performance curve, I'd still strongly suggest that this isn't way up the expensive side of the curve, and still more expensive than a properly designed budget performance machine that has similar computing and graphics power, but slightly different choices for hardware.
And if you're getting it for gaming or general work, you shouldn't. They call this a workstation for a reason. It's server-grade, with ECC RAM and the whole deal.
There aren't any.you should include the cost of additional apple displays.
--Patrick
No, it doesn't come with them, but I'd be surprised if a significant portion of the buyers for this unit will only use the included display and no others.There aren't any.
No, I meant that Apple does not make any displays. They got out of the display business, and now they only resell displays from LG.
--Patrick
Ah, I hadn't noticed. So they only sell displays when there are computers permanently affixed.
When they came out I did lust after the thunderbolt displays.
For grins (and because science!), I decided to put together a "functionally equivalent" 8-core system to go against the $5k base model. Trade-offs were generously accepted and considered if they were Close Enough even if they weren't exactly equivalent. In each case I tried to pick the lowest-priced part that wasn't down in the "nobody has ever heard of this vendor" part of the list.
Code:
CPU - 300 - AMD Ryzen 7 1700
MLB - 250 - MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium
RAM - 600 - 32GB (4x8GB) Samsung DDR4-2400 ECC
HDD - 650 - 1TB Samsung 960 Pro M.2 NVME
PSU - 110 - Seasonic Prime Ultra 650W
CAS - 100 - Decent ATX case (70-100)
MON - 1250 - Dell Ultra HD 5K monitor (REFURBISHED)
GPU - 500 - GeForce GTX 1070
WLS - 60 - WiFi ac (50 - internal PCIe) + USB BT4.0 (10 - USB dongle)
HID - 110 - Mechanical kbd and laser mouse (both wired)
SPK - 50 - Adequate 2.1 speaker system
CAM - 80 - 1080p 60fps webcam w/ microphone
RDR - 25 - Multi-format card reader (bay-mounted)
OS - 150 - Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
==========
TOT - 4235NOTES:
-Ryzen platform was chosen because nothing else can deliver 8 cores of performance at that price point while supporting ECC.
-I was NOT able to confirm whether or not the specified MSI board does/doesn't support ECC. If not, a different MLB would need to be subbed.
-Does NOT include 10G NIC, adding one would add $250 to the price and would cut the GPU bandwidth from the full x16 down to only x8.
-GTX 1070 was chosen because it is the lowest-priced GPU that is on par with Vega 56.
-I was able to find a 5k display refurbished, non-refurb price was $350 more.
-External expansion is more limited (no Thunderbolt, etc) but the assumption is that needing ALL the iMac's ports would be rare.
...so $4235 to get into the same territory, and just over $4800 if you need 10Gb Enet and have to buy your monitor at full price.
--Patrick
Oh, and I forgot to mention above that:
-The Xeon W-2145 in the iMac Pro is estimated* to be around 10% faster per core than the Ryzen 1700.
-The RAM in the iMac Pro runs about 10% faster (2666 v. 2400).
-You could shave about $200 off the price of the Ryzen system by replacing the M.2 SSD with a 4-way RAID0 of 256GB SATA drives but that seemed...risky.
-The Ryzen build assumes you would be running WinX. If not, there's another $150 you could save by running Clear Linux or Debian 9**.
SO ... is the $4999 iMac Pro "competitive" with a comparable BYO system? In no uncertain terms, the answer is "yes." If you BYO you can cut 15-ish% off the price (or more depending on how many sacrifices you want to make) to get a system that is a little more than 10% slower, and if you need an extra $500 in your pocket more than you need to crank out your jobs 10% faster then there is a viable alternative. Otherwise the iMP is extremely attractive. If you're an Ethereum miner, the iMP will even mine Ethereum almost 20% faster than the Ryzen system (Vega56 v. 1070)...which could theoretically even make up for the price difference within a year's time.
--Patrick
*passmark.com doesn't have benchmark figures for the W-2145 yet, so I extrapolated using the W-2125 and W-2133.
**These were the two best-performing distros over at Phoronix on modern server hardware.
-The Xeon W-2145 in the iMac Pro is estimated* to be around 10% faster per core than the Ryzen 1700.
-The RAM in the iMac Pro runs about 10% faster (2666 v. 2400).
-You could shave about $200 off the price of the Ryzen system by replacing the M.2 SSD with a 4-way RAID0 of 256GB SATA drives but that seemed...risky.
-The Ryzen build assumes you would be running WinX. If not, there's another $150 you could save by running Clear Linux or Debian 9**.
SO ... is the $4999 iMac Pro "competitive" with a comparable BYO system? In no uncertain terms, the answer is "yes." If you BYO you can cut 15-ish% off the price (or more depending on how many sacrifices you want to make) to get a system that is a little more than 10% slower, and if you need an extra $500 in your pocket more than you need to crank out your jobs 10% faster then there is a viable alternative. Otherwise the iMP is extremely attractive. If you're an Ethereum miner, the iMP will even mine Ethereum almost 20% faster than the Ryzen system (Vega56 v. 1070)...which could theoretically even make up for the price difference within a year's time.
--Patrick
*passmark.com doesn't have benchmark figures for the W-2145 yet, so I extrapolated using the W-2125 and W-2133.
**These were the two best-performing distros over at Phoronix on modern server hardware.
It still pains me to buy an Apple laptop where the equivalent pc laptop is so much cheaper.
Can’t complain, it’s the cost of entry into a lucrative market, and the hardware is rock solid, with battery life that’s amazing. I’ve easily made 20x the cost of my old laptop on consulting jobs I wouldn’t have gotten without it.
Still a pain in the pocketbook though.
And oh man, the dongles. Dongles everywhere, for everything, all the time and forever. Spent $200 just on cables and dongles so I could do what I’m already doing with the machine that broke. Would have saved a chunk if I could wait for amazon, but the deadline doesn’t change just because a 6 year old piece of hwardware dies.
Can’t complain, it’s the cost of entry into a lucrative market, and the hardware is rock solid, with battery life that’s amazing. I’ve easily made 20x the cost of my old laptop on consulting jobs I wouldn’t have gotten without it.
Still a pain in the pocketbook though.
And oh man, the dongles. Dongles everywhere, for everything, all the time and forever. Spent $200 just on cables and dongles so I could do what I’m already doing with the machine that broke. Would have saved a chunk if I could wait for amazon, but the deadline doesn’t change just because a 6 year old piece of hwardware dies.
Well, that answers for me whether you got the "low-end" 2015 model or the current 2017 with all its USB-C goodness. Let us know how the keyboard feels for you, that's the biggest change people report. Oh, and treat that keyboard reeeeeal nice, it's quite common to lose a grain of salt off a pretzel or something down the gap around a key and jam that key as a result.
--Patrick
--Patrick
The keyboard is distinctly different, with a notably shorter throw. It's not bad, though, and I'll get used to it. I doubt it's going to be an issue, but thanks for the jamming info, I'll have to be more diligent about covering the keyboard when I eat.
I would have gone for the 2015 model if they carried the ones with discrete graphics, but Apple segments the market very well, and even if Apple still sold them new, they probably wouldn't have been in stock in the store. Getting a used one on short notice might have been possible, but getting applecare with it is a bit harder. I'd have to look for someone that bought a high end model with apple care just before the new models came out.
The 2015 model can also be upgraded (HD and RAM) if I understand correctly, but the graphics card, which can't be upgraded in either case, was the clincher for me. Integrated graphics is a huge performance hit, and this computer needs to be my everything (windows & OSX development, gaming, etc) for the next several years. I'm already bummed about the 1TB hard drive limitation.
That's apple, though, pay to play.
I would have gone for the 2015 model if they carried the ones with discrete graphics, but Apple segments the market very well, and even if Apple still sold them new, they probably wouldn't have been in stock in the store. Getting a used one on short notice might have been possible, but getting applecare with it is a bit harder. I'd have to look for someone that bought a high end model with apple care just before the new models came out.
The 2015 model can also be upgraded (HD and RAM) if I understand correctly, but the graphics card, which can't be upgraded in either case, was the clincher for me. Integrated graphics is a huge performance hit, and this computer needs to be my everything (windows & OSX development, gaming, etc) for the next several years. I'm already bummed about the 1TB hard drive limitation.
That's apple, though, pay to play.
I don't know about that. I suspect if you subjected any apple laptop to the testing conditions of a toughbook, it'd fail a lot of them.
Well there's the external graphics option, of course, but you'd be limited by the Thunderbolt 2 interface (equivalent to PCIe v2.0 x4). Your option is more expensive, but much faster.
--Patrick
An external graphics card significantly reduces the portability of the whole solution, but for those who need a portable computer that can also game at one location that wouldn't be a bad way to go.
Also for people who need a laptop and need CUDA some days BUT Vulkan on others.
--Patrick
Last edited:
...they're so FAST! "Nope, you touched it. I'm typing it. You thought about that one pretty hard, typing it, too."
--Patrick
Yeah, I feel like I'm slamming my fingers into them - probably because I am.
GasBandit
Staff member
Apple faces lawsuits after saying it intentionally slows down aging iPhones (ostensibly to compensate for "poor battery performance," *cough*bullshit*cough*plannedobsolescencerunamok*cough*)
Yes, Gas, we know you hate Apple*. I keep hearing this, and I want to see how the case shakes out. My prediction:
Lawyers: "So you slow down old phones to get people to buy new equipment."
Apple: "No, we slow them down so they don't shut off unexpectedly when the batteries age."
Lawyers: "But you admit you expect people with aged batteries to just buy new phones."
Apple: "No, we expect them to buy new batteries like any other phone."
50 GOTO 10
I really don't see how any of the lawyers have a case. Old phones running new iOS with new batteries perform exactly the same as at launch. There's empirical proof across all models. The suits allege the slowdowns are to drive sales. Apple alleges the slowdowns are to avoid shutdowns, and even the plaintiff's own testing shows phones speed back up with new batteries installed. If the lawyers (somehow?) win their case and force Apple to remove any throttling code, who exactly is going to be happy about having a phone that now constantly shuts off at 30-40% battery instead of just being 10% (or whatever) slower? Are the lawyers just trying to get Apple to somehow settle? To what end? Just to smear Apple's reputation? To get free replacement batteries for everyone for the life of their iPhones? Are people actually being injured somehow** due to their phone(s) being slower? All phones do this as the battery ages (the early shutdown thing, not the slowdown thing). And so do all shavers, all drills, all leaf blowers, and everything else that uses Li-ion technology. What's the actual point of the suit?
The best guess I've heard bandied about the Internet is that the lawyers are hoping that, during the discovery phase, some email/memo/whatever will be discovered wherein some executive-level employee says, "...well I guess they'll have to buy new phones won't they?" so they can latch onto that to be all, "Aha! See, we told you it was always about driving new sales!" And then they'll get that sweet class-action money they're hoping for.
--Patrick
*Well, anyone who does the whole "walled garden" thing, really.
**This is actually kinda important, since in order to prove a tort, one has to prove an injury has occurred, and presumably not merely an inconvenience.
GasBandit
Staff member
Actually, if you read the article, the suit alleges that the battery problem is a defect, and apple should have corrected it by supplying new batteries, but they decided to slow down their phones instead.
Also the thing is they didn't TELL anybody until now they'd been doing this, so naturally people just thought they needed new phones.
This is the first article I've read that alleges the battery defect angle. I admit I didn't read it until your reply. All tech news sources lately have been inundated with this story and since nobody seemed to be saying anything new, I didn't expect this one would be different. It's still going to be hard to prove, especially since Apple did acknowledge a battery defect (with the 6s) and replaced those batteries (for free) but of course when those new batteries run down, they're going to do the same thing. So either Apple's stance is legit, or else every single battery manufactured by Apple('s partners) since 2012* inherently has this "defect."
Apple does have a reputation for doing things without asking for input, no contest. The new phone OS would tell people their battery needed service, but didn't tell them it would throttle. I admit I didn't even know about this until a couple weeks ago when the stories first started coming out, but I'm also not in the habit of periodically drag racing my phone. When my battery started going, I wasn't concerned about how slow it went, I was more concerned about getting it to last until its next charging opportunity. Still not sure how "didn't tell anyone" caused harm to customers, though (other than bragging rights).
I tried to check my own phone using the free app mentioned in many of the articles, but when I went to get it, I discovered a) the price had risen from "free" to $0.99, and b) reviews of the new $0.99 version claim all the English dialogue and menus were removed and replaced with Chinese-only. Also it requires iOS 11 now (my iPhone 5 can only do up to 10.3.3). Soooo I didn't try it.
--Patrick
*2012 was the year the iPhone 5 was introduced, which is the oldest phone capable of running iOS 10.2.1, the first version alleged to contain this throttling code.
Batteries wear out. It's a simple fact. They weren't designed to operate more than two years without replacement.
While I'm upset Apple did this without telling anyone I'm more upset they didn't give an alert. A simple "Battery needs replacement. This phone will continue to operate at a reduced level of performance until replacement" would have been vastly better than doing it silently - and I would have had the replacement done. If this happened within the applecare warranty or regular warranty, then sure, Apple covers it. Otherwise let the users replace it at a cell phone repair shop or through apple directly.
I don't think there's a reasonable damages claim here. The phone still works. Harm by reduced performance, especially when there's no guarantee of any specific measurable level of performance, is going to fail. The phone still plays games, makes phone calls, etc.
The reality is that this is protecting the users anyway. Not just from suddenly dead phones, but also from expanding batteries and "venting with flame".
Doing it sneakily was the bad choice.
While I'm upset Apple did this without telling anyone I'm more upset they didn't give an alert. A simple "Battery needs replacement. This phone will continue to operate at a reduced level of performance until replacement" would have been vastly better than doing it silently - and I would have had the replacement done. If this happened within the applecare warranty or regular warranty, then sure, Apple covers it. Otherwise let the users replace it at a cell phone repair shop or through apple directly.
I don't think there's a reasonable damages claim here. The phone still works. Harm by reduced performance, especially when there's no guarantee of any specific measurable level of performance, is going to fail. The phone still plays games, makes phone calls, etc.
The reality is that this is protecting the users anyway. Not just from suddenly dead phones, but also from expanding batteries and "venting with flame".
Doing it sneakily was the bad choice.
My mom broke her arm thanks to having to deal with a wonky iphone battery that wouldn't keep a charge. And the same arm just broke again since it was weakened from the first beak. Wondering if we'd have a case thanks to Apple hiding the problem...
I suspect it would be a very, very hard case to press.
It happened at the nursing home, so there'd be plenty of documentation, but you're probably right.
Well, you'd have to show that 1) the phone had a guaranteed level of service that 2) wasn't met due to a manufacturer's decision or failure, 3) happened when the phone was in good repair/condition and being used appropriately, and 4) the performance/service failure led directly to the injury.
If, for instance, the remote control of the TV failed to work, and someone was injured walking to the TV, that couldn't be attributed to the manufacturer. There has to be a more direct causal link.
If the device was connected to cellular service or wifi, then you'd also have to show that the failure wasn't due to service issues or quality.
If the phone is older, had water damage, been dropped and dinged or scratched or had other large physical scars you'd have to show that these were well within the manufacturer's guarantee of service.
And on top of that, Apple promises very little. In fact their terms of service specifically disclaim performance for many functions and services.
You'd have to show that either they promised something that wan't met, or that the legal requirements government places on consumer products somehow provides a guarantee that Apple should have met but didn't.
Looks like Apple decided to Do A Thing in response to the battery controversy.
tl:dr; For 2018, $50 discount on OOW battery replacements for iPhone 6 and newer (dunno if this includes SE), and iOS software will be updated to include better feedback as to whether the battery's condition is impacting the phone's performance.
--Patrick
tl:dr; For 2018, $50 discount on OOW battery replacements for iPhone 6 and newer (dunno if this includes SE), and iOS software will be updated to include better feedback as to whether the battery's condition is impacting the phone's performance.
--Patrick
The article says that battery replacement cost is being reduced from $79 to $29 (but only for 6 and newer, and only during 2018), I just did the arithmetic to arrive at the $50 discount figure.
--Patrick