![]() Ten years ago we had relatively affordable, conveniently upgradable Mac Pro models. I don't understand why we have to make these painful tradeoffs in 2022 when they weren't necessary in 2012. The Mac Pro used to be a machine built for the future, not for the apparent planned obsolescence of the Mac Studio. The consequences of this case design is that the Mac Studio is non-upgradable in every way, a stark contrast to the 2012 and earlier Mac Pro, the open case design of which allowed trivial user replacement of almost every internal part. Unfortunately, the internals of the Mac Studio are crowded into a small case of approximately the same design as a Mac mini. In contrast with the obscene, historically unprecedented price of the new Mac Pro, the base price of the Mac Studio is an affordable $1999. This year the new Mac Studio was introduced. In my eyes, the 2019 Mac Pro was a betrayal of Apple's 2017 assurances. The Apple news media gleefully exclaim "The new Mac Pro is not for you!", but the problem is that the old Mac Pro was for people like me, as proven by the fact that I had one, as well by Federighi's statement that it was for people like me. I don't know many individual software developers now who can afford a new Mac Pro. The Mac Pro was discontinued and replaced with a different computer of the same name that was no longer for its largest pro audience. ![]() I would argue that the Mac Pro as we software developers knew it was never given a successor after the "trash can". In a 2017 interview about the Mac Pro, Apple Senior Vice President Craig Federighi said "it’s possible software developers are actually our largest pro audience." These computers were quite common among my fellow software developers, and indeed I personally bought a 2010 Mac Pro. ![]() Prior to 2013, the Mac Pro and Power Mac had been relatively affordable for individual creative professionals (as opposed to corporate and other institutional buyers with vast sums of money). For comparison, the Late 2013 21.5 inch iMac had a base price of $1299, and the 2019 21.5 inch iMac had a base price of… $1299, an increase of 0%. The overall US inflation rate between 20 was 10%, not 100%. There are short-lived periods of a few months when the base price was a little lower or higher, but I've not included those specific models because they would add unnecessary complication to the table without changing the trends significantly. Below is a historical list of changes in the base price of the Mac Pro and Power Mac. ![]()
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