Mac Pro — Blog — Healy Chen

I'm not getting the new Mac Pro

Seriously, I am not preordering the new Mac Pro. One, and most importantly, because I can’t afford it, and two, because I think the new Mac Pro is a machine for the true pros, and I’m not a professional - yet. Apple likes to use the word ‘Pro’ for its products to denote the higher end model, whether or not the particular product really deserves the moniker. On the Macbook line, going ‘Pro’ is the only way to get a screen larger than 13 inches. You want the highest spec iPhone possible? The iPhone 11 ‘Pro’ is the model to buy.

However, there are a few times that when Apple uses ‘Pro’ in its products, it truly means it’s geared towards professionals. The iMac Pro is such a machine, and now the new Mac Pro - alongside the $6,000 Pro Display XDR monitor - brings more computing power than the typical consumer can possibly use to the market. It’s a sort of thing that you’d want your respective creative company to purchase for you, rather than forking over the at least $5,999 starting price yourself. It’s pro-grade stuff for the people that need it, though it’s good to know there’s finally a Mac that can run Google Chrome smoothly - with only two tabs open.

You and I surely do not need the hefty specs of the Mac Pro, even if we can afford the entry price. I’m sure technophiles with an inclination towards spending their disposable income on the latest tech gadgets will scoop up the new Mac Pro to showoff on instagram. Like Porsche owners who switch cars every time a new model comes out, these tech nerds will upgrade to the latest and greatest products just to say they have it (I’m guilty as charged with regards to the yearly iPhone upgrade). Good for those people, because I’d be doing the same thing if my car enthusiasm didn’t take up so much of my own disposable dollars.

It’s a shame how adult sensibilities will stop you from doing something you wanted to do as a child. I’ve always been enamored with Apple’s Mac Pro line dating back to the legendary G4 Cube design, and had this belief that when I grow up to a steady paycheck, I’d buy a Mac Pro for myself - simply to have it because it looks so cool and awesome. Fast forward to present, and I wouldn’t think to buy a thing where its utility value for me is so small. I’m quite happy with my 15-inch Macbook Pro, and for what I do with it, there’s no reason to upgrade to the new Mac Pro.

Besides, I’ve come to enjoy the portability potential of the Mac laptop, even though currently 99% of the time it’s plugged into power on the desk. You just never know when you might have to move out in quick notice.

The old Apple is back

Apple at its best, and what drew me into the company back in high school, is when they announce products in the pro tier of their Mac lineup. Lust-worthy items with exorbitant prices that I desperately want, but cannot hope to afford. I remember when the 30-inch Cinema Display was first introduced: a display so unimaginably large that costs more than entire computer systems! I wanted one immediately, though sadly had to wait for that display technology to trickle down to the hundreds of dollars range many, many years later.

I also remember the first ever Mac Pro, a monster of a computing machine for three times the costs of my poverty-spec Macbook laptop. I couldn’t possibly utilize all that number-crunching power (much less pay the price), but the 'cheese grater’ tower just looks so damn awesome. Apple is clever like that, aren’t they? Their superb ability to make people pine for their products is one of the biggest reason I upgrade to the latest iPhone every year, even though for my purposes I’d still be okay currently with an iPhone 8.

So today it was a throwback of sorts for Apple at their annual developer conference, where they announced a brand new Mac Pro tower, and a 6K display to do along with it. The unit starts at $5999, and the monitor is $4999 for the panel only; the aluminum ‘Pro’ stand with the fancy hinge mechanism is another $999 on top! I could hear the collective groan from the audience over the keynote livestream when the guy on stage announced the stand was separate and costs the same as an iPhone. This is Apple pricing madness at its best, and it brings me back to youth.

Of course, the specs of the new machine and the display is out of this world, and just like a decade before with the old Mac Pro and pro display, it’s way more computing power than I can ever use in my current capacity as a photography hobbyist and a writer. The difference now is that I don’t want the new Mac Pro at all, even though I can somewhat afford it (just have to put a few things up on eBay). Perhaps its my adult sensibilities coming into effect: I no longer buy things for the heck of it; the item has got to serve a purpose. My two years old 27-inch iMac is still up to the tasks superbly, so there’s no reason to replace it with a far nicer box for marginal gains in speed.

Indeed, the new Mac Pro and Pro Display is strictly for the professionals, the type who can expense such extravagant acquisition on their respective company accounts. I’m definitely not one of those people, the type to work with three simultaneous streams of 8K footage, or mix 1000 tracks of sound at the same time.

Who am I kidding, though; I still want it.