 Apple finally did it. The 2019 Mac Pro is legitimately a proper desktop computer for professionals and they're going to sell a lot of them. Or at least more than the trash can, which so few people actually bought that we couldn't find one for comparison for this video. But while Apple has historically done a pretty good job of minimizing the Apple tax at launch on their base model Mac computers, they literally doubled the launch price of this product compared to its predecessor and by the time you kit it out in a way that makes any sense it costs about as much as a new car. So let's talk about who, if anyone, should actually buy one of these. But you know what you won't need? An auto loan for FreshBooks accounting software is custom-built for small business owners like you to help you stay more organized and productive. Try their 30-day free trial at freshbooks.com forward slash tech tips. We're gonna have that linked below. Compared to the knockoff case that we checked out recently, the fit and finish of the real Mac Pro is obviously a lot better. Panel gaps are minimal and the construction is reassuringly Apple grade. There's nothing on the front panel, but the distinctive 3D bubble grill with no filtering mesh behind it and around back were treated to a relatively small amount of I.O. Two USB 3.1 Gen 2 type A ports, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, and our GPU's built-in I.O. We opted for the Radeon Pro Vega 2 Duo, giving us two graphics processors today and the capability to add another two down the line. Near the power supply are the two curiously positioned 10 gigabit ethernet ports, which is freaking awesome. And then finally up top is the fun part. Aside from the additional two Thunderbolt 3 ports and power button, there's the handle to open the chassis. Pull up, twist counterclockwise, and the chunky hefty feeling outer shell slips off giving you easy access to the internals. That is assuming there's nothing plugged into the back and that the computer is off. Otherwise, it shuts down and gives you an angry orange SOS. Servicing the Mac Pro? Shockingly simple, to the point where most PC manufacturers could actually learn a thing or two. Most things are accessible without any tools at all, and the few things that do require them are standard Phillips with large knurled thumb screw heads, even if your thumbs won't reach most of them. Of particular note here is Apple's graphics card mounting mechanism, where it's held in place by no fewer than four points of contact. The rear panel bracket, as you would expect, the satisfying PCI Express release latch, a front panel bracket, and some extra support from the power supply shroud. This thing isn't going anywhere during shipping. Although we did still have to reseed ours a little bit when we got it, due to a loose whatever this thing is. We'll take a closer look at the rest of the internals in our upcoming Mac Pro upgrade video, so make sure you're subscribed for that. But for now, my only big complaint in here is the included SSDs being tied to the T2 chip. Now you can expand the storage yourself via SATA or PCI Express later on if you want, and surprisingly, you can even boot off of your add-in storage instead, so that helps a lot. But Apple still finds their own special way to say, F you, by requiring the stock SSD to be inserted in the system in order for it to run, and making the SATA ports unusable without an add-on drive bay enclosure. But hey, sure looks great on the desk, don't it? Love the bubbles or hate the bubbles? When paired with the Pro Display XDR, this setup screams simplicity and power, and Apple really nailed the matched industrial design between the two, even if they made some boneheaded sacrifices to functionality in the name of aesthetics. Your fancy monitor does have a built-in USB hub, which is nice since most of the Mac Pro's I.O. is around back, but if you want to go any faster than USB 2.0 speeds, you're going to need to reach over to your tower anyway, because Apple opted to have only one physical connection for the two DisplayPort streams required by the Pro Display XDR. That means that it's only compatible with Macs that support this combining feature, and that there isn't enough bandwidth left over for high-speed I.O. Setup, of course, was as ludicrously straightforward as ever on an Apple product, so once we were up and running, we threw our test suite on it and got to work. Ours is what we would call the reasonable config, with a 16-core Xeon W CPU, and then for today, we're going to look at it from an Apple ecosystem point of view against the iMac Pro and the 16-inch MacBook Pro. The PC comparison will come, but in a separate video once we've had more time with it. Compared to our iMac Pro's upgraded 18-core CPU, we would expect multi-threaded workloads to suffer a little bit by comparison, since architecturally the two CPUs are very similar. But the extra boost clock, and especially the much higher base clock, helped our 16-core claw its way back into contention, and we of course see that the Mac Pro soundly trounces its cousin in more lightly threaded workloads. Faster memory also helps here, which means all in all, pairing a Mac Pro with a middle-of-the-line or better CPU equates to a hefty performance boost that you should definitely take, as long as you don't take it from Apple. Turns out, you can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars by upgrading the CPU and the RAM yourself. Onto thermals, the Mac Pro actually does spectacularly well. This thing is full of surprises. Apple's 3 fans plus blower combo stay pretty quiet under load, thanks in part to the thick outer casing and geometric baffles on the front and rear. And they also push a ton of air when they're cranked to maximum speed without an annoying whiny tone to the sound. Now, I'd still like to see a removable filter here, because it remains to be seen just how dusty it'll get after a few hours of use. But as it stands, even synthetic loads were no match for this cooling solution, and that is extremely refreshing considering how hot their more integrated systems can get. Best of all, those SSDs are separate modules out of the way of the main heat generating components, so board failure-related data loss on your main drives is a relatively unlikely event. Now, with the testing behind us, let's talk about the elephant in the room. Pricing. $7,000 for a Xeon W3275? They go for under $4,500 brand new, let alone with a trade-in on the stock W3223 that, according to Intel anyway, costs $1,200. Now, the SSD isn't a terrible value, and depending on how much RAM you need, it can either be relatively normal pricing, like their 128GB DIMMs, or outrageously marked up like... everything else. Making matters worse, it's not even especially high-end memory for what it is either. And then there's the graphics cards. A Radeon Pro 580X is just a driver-tweaked Radeon 580X, a sub $200 card that has no right whatsoever being anywhere near a $6,000 computer. As for the Radeon Pro Vega II, that's essentially a Radeon VII with four more compute units and 32GB of RAM. For $2,400? Probably the biggest middle finger, though, is the $400 wheels. I mean, maybe they're amazing. I wouldn't know because I was all out of money after buying the $1,000 stand for my monitor. But here's the thing. Maybe Apple marked this machine up the way that they did because they wanted to send a message that goes like this. This is not a replacement for your old cheese grater. Those started at $2,300, less than half the cost of this new monster, even accounting for inflation. And they were used by professionals, yes, but also individual users at home. Well, not anymore. The message, whether you like it or not, is that you don't need a desktop. And in fairness, maybe Apple has a point here. I mean, we already know that video editing, even 4K video editing, doesn't exactly require a ton of horsepower these days. 2D animation studios might benefit from faster render times than they could get on Apple's more consumer devices, but the benefit simply isn't enough for the margins that these studios run on to run out and buy a bunch of these. It can't really be a server because even if Apple has a new version of Mac OS Server in the wings, there's little in the way of internal expandable storage for the Mac Pro, and the rumored virtualization capabilities haven't materialized. And then even if they had, the pricing is so far out of whack that it might make more sense to just buy a bunch of iMacs or Mac Minis for how many VMs it could actually run at once. So it's clear then that Apple is laser focused on the big boys in Hollywood. And as it turns out, there are plenty of animation studios and VFX firms that are still using trashcan Mac Pros, because for them, changing their processes means downtime and movies are big business. But I do wonder a little bit if this might be too little, too late. Despite the inertia, there's been a slow but steady shift towards Linux based workstations for anything that doesn't use the Adobe Suite. And from what we've gathered, talking to people who work for these turncoat studios, these new Mac Pros are just not competitive enough to decisively bring them back on board. Not only do more powerful solutions exist, they're also more cost efficient. Loyal studios, therefore, are going to need to take up the slack. The Afterburner card, though, is an interesting piece of the puzzle. But the problem with it is that I don't see it turning the tide either. At $2,000, it merely decodes ProRes. It doesn't encode. It doesn't support any other formats like R3D or Cineform. Just ProRes. And that's important because for compositing, VFX studios largely use the OpenEXR format developed by Industrial Light and Magic back in 1999 due to its flexibility. And the final edit usually works with proxy clips because, news flash! You don't need full quality 8K ProRes while you're looking at a preview window. Also, for the most part, VFX outlets are doing 4K compositions right now, which means not only does the Afterburner card have dubious benefit, but the amount of system memory that they need is within the 128 to 340 gig range, which is, if you'll recall, coincidentally, where Apple stands to make the most money from its RAM markup. So, we're not saying this product's gonna flop for Apple. I said right at the beginning, I think they're gonna sell a lot of them. We're just saying that the loyal studios are going to have to bear the burden of supporting a low-volume product on their own. And this article from Lunar Animation shows that, well, they just might do it. Not only did they purchase a Mac Pro after suffering the Mac Pro drought for the last six years, they also paid for the factory upgrade to 16 cores, 192 gigs of very overpriced memory, and two single GPU Radeon Pro Vega IIs. Instead of a single card for some reason. And while I question those decisions, especially the twin single GPU cards, the irony is that, again, they'd probably save money by hitting the ground running with their new machine, working on some big budget project, rather than having downtime with it sitting there doing nothing while they wait for a tech internally to upgrade it for them. That is what Apple is banking on, whether it's fair or not. And compared to their previous best iMac Pros, they're certainly saving substantial amounts of time, even if they never mention what the afterburner card ever actually did for them. So let's take a step back and ignore the price itself for a moment, because studios with workflows like Lunar's are likely to pay any price that Apple asks because of how much value the machine can deliver for them. So the question then becomes, if you know you need a Mac, and you know that you can afford the Mac Pro, what kind of support can Apple provide for it? As it turns out, as with the machine itself, the answer is both good and also pretty disappointing. So first the good stuff. Apple's AppleCare for Enterprise service offers one-hour support response for urgent issues and next-business-day on-site repairs facilitated by IBM's Global Technology Services, and that includes replacing defective devices if the problem is irreparable. So far, so good. Unfortunately, it looks like, as with consumer AppleCare, it only goes out to three years, while competitors like Dell offer a tech at your door within four hours of dispatch for up to five years. Now, whether the actual level of service is comparable, I'm going to leave to those with more experience dealing with these services, but at least from a sales perspective, Apple's on the back foot here. And then for indies or small outfits like us who don't qualify for AppleCare for Enterprise, well, you're stuck with either the plain old bring-it-to-the-genius-bar AppleCare experience or the standard one-year warranty on a computer that can cost more than a car. And we actually reached out to Apple Support to ask about this, and in spite of its expandability, they actually don't even offer a parts replacement service for in-house technicians to deal with. It's Apple or nobody, which is very disappointing, to say the least. Which, I mean, I guess it really summarizes the new Mac Pro, doesn't it? It's not a bad machine, although choosing Xeon W at this point in time was an unfortunate decision, we'll revisit later, but pricing it this high means that while Apple isn't stepping on their iMac Pro's toes, they're pricing out enthusiasts and small-time professionals who might otherwise be interested. But maybe that was their point. Yeah, it's expensive. So what? If you're poor and all you do is browse Facebook anyway, get an iPad, you ****. All right, then. Fair enough. And you know what else is fair? This segue to our sponsor. Massdrop is collaborating with Sennheiser again with the PC37X gaming headset. It features an open back design with drivers that come from the HT598 and HT600 family. That means clearer audio for gaming and music. The mic is optimized to handle unpleasant pops and hisses and its noise canceling, and it automatically mutes by simply rotating it up until you hear the click. It includes a 10-foot braided cable so it'll reach around to even your devices that have all the power. That have all the I.O. in the back. And you can buy today at the link in the video description. Actually, I think the audio is... No, yeah, it is on the back. Thanks for watching, guys. If you're looking for something else to watch, maybe check out the latest part of our Hack Pro build where we try to take this thing on with a Hackintosh. I highly recommend it.