Ever since the Mac Pro was first announced, we knew that it was going to be pretty expensive – it's an Apple product marketed to professionals, after all. However, now that we've had a chance to mess around with the configuration tool, we know just how expensive it can get.
One of the most jaw-dropping price additions that the Mac Pro has is the wheels. This is a giant metal box, so it can get heavy – having wheels makes it much easier to move around an office. However, if you want to upgrade the Mac Pro chassis with these wheels, it'll set you back $400/£360/AU$640. You read that right.
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It's important to note that the Mac Pro isn't really intended for everyday users. This is a professional machine for rich grown-ups, and the pricing definitely reflects that. However. $400 for a set of wheels seems a little ridiculous, no matter how fancy they actually are.
This is the same company that is selling a $999/£949/AU$1,699 monitor stand for the Pro Display XDR, so the wheels almost seem like a bargain in comparison. The price of these wheels only further proves that this device probably won't be found in many people's homes, but instead in a lot of offices.
Wait, there's more
Because the Mac Pro configurator is out, we did what any other computing-obsessed geek would, and we turned everything up to the absolute max. Now, unless you're literally running a Hollywood rendering farm, you'll have absolutely no need for a maxed out Mac Pro, but it'll run you $52,748/£47,588/AU$84,778. That's enough to buy a pretty decent car.
For that jaw-dropping price tag, you're getting an absolutely ridiculous stack of hardware, including a 28-core Intel Xeon W processor, 1.5TB of RAM, 4TB of SSD storage and two AMD Radeon Pro Vega II graphics cards, each equipped with 32GB of VRAM. Again, you will never need this level of hardware unless you're literally Pixar.
One thing we do have to call to attention, however, is the entry-level model. Just to get in on the ground floor of the Mac Pro experience, you're going to have to drop $5,999. That's a high price for any computer, to be sure, but the really insulting thing here is the paltry 256GB of storage you get. At this price point, 1TB of SSD storage should be the absolute minimum – instead, you'll have to shell out an extra $400/£360/AU$640. To put things into perspective, we can buy two fast NVMe 1TB SSDs for the same amount of money.
Basically, the Mac Pro is an obscenely expensive machine, and the pricing seems to indicate that Apple simply isn't interested in selling the Mac Pro to everyday users. If you want a desktop macOS Catalina experience, you're probably going to be going with the Mac mini for a while.
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