Apple releases more pricing details for Mac Pro, now available to order: maxed-out 4TB model costs $50K+ and wheels are $400, delivering between December 19-27
and you still have to buy the display separately. https://www.theverge.com/... The bulk of the expenses there appears to be RAM: 1.5TB of RAM will cost $25k. Jodi Beggs / @jodiecongirl : I don't know how much this stuff is supposed to cost nowadays but the $400 wheels part isn't a great signal https://twitter.com/... Appabend / @appabend451 : I'm still amazed that they can pack in 28 cores CPU, 1.5TB of RAM two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo (that's 4 GPU basically)... ... but only 4TB SSD. Like bruh, even I have that and I'm not some industry giant. https://twitter.com/... Tim Soret / @timsoret : $52k for accelerating a bottleneck in a business working on million-dollars projects is actually reasonable. For this price, you have 28 cores, 1.5TB of RAM, 4 GPUs with 32GB of HBM2 VRAM each. It's an absolute unit made for scientists & computer graphics, not any of us peons. https://twitter.com/... @thetrudz : See and I wanted the “poor” one that's $11,000.😭😭😭 https://twitter.com/... Jason Snell / @jsnell : When released in March 1990, the base configuration of the Mac IIfx cost $9,000, which is $17,930 today. (The Mac Pro's base config is $6000.) https://twitter.com/... Jollof Papi / @officialenam : 1.5TB of Ram cos you clearly want to run a real life version of sims https://twitter.com/... @profjeffjarviss : Instead of a UBI/Andrew Yang giveaway of $1000, we should buy every US resident a Mac Pro, and let the nation innovate. https://twitter.com/... Alex Heath / @alexeheath : A $52,000 bicycle for the mind https://twitter.com/... Steven Sinofsky / @stevesi : Inflation adjusted, this is about the cost of the typical workstation in 1987—something with a monochrome monitor, 16MB RAM, 80MB hard drive (eg the MicroVAX line). It is ~half the cost of a SUN workstation at the time. https://twitter.com/... Mike Rundle / @flyosity : Nice of Apple to add the little explainer about whether or not you need the $400 wheels for your Mac Pro. pic.twitter.com/SZtGmjqgdm Katie Notopoulos / @katienotopoulos : People scoff at the $53k Mac Pro, but wouldn't you pay any price to have Chrome run flawlessly with more than 6 tabs open? Josh Dickson / @joshdickson40 : I'm going to need to live in the thing for $50k https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
When Apple unveiled the Mac Pro tower in June it promised an $6K entry point; today's order-opening reveals how fast the configurator climbs — the fully loaded 4TB model crosses $50,000, with the 1.5TB RAM option alone accounting for roughly half of that, wheels billed at $400 extra, and the Pro Display still sold separately. The reaction online fixated less on the specs than on the line items, especially the wheels.
This is the continuation of a documented arc: Apple had already pushed new products to higher starting prices in 2018, and the last 2017 Mac Pro refresh was only modest spec bumps. Today's pricing makes the 2019 tower the most explicit statement yet of where Apple sees pro-hardware margins.
First-order effects
- Pro buyers placing orders this week face steep à-la-carte escalation: memory is the dominant cost ($25K for 1.5TB), accessories are upsold ($400 wheels), and the display is not included, so the real desk-side price exceeds the headline configuration price.
- Apple converts the Mac Pro from a product into a pricing signal — a $50K+ public ceiling that resets expectations for what the company will charge its highest-end customers.
Second-order effects
- The ridicule around the $400 wheels erodes the premium-pricing goodwill Apple built elsewhere, raising the cost of its high-ASP strategy just as the wider lineup moves upmarket.
- The wide gap between a $6K base tower and a $50K+ build leaves the mid-tier professional underserved, creating space for a compact, cheaper pro machine — a gap Apple itself later fills with the Mac Studio.
Third-order effects
- If Intel-era config economics keep pricing pros out, Apple's shift to in-house silicon — already visible in the M1 MacBook Pro delivering big performance gains from $1,299 — becomes the structural correction: performance per dollar migrating away from expandable towers toward integrated machines.
The trend: Apple's pro hardware is caught between an ever-higher-ASP strategy and its own transition to in-house silicon that undercuts the tower's price-performance logic.