Apple's super-powerful new Mac Pro costs anywhere from $6,000 to a mind-boggling $50,000 - here's why it's probably not for you

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The Mac Pro (left) and Pro Display XDR (right) from behind

• Apple's new Mac Pro starts at $6,000 but costs more than $50,000 if you outfit it with top-of-the-line specifications.
• While those may seem like wild prices for the average consumer, it makes more sense when considering Apple's target audience for the Mac Pro.
• The Mac Pro isn't meant for the average computer user, but rather professionals that need to manage heavy workloads on a daily basis.
• That could make it a fit for those working in the film production industry, or businesses and organizations looking for an infrastructure solution.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Apple's new Mac Pro costs as much as Tesla's Cybertruck if you outfit it with top-of-the-line specifications. Starting at $6,000 for the base model and going all the way up to just over $52,000, the Mac Pro is tens of thousands of dollars more expensive than your average computer.

And there's a good reason why: it's not meant for the average person. "For that money, you're not buying a PC," Ranjit Atwal, a senior research director at market research firm Gartner, told Business Insider.

The Mac Pro, which Apple launched on December 10 after announcing it in June, is a computing powerhouse designed for professionals and businesses that regularly manage very heavy workflows. That could include tasks involving large-scale data processing, app and video game development, networking infrastructure, film editing, and music production.

The Mac Pro runs on an Intel Xeon W processor, the line of Intel chips optimized for tasks like 3D rendering, the development of artificial intelligence programs, and running complex 3D CAD software. The $6,000 base model comes with an 8-core processor, 32GB of memory, and Radeon Pro 580X graphics with 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage space.

But the high-end model that will run you more than $50,000 comes with a beefy 28-core processor, 1.5TB of memory, two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo GPUs, and 4TB of storage. You can also add Apple's Afterburner card, which is an accelerator card that can enable playback of three streams of RAW 8K video simultaneously, for an extra $2,000, and wheels for $400.

Atwal sees the Mac Pro, especially the high-end configurations that cost tens of thousands of dollars, as being more of an infrastructure solution than a traditional computer. "That's what you would expect to get for those kinds of price points," Atwal said. "It's almost a portable data center."

The Mac Pro could also be well-suited for those interested in best-in-class gaming, says Jeff Fieldhack, research director at Counterpoint Research. "At the price, this is for the hardcore gamer and performance junkies," he said to Business Insider via email.

Until this week, Apple hadn't launched a new Mac Pro since 2013, when it released the cylindrical model that some likened to a trash can - a design that made the Mac Pro difficult to upgrade. Apple addressed that with the new 2019 model, which features a new build that allows for easy access to internal components. But that didn't prevent some from poking fun at the design yet again, this time comparing it to a cheese grater.

The launch comes after Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said in 2017 when speaking to a group of journalists at BuzzFeed and TechCrunch among others that the company was "completely rethinking the Mac Pro."

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