[noir_lord]

> Anytime a new workstation makes the news (see Apple's latest workstation).

If you where talking about Workstations from the usual suspects (HPE, Dell) I'd agree but Apple really do put a fantastic markup on their kit.

There are also a lot of people buying those Apple Workstations where they only need one or two of them and someone like Puget could build something faster for much less.

[DFXLuna]

Surprisingly, the margin isn't as insane as you would think. Linus Tech Tips actually did a video comparing a homebrew Mac Pro killer vs the Mac Pro and they came out surprisingly close. Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_IHSRPVqwQ

Once you factor in the cost of stuff like support and hardware validation it becomes pretty much a moot point. That's without even considering that you would need to hire a supply chain expert(s) to acquire large quantities of parts if you needed anything more than a few machines. At my work, we have whole departments full of people dedicated to making sure we have the right mix of hardware at the right time to fulfill customer needs.

There are definitely some configurations that really don't make sense (the lowest end config comes to mind) but, at the same time, if you run a business with a team of people training on Macs, the amount of money it would cost in training and lost productivity to switch over to Windows for possibly lower prices makes even less sense.

I'm a custom PC and linux guy myself but this seemed like a good time to remind everyone that there's more to computers than just the cost of making a single machine.

[michaelmrose]

You are so right. At the moment its 14k for 28 * 2.5Ghz Xeon W with 32GB of ram and 2 TB of ssd storage. This is 10000 over an equivalent machine. This is 250% markup.

[icedchai]

Insane. For that price you could build a monster Threadripper box.

[fomine3]

I won't say it's insane but now lack of Threadripper or EPYC is serious lineup defect. I'm exciting how Apple make competitive chip.