I started to watch the keynote yesterday, but got interrupted. I’ll catch it later.
Impressions so far...
1) The new Mac Pro is exactly what Pros have been asking for. It’s not for the unwashed masses, but for a real pro $6k is not out of line and the modular design and speed will be welcome. A base model iMac or Mac Mini has all the performance most normal humans will ever need.
2) Dark Mode may be aesthetically pleasing, but hardly revolutionary. Gushing over it is embarrassing.
3) Increased functionality for the Apple Watch is always welcome.
4) Delivering a monitor, even a “Pro” monitor, without a stand, and then charging $1k for a stand is obscene, and plays right into detractor’s hands.
I’ll have more once I’ve watched the whole thing and digested it free of the “Reality Distortion Field”.
$6K is the "starting at" price. Historically, I've found that fully pimped-out Macs cost about five to six times what it would cost to build a hardware-comparable PC, purchasing all the parts at Micro Center retail prices. I don't know the specs of the new "starting at" Mac Pro, but also based on historical experience, I'd be surprised if I couldn't build or purchase a hardware-comparable PC for less than half the cost. The price differential seems to increase the higher up the line one goes.
I do give them credit for (apparently) abandoning forced obsolescence in favor of modular design, but only if they don't have some other tricks to prevent users from installing their own add-on hardware. I wouldn't be surprised if only certain, "approved" components will be recognized by the system, or if they have some other proprietary means of preventing people from buying the cheapest Mac Pro they can and then upgrading it themselves.
That being said, I might still buy one. I'm getting pretty sick of Microsoft's ********. They finally came out with an OS that I'd rate as excellent, but they ruined it by infesting it with spyware, forcing updates, and forcibly reinstalling unwanted and unneeded bloatware every time the system updates. But I want to make sure I don't get caught in some proprietary Apple trap whereby I have to pay through the nose for "official" hardware every time I want to upgrade something -- the software equivalent of soldering the RAM to the mobo, as it were.
The other option, Linux, is a pain in the ass at the moment for any sort of graphics work because X, which is admittedly a mess, is being replaced by Wayland, which simply isn't ready for prime time. Last I checked, it lacked support for even simple, essential functions like gamma adjustments, which the devs say should be be handled by the application compositors, which just pushes the bugs, kludges, and incompatibilities downstream, as far as I'm concerned.
Rich