> today's equivalent: the MacPro, sells at an eyewatering $6,999[2].

Others have already called you out on this, but are you being intentionally misleading to bolster your point, or just unaware of the Mac Studio's configuration options versus the Mac Pro?

The Mac Studio is effectively the new Pro. It has literally the same chip (Ultra) as the Pro for thousands of dollars less, and also offers another still very performant configuration (Max) for even less money. The Pro now only serves a very small niche that needs PCIe.

If you were to use the Mac Studio in your price comparisons, your point basically evaporates.

That’s because most people who bought these machines 20 years ago now just buy laptops which are perfectly sufficient for their use cases.

Even if there was a 3000-400 desktop Mac Pro I doubt many people would buy it instead of a MBP.

If you need a laptop anyway what’s the point of getting an another machine which is just marginally faster? That wasn’t really the case 10-20 years ago when laptops weren’t really an option as a primary machine for demanding use cases.

> If you need a laptop anyway what’s the point of getting an another machine which is just marginally faster? That wasn’t really the case 10-20 years ago when laptops weren’t really an option as a primary machine for demanding use cases.

Laptops, even those marketed as "mobile workstations", really can't compete with a proper desktop-experience - yes, a docking-station goes a long way with replicating connectivity options, but (in my life, at least) there's far too many qualiatative and quantiatative benefits to having a "proper" desktop for dev.

----

A major point for me is that I treat my laptops and portables as though they could/will go missing the next day - which means I'm careful to avoid putting irreplacable data on my laptop (and have Bitlocker enabled, which does noticably impact disk IO, even today) - whereas my desktop is a different, and a more trusted, environment. I'm not going to compromise my daily computing experience by using a throwaway-ish environment.

> Laptops, even those marketed as "mobile workstations", really can't compete with a proper desktop-experience

But that's what I've found remarkable about the MacBook Pro 16 with the M1 Max. It absolutely does replicate a desktop computing experience with smooth performance... and it does it even on battery power. As I said in my other post I've just never seen anything like it. It's beyond benchmarks to have an experience that just never hiccups or stalls on a laptop.

> A major point for me is that I treat my laptops and portables as though they could/will go missing the next day

You might need to recognize that you're the outlier in these conversations, then. The world has largely moved to laptops. Only those that truly need a desktop are issued one these days (and again, with the Max / Pro chips, even the need should be called into question for most use cases). Especially with hybrid work policies, I can't really imagine any modern corporate office issuing you a big old tower on your first day.

You really think most developers in 2023 are using desktops?

Honestly, I don't know - but I'm not willing to bet either way: don't forget there's a _huge_ contingent of people at companies of all sizes that figured out VBA in Office by themselves and write software internally at work who don't identify with us, the HN fringe, who only code in the office, on a company-provided desktop.

I've only ever seen (and experienced first-hand) software companies and startups issuing laptops as-standard instead of desktops twice in my whole career, all other companies I've either worked for, or worked with, preferred desktops.

At my current company we interface with a lot of independent contractors and I have noticed that exclusive laptop use is far more common there - but it's still at-odds with my own personal experience.

I work with a lot of enterprisey companies and state and local companies (cloud consulting department at BigTech) everyone has a laptop.

If you don’t recall there was a worldwide pandemic a couple of years ago and a lot of people started working remotely.

I would say the entry level workstation line today is Mac Studio (starting at $1999), not Mac Pro, which is strictly top end. The $6999 model of today is not equivalent to the old entry models in any way, unless you just go by bulkiness.

Why "not equivalent"? Both are top-tier workstation options of their times.

But... the UX of PowerMac G5 is lot more pleasant and everything feels lot more responsive than on modern Pros. Probably because of lack of signature verifications, SIP, RPC with Apple servers. But still, those machines _feel_ better.

> Why "not equivalent"?

The Mac pro is just a Mac studio with a "PCI express expansion chassis" bolted on which is of no use to most people. The price says Apple doesn't want to sell a lot of those machines, they probably only fitted a M2 CPU in an old Mac pro chassis to tick off the 'entire range migrated to Apple silicon' promise.

> But... the UX on PowerMac G5 is lot more pleasant and everything feels lot more responsive

Heh, that reminds me of when a friend of mine invited me over to show-off his hand-restored Mac (early-1990s-ish - I think it was a Performa 520 or 575?) and despite the lack of double-buffered graphics there were hardly any painting artifacts but the most striking thing was just how smooth and responsive everything felt - obviously the fact it's a CRT helps a lot.

When the world moved away from computer CRTs to TFTs we also went from 70-85Hz to 60Hz everywhere - and I swear I definitely can "feel" 60Hz vs. 85Hz - so I'm looking forward to monitors gradually shifting towards 120Hz or 144Hz (or higher?) because that definitely helps with responsiveness and snappiness, even with double-buffering and desktop composition.

An entry level cheese grater or trash can definitely wasn’t top end of their times. Middle end parts in a top end case, sure.