July 3 update below, post originally published July 2.
You might expect it for the iPhone SE or the MacBook Air, but Apple has decided to make you an offer on the Mac Pro, cutting the price of the powerful computer by over $2000. The catch? You’ll need to buy it through Apple’s refurb page.
FILE - In this June 3, 2019, file photo, Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks about the Mac Pro at the Apple ... [+]
July 3 update: Those of you looking to buy a Mac Pro new should take note of a new GPU configuration now available. Picked up by Ars Technica’s Samuel Axon, you can outfit the MacOS desktop beast with AMD’s Radeon Pro 5500X. More powerful options are available, but this is a $200 upgrade to the base 580X:
"The W5500X is a lower-cost alternative to the W5700X, which itself was only recently added as an option—just this April, in fact. A key difference between the two is memory bandwidth: the 8GB W5500X offers 224GB/s whereas the 16GB W5700X offers 448GB/s. Additionally, the W5500X has 24 compute units and 1,536 stream processors, while the W5700X offers much more bang at 40 CUs and 2,560 stream processors. It’s a big difference in performance and a modest difference in price."
Unlike the ‘one size fits all’ approach to the consumer laptops which have minimal configuration options, Apple continues to offer the option to tailor the Mac Pro to the exact needs of the end user.
Apple has a number of Mac Pro machines on sale in the refurb store, with the lowest priced model prices at $11,469.
While the Refurb page of the online Apple Store is not always promoted widely, Apple has offered refurbished units for many years. Consumer products generally see a discount on the order of fifteen percent. As for the units and what has happened, I’l leave that to Apple to explain:
"Every Apple Certified Refurbished product completes a rigorous refurbishment process that includes full testing that meets the same functional standards as new Apple products. Your refurbished device is truly “like new.” "
More importantly, you still get the same one-year warranty that would come with a brand new machine, and you can still add on Apple Care.
People take pictures of the Mac Pro in the display room at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference ... [+]
The refurbished Mac Pro comes with a 2.5 GHz 28-core Xeon W processor, 1.5 TB of DDR4 memory, 2 TB of storage, and two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo graphics cards. All of that will put you back $43,859 compared to $45,999 if you were to buy the same specced unit new, a roughy five percent saving.
And if that’s not enough to tempt you, Apple will throw the power cord in for free.
Now read more about the $700 wheels you can buy for the Mac Pro…
