Shane Cole
Production of Apple's new professional desktop is said to be heavily constrained, with representatives indicating that the company's retail stores will not stock the machine until at least March.
Business sales staff at Apple Australia have been instructed to point customers looking to order a new Mac Pro toward Apple's online store, according to a report from Electronista. Default configurations purchased today would not be scheduled to ship until February, while customized units could take even longer, depending on the components chosen.
The all-new Mac Pro, featuring a sleek cylindrical design and next-generation architecture, was announced in October for a December launch. Apple began accepting preorders on Dec. 18, and shipping commenced one week later.
Some customers who ordered base-model Mac Pro units received their machines as early as Christmas Eve, while many others — Â including those who opted for one of the Mac Pro's 200 custom configurations — Â are still waiting.
Journalists given review units from Apple have been effusive in their praise of the tower's industrial design and processing power, despite a dearth of software designed to take advantage of the new Mac Pro's dual-GPU design. Anandtech's well-regarded Anand Lal Shimpi, for instance, found the machine to be "the first desktop in a very long time that I want very close to me."
Apple has chosen to manufacture the updated Mac Pro in a new Austin, Texas facility, a return to the company's roots whose ramp-up may be contributing to the supply constraints. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company made Macs in the U.S. until 2004, when its last stateside manufacturing plant closed its doors.
For now, while Apple's own online store doesn't advertise availability of the Mac Pro until February, major resellers such as Best Buy are advertising their own stock. The entry-level $2,999.999 model is listed to ship in just one day, while store pickup is available in five to seven days.
The same goes for the 6-core $3,999.99 model at Best Buy, which is also advertised to ship from the resellers warehouse in one business day, or arrive at the nearest retail store for pickup in less than a week.
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29 Comments
It could be because yields are so low but I'd think 420 units (one per Apple Store) isn't a big deal for Apple. I wonder if the primary issue not having any to sell in stores until March so it not being worth advertising until such time they will have units on hands. I can't image many of their Mac Pros buyers being on the fence until such time is they can see one in a store. Could there also be a need to have 4K displays setup so they can showcase just how good it looks?
Apple should pull the old MacPros from their stores.
I was at an Apple store last week and they had one on display. I didn't ask if they had any to sell (I doubt it), but you could play with the one they had. It was hooked up to a Thunderbolt Display.
I would expect that Apple would stock at least 30 units per store. That would be over 12,000 machines to stock their stores. In high volume stores which Apple has quite a few of, the total could come to 50 machines per store. One other problem that is not mentioned here, but having space to securely store 30 machines may be a pretty big problem in some of these stores. It would not be politic for Apple to start stocking their own stores before any of the Authorized dealerships get stock as well. The dealer network is probably at least 3 times as large as the store network. That would bring the total to closer to 48,000 to fill the retail channel. On line retailers, schools, and government are other channels to fill with stock. The final issue is many specialized software partners need to add support for the machine's dual video cards and the 6, 8 or 12 core processors. The pro users for this machine may be really tired of waiting, but it takes time for volumes of users to match the cost of new development. This business really does qualify as a hobby for Apple, but it will grow with time and a rejuvenated workstation ecosystem. I would be surprised if Apple sold more than half a million Mac Pros a year. With an average selling price of $5000, that would equate to $2.5 B which wouldn't add much more than 1% to Apple's top line in sales. Apple could sell 1 Million Mac Pros in 2015 and still not break 3% of Gross sales. Profits might be a different story. High end machines like these could easily put 35% on the bottom line. A fully upgraded $11,000 machine might not cost more than $5500 to make in volume. The real bright spot for this will be how it will benefit from the reduced power demands of Intel's, AMD, and nVidia's next couple of generation of machines. Silicon simply cannot add more speed(frequency) without melting down. 2.5 GHZ is a frequency wall for Silicon beyond which leakage is the real killer problem. I find it particularly interesting that the storage is connected directly to the Video cards. Apple seems to be positioning themselves to take advantage of a new computing model over the next 10 years.
Sadly, this probably means that we won't get any sales numbers on the Mac Pro at the next earnings call (AIR, February)... I read somewhere that Thunderbolt 2 chips are in short supply. It is also possible that Apple was overwhelmed with orders for these machines.