Apple’s new Mac Pro and 32-inch 6k Pro Display XDR, whose base models retail at $6,000 and $5,000 respectively, are available for sale as of today. Much hullaboo has been made about how the display requires the additional purchase of a $999 Pro Stand or $199 VESA mount adapter, but the Mac Pro maxes out at a jaw-dropping $52,750 including all possible accessories and upgrades such as a 28-core Intel Xeon CPU, 1.5TB of ECC RAM, 8TB of SSD storage, and two AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo graphics cards with 64GB of HBM2 memory each.
That $52,750 price tag includes $400 dollars in wheel.
Yes, that’s right, if you select “stainless steel frame with wheels” instead of “stainless steel frame with feet,” the price of the new Mac Pro goes up by almost half a thousand dollars. If you click a drop-down menu titled “Do I need wheels for my Mac Pro?”, Apple helpfully explains that the extra $400 will make your computer slightly easier to move “without having to lift it”:
The standard Mac Pro has a stainless steel frame with feet, which is a good option if you don’t need to move your Mac Pro away from your workspace very often.
... Customize your Mac Pro to have a stainless steel frame with wheels, which is ideal for moving your Mac Pro quickly and easily without having to lift it. Configuring your Mac Pro with wheels makes it about an inch taller than the frame with feet.
Look; anyone who is shelling out for a Mac Pro with upgrades has money to spare, and the wheels come to under one percent of the fully tricked-out version’s cost. But that doesn’t make this any less of a shakedown. That is $100 a wheel. There’s only a couple scenarios in which the extra cost could possibly be even justifiable (and that’s using the term very, very loosely). That includes when a wealthy business is paying—the likeliest option, as the tricked-out Mac Pro is primarily intended for design and animation studios—or if the customer is an Apple devotee champing at the bit to pour more money down the company’s drooling maw.
Instead of paying $400 for Apple wheels, you can spend a fraction of that price to buy a very nice rolling computer tower caddy, along with a spare if it breaks or something. Or, hell, you can pay me $400 and I will come over and move that thing across the room when you need to. But there is no secret wheel technology here. It does not follow you around the room like a dog, or skid to a halt if it is careening towards the stairs, or roll in front of a speeding car for you. The $400 wheels will never love you, just like Apple won’t.
$100 dollars a wheel! God.