1. Nobody in their right mind would use a bank of Mac Pro's as a server farm...they would use servers which are specifically designed for that purpose. Using Mac Pro's would be a waste of money and geography.
The original Mac based Beowulf Cluster Supercomputer at Virginia Tech was made with 1100 PowerMac Towers (2200 processors). When this set-up was turned on in 2004, it was the 3rd fastest computer on earth, but its $% million cost was less than 1/10th what the 4th fastest cost... and 1/20th of what the 2nd fastest cost... and 1/100th the cost of the fastest supercomputer in the world, the Japanese Earth Emulator.
One of the purposes to which the VT Supercomputer was put was rendering very complex graphics.
But, you're right about the form factor... year or so later, VT replaced the towers with xServes which took up about 25% of the space the PowerPC towers took... and half the energy.
They sold the used PowerPC Mac towers for more than they paid for them to help fund the upgrade. However, even though they increased their peak speed by about 5 Teraflops because of faster xServes, they were only able to make seventh place that year because larger and faster Beowolf clusters (including one with 1600 Mac xServes built for the US Army) had been constructed.
Modern xServes are basically Mac Pros with Xeon processors in a rack mount configuration.
Here are some people in their right minds at a credit card processing company who are using Apple Macs in a server farm:
2. Most people do use "Sudetenland i7's" or Opterons or less expensive Xeons in "mission critical work," hence the 10% Apple market share. There are far far more Windows and Unix based servers and workstations being used in "mission critical work" than there are all Apple computers of whatever make. Google builds their own design for their "mission critical work" and I assure you they don't build Macs.
Very few professional organizations BUILD their own computers. That's what I meant by a "Sudetenland i7." The number of Windows v. Macs in the market is not the point. Also, Sudetenland, an OS X.4 or greater Mac is running certified UNIX™. For those who need servers the per-user licensing cost of the Mac solution is far lower than Windows per-seat licenses.
3. The pricetag for building a Mac Pro clone using the same spec equipment and the same processor buying from a retail parts outlet is $2000. That would place the price for constructing a unit wholesale at about $1000...maybe $1200 at the outside. Ummm...let's see now $2500/ $1200 = 2+ gee I guess that makes 100%. Add a little overhead and labor costs and you still are at 80% at the minimum.
You have very little idea of what you are talking about when it comes to retail pricing, wholesale pricing, and discount marketing mark ups. Your numbers don't stand up to analysis in the real world.
NewEgg and other web based hardware suppliers' markups are nowhere near the 100% that you assume. For example, the 2.66GHz Xeon processors in the Mac Pros are $1020 each (Egghead) at deeply discounted retail, but Intel sells them at $958 each in lots of 1000—which is probably at the discount level that NewEgg buys them. That means their mark-up on that product is only about 6.5%.
Compare Egghead's retail discount mark-up to this one from Hewlett Packard. HP sells that very same chip, at retail—as a 2nd processor option for the computer I compare below—for what is probably the MSRP of $1,549 each! That's a retail mark-up of 62.7 percent!!!!
Apple will sell you that second processor for a mere $650—$3,299 - $2,499 = $800 - $150 for the additional 3GB of RAM you get in the upgrade. = $650—when you upgrade to the two processor Mac Pro! That is an amazing bargain.
Apple is the prime example of Just-in-Time inventory control, so let's assume that they buy in sufficient quantities to get it down to around $900 per chip on the quantities they buy.
In the following estimate, I will show my estimated Apple cost for components in bold. There are TWO Xeon X5500s in the $3,299 eight core Mac Pro, so just for processors Apple cost is probably paying around $1,800 per dual Mac Pro at cost. Other components:
- Custom logic boards (Egghead offers a dual Xeon 5500 ready motherboard for $530) so let's call it $250
- 640GB HDs - call it $40 each
- 6GB of RAM (Kingston's is about $70 per 2GB or $210) - $140
- Heavy Duty 1000W power supply (Egghead's offerings average around $200) so let's call Apple's $125
- Graphic card about $50
- Case - aircraft grade machined Aluminum (looking at Egghead cases, it could be as high as $150) but let's use - $125
- Cooling fans, silent and high capacity - $15
- Keyboard, mouse, power cord, etc. - $20
That comes to $2,565 before we include labor, benefits, Warranty set-asides, OS X and iLife, OS and included software development, engineering, operating overhead and advertising. My thumbnail guesstimate, discounting quite a bit off of the retail prices to estimate Apple's cost, the mark up comes to about 28.6% BEFORE overhead and profit.
For the entry level $2,499 Quad Core Mac Pro, subtract $900 for the extra processor. That's $1,665. The mark-up is a better 50% before overhead. It is certainly not 80 or 100 percent.
Apple has to PUBLISH its costs and earnings... and the mark up is ~30% across the line.
When you compare Apple Workstations to Windows PC Workstations with equivalent hardware from major makers, the dichotomy you claim is totally the opposite.
TigerDirect.com sells a discounted (HP's MSRP $3599) Hewlett Packard Workstation class computer for $3499 that is essentially equivalent to the entry model Apple Mac Pro... Better Green, Worse Red:
- Apple Mac Pro Workstation Computer - one Quad core Intel Xeon X5550 2.66Ghz Nehelem Processor, 3GB DDR ECC RAM, 640GB 7200RPM HD, 18X DVDRW Superdrive, NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB of GDDR3, Apple Mac OS X.5.6 64 bit. - Price $2,499
- TigerDirect HP Z800 FL879UT Workstation PC - one Quad core Intel Xeon X5550 2.66GHz Nehelem Processor, 3GB DDR3 ECC, 500GB HD 7200RPM HD, SuperMulti 16X LightScribe DVD±RW , NVIDIA QUADRO FX1800 with 768MB of DDR3, Microsoft Windows XP Pro/Vista Business 32 bit - Price $3,499
The two processor, 8 core, version of the HP X800 Workstation is $5,286 MSRP—and you have to install the additional processor and memory yourself.
Apple's matching 8 core Mac Pro is $3,299 MSRP—complete out of the box.
The Mac is almost $2,000 less expensive than the HP equivalent.
Macs are less expensive than PCs... who woulda thunk it? Perhaps you need to re-examine your basic assumptions about pricing and value.