Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The $700 Mac Pro Wheels: Explained!”.
Wow, [ Applause, ], hey, what’s up guys mkbhd here, welcome back to quarantine content, just a little entertainment for you, while we’re all staying inside, i’m your host, marquez, brownlee and uh. You might have heard by now that apple was selling these wheels for the mac pro. You remember that clip at the end of our mac pro review of it just kind of rolling away, because there are no locks yeah those wheels. Now on the surface, it’s not actually clear why anyone would actually need wheels to their computer.
Considering your computer just sits at your desk anyway, but hey you know what there’s nothing wrong with selling a product that very few people actually need, but they are a 400 option when you configure them alongside the new mac pro. And if you don’t do that, you decide you want them later for some reason you can buy them to install yourself separately for seven hundred dollars, seven hundred dollars for these wheels. I have some thoughts, so there’s a lot of reactions.
I could give a lot of things i could say about these wheels about how ridiculous they are, how stupid they are, how insulting it would be that they would even offer that, but i decided to take a step back and actually try to consider why they exist In the first place, now, as you saw by the unboxing, i actually have the wheels and i got ta say having them in person which very few people obviously do. There are some really nice wheels objectively. These might be the nicest computer wheels i’ve ever seen. Now. I don’t know about you, but when i think of computer wheels, i’m thinking of like the dusty plastic, like those standard casters, you see in schools, these wheels are complete and total overkill, uh they’re, entirely metal and rubber, and you can tell as soon as you pick One up it’s hefty, like there’s weight to it. How much weight you might be asking? Well, one wheel weighs more than twice an iphone 11 pro, so you can tell it’s basically solid metal.
They come with this metal. Dual sided hex tool with a black rubberized sleeve around the middle for grip. That just says china there’s also two nearly identical installation guides in the box for some reason, but one of them with more languages than the other. Why would they make two of these? Instead of just printing it all on one, i don’t know and the wheels themselves they fully articulate 360 degrees at every joint.
So the top joint rotates totally around and also says china on the top of it and then there’s two fully independent, fully articulate super smooth rubber treads so kind of like a car with torque vectoring. It can create an even tighter turning radius than if it was a one-sided single tire. So all that being said, are these wheels actually good to cost 700? No, of course not still if this, if this piece of metal with tiny microchips and ram and a motherboard and batteries and cameras and software tying it all together and the screen costs 400, then the material cost is clearly not there. But you know.
Sometimes you can argue the value of something is higher, based on the value it delivers to the person who buys it, but still the value of these wheels is just putting the mac pro on wheels with no brakes, and the mac pro has to be plugged into The wall to be on anyway, so that argument doesn’t really work, really the only reasonable argument you can come up with having actually seen these is okay. These are such high quality wheels that the tooling required to make them cost so much, and the volume that they’re going to sell is so low that they have to price them super high to make their money back on selling these wheels. But apple doesn’t need to make their money back on every single product they make. They regularly don’t do that and they often subsidize their less successful products with their more successful ones. So why would apple make these 700 wheels if they know that the answer i think to keep their shine see apple loves to keep this image of a premium luxury brand. It’S what allows them to charge more for a lot of stuff, but everyone knows every every luxury brand’s got some luxury products that you know are so expensive that people aren’t really mad, that they can’t get it.
But it’s super easy to make fun of. We see this with brands, we talk about all the time supreme, gucci rolex bugatti, you know, there’s a ton of them and no matter what you think of them, you’ve heard of them, and you know what they stand for now. Let’S be perfectly clear: apple is a tech company. Obviously, but in this tech world they are the luxury one and keeping that status.
Keeping that perceived image of high quality isn’t easy that that doesn’t just come effortlessly. You know they’re in a competitive tech world where other companies are throwing their absolute best at them and trying to make their best possible products and make as much money as they possibly can and so that competitive landscapes crafted the likes of the 329 ipad, which is An incredible deal in the tablet world and, of course, the recent 400 iphone se. That’S super competitive again, one of the best deals ever from their camp, so they’re not allergic to pricing things competitively, especially when it benefits their business, but on the other end of the spectrum to keep their premium luxury image.
They, of course, need high priced products see. This is something i’ve talked about in some previous apple related videos, because as much products as they do make, i’ve wished that they would make more to fill in the gaps, because, often in some categories they will choose to keep up their image. They will choose to just make the expensive version of that thing like when making a desktop tower computer.
They only make one and they made the expensive one. Now there are many things that can change the perceived quality of an item. You know the actual hardware quality and fit and finish and materials, and even the name and the design of the packaging, but the price is also one of those things.
There have been studies done and i’ll try to link one of them below, where you put two. Essentially identical things next to each other and price one item higher than the other, and if you ask people which they think is the better higher quality item, they’ll pick the more expensive one. People literally just assume with no other context that the higher priced item is better but here’s the thing competition is brutal, especially in tech, so you can’t just raise all of your prices across the board and then boom suddenly you’re a luxury company.
It’S not that easy. So apple is uniquely positioned in a way where they can be competitive where it matters, but then they can also, on the other end, sacrifice some products for the memes in the name of keeping up their luxury status. And i guess why not make something extreme while you’re at it linus from minus tech tips, made a great video touching on a lot of this which i’ll link below where he also brings up.
Another great point tell me: if you’ve heard this before media attention, all press is good press. Virtually every article written about the mac, pro’s crazy wheels, mention other apple products, shed light on the mac pro and on apple’s history, sometimes literally even list a couple. Other apple products that you could buy for the same price as those wheels, so you can see how it feels like all press is a good press, so apple can choose to make that sacrifice with certain products and the mac pros wheels.
That’S a perfect set. That’S a perfect place to sacrifice: were you gon na buy these anyway? If they were, if they were 200 bucks, if these were 25 bucks, were you gon na buy the mac pros wheels? No, so this is a perfect no-brainer. You know what else is a no-brainer? The thousand dollar monitor stand the 300 coffee table book, the 17 000 gold apple watch.
So, while pretty much no one in their right, mind should buy any of these. It makes perfect sense that they exist and the more you talk about and comment about, their crazy 700 wheels. The more apple kind of just gets exactly what they want more attention unless it’s this video either way, that’s been it thanks for watching hope.
You learned something and uh. I guess i got ta go find something to attach these wheels to now to feel like, i spent them for good reason. It’S probably not gon na happen, but either way the merch also by the way, is also on sale. All those links that i talked about are below the like button check them out thanks again for watching catch, you guys in the next one peace .