Here Is Apple Selling Mac Pro Wheels For $700?
Apple’s latest Mac Pro was released in 2019 with an all new design and is now more powerful than ever. The Mac starts at $5999 for the baseline model; although this may sound expensive, it is not made for your average consumer, instead it is for users who require lots of power, for example people who do intense amounts of editing. Alongside the release of the Mac Pro, the Pro Display XDR was announced and many critisised Apple for releasing a $999 stand. Today, I am going to be talking about why Apple released $700 wheels for the Mac Pro.
When bought with the Mac Pro, you have the option to purchase the wheels for $400. If you did not buy them when you bought your Mac Pro, Apple sells them as an accessory for $699. Yes, you read that right, $700 for a set of wheels for your computer.
The reason they are even an option is that the Mac Pro is incredibly heavy. The computer weighs 35.4kg. So, to make it a bit more portable for people who need to move around their computer Apple have wheels as an option for the Mac.
In Apple style, they have done an incredible job in designing the wheels. They are quite heavy, are made out of metal and rubber, come with a little tool to add grip and can rotate 360 degrees. With that said, it still does not justify their ridiculous price.
So why has Apple made these wheels so expensive?
First, you need to consider who is going to buy them, not many people. The number of people that have a Mac Pro is not that big; this means that the number of people who purchase the wheels is even less. So by selling them at a higher price might say that they can make their money back right. No. Apple is probably not going to make money off of these.
The real answer is that they need to keep their perceived image of being a luxury retailer in the technology sector. This is not the first time Apple has charged a significantly overcharged their customers for a product. The Pro Display XDR comes with a $999 stand. You can purchase a $199 sleeve for a MacBook Pro. The smart folio cases for the iPad Pro can cost upwards of $199. They even sell feet for the Mac Pro which cost $299.
Even though these products most likely won’t make much money for them, it allows Apple to be seen as the sort of superior brand. The one that you aspire to buy from. Some products are priced very competitively like the iPhone SE, the baseline iPad and even their TV streaming service Apple TV+ which undercuts their biggest competitors Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime. These allow you to get into the Apple ecosystem and feel like you own something that is in the luxury and premium market. To make this possible Apple needs to sell some things that are overpriced to make this feeling possible.
Another good point is that the people buying a Mac Pro can spend over $50,000 if they want to max out the product with the highest specs and display. So what is another $700 for wheels? The only people who are going to buy these are the people who are already paying a lot of money for the computer, so it makes sense that Apple makes them as expensive as possible. If they were cheap, say $100, ordinary users would not buy them anyway because they have no use for them, they don’t have a Mac Pro.
Finally, the memes. Like in my post about the AirPods, memes are a big way that Apple markets some of their products. By pricing things in a certain way Apple opens themselves up to let people make memes about those products. These memes are seen by millions of people all over the internet, and they get people talking about Apple. For Apple the majority of these memes make fun of the price. This can be seen with the memes about the Pro Stand, the wheels and the original gold Apple Watch Edition which costed around $17,000. These get people talking and links back to my first point, it helps Apple be percieved by consumers as this luxury brand, the same way we feel about brands like Lambourghini and Prada. And you know what they say, any press is good press.
