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Very impressed!! Glad I waited...whos ordering?


Impressed? Please send me some of whatever you're smokin'.

I'm a militant Windows hater to my core. YET.....I'm so UN-impressed...I'm seriously HOPING Windows 7 kicks a$$, so I can build a screamin' fast, high performance 3d/photography workstation for $800 less than the mediocre *new* Mac Pro.

Apple is returning to their over-priced days of yore. Shame on them. F#&* Apple.
 
The stock GPUs available are pretty disappointing. The 4870 is a good card, but apple is charging too much for it. And the 4870 isn't a "mid-range" card like others have said. It's more of a cross between med and a high end card. The 4850 is what I'd call a midrange card, and the 4850 is an awesome card, so the 4870 is pretty good. There's not really a need for a 295GTX or 4870x2 when it comes to mac platform. SLI/Crossifre is more for gaming. The only other single card options would be the GTX260 (better than the 4870), GTX285 (also better than the 4870 and GTX260). And really, the 4870 is really only 20% slower than the GTX285, which is not really a big deal in everyday operations unless you game, and if you are a hardcore gamer, why own a mac anyway? The 4870 is a great card for the Mac pro.
 
Seems to me it was a good idea to keep offering the four cores and making them cheaper to almost meet that mythical mid-range tower that everyone has always wanted.

It's just a shame that they didn't make them cheaper.

All the new numbers are very impressive though, and that's all I ever need from an MP announcement :). Ooh, ahh. Okay I'm done, look forward to the next one.
 
What's even more absurd is you can make an identical windows setup (in core i7 package rather than xeon) for 1/3 of the price (and the memory on good i7 motherboards can go up to 24gb). I don't understand how this is advantageous to apple in any way. Their only quad core desktop is nearly £2000, that would buy a top of the range windows desktop. This seems such a huge step down from a dual processor setup.
 
I think this is the upgrade most of us professionals who are holding on to our Dual G5's have been waiting for.

Complaints about speed/power/cost only seem to matter to those who need/crave yearly updates. I suspect for the vast majority of pro users, this is not even close to reality. We milk our computers for 4 years or more and use them to make our living. The cost of a new system every 4-6 years is entirely justified on the basis of increased productivity and advances in technology (not to mention software).

I will happily dole out $3000-$4000 for a new Mac Pro because it will keep me happily productive for years. And i will be grateful for the opportunity, because i remember paying $10,000 in 1992 for a Mac IIfx and thinking I was getting a stinking good deal.

Thanks, Apple. I love your computers, but even more than that I love making money with your computers.

If you enjoy paying more than the actual value for a product...this mac's for you. *I* don't like being ripped off. The product is fine in MANY ways...it's simply overpriced. I think Apple should take pride in offering great products at reasonable prices and profit margins...not seeing how much they can get through marketing hype.
 
I gotta say im surprised at how angry some people are. If you don't like the updates, don't buy the computer, or better yet, buy the 8x2.8 versions for cheap (i did kind of feel i was getting away with ripping apple off for getting my 8 core for so cheap compared to comparable windows setup. Perhaps apple realised and they've returned to original pricing?). Only sales will tell whether this was the right decision...
 
If you enjoy paying more than the actual value for a product...this mac's for you. *I* don't like being ripped off. The product is fine in MANY ways...it's simply overpriced. I think Apple should take pride in offering great products at reasonable prices and profit margins...not seeing how much they can get through marketing hype.

They are the only company selling Macs legally. So they can sell overpriced computers.
 
The Mac Pro has actually been somewhat underpriced compared to any machine with the same or similar specs. It merely doesn't fit some very vocal people's demands.

Pros who need workstation power have loved the Mac Pro since it came out and still do.

jW

Honestly, some of you people (fanboys) need to get around and get real. Carefully read the review and real world performance in this article linked below. At the end of the day, it is all about computing and getting your work done. Comparing Macs to PCs is legitimate, there is nothing special about the Mac market except for the OS, for now.

http://www.macintouch.com/reviews/efix/

Apple has become completely delusional and out of touch with its customers, wanting to force what they think you need to buy vs. what you really need. I, as I am sure many, had hoped Apple would reconsider, these latest machines confirm they have lost their way. Comically when Mac Pro sales drop they will rationalize it by saying the desktop market is shrinking. Sadly when they realize their stupidity it might be too late. I also do not understand what their full time, award winning designer, is doing these days not to have the time to redesign a now very old case. Then again, it has taken them 4 years to refresh their displays. Go Apple blazing design and innovation!

I have been using Macs for 19 years now. Based on Apple's current offerings and trend, I can not and will not justify the expense to replace my $1,650 G5, most especially when I am insulted by its executives when they tell the world prices have actually come down $300. I am likely to transition to a hackintosh, unless I can find a great deal on a previous generation Mac Pro. Furthermore, given Apple has iPhone fever and all its products, including Mac OS are being neglected (I will be surprised if Snow Leopard comes out before Windows 7), I may migrate away from the Mac to Ubuntu or even Windows. Too bad, I truly loved Apple and the Mac...but hope is the last thing to die...mine is on life support now.
 
These boards replicate themselves with every product cycle.

For those who want to build an equivalent Windows box for xxx dollars less, please go do it and stop wasting our time. Complain once if you must, then go. Do you have no lives?

And enjoy windows. I really mean that.

I own too much software to change over, nor do I want to. I like the Mac OS (I run Windows when I need to in Parallels, by the way) and I earn my keep with FCP and CS4. It would be insanity to switch over for me. It's like the endless, and identical, debates on DPReview when Nikon comes out with an expensive new camera. Same gripes and general BS, same threats to change platforms.

Any pro has way too much invested in either system's glass (lenses) to just switch, but there is a very vocal contingent that always threatens to.

They rarely do.

So do what you want - love and peace, peace and love.

I will stick with Apple, drink the Kool-Aid, be a Fanboy - deride me all you want - their hardware has worked for me for 15 years, it has lasted longer than similar Windows setups and I have few complaints.

Buy what you need when you can afford it. Until then, use what you have and stop griping.
 
I will stick with Apple, drink the Kool-Aid, be a Fanboy - deride me all you want - their hardware has worked for me for 15 years, it has lasted longer than similar Windows setups and I have few complaints.

Buy what you need when you can afford it. Until then, use what you have and stop griping.

I kind of agree, but to people like you (and me) who have invested heavily in the OSX environment, to have such a dissapointing upgrade (i would say downgrade) is a bit of a pain (not that i was thinking of upgrading anyway!)

Honestly, some of you people (fanboys) need to get around and get real. Carefully read the review and real world performance in this article linked below. At the end of the day, it is all about computing and getting your work done. Comparing Macs to PCs is legitimate, there is nothing special about the Mac market except for the OS, for now.

The 8x2.8 mac pros were about 2/3 the price of an identical dell when they came out. I thought this was apple's future plans with the mac pro.
 
Capitalism and the free market would state that if it's overpriced it won't be bought, so if you think you're the market this was made for and that it's no longer worth your money, don't buy it and, according to basic economic theory, it will either be reduced in price, improved to meet the price, or removed entirely.

I'm honestly surprized they went ahead and updated the Mac Pro so early, but Nahelam is very powerful so it was bound to happen soon. Either way, I was planning to wait for the 32nm shrink before buying - maybe by then there will be 4 core imacs XD
 
Apple is the first one out with these chips, Dell wont get them for another month. If you're comparing this to a consumer i7 chip then you're comparing a gaming rig to a pro Xeon workstation which is completely fallacious.

No, it's not. It's quite a reasonable comparison, as long as you allow for the differences in hardware between a consumer-level desktop and a professional-level workstation(/server, since they use the same componets).

Which is why I say $2000 is a reasonable upper limit, even though you can buy, today, a Dell PC with essentially identical specs to the bottom end Mac Pro for $1100. The $900 difference easily accounts for a different chipset, high bandwidth I/O options, and the like.

I buy, setup, and maintain more than enough mid-range Intel hardware like the stuff in the Mac Pro (both past and present), to have a good feel for the prices differences involved.

The idea that you can't make a reasonable estimate of what a Mac should cost, just because "ZOMG they're Apple and no-one else builds Macs", is ridiculous on its face. Macs today are just standard PCs with EFI and pretty cases. It's *trivial* to figure out roughly what it should cost because you just have to look at everyone else selling machines with the same hardware in a competitive market.

Apple have always charged a decent price for their pro workstation, if you look at any keynote you will always find them jeering about how their computer is $1000 cheaper than Dell's, and I see no reason why they would change this.

Of course, what they didn't tell you in those comparisons is the Mac had a crappy $100 consumer video card and the Dell had a brutally quick $1000 professional video card, three times the warranty, and various other features that more than made up for the difference.
 
If you enjoy paying more than the actual value for a product...this mac's for you. *I* don't like being ripped off. The product is fine in MANY ways...it's simply overpriced. I think Apple should take pride in offering great products at reasonable prices and profit margins...not seeing how much they can get through marketing hype.

Is it ? The base Mac Pro is 2899$ on the Canadian Apple Store. I'm on Dell.ca right now and I'm pricing a Precision Workstation (business section). This thing starts at 1976$ base. Fantastic right ? Not even close. First, at 1976$, I'm getting 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, 667 mhz. I'm getting a 80 GB SATA hard drive. I'm getting a 256 MB nVidia NVS card. I'm getting a 6 year old OS (downgrade to XP is base, I have to pay extra for Vista). The processor, though a Xeon, is not a nehalem, and it's a 2.0 GHZ, quad core, single thread per core.

Let's say I do customize my super Dell workstation to be up to spec to what Apple offers, guess what happens ? The Mac Pro becomes the cheaper option and still has better specs, since I can't spec the Dell workstation for DDR3, triple channel RAM or to have a Nehalem processor with 2 threads per core.

Mac Pro buyers need to realise that what they are buying is not a competitor to the Dell Studio XPS 435, it's a Dell Precision Workstation. Professionnal grade hardware fetches a professionnal grade price, it's as simple as that. The Mac Pro isn't for you if you think it's overpriced, just like many Dell buyers look at the Precision line and scream OVERPRICED at the top of their lungs.
 
I can guarantee that a benchmark using 100% cpu usage would show the previous base model mac pro to be faster than the new base model mac pro. Anyone find any benchmarks, please link!
 

Man would you quit your whining. Either you can afford it or you can't. If not, move along.

I don't bitch about Smith and Wollensky's steak prices. They're expensive, and they're freaking WORTH it. The mac pro is the same. If you don't agree, go to Ponderosa or Dell - both have similar products, enjoy.
 
for $3-4K, that looks like either the 4 core 2.93Ghz or the 8 core 2.26Ghz. Are those the ones that you're looking into? Cause the upgrade to the 8 core 2.66Ghz will run $4700. that's the jump that seems a bit steep.

The 8-core 2.26GHz is a more than capable upgrade to my 2.0 Dual G5. Bump it to 8GB RAM with a single 1TB HD and I'll be happy for quite some time. That configuration knocks me back about $3500.

One or two good paying print projects will take care of the cost, or maybe one big web site design. No big deal. In a year or two, I'll boost the RAM to 16GB and maybe add a HD or two, which will keep me satisfied for another couple years; or perhaps even longer.

The point is that most professional Mac users can and do get by with something less that absolute top-of-the-line for long periods of time. So when the upgrades do arrive, and the time is right, the cost is a secondary concern, being far outweighed by the advances in speed and technology.
 
There's about a billion feature and design decisions in these updates that make absolutely no sense to me, looking at the target user of all of these devices.

A wired numeric keyboard is now an OPTION? What do people who walk into a bestbuy to buy an iMac wanting a numeric keyboard do, since its a BTO option now?
Apple has completely lost ****ing touch.

Why not change the default, or at least have an option for a black-keyed keyboard? It would only, you know, match every single other recent apple product out there, withe the black+aluminum theme. Or is that too ambitious of an endeavor? They've only had since the plastic imac days to unify the color.
 
The case of the Mac Pro is awesome.

The price is not.


An Nvidia GeForce GT 120 in a $2,500 machine!? You've got to be kidding me.
And only 3 GB of RAM. 8GB should be the minimum.

I'm always torn with the Mac Pro. It's such an awesome machine, but the price to hardware ratio is always terrible.
 
I'm not overly impressed with the new Mac Pros.

Memory configuration is a bit strange. Priced too high, but this is probably due to "early Apple adopter tax" because of the new internals and architecture.

Waiting for the next upgrade seems the best strategy when Intel releases the 32nm chips of Nehalem based on their tick/tock strategy, we will see drastic price drops. Since I already have the 2.8GHz 8-core Mac Pro, I think this latest Mac Pro is more a side-grade.
 
I'm not overly impressed with the new Mac Pros.

Memory configuration is a bit strange. Priced too high, but this is probably due to "early Apple adopter tax" because of the new internals and architecture.

Waiting for the next upgrade seems the best strategy when Intel releases the 32nm chips of Nehalem based on their tick/tock strategy, we will see drastic price drops. Since I already have the 2.8GHz 8-core Mac Pro, I think this latest Mac Pro is more a side-grade.
With Westmere you also get 2 more cores, which may mean similar CPU prices. That being said there's still the "early Apple adopter tax."

I'm not even sure that we'll see a big update with Westmere. Anyone think it'll be like the Clovertown "update"?
 
If you enjoy paying more than the actual value for a product...this mac's for you. *I* don't like being ripped off. The product is fine in MANY ways...it's simply overpriced. I think Apple should take pride in offering great products at reasonable prices and profit margins...not seeing how much they can get through marketing hype.

You've been here since 2005 and you really believe this? Do you think Apple is sitting on 20 billion in cash because they like "reasonable profit margins?"
 
Is it ? The base Mac Pro is 2899$ on the Canadian Apple Store. I'm on Dell.ca right now and I'm pricing a Precision Workstation (business section). This thing starts at 1976$ base. Fantastic right ? Not even close. First, at 1976$, I'm getting 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, 667 mhz. I'm getting a 80 GB SATA hard drive. I'm getting a 256 MB nVidia NVS card. I'm getting a 6 year old OS (downgrade to XP is base, I have to pay extra for Vista). The processor, though a Xeon, is not a nehalem, and it's a 2.0 GHZ, quad core, single thread per core.

Let's say I do customize my super Dell workstation to be up to spec to what Apple offers, guess what happens ? The Mac Pro becomes the cheaper option and still has better specs, since I can't spec the Dell workstation for DDR3, triple channel RAM or to have a Nehalem processor with 2 threads per core.

Mac Pro buyers need to realise that what they are buying is not a competitor to the Dell Studio XPS 435, it's a Dell Precision Workstation. Professionnal grade hardware fetches a professionnal grade price, it's as simple as that. The Mac Pro isn't for you if you think it's overpriced, just like many Dell buyers look at the Precision line and scream OVERPRICED at the top of their lungs.

Apple have announced systems using Nehalem Xeons early, Dell announced and shipped systems using Penryn Xeons early. Comparing old and new isn't fair. Dell will have competing systems soon. Probably at similar prices as Dell were more expensive before.

However it is fair to compare the $2,499 Mac pro to a Studio XPS 435 as the single socket Nehalem precision will likely be of a similar price and if you don't need ECC memory then XPS 435 probably will give you similar performance assuming nothing goes wrong. On a different OS of course.
 
A wired numeric keyboard is now an OPTION?
Apple has completely lost ****ing touch.

The numeric keyboard is standard with the new Mac Pro.

You should read before you rant. :p
 

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