You don't need a Mac Pro to do that. You don't even need a current model at all...hell plenty of ACTUAL pros are still using G5s believe it or not.
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Apple Introduces New Mac Pro with Nehalem Xeon Processors
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You don't need a Mac Pro to do that. You don't even need a current model at all...hell plenty of ACTUAL pros are still using G5s believe it or not.
Why is it elistist to state facts ? Apple has abandonned the Prosumer market in favor of the Professionnal market and consumer markets. Is a dual core iMac really not powerful enough for home video/photo editing ? If you're making money off your work with the Mac, is the Mac Pro really that big of a dent in your profit ?
The best way to get Apple to sell a machine with consumer grade hardware (i7-920s, non ECC RAM, etc..) is to ask them for it. If there is enough demand, they will make a product for the segment.
True. There is another thread with a guy who took out a loan of $8000 to buy a new machine in another forum "so he could torrent faster." I wonder if he is making money from his machine?
I would also say that graphic and video enthusiasts could also benefit from this machine, if they have the dough.
Mine (a rev. A ALU) spends more time playing beachball than working. Other than that its not like it has a low memory ceiling, tiny hard drive that can't be upgraded without tearing it apart, third-rate graphics, slot loading drive that can't take clients mini-DVDs, and not enough ports for all the external devices needed to make up for its deficiencies or anything. Oh wait. It just might be the worst computer I've ever owned and that's including the POS compaq that I bought has an experiment that died after 18-months.
We do, continuously. It doesn't meet Steve and Jonathan's ideology of pretty looking underpowered all in ones for everyone.
AVCHD doesn't play nice with G5's. There are work arounds (Voltaic), but basically what i've heard is that you need a minimum intel processor to work with AVCHD.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1414858&tstart=0
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/549090/
The absolute fastest always costs disproportionally more than the amount of gain being offered: simply put, its the law of diminishing returns.
Personally, for a home hobby machine, the first question I'd ask is if your current machine is so "slow" that you believe that its worth the cost to replace it. For as long as the answer is 'No', simply stick with what you have. In general, expect that you'll be OK until you upgrade some other relevant portion of your workflow. For example, I'm looking at going from an 8MP to a 21MP dSLR, so the horsepower demands for processing RAW files is going to roughly triple. Hence, the camera upgrade is going to also drive a computer upgrade too. I keep all of this news in perspective by remining myself that either basic Mac Pro models are cheaper than the camera body I'm looking at.
-hh
Here is the reply to my enquiry - seems OWC are as baffled as I am by the 32Gig requirement
"As for now OWC is only going to offer the larger kit, just like Apple. We have one of the mac pro coming in so we can do our own testing on the 4gb's. We don't know without testing if it can work good with a smaller kit size. So, until we get the mac pro in and do testing, we have to only sell what Apple does. And we want to find out the details on why they suggest the larger kit, going to take some time to figure out, too new of a system. Lately customers are going with the 16gb with 2gb modules. All of us just have to wait, unfortunately."
Firewire/USB can take care of about every gripe you've list here, including lack of ports (Hubs!).
Did it ever maybe cross your mind that this "We" you're refering to is actually just a vocal minority ?
If the prosumer PowerMacs were selling so well, why would Apple cut off that segment from an upgrade ? I get the feeling that Steve and Jonathan's thinking is that the prosumer market rejected the MAC or is already too saturated with many competitive offers and the razor thin margins just aren't worth the effort for a niche player like Apple.
If the industry analysts are to be believed, the consumer market for $800+ desktop towers is vanishing rapidly. According to Gartner and others, it appears that most consumers with $1000 or more to spend on a computer are going after notebooks.
I'm really looking forward to the end of March now because when Nehalem gets officially released by Intel it won't take long for the likes of Dell to put similar systems up for sale. Then we'll see if this price hiking is limited to Apple. As it stands, we know that Apple could sell these machines for a good $1000 less and make the same kind of profit as they did with the last Mac Pros at release.
If Dell suddenly releases similar specced workstations at $1000 less than Apple then Apple will have some serious egg on their collective faces. OS X or not.
If Dell suddenly releases similar specced workstations at $1000 less than Apple then Apple will have some serious egg on their collective faces. OS X or not.
If on the other hand, Dell releases workstations more expensive than similar Mac Pros, then some posters here will have a lot of egg on them
doubtful though.
Very true. The Pentium M (and to a lesser extent the drastic improvement of notebook graphics cards compared to their desktop brethren) changed the game plan considerably. When the Pentium Ms came out people were hacking together desktops with pentium ms and overclocking them because they were so much faster (for the money) than the P4s and even Athlon 64s of the time. The fact that the current Intel lineup is all based off from the laptop based Pentium M rather than the desktop based P4 speaks untold words. You can now get the same performance in a laptop as in a desktop with a relatively small difference in cost - six years ago that simply wasn't the case.
However, we're talking about professionals here with the Mac Pro. A lot of professionals actually use the extra stuff in the Mac Pros. I use my four cores in my MP regularly and if I had an eight core, I'd do the same. While I love my MBP, I can't let three jobs run on it while tinkering around on it browsing the net etc. Mind you, I think the large majority of 'Pro' users have a laptop to accompany their desktops anyway.
Compare the current T5400 to last generation Mac Pros and post accordingly today. That way, you're sure not to have egg on your face.
Hahahaha! That is true. However, I don't think Dell will miss this opportunity to appear far far better value than Apple. Hell, if they do undercut Apple by $1000 but to do so they have to significantly cut their margins compared to the rest of their machines, it would probably still be worth it in the terms of long term Dell v Apple image. The news headlines on the tech sites would waste no time to start shouting out "Dell undercuts Apple by 50%", "Apple Tax live and kicking" or "OS X is now $1000 more expensive than Windows". Such headlines would be read by a lot of people - even if its a non-techie glancing over some headlines and that would end up making more people think that Macs cost much more than Dells. Which is something mac enthusiasts have been able to disprove on the whole over the last few years by comparing specs price for price.
Is this a new policy? I didn't know Apple offered rebates in situations like this - is there info available on this (because I just bought one of the "old" towers last week and wouldn't mind getting a little bit back myself)?
Inferior products? The point is if you have CHOICES you can get the BEST POSSIBLE hardware for the best possible prices. Do you honestly believe that Apple's hardware is anything special? It's not. And before you tell me how few problems it has compared to Dell or someone else, take a look at the issues the MBP had the past couple of years from keyboard problems to failing Nvidia GPUs. They are FAR from perfect. Paying double what the hardware is worth might be fine by you, but it's not fine by me. I would not have even purchased my MBP had I not got almost $600 off because of the emerging uni-body models which I didn't like anyway (I got a matte screen and two firewire ports, etc. on mine). To me, a Mac is the Operating System, not the clone-based hardware it now runs on. Being able to choose the hardware I WANT instead of the hardware they want to sell me and getting it for a competitive, yet fair price is what I want. Feel free to pay anything Apple asks, though.
Apple offers three different processors, both for the old model and new model. They are compared at their "level" of low-end, middle, and high-end option. And My numbers are completely accurate.
I'm going to keep re-posting this chart until I stop hearing people misleading everyone.. (purposefully or not)
Only the highest end CPU is more, and only by ~8% .. The other two are actually cheaper. And we all know the costs of the platform, GPUs, memory, have hardly changed at all. The only thing that can even be justified to add cost is the modification of the internal case..
Face it, Apple jacked the margins beyond belief... I am NOT a happy camper right now..
It's not about what someone "needs" or even wants. People want to feel that they are getting a fair value for their money. The fact is, even by Apple's standards, you just got completely ripped off. Why you are particularly happy about that is beyond me...
pprior said:
That's a ridiculous suggestion. More competition would lead to better components, faster updates, etc if Apple was forced to increase value and reduce their ridiculous margins..
Anyone who needs multiple FireWire 800 devices running off their computer, like, oh, say, videographers or musicians who have multiple hard drives or A/V decks running on their computer. Besides, it's not hurting anything.
Do we know how many FIREWIRE 800 busses this new Mac Pro has even though there are 4 FW800 connections? - as this has a big impact on Music peripherals. It's virtually impossible to run a decent audio interface and have an audio HD on 1 buss without encountering issues.....
You know WHY they did it? They just made RECORD BREAKING PROFITS during the worst recession known to man since the Great Depression (worse in some ways because it's global). This means that their sales are either right in the sweet spot for maximizing profits OR their prices are way too low for what the market will bear. So they're testing the waters to see how much people are willing to pay to own a Mac while simultaneously trying to make sure (i.e. Psystar) that no one else can offer a Mac for less money to undercut them. Despite what some people think, there is NO COMPETITION for Mac hardware. It doesn't matter that it's the SAME hardware that Dell and others use. If you cannot put OS X on Dell hardware (without hacking anyway), then that hardware is MEANINGLESS when used in conjunction with OS X because it doesn't work! The only possible recourse that could make a case for competition is for someone to abandon all their Mac software and switch to the Windows or Linux operating system so they can use that cheaper priced hardware.
Put bluntly, Apple has a monopoly on the hardware for its operating system! It doesn't matter that hte hardware is the same as Dell because you cannot put OS X on a Dell (again, unless you want to hackintosh your way through life, which I think is a perfectly valid option, but then I'm rooting for Psystar to kick Apple's butt so we can FINALLY get some SANE prices).
Again, the ONLY REASON Apple is ABLE to charge those prices is beacuse they have ABSOLUTELY *NO* COMPETITION for hardware. So as long as people want OS X and don't want Vista, people will keep paying astronomical prices OR they'll put up with Vista's limitations (or get a hold of XP or give Linux a try). When Windows 7 comes out and IF it's as good as some say, this free-for-all greed party will come to a rather abrupt end (sooner for many in this and other threads that have already cried ENOUGH and are willing to go crawling to Microsoft to avoid paying Steve Robz 2x what his company's hardware is worth.
Their last quarterly profits combined with the latest satisfaction surveys for Apple indicate that you are WRONG. Now don't ge ME wrong beacuse I agree 200% with you. But the fact is as long as the numbers keep telling Apple people are willing to pay MORE and as long as there is no competition to undercut them, you can be plenty sure they will charge AS MUCH AS THE MARKET WILL BEAR and not a penny less.
In short, GET USED TO IT or move on because Apple are greedmongers and don't CARE about you (remember you have to PAY to get "AppleCARE"; it's not free!)
Neglegting Apple's core users
It's worth commenting that a large quantity of MAC PRO users are self employed / sole trader Musicians / designers / editors etc and for us these pricing issues are a real issue. iIt's amongst these groups that a large quantity of Apple's loyal fan base is but the way they have positioned these models seems more at larger agencies / institutions and neglecting those core users in the creative industries.
Agreed??
It's worth commenting that a large quantity of MAC PRO users are self employed / sole trader Musicians / designers / editors etc and for us these pricing issues are a real issue. iIt's amongst these groups that a large quantity of Apple's loyal fan base is but the way they have positioned these models seems more at larger agencies / institutions and neglecting those core users in the creative industries.
Agreed??
In light of the new Mac Pro and given its overpriced status, are there any places offering close-outs on the previous model for a substantially reduced price? (e.g. I got my MBP for almost $600 less than the new uni-body MBP and about the same price as the new regular Macbook via such a closeout price).