How I gave up waiting for a new MacPro, bought the fastest rMBP and never looked back

[xShane]

How I gave up waiting for a new MacPro, bought the fastest rMBP and never looked back.....

I'll make this short.

Im a composer / musician who scores music for films. I need a lot of horsepower and very fast reads from SSDs, due to mammoth sample-libraries for my Orchestral music.

I owned a 2010 4 core Mac Pro Tower with 32 gig of RAM and 5 internal 128gig SSD's hooked up to 3 displays. CPU wise, that is a little under-powered and it is generally agreed that for Music , the 6-core is the sweet spot for professional music production.

Well....the rMBP is just under the 6-core speed according to Geekbench.

So ...i bought it. With 16gig ofRAM and the 768 gig SSD (read speeds are just about 500) . I also bought a 27 inch Thunderbolt display.

So, I brought it home, migrated all my data from Tower to rMBP. I took an HDMI cable from rMBP to my over head 1080 TV, another thunderbolt cable to TB display, hooked up my full sized keyboard, midi controllers and mice to the TB 27inch Display (it's a hub)

Loaded up my busiest, most CPU intensive session from my tower......


and hit play............

IT PLAYED!! ...my CPU meters in Logic Audio barely blinked, and that super fast internal SSD inside the rMBP streamed all my strings, brass, woodwinds like a champ!

unbelievable.


The best part?
At the end of the day, I wanted to chill out on the couch and continue editing my recording session...just unhooked 2 cables....and ALL that power came with me to the couch.

To keep things safe, I have a time-capsule that backs up wireless, when im disconnected from the big rig and over ethernet ( the 27 TB display has ethernet ) when hooked up to big rig.

I am free !!


absolutely amazing. That rMBP is running a 27 inch, a 1080 hdmi tv and its own display and audio in/out is powered by the UAD Apollo TB audio interface.

and I've got 6-core MACpro power in a friggin laptop.


Embrace the future, it's here.
I won't be needing that desktop ;-)

best,
SvK

Glad to hear it worked out for you Sounds like you have an awesome setup there.

 

[SvK]

xShane.
thank you!

 

[Cinematics]

Awesome story, SvK ! It seems, professionals are shifting to portable world.
Portability and convenience help us to achieve spectacular results!

 

[Ploki]

I was in the same boat, music production/composition. Had a 2008 8-core, was waiting for a new Mac Pro to come out. On the other hand because I do work on the go a lot, I needed something to replace my 2008 unibody as well.

Sadly we have reached a point where the MacBook Pro is almost as fast as the Mac Pro. This is why we need a refresh.

I barely touch my Mac Pro these days. Having to transfer files over to the Mac Pro is just a hassle when I can do everything directly on the MacBook Pro; and if I need more monitors, I can hook them up.

Finally just picked up a Promise Pegasus J4 to store my media, and that's fast and more efficient for my needs than dealing with the slow HDDs in my desktop.

Just a year ago, I would have never imagined let alone argued that the MacBook Pro is a Mac Pro replacement. Today I can say for sure that my rMBP is more than enough for my needs and I think I'm ready to get rid of the Mac Pro.

Sadly for the Mac Pro line, not sadly for the macbook pro line.

I sold my Mac Pro to buy the rMBP. I'm extremely content with how it performs. I hate the whole file-transfer fiasco, cost me a 200 kilometer drive on more than a few occasions due to forgotten files.

Fact is, i just looked at rMBP Geekbench score and it surpassed the 2008 Mac Pro score. Since the Mac Pro was doing pretty much everything I needed it to do, it was a nobrainer.

IT PLAYED!! ...my CPU meters in Logic Audio barely blinked, and that super fast internal SSD inside the rMBP streamed all my strings, brass, woodwinds like a champ!

unbelievable.


The best part?
At the end of the day, I wanted to chill out on the couch and continue editing my recording session...just unhooked 2 cables....and ALL that power came with me to the couch.

To keep things safe, I have a time-capsule that backs up wireless, when im disconnected from the big rig and over ethernet ( the 27 TB display has ethernet ) when hooked up to big rig.

I am free !!


absolutely amazing. That rMBP is running a 27 inch, a 1080 hdmi tv and its own display and audio in/out is powered by the UAD Apollo TB audio interface.

and I've got 6-core MACpro power in a friggin laptop.


Embrace the future, it's here.
I won't be needing that desktop ;-)

best,
SvK

The good thing is when Thunderbolt pickups, you can have fast latency-free external storage expanded when/if you need it. When SSD prices come down I'm just going to start buying a separate SSD for each project I work on, and a Thunderbolt enclosure for it. That way I just archive the drive which is what, 100euros for the 128Gb version... Just work on the drive, when you finish take it out of enclosure - store it, you're done with it. Seems dreamy.

 

[QJMan]

This story looks like my friend's experience from last summer!
He is working at professional movie industry, used Mac Pro all the time,
until I showed him these Geekbench graphs!
Recently he bought cMBP, and uses it all the time, with Apple Cinema Display.

 

[stu.h]

Sure it was.

Didn't realise we are in October already.