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Longtime Mac Pro Waiters

S

stimpycat

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 2, 2007
142
0
I appreciate that those who have only just decided to get a Mac Pro now - waiting is advisable but from the threads on here some people have been waiting a 6 months, that's just daft.

a) The new Mac Pro is unlikely to be radically different enough to justify such a wait, and will therefore be disappointing to most long time waiters I suspect. Any speed increase etc will not be noticeable by every day users surely?

b) If you do wait, and buy one the day it's launched - within 6-8 months you'll be back at square one again and simply be on the otherside of the fence - I.e a man with an 'old' Mac Pro reading forums about people waiting for a 'new' one around the corner.

A year is a very short time.

People here are talking and waiting as if this is the last Mac ever made or if it's going to have rocket power or something.

My point is - Those people that didn't wait will be the ones buying again in say 2009 where as the waiters will probably not want to buy again until 2010 so it all overlaps - you could say those who have brought this month are actually waiting for the 2009 update where as the current waiters are being impatient.

Just to put a different spin on it :)
 
I have been waiting a while. However, I can get by just fine without one right now. I also get a nice ADC discount, on top of some extra from a gift card I purchased, $700 saved in total.

a) I disagree. We have Harpertown coming, which points toward eight-cores all around. Going from quad-core core to octo-core at the same price point would be a nice boost. SS, new grahpic cards, etc etc. I don't see a reason not to wait. I am not about to buy something well over a year old.

b) I don't care what happens in 6-8 months. I am waiting. Case closed. I don't see any value in the current one when I know what is coming out.

No it will not be the last Mac, however it will be a much better value for my money than the current one. I chose to spend my money in a smart way. We can say the next one won't be fantastic, but the things coming out of Intel say otherwise. If Apple decides to skip out on those things I very well may build my own Xeon workstation.

Also, why the heck do you care? I can do what I want with my time and money. You basically calling people fools for waiting. That isn't very nice and your concern for what I do, concerns me.

What spin exactly? Explaining that some people buy and some people wait and that they will overlap? Can you say duh? There is a Mac Pro on the horizon, and I chose to wait. What more would you like me to do? Should I buy one now because you made this post?
 
Apple insiders?

Hello,

Im new to this forum, though i've been reading it daily for the past two months.
I just bought a MacPro, 2.66GHZ a month ago so you can't say i have a special interest but i've been wondering with the amount of threads saying there will be no update in the near future...
Am i the only one who suspect there are apple workers trying to make it look as though no update is planned and keep the current model still in stock? :confused:

Just my spin on things...
 
Gilad said:
Hello,

Im new to this forum, though i've been reading it daily for the past two months.
I just bought a MacPro, 2.66GHZ a month ago so you can't say i have a special interest but i've been wondering with the amount of threads saying there will be no update in the near future...
Am i the only one who suspect there are apple workers trying to make it look as though no update is planned and keep the current model still in stock? :confused:

Just my spin on things...
Click to expand...

Who knows? Steve jobs and those working on them. The Mac Pro is very outdated though, they skipped on nearly all of the Clovertown line, we can assume that is to pickup Harpertown. Which we have a rumor of Apple buying them up.

A Mac Pro is due, Macworld at the latest.
 
stimpycat said:
Any speed increase etc will not be noticeable by every day users surely?
Click to expand...
Many of the people desperately waiting for a MacPro upgrade (myself included) are not what you call "every day users". When rendering or compressing video files, a 10% or 20% performance improvement can make a huge difference. The same is true for compiling huge software projects and many other time consuming tasks - the kind of job that justifies the extra expense of an Apple "Pro" computer. Your statement would probably be correct for the majority of MacBook and iMac owners, but not for the MacPro.

- Martin
 
sblasl said:
How do you know what is "coming out", do you work for Apple?
Click to expand...

What he is saying is, the MacPro is long over due. Hasn't been updated since August 2006. It's in need of a major update. Everything in it is out dated. Video card 2 years old, better ones are out for same price. New Penryn debuting. The MacPro has the ability to go all 8-core now for the same price as the 4-core. A new one will be arriving soon.
 
StimpyCat Doesn't Know What He's Writing About

22564655.jpg
Making my blood boil. I bought the 2.66 Quad MP in August and I can tell you without reservation that it is TOO SLOW.
stimpycat said:
I appreciate that those who have only just decided to get a Mac Pro now - waiting is advisable but from the threads on here some people have been waiting a 6 months, that's just daft.
Click to expand...
Depends on what they have and how much power they have immediate need for.
stimpycat said:
a) The new Mac Pro is unlikely to be radically different enough to justify such a wait, and will therefore be disappointing to most long time waiters I suspect. Any speed increase etc will not be noticeable by every day users surely?
Click to expand...
None of us are every day users and it WILL BE RADICALLY DIFFERENT and significantly faster. Combination of 45nm Harpertown pairs and the Stoakley-Seaburg platform will make it so.
stimpycat said:
b) If you do wait, and buy one the day it's launched - within 6-8 months you'll be back at square one again and simply be on the otherside of the fence - I.e a man with an 'old' Mac Pro reading forums about people waiting for a 'new' one around the corner.

A year is a very short time.
Click to expand...
What's that got to do with anything? Some of us will buy the next model immediately as well. Some of us will not even sell the one we have and keep expanding our core farm for rendering even faster with every incremental addition.
stimpycat said:
People here are talking and waiting as if this is the last Mac ever made or if it's going to have rocket power or something.
Click to expand...
It will have rocket power. I don't see any signs anyone thinks this will be the last Mac ever made. How do you deduce that?
stimpycat said:
My point is - Those people that didn't wait will be the ones buying again in say 2009 where as the waiters will probably not want to buy again until 2010 so it all overlaps - you could say those who have brought this month are actually waiting for the 2009 update where as the current waiters are being impatient.
Click to expand...
Your "point" makes no sense in the english language. Many of us buy the new models every time they come out and sell the last one or expand our base of machines. The notion that current waiters won't buy the next model in a year or less is completely arbitrary in your imagination and nothing to do with reality.

This group is very diverse in why we need more power - some for 3D work, others for video editing and compression work, scientific research, still others for simple multitasking among 10-15 programs at once. Other posters here have explained a lot more details than I need to in this post. You are completely out of line to judge why we "wait", how we "wait" and what our future "waiting" and buying behavior will be. You don't know and we are not a monolithic thinking acting group. There are probably as many reasons for each of us waiting as there are members of the group - not to mention those who have never been to MacRumors.

I'll bet you can't even imagine how we use our Quad G5 and Quad Mac Pros to do what. And I'll bet you there are some 8 core Mac Pro owners in our group who will also buy the new one as soon as it ships because they recognize that it is not fast enough either.

Plus the fastest one that ships next month will also not be fast enough. Get it? We can't get anything fast enough for several more years.
 
Multimedia said:
Making my blood boil. I bought the 2.66 Quad MP in August and I can tell you without reservation that it is TOO SLOW.Depends on what they have and how much power then have immediate need for.
Click to expand...

You think the machine is slow? I have a Quad 3.0 that does some heavy 3D rendering and the machine is not exactly a turtle when it comes to getting work done. Maybe you need more cores...

I tend to agree with the OP. I waited quite some time, then eventually broke down and got a 3.0 on eBay for a decent price. No regrets here, and I have been able to enjoy the speed and expandability of the new machine. The next generation will always be faster, but hard from a quantum leap in speed from whats out now. (one of the rare occasions we saw a HUGE speed jump was when going from G4 to intel core duo in the laptop line)
 
The argument for many, including myself, is value for money. I cannot, in good conscience, give Apple over $3,000.00 for last year's hardware. The Mac Pro has not seen one price cut to adjust for declining prices of its current hardware. The prime example of that is the cost of the end-of-life (EOL'd) Radeon x1900xt. Apple charges $400.00 for this part, a part that ATI themselves discontinued nine months ago and no longer make. The next equivalent part from ATI is the x1950xt, and it sells for $150.00. nVidia's 8800GTS (640 meg), as another example, can be had for about $320.00 if you know where to look, and it is newer and far superior to the x1900xt. Why in the world would I give Apple $400.00 for a video card that was released in January 2006??!!

FBDIMM's have decreased in price significantly since the Mac Pro's inception over a year ago, as have hard drive prices. Of course many people are aware that it is better to purchase extra memory and hard drives from 3rd party vendors, but at the same time it is rather insulting that Apple would charge someone $323.00 for a 500 gig hard drive, when one could purchase three for that price. And what about the CPUs??? The upcoming Harpertown quad-core chips will sell for roughly the same price as the dual-core CPUs in the Mac Pro now.

There is better technology currently available (video cards), and better technology on the way inside of 30 days (Harpertown quad-core, energy efficient CPUs, Stoakley-Seaburg platform with 1600 FSB). As suneohair has stated, what do you care what we do with our money?

Oh, and I like this statement the best:

within 6-8 months you'll be back at square one again and simply be on the otherside of the fence
Click to expand...

How do you figure??? The Mac Pro has gone 435 days without an update, yet you think in 6-8 months time they are going to update is again?? Think again. :rolleyes:
 
This is why I think Apple is keeping a new MacPro so secret. There will be an update this year. I don't think Apple could hold out until January. Well, they could, but I don't think they will. MacPro with Leopard. "This is what Leopard can do on 8-Cores."
 
Apple really over-charges for their ram, I just checked their website.

At OWC, I can buy 4 gigs of ram for 250 dollars.

On Apple's website, it costs 700 dollars.

One could get 8-10 gigs of ram from OWC for the exact same price.

What a rip-off!!
 
The main reason some people have been waiting for such a long time is that they did not expect apple to go so long without updating the mac pro. Simple as that. When the mac pro came out in August 2006 there were plenty of things slated to be released a few months later- quad core, stoakly seaburg, new graphics cards etc. It was reasonable to assume that Apple would update the models, at least in some way, in early to mid 2007. But after 14 months Apple are still selling the original three models completely unchanged, and the long term waiters are amazed it has been this long. If they had known it would be this long when there began to wait, then I doubt if many would have waited at all, but with Apple there is no way to know so you just have to guess. The longer it has been since the last release, the closer you are to a new release and the more reason there is to wait (that applies to both "old waiters" and "new waiters"). If you wait a long time then lose patience and buy one, and then a new model is released 2 weeks later then you will naturally regret your decision to buy, as you will see what you could have got for the same money. You can tell yourself "I don't care, I got what I wanted, when I wanted it, and had two extra weeks of use out of it" but it won't silence the voice that is telling you that you really ****ed up your major purchase.
My reason for waiting: I want 8 cores to future proof me for using lots of Audio Units in Logic 8 (they spread very well across multiple cores), but I cannot afford the current 8 core mac pro (and this chipset appears to be strangled by memory transfer issues anyway). I want my mac pro to last me a long time without reservations, and I think it will not be long until something I will be happy with is released. There is no reason for Apple not to release a new mac pro range soon.
 
This forum needs more thread of people stating their opinion on why you should wait/not wait for the Mac Pro, and then a ton of posts by WildBill/Suneohair/MultiMedia refuting/defending the persons position.


It's like a no, with a yessy aftertaste.
 
I love these threads. Amusing. I'm waiting. I've had my G5 2.0 since what, June 2004? It still does the job, albeit slow, but does the job. I can wait. If Apple is listening drop the price of the current models by 30% and I'll take one off your hands.
 
Sean Dempsey said:
It's like a no, with a yessy aftertaste.
Click to expand...


you win! best thing i read on the interwebs today. :)

went from dual 1.8 g5 to quad 2.66. i don't care what comes out next, this is really freaking fast, much more quiet, and much more expandable. well, i only use it for email and watching keynotes, but it does that REALLY well.
 
I'm only waiting up to 2 weeks after Leopard is released. I am in need of a new computer. Too many projects due. I spent at least 3,000 on this POS G4 when it first came out. I seriously think I would get my money's worth on a new MacPro Old or New. Don't really care anymore. But I will only wait until November 14th.
 
I Have An Insatiable Lust For More Speed Beyond What Is Possible Tomorrow

4JNA said:
Went from dual 1.8 g5 to quad 2.66. i don't care what comes out next, this is really freaking fast, much more quiet, and much more expandable. well, i only use it for email and watching keynotes, but it does that REALLY well.
Click to expand...
Try crushing video and you will realize it's not freaking fast at all. :rolleyes: Only fastER.
22564655.jpg

I am Leopard, Hear me Roar!
 
4JNA said:
wow, tough luck. my 'super secret' friend told me the release date is 11/15, it will be four times as fast, half as big, and cost only half as much. better luck next time. ;)
Click to expand...

Well if there are really good rumors of a MacPro update around then, then obviously I will wait. But I'm still guessing a major MacPro update is coming with Leopard.
 
Let me see... Yeah! I'm still running on a boring Single processor Powermac G5 1.8! This sucker is still managable but there is no way I'm going to buy a new Mac Pro now. As for the poster of this thread said... It's just an obvious reality that whatever we will buy will eventually be out dated... the only thing is that we won't be stupid enough to fasten the process espacially if the price will be similar to what is now selling. So keep on conveincing yourself that you did the right move and be happy... don't spread your false joy to every right minded here!
 
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