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Whats keeping you from getting a new Mac Pro?

illegalprelude said:
Epic Fail. Some of the biggest POS computers out there. Beyond the fact that its a windows unit, Gateway uses the bottom of the barrel parts. Plus, there is a lot more to a Mac Pro then just spec for spec, aka expandability but thats another topic that will just go round and round 🙂
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Not according to my store's return rate. Epic fail on your part regarding the reliability and return rates of todays computers.

Vista SP1 works fine, just as good as XP did after it's second SP. What bottom of the barrel parts ? You need to toss that tired old urban legend away. The Gateways of 5 or 6 years ago were terrible, but the new ones of the last couple of years are good machines. I know what the return rates are. You, on the other hand, are blowing smoke. The Gateway my customer bought had a better CPU, video card and HD than the MacPro. The tower I sold the customer had plenty of expandability for his needs. At $800.

Btw, MacBook Pros and iMacs have some of the highest return rates. Defective video cards and lcds. Only Acers are worse. Epic fail, indeed.
 
Bubba Satori said:
Not according to my store's return rate. Epic fail on your part regarding the reliability and return rates of todays computers.

Vista SP1 works fine, just as good as XP did after it's second SP. What bottom of the barrel parts ? You need to toss that tired old urban legend away. The Gateways of 5 or 6 years ago were terrible, but the new ones of the last couple of years are good machines. I know what the return rates are. You, on the other hand, are blowing smoke. The Gateway my customer bought had a better CPU, video card and HD than the MacPro. The tower I sold the customer had plenty of expandability for his needs. At $800.

Btw, MacBook Pros and iMacs have some of the highest return rates. Defective video cards and lcds. Only Acers are worse. Epic fail, indeed.
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Sure Macs may have their problems but so do every other brand. I work in electronics retail myself and I see everything returned with issues, both macs and PCs, Dells and Acers. Less macs get returned though most likely because we don't sell as many as we do PCs. Gateways, Acers and Dells have the most "stupid" problems such as dead out of the box units though.
 
No one seems to know about the ram. Can't buy just 2 x 4GB on the apple web site, so don't know even if it can run on 2 x 4GB ram (from 3rd party) or any combinations.

Also would be running an eizo 21" , until acd 30" LCD comes out. If I get an answer on the ram, I'll buy same day.
 
Apart from the obvious hesitation because of the cost other alarm bells are ringing for me. This machine is already touted as early 2009 which by itself means there will be a late 2009 model ? Also the dreaded revision A syndrome which we see all too often from hardware. To me the new mac pro looks a little unfinished particularly the ram slots and the lack of a quadro card. Can this really be the machine that they launch snow leopard with ? From my understanding something is missing i believe. If open cl is to be maximised then surely we need a more powerfull card or does it help with multiple cards ? I have the funds and one kidney left. So now it's a case of studying the bench marks which must be imminent and then finally waiting for the snow leopard release to bite the bullet.Some things remain constant with apple particulary revision A products, price falls, and with hindsight even forum reactions to new products are becoming very predictable.

BLESSED BE THE EARLY ADOPTER
 
chedda said:
Also the dreaded revision A syndrome which we see all too often from hardware.
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Heard a lot about it; never had it happen. It's a myth.

From my understanding something is missing i believe.
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What, then?

Some things remain constant with apple particulary revision A products, price falls, and with hindsight even forum reactions to new products are becoming very predictable.
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Except that Apple never lowers the price of a product during its lifetime.
 
Waiting for Snow Leopard

I really want the new Mac Pro, and I have set aside the cash for it.

But I think I will wait until there is a version of it bundled with Snow Leopard.

I prefer to get a machine that is already configured/tuned for the new OS.

For example, my understanding is that ATI/AMD is rewriting their drivers for Snow Leopard in order to take advantage of Grand Central and to enable OpenCL. It's a serious enough commitment that that is where their Apple-specific resources are going instead of additional cards for Leopard. So *maybe* there will be more video card choices under Snow Leopard, and I'm hoping 4870 X2 or whatever else is "hot" in June.

Also, I wanted to wait to see some specific benchmarks. But in a few weeks, waiting to June becomes not such a big deal.

Of course, I'm assuming that June will be the Snow Leopard release. :apple:
 
Tallest Skil said:
Nineteen years. They don't drop prices.
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Ok, whatever helps you sleep at night. It's not a common occurrence (especially of late), but it's not unheard of.

So in your alleged nineteen years of Mac usage, how many of them came after puberty, and buying the machines on your own?
 
Bubba Satori said:
Here's what a customer told me about why he didn't get a MacPro. He had just bought a Nikon D300 and Lightroom. He was replacing his old 3.4Ghz P4 XP box with 1GB memory, 64 MB video card and 120GB HD.

I showed him the last gen MacPro single quad for $2,399. He said his daughter had one and was using Aperture.

He asked what a similar PC would cost. I showed him a new Gateway i7, 8GB memory, 750GB HD and 1GB Nvidia 210 video card. Faster CPU, four times as much memory, twice as much HD and a much better standard video card. $800.
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Some things to consider:

1) Don't compare amount of ram, mac pros can handle more, and mac pros take much faster ram.
2) i7 is not a server grade processor like an xeon is. Xeon's are built to be pushed to there limits for long amounts of time.
3) HD space, mac pro has 4 hard drive slots that don't require messing with wires
4) Graphics, mac pro can take 4 cards. The gateway only has 1 pcie slot
5) Service; Gateway:what service? Mac: Amazing service
6) build quality: Gateway: Quality? whats that? Mac: Extremely well built
7) ITS A FREAKING GATEWAY!!!! Gateways are down there with E-machine and dell! They suck!
 
For what it's worth, I don't expect to see a Mac Pro price drop any time soon, I just have this deeply ingrained hatred of false blanket statements.

edit: Above hatred also applies to glossy screens, USB being used for anything except input devices, and the new small keyboards.
 
I'm waiting for benchmarks, preferably some that will give me both OSX marks as well as XP/Vista benchmarks (blasting away at badguys in a Windows Boot Camp partition helps mellow me out after a long day 🙂).

I want to decide on 4 cores or 8 cores, but have no idea which way to go until benchmarks start rolling out... I also want to wait for a bit until the memory of my last big purchase fades from the lady's mind (had to replace my MBP a few weeks ago). She doesn't like it when I drop oodles of cash on computers instead of on her. 😛
 
For me it is simply that the specs have not changed all the much from my current Mac Pro (06 model). I can see reason to upgrade, but for the price it is not worth it yet. Maybe in a year or two. This girl still has a lot of life left in her.
 
Tallest Skil said:
Examples, please, of it happening at all.😕
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iPhone is the most recent example, but of course isn't a computer.

My PowerBook 3400c/240 and Power Mac 6500/300 both had price drops right around the time I bought them. I can't recall which was which, but one dropped right before I bought, and the other dropped right after.

8600 had a drop, as did the 9600 at the same time if memory serves.

I believe there was a drop in the Yikes/Sawtooth era as well, but that might be ****** del toro
 
I'm not convinced the new chips are really going to be worth the upgrade for me. Every user is different though and some will buy and never even use 80% of the power it can handle.
 
grue said:
iPhone is the most recent example, but of course isn't a computer.

My PowerBook 3400c/240 and Power Mac 6500/300 both had price drops right around the time I bought them. I can't recall which was which, but one dropped right before I bought, and the other dropped right after.

8600 had a drop, as did the 9600 at the same time if memory serves.

I believe there was a drop in the Yikes/Sawtooth era as well, but that might be ****** del toro
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So none since '96, then. Thought so.😛

I think it's safe to say that Apple doesn't do price drops, since the Scully/Amelio era was its own tyrant.
 
Tallest Skil said:
So none since '96, then. Thought so.😛

I think it's safe to say that Apple doesn't do price drops, since the Scully/Amelio era was its own tyrant.
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There are also minor ones from time to time, but they generally predated the current situation where douchebags buy anything with an Apple logo to make themselves feel cool. See also: Pre 3rd-gen iPod.

But yeah, I'm not saying Apple makes a habit of it, but to say that they never do it is the kind of blanket statement that drives me to rage-induced madness. Everyone between the age of birth and about 17 can evoke the same reaction.
 
What's keeping me from getting a new mac pro:

1) My Mac Pro is still new to me
2) Money. To get a comperable, relative time wise future proof version to be comparable to what I have (8 core, 8gig of ram, wifi, 2TB storage) would cost about $5400 (it's with 12 gigs of ram on new config, as I don't see a point if you're getting i7 based technology to set your ram up as dual channel as the technology is designed to be enhanced to use triple channel, which to me is really the only reason why apple would sell their base configs as 3 (3x1gig) and 6 gigs (6x1gig); I paid a lot less for mine being slightly used (by about 3 months) and still under warranty.
3) I don't necessarily need bleeding edge technology. an 8 Core Xeon is fast enough for me, and will run my MacOS perfectly fine, and my bootcamp (for the few windows apps I need) just fine. Eventually I know I'll need to upgrade, but not atm.

Eventually, after the new machines have been out for a while, and when I see a real need to upgrade, I'll look on the lightly used market.
 
While I'm bored and posting here, I should mention that at this moment, it's almost 11pm and I'm at work, waiting for this godforsaken render to finish so I can burn off screeners for corporate partners. Who likes pizza?
 
grue said:
While I'm bored and posting here, I should mention that at this moment, it's almost 11pm and I'm at work, waiting for this godforsaken render to finish so I can burn off screeners for corporate partners. Who likes pizza?
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where are you? its 7:50 here in CT.
 
Macpropro80 said:
where are you? its 7:50 here in CT.
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Melbourne, Australia. I'm sitting here watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall and watching Compressor sllloooowwwwwwllllllllllyyyyyy do its thing, and then I need to burn off eight copies of the screener after I finish. I eagerly await OpenCL + new version of Final Cut Studio that will take advantage of it.
 
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