Why I haven't been able to switch to Mac even though I want to.

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An older Mac Pro might be your solution. Or a hackintosh.

 

A hackintosh is the perfect solution if you only want one machine. I'm thinking about building one myself. That's the one thing I miss from my Windows days.

 

This really just sounds like buyers remorse, maybe having a plan for purchases would keep you from spending all this money unnecessarily, and allow you to get the Mac Pro you seem to want. You could after all get the base model and upgrade it to your liking, I don't think they've updated the page for it recently so I'm pretty sure it can handle way more than 8TB internally. If you're citing processor prices, I'm thinking you put together your machine yourself, so upgrading a Mac Pro shouldn't be that much more trouble, and you'd save a lt not buying the upgrades from Apple. Or try Refurbished and upgrade fom there. I personally use a 15" 2011 MBP 2.2 although I'm just a student and I don't really push it so your mileage may vary.

 

Your computing needs may be greater than mine, but my first Mac performed much better than my previous similarly configured Windows Machine; Mac OS seems more efficient in managing memory (and processor?) so you might be able to get the same "bang" with a Mac with less impressive specifications!?!

 

Hackintosh

Hackintosh is your best choice. Legitimacy aside, it really is. I don't think Apple cares all that much either since they're just not going for that part of the market. Sure they'll go after Psystar for trying to make money off of it, but I don't think they really care that much about individuals installing OSX on plain PC hardware. And it really isn't that hard. I've done many linux installations that were more difficult. There are Intel-based motherboards that are close enough to be natively supported by OSX.

 

I would go with the hackintosh route is your best bet

 

There are plenty of forums about hackintoshing. As long as you buy an OSx disk, Apple doesn't really care.

 

YOU can do What I did in the opposite direction. I am bringing in a pc to my home after using only mac for 15 years.

I sold a mac pro and an iMac then I added a custom built pc and a 2011 mac mini server.

my mini server has vmWare fusion and windows 7 my pc only has windows 7.

benefits are cost. the server and the pc cost about 2k. really 3k counting 46 inch sony tv and drives.

the mac pro and the iMac cost about 4.5k. more like 4.9k counting ssd addons


I find I am using the pc unit as much as the server.

I built a pc for quiet first maybe I will hackintosh it maybe not. it is better then the mac pro quad core 2.8 in every way except the gpu.
the gpu is a 7.1 windows experience score.
the pro had a 5870 which was a 7.6 on windows experience score.

it is unreal for quiet. I am lazy but I may hackintosh it.

 

Hackintosh

I'd never thought about hackintoshing until yesterday when I found out more about it! I found a YouTube channel that walks you through every step in great detail. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCED7EB31338F57A9&feature=plcp. Watch the video's I found them very interesting. Also check out the Tony Mac Blog. It has all the downloads needed and a great forum if you want to ask any questions. The recommended build page is great personally i'm doing the pro build #1 I linked to in August.

 

A mac-mini was in no way near what I needed power wise.

A mac-pro was over kill and a budget stretcher.


I found the 3.4 Ghz i7 2011 27" iMac to be ideal - especially when a second display is added.

 

Do you need the power for some particular app, or you just "need" it to have better spec than some PC you can build for similar price, or some other psychological reason?


Unless you have some specific hard core workload, even a 13" MBA is fine for most people.

Unless you're playing high end games... but the mac isn't really the right platform for high end gaming at the moment. Get a console or keep your PC for that.

If it is the storage requirement, stick PC-BSD on the PC and just fill it up with disk, and run it as a ZFS NAS.

 

you do need a mac pro

so your saying you have a quad core sandy bridge e processor at 3.6ghz and a geekbench around 13k, you need 12tb of storage and you don't need a mac pro?

the mac pro base is at around 8500 but is running 3 year old tech ( before you bash me hear remember the 2010 xeons were just minor clock bumps to the 09's)

the new mac pro will be around 15k or more so wait for that and maybe it will fit your needs

 

the hardware has a lot to do with it,look it up and you should be fine.

Have you considered a TB storage solution and useing your laptop?

 

I also want a mid range Mac that doesn't have a built in screen.

 

Not if you are talking about "pure" processign power. OS X may be somehow faster in starting/switching programs and overall more responsible, but when you don soem computation-heavy work, the system with faster CPU will always win. And memory allocator in Windows 7 is about on par with the one in OS X.

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I too, I too Give me a new Mac Cube!

 

actually the 1700 iMac is closer to 8k

 

Geekbench

As far as geekbench scores go, my i7 iMac is getting over 10,000 but it's almost 3 years old now.

I've thought about a Hackintosh as well but I don't want to worry about some software update scuttling my setup.

Cost is definetely a consideration for most everything these days but being a Mac user I just want it to work.

And I want to stay the heck away from the Windows machines I deal with for my day gig, pretty much all day long.