Mac Pro

[asonda]

Hi All,

I've made the decision to go for a Apple Mac Pro.

With the 8-Core Xeon set-up. The base model is £2,499.

I'm not rushing into buying such a machine as I'd only want a Mac Pro for doing certain things, Video Processing, Rendering, Encoding and use of 'Mac Only' Applications for program coding and such.

It's a strange situation I'm in because as you all know, I provide top quality gaming machines, Quad-Core liquid cooled beasts along with I.T support for our locality and business I.T support.

I know that I can build myself a monster of a PC for around under £1200 with a Intel Core i7 Processor, Terrabytes of Storage, Gigabytes of Ram and mental Graphics set-up.

Basically, those of you that use Macs, I want you to persuade me to get a Mac Pro.

Those of you who are die hard PC lovers, persuade me, NOT to get a MAC.

Interesting...

Those in the middle ground, how would you weight it up? Remember the possibility of a Hackintosh (PC Running MAC OS) but i'd have to find out how naughty it is, even with a legally paid for licence for the software.

 

[nickpp]

We use mac pros

Think the os blows windows out of the water, less viruses ect etc.

Vever had one fail yet either...(may regret saying this)

Got a 4 year old 17 inch g4 powerbook that is still going strong also.

You can always boot into windows if you need or use a virtual machine that has the windows app on the mac dock

 

[Dawg]

My sister has just got one of those FO size Macs, £3.2k it cost her in all. Absolutely loves it. But she needs it to run Final Cut Pro 7, which most people don't.

 

[asonda]

There are lots of positive comments about MACs in general these days. I personally think it's down the the iPod and iPhone. The younger generation are getting in on the game and subsequently creating a bigger market for the MAC.

Final Cut Studio is something that I may need to use 'eventually' but that is something that would come a year or more later down the line.

However there are specific MAC apps I do want/need to use. Is anybody familiar with 'Hackintosh'.

 

[Steve_D]

I have a MacBook Pro and I wouldn't swap it for the world, I'd take a Mac over a Windows machine any day of the week BUT it's all about what you need it for.

If you're going to need Mac only software then get the Mac Pro (it is a lovely machine!) and run Windows along side it. You can run Widows on a Mac using the built in boot camp or you could buy VM software such as Parallels.

 

[garyk]

I straddle (oo-er) the two and have owned macs for the last few years now alongside a traditional PC.

I find OS X on the whole an awesome operating system. Little things bug me though such as not being able to right click on an item and having 'mail-to' as an option or 'New text document', although thinking about it might be able to applescript it.

As a 'dev' I still need windows and on the mac I use vmware fusion. I did use parallels but started having performance problems. Fusion can also open any vm's that have been created with wm workstation and for me virtualisation is great. You can start with a clean system, snapshot it, install a load of apps and then rollback cleanly.

In fact the biggest and best difference between the two OSes is how apps are installed. On windows you typically have an installer which installs the app and any dependant dll's which get scattered to the four corners of your hard drive. If you install alot of apps over time dlls get orphaned or one version overwrites another and the system starts to perform sluggishly. On OS X a single .app file is a package which contains *all* the dependancies within one file, like a zip archive so its much much cleaner and one file to drag to the trash to uninstall it.

Downsides? price for sure although second hand values are higher too. Software availability? Much much better than it used to be but still not as much availability for windows. Options are windows via a VM or bootcamp or you can install 'fink' which gives you access to a large range of linux apps.

Of course for iphone development a mac is a must, you can get/download XCode and Interface Builder for free to then be able to build cocoa apps for OS X and iphone and run on the iphone simulator.

Gary

 

[Dominic Taylor]

I've got a 3Ghz quad-core Vista desktop and a brand new 17" MBP. Rarely use my desktop now. Except for gaming and blu-ray playback (hooked up to my amp via Radeon's HDMI of course)

 

Price the parts for when you break this MAC Pro, and anyone who tells you that they do not break is talking nonsense.... all electronic equipment breaks

Build yourself a decent PC...... fill it with all the extras you need to have to make use of it, not only for the applications you listed above, but for repairing other PC's that come in.

I'll give you a nice example.....

The PC I am sitting at right now is:
Intel Q6600 CPU
4Gb DDR2-800 RAM (two nice matched pairs of decent stuff)
50Gb Velociraptor System Drive
500Gb Data Drive
500Gb Data Drive for client disc images
1Gb GFX Card running dual monitors
DVD-ROM & DVD-RW
etc

It also has a pair of SATA-HDD docking stations, which are used when taking images of clients HDD's before they are wiped, etc. Acronis Trueimage sorts this out easily.

Also means that, when I transfer someones data over, they can query something that has been overlooked (in a weird sub directory on the drive) or I can cope with queries when the client is being a little confused, etc. I can safely store these images for a few weeks if necessary, incase of future problems, etc. They only get deleted when the space becomes an issue, and then are removed in chronological order.

Amazing how easy this makes things, and allows me to get a load of PC's all churning along at once.... which is the only way repairs pays these days.

This PC has dual NIC's in it, and runs a mini network i use for a specific clients job, plus is my main Internet PC for downloading drivers, etc..... I also keep a little NAS to build a list of these drivers, plus share files across the network...... but the bulk of the downloading etc is done from this PC (all runs smoothly in the background while I get on with a load of other stuff).

Try all that (plus use the machine as your main PC) for the same dosh in the world of the MAC

I rest my case m'lud

 

[Dominic Taylor]

My Quad core Vista system is, well, good but frustrating at times. I think that's likely to do with ATi's terrible drivers - Vista itself seems quite stable and the system is great for raw processing power, when it doesn't crash. Had a friend over to work on an animation project and we kept hitting weird errors with my video card. Painful and an awful waste of time. Looking forward to testing out Win 7

In summary it completely depends what you're using the system for. For the poster above me there's little point using a mac if you're dealing primarily with Windows/*nix systems. I'm not sure I buy the whole "you NEED a mac for design work" since most software now runs on PCs too, and you can build an equally powerful PC for much less cost (my desktop was only around the £600 mark iirc, ex. monitor/etc), but OS X is gorgeous and most applications are simply far superior to anything on Windows.

eg. Coda - fantastic software that saves us so much time.

 

[Steve_D]

Comspec raises a valid point. PRICE. You can build an immense PC for half the price of a Mac Pro!

Parts for the Mac are extremely over priced. The battery on my MacBook Pro has just died and I am gonna have to spend £90 on a new one!

Coda is an amazing application. So much better than anything I have ever used before.

 

[Jozo]

I think that the extra cash you splash out for the Mac is well worth it.
I have iMAC which wasn't cheap.

I am very happy with the operating system. It took ma a week or two to get used to the new environment.

If I needed to do Video Processing, Rendering, Encoding I would go for Mac.

Saves you lot of frustration and with the new Snow Leopard round the corner I would not hesitate one minute.

 

[Steve_D]

Why do so many people capitalise the word MAC?

It's something I've never understood.

 

[Jozo]

It deserves to be capitalised! hi

 

Without getting into this boring Mac v PC row once again, lets look at the real facts in this case !!

Asonda is a computer repair guy, who will have loads of Pc's in for repair. What sense would it make to have a Mac sitting there, when he could have a decent PC which would be useful for his repair work? I refer you to my previous post re disk imaging etc......

 

[tony79]

Without getting into this boring Mac v PC row once again, lets look at the real facts in this case !!

Asonda is a computer repair guy, who will have loads of Pc's in for repair. What sense would it make to have a Mac sitting there, when he could have a decent PC which would be useful for his repair work? I refer you to my previous post re disk imaging etc......

But if he had a mac he would be fairly safe in the knowledge that whilst he is fixing the PC's, his wont get inundated with viruses, driver errors, dll errors, registry errors etc. etc.

 

[Steve_D]

But if he had a mac he would be fairly safe in the knowledge that whilst he is fixing the PC's, his wont get inundated with viruses, driver errors, dll errors, registry errors etc. etc.

Not guaranteed.

Just not as likely

 

But if he had a mac he would be fairly safe in the knowledge that whilst he is fixing the PC's, his wont get inundated with viruses, driver errors, dll errors, registry errors etc. etc.

Yes, and it could sit there doing nowt while he does all his daily repairs, and probably has to have a PC built sitting on the nech purely to help with the usual tasks that crop up whilst doing these repairs.

Sorry, but for a PC repair guy, a Mac is just a waste really. we don't just use our office Pc's for office work, they are a repair tool the same as any other too.

 

[asonda]

oooeeeerrr missus. Controversial eh?

I knew this would start a bit of a debate, good stuff

There honestly is a reason why I 'need' a Mac but maybe not why I would need the most expensive one they sell.

You have all made some very good points and actually helped me no end.

Anyone else want to add more info on Macs?

 

Get a waterproof one..... oh sorry wrong thread

 

[asonda]

Get a waterproof one..... oh sorry wrong thread

LOL, That's what me dad said when I said was thinking about buying a Mac