Apple's Mac Pro - A True PowerMac Successor
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 16, 2006 12:27 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Final Words
The Mac Pro is pretty much everything the PowerMac G5 should have been. It's cooler, quieter, faster, has more expansion and it gives you more for your value than the older systems ever could.
If you were happy with your PowerMac G5, then you'll definitely be happy with the Mac Pro. And if you're a heavy multitasker, you will quickly be spoiled by the four very high performance cores that have found their way into the familiar looking chassis.
We did want a little more out of the system; for a company that usually embraces up and coming standards we wanted to see things like eSATA or CrossFire/SLI supported, but that's mostly for the geek in us that just likes playing around with interesting technologies. We would've also appreciated a more upgrade friendly setup; while we do appreciate how easy it is to install new drives and memory, replacing your CPUs is much more time intensive. Seeing as how you can now buy CPUs for your Mac from Newegg thanks to Apple using regular Intel processors, we'd assume that CPU upgrades will be done a bit more frequently especially as time goes on and prices drop.
From a performance standpoint, running OS X, the Mac Pro is truly Apple's fastest system by a long shot. Some of the performance advantages over the PowerMac G5 aren't enormous, but then you look at situations like iPhoto, Xcode or Final Cut Pro where the G5 is just put to shame. Rosetta performance is just about as good as it gets, the only real solution to that problem is for Adobe and Microsoft to hurry up and release updated software. Unfortunately since Apple isn't really a favorite of either company, it's not like greater than usual amounts of resources are being thrown at releasing new products specifically for the Mac platform.
Would we suggest staying away from the Mac Pro until all applications are available as Universal Binaries? No. But make sure you know what you're getting yourself into before you buy anything: emulated performance is bearable, but it's by no means fast.
One of our biggest concern about the Mac Pro is that users who don't need 8 memory slots or four cores would be better off if Apple released a single socket Core 2 based Mac tower. The memory performance of FBD on the Intel 5000X chipset is absolutely horrid and there's nothing you can do about it unless you switch entirely to an all serial interface or go back to using regular DDR2 memory.
The memory performance of the Mac Pro is noticeably better than the PowerMac G5 and competitive with other products in the Mac lineup (for now), but it's still significantly lower than where it could be. Intel seems married to its FBD strategy for now, which unfortunately means that as long as Apple wants two sockets for the Mac Pro, you'll need to deal with FBD. Our recommendation to Apple? Give us a Core 2 based tower. Our recommendation to Intel? Give us an alternative to FBD.
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dborod - Monday, August 21, 2006 - link
I also miss the Keyboard II. As an alternative I use the TactilePro from Matias (tactilepro.com). To quote from their web site: "The Matias Tactile Pro Keyboard is built from the same premium keyswitch technology that Apple used in its original Apple Extended Keyboard, widely viewed as the best keyboard Apple ever made."I agree.
Maury Markowitz - Friday, August 18, 2006 - link
I actually use the Keyboard II. ON MY PC!Maury Markowitz - Wednesday, August 16, 2006 - link
You're basically asking why you should bother with a woman when you can "operate" with your hand. After all, you can do everything with your hand that you can do with a woman, right, so what could a woman offer?No, really, I'm not joking here. I'm using this blatently outrageous imagery to get my point across. There are things in life that you simply can not put into words, yet to claim they don't exist is obviously untrue. Try watching your kid being born some time, try putting THAT into words!
I didn't even know the answer myself until last winter. My friend was on a four-month trip, so he lent me his Mac while he was gone so I could handle his e-mail (he has a small company). Some things are not as good on the Mac as the PC, some things are just _different_, but a lot of things are better. There's no simpler way to say it.
There's no laundry-list of features that will convince you of this, you just have to try it for a while. It's entirely possible that you won't even notice much of a difference after trying it out. But I'm betting that's not true for the vast majority of people. In my experience the Mac simply looked better, ran smoother, and was much quieter than my PC. I wanted to buy one then and there, but the lack of games meant I'd need to keep a PC around as well, so it was very difficult to justify. Now that the new machines run Windows too, there's no good excuse any more. Now I'm saving up.
Maury
plinden - Wednesday, August 16, 2006 - link
An answer to this can only be a mix of objective and subjective, but this is what I like about OS X:* The OS is more stable and professional, easier to use and better looking than Windows or Linux (I've used Windows since Win3.1 and *nix since before that - it's maybe not more stable than Linux, but definitely much easier to use).
* I can do in OS X whatever I can do in Linux and Windows. (If you really need something like AutoCAD, go ahead and get a windows-only PC. It's cheaper than a Mac + XP install disks).
* I can install on a backup boot (without going through any WGA crap) on an external FireWire drive and USB2 (with the Intel Macs) without having to hack anything on the install disk.
* OS X is much more secure ... whether through obscurity or better design, it doesn't matter. You can't get infected with a virus or other malware. I tried hard to infect my backup install with that "virus" that was released back in February, but it couldn't do anything. Because I was running, as I normally do, without administrator privileges.
* You don't need to be administrator to be able to do anything ... yes that mostly the fault of third party developers who don't understand, but MS didn't do a lot to educate them on writing apps to be used as non-administrators.
* OS X is *nix, and I can clone my development environment across Linux and Solaris without needing to download and install something like cygwin (I'm a big fan of cygwin, but I would rather not have to use it).
* I can run OS X, Linux or Windows (if I really want it) on one machine.
* I can spend my time doing productive work, rather than running virus and spyware scans, defragging the hard drive or tweaking services.msc in Windows ... or trying to make sure I don't trash one of my Linux apps by installing a binary that doesn't work in my kernel version (because I didn't have time to get the source code and all dependencies and build with the correct version of gcc). I've enjoyed tweaking Windows and Linux in the past, but now I'm a productive member of society and just want to be able to meet my project deadlines.
Instead, why don't I rephrase your question and ask "what does Windows bring me that OS X doesn't?"
Assume, like 90+% of the general population, that I don't play graphics-intensive 3D games.
Desslok - Wednesday, August 16, 2006 - link
Nothing beats their current iLife software suite. At least nothing I have found comes close to it on the PC side, plus now that you can run XP on them you can have the best of both worlds. Albeit no SLI/Crossfire, but then again how many people really use SLI?retrospooty - Wednesday, August 16, 2006 - link
I keep asking the same question, and ilife keeps coming up as the answer, but no-one cares to explain what it is an/or why it is better then the PC equivalent. What is ilife, and why is it so great?Desslok - Wednesday, August 16, 2006 - link
Read the reviews on iLife if you want to know more. They can explain it much better than I.retrospooty - Wednesday, August 16, 2006 - link
Thanks, I did at your suggestion... So its a suite of iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, and iWeb... Oh boy, I am totally unimpressed. I have all that on my PC using various free crap. I am sure they are nice apps for what they do, but hardly worth purchasing (thus the reason they are free). That is SOOOO not a reason to buy a MAC over PC (to me anyhow). I prefer to build my own hardware and have a way faster system.plinden - Wednesday, August 16, 2006 - link
Unlike you, I've used both iLife and free crap (as you aptly call it), and apart from Picassa (as a replacement for iPhoto) there's no contest. I have been able to very quickly and easily put together DVDs of the kids for the rest of the family using iMovie and iDVD. Sure I have done something similar with Windows Movie Maker, but the result is nowhere near as good.But ignoring iLife (it's not one of the reasons I give for liking Macs) there is still no reason for me to switch back to Windows.
90% of my time on my computers is spent working ... that includes code development. Compilation time for my code on my Mac is the same as in Linux but is twice as fast per CPU cycle as in Windows.
So explain to me again why Macs are crap ... what? ... oh games. Right, well I guess I'm too cheap to spend thousands on a toy.
retrospooty - Wednesday, August 16, 2006 - link
I never said macs are crap specifically... I was just asking what the draw is. I would personally not buy ANY computer from ANY major manufacturer. Not Dell, not sony, gateway, Apple, or any other manufacturer, because they are all crap. Cheap mobo's and memory bought in bulk and sold to the masses. Junk.