Let's hope that the next Mac Pro makes a leap in style & performance as the latest Corvette does from the previous model…!
P.S. - Anyone got a spare US$60,000.00 sitting around…?!? I got a V8-fueled Fiberglass Fever…!
That is without question the most beautiful Corvette made in my lifetime. Finally, Chevy made a Corvette that looks as good as it goes.
Still, Chevy needs to EOL the Corvette. It's only a tiny fraction of their total sales and thus is not very profitable. Most of Chevrolet's business is with family cars like the Cruze, so that's where they should focus their engineering efforts. Furthermore, the Camaro can do 90% of what a Corvette can do, and for that last 10% the driver just needs to think ahead and use workarounds. Nobody needs a Corvette to get from point A to point B anymore than they need a Mac Pro to run Lightroom and Photoshop.
If Apple even made the same profit HP did with 1/3 of the sales, they'd make $250m out of $8b = 3% of their profit. Every portion helps out but it's a tiny fraction.
So by this reasoning, Chevrolet should kill the Corvette and Dodge should kill the Viper. Neither car amounts to much in profits, so what good are they?
I don't think profit should be the motivating factor in discontinuing models but buyers should realise that without a lot of profit, it makes the decision a lot easier.
It's not retina...sure. But the 680 MX will throw this 27 inch screen around alot better than a retina would perhaps.
The 680MX could probably have handled a higher resolution but the lower-end GPUs in the 27" would have to as well. The 680MX is scoring really well in tests:
In a lot of the tests, it's actually faster than the desktop 680 in the Mac Pro.
"For everyone asking about heat and fan noise, I have literally been benching this non-stop for the past 5 hours and the only time the fan kicked on was while playing Crysis 2, and even then it really wasn't that loud. Some fans can just have the most obnoxious whine, this one isn't as high pitched as some macs I've owned in the past. After an hour of Just Cause 2, the back is slightly warm to the touch, but nothing as hot as last gens iMac."
No heat issues with the new design and great performance. The luxmark score is lower than the old Radeon though. NVidia really needs to work on their OpenCL support. That's a really poor show from a company that popularised GPU computing with CUDA. Even the Heaven benchmark is getting great framerates, though you'd have to run it under Bootcamp for the full test.
"A 27" iMac with a Fusion drive, 32GB RAM and 2GB GTX 680M is a workstation. A 15" rMBP with 256GB SSD and a 1GB 650M is a workstation.
In your mind, you have an association between the word workstation and the tower form factor but the definition has expanded over the years. There's a resistance to this just now because it's still in the early phases. We only got quad-core laptops and iMacs around 2010/2011."
Well, Marv' and Wizard. My New 27 inch iMac FINALLY arrived. (Yes, with external DVD player...)
Fusion.
8 gigs of Ram.
3.4 gig Ivy.
680 MX.
That's the problem with the iMac, it's gimped.
I bought a 2009 Mac Pro and upgraded it to:
3.46 GHz Hexacore Xeon W3690
24GB RAM
XFX 6870 Black Edition
Blu-Ray player (fu[k you, Apple!)
6 G SATA PCIe HBA (Rocket 640L - natively supported, but not advertised as such
Two 256 GB Plextor M3S SSDs, in RAID 0 volume on the PCIe HBA
Two 2 TB Seagate Barracudas
One 3 TB WD Green
I bought most of the components used on eBay (very carefully!) and the W3690 was huge score since I got it at what would be a great price for even a W3680. Total cost was LESS than your new iMac, and performance, expandability, and upgradability CRUSHES any iMac. A 6870 CRUSHES the iMac's ridiculous mobile graphics. It's not even close.
Granted, my Mac Pro didn't come with a new display, but I'm not in the habit of throwing out displays. I just plugged in the display I was using with a Mini. A desktop computer grows obsolete faster than a quality display, which is why the iMac design is STUPID for a high end workstation.
Notes on the past, present, and future of the Mac Pro
It is helpful to think back a bit to differences between the original 2006 Mac Pro and the current version. In 2006 [1,1 and 2,1], there was a single base model which could be customized via build-to-order options for its dual CPUs, graphics cards, and so on. This approach continued with the speed increase in the 2008 [3,1] -- one dual-CPU base model with a limited but intelligent range of BTO options.
In 2009, however, the Mac Pro line was split into two base configurations -- a single-CPU machine and a true dual-CPU Mac Pro. This was an important watershed, away from the original vision for the Mac Pro. The original Mac Pro continued, but a low-end single-CPU server replaced the base configuration. In other words, in 2009 the base configuration for the true dual-CPU Mac Pro jumped from one price point to another -- from $2499 to $3299 [4,1] -- and today it is at $3799 [5,1]. The low-end $2499 base price point was filled by a single-CPU Mac Pro that was basically a server -- a shift that became clear in late 2010 with the final discontinuation of Xserve and the official introduction of the current "Mac Pro Server" (and "Mac mini Server"). Following in the wake of this server-hardware shift was the change in the Mac OS X Server software from a separate product to an add-on in Lion and Mountain Lion.
So today the choice is explicit -- you can buy a low-end single-CPU Mac Pro that is basically a server but has all the internal storage, memory, and expansion capacities of the dual-CPU Mac Pro, or you can buy a true Mac Pro starting at a somewhat higher price point.
In short, the original essence of the Mac Pro is the dual processors. As a result, a Thunderbolt iMac could well replace a Mac Pro for some users, especially those using single-CPU Mac Pro machines now -- but it cannot replace the original meaning of "Pro" in the Mac Pro -- the iMac will never be a multiple-processor machine.
What does this history mean for the future? I think the big questions are:
[1] Does Tim Cook's Apple see a true Mac Pro (which I've defined here as having more than one CPU) as a machine worth producing? I think the answer here is yes. I don't think he would have responded last year (June) with the "we're working on something really great for later next year" statement if he did not intend to continue the line. [I know nobody here is disputing this point, but I seem to remember a few people doing so in some of the other threads.]
[2] Will Apple continue to use the Mac Pro and Mac Mini form factors for its servers? I tend to think the answer here is also yes. It took them three years (2009-2011) to make the transition from Xserve/Mac OS X Server to the current approach. Tim Cook was in charge for much of that transition. I don't see them going back.
[3] Is it possible that the Mac Pro Server will be discontinued, absorbed by increasing speed and capacity in the Mac mini Server? This one is tougher. I think it is a possibility. It's hard for me to see it happening before Haswell, though:
[A] Obviously, Apple pulled the plug on Sandy Bridge EP (E5) processors last year after almost nine months of delays (originally due Q3 2011, they weren't shipped until Q2 2012). Intel is skipping Sandy Bridge EX (E7) altogether and going straight to Ivy Bridge EX (E7). While the latter doesn't affect the dual-CPU Mac Pro, my instinct is that Apple likes to keep its development options open and the Sandy Bridge Xeon bugs that resulted in its highest-end processors being aborted scared Apple away.
[B] I don't think it is at all realistic for Haswell EP (E5) Xeons to appear in time for a 2013 Mac Pro. So we're looking at the Ivy Bridge EP (E5) Xeons, which are next up -- the Ivy Bridge E3s are already out, and the E5s will come before (or together with) the E7s.
[C] In addition, any Ivy Bridge Mac Pro design will transition easily to Haswell, the "tock" to Ivy Bridge's 22 nm "tick" -- so there is no reason to wait for Haswell's engineering advances, like transactional memory:
Those programming benefits will come in a straightforward 2014 refresh of the 2013 design -- think 2014 WWDC.
PREDICTIONS:
[I] We'll see a new dual-CPU Ivy Bridge Mac Pro this year starting at about $3299. The base configuration will have a Fusion drive. It will hold up to four 3.5-inch hard drives. The design will also leverage the difference in size between a SSD and a 3.5-inch HDD. You'll be able to put up to eight SSDs in it -- SSD prices in the future may fall to the point where people would be able to do that. I think any new Mac Pro design has to recognize this changing technology.
[II] There may or may not be a low-end single-CPU Mac Pro Server option, as there is today. I think there is still a place for a 3.5-inch-hard-drive server in Apple's lineup, but I don't know how long that will be true -- the continuing development of SSD storage capacity will eventually kill the Mac Pro Server, IMHO. The day you can fit 4 TB of SSD storage into a Mac mini Server will be the end.
[III] Finally, as you might have gathered, while I'd love to see real innovation, I don't think anything truly different (like some of the things dreamed up in these various Mac Pro threads) is going to happen now. That's further off. What we have now is Apple adjusting the Mac Pro to the present and immediate future, not something more distant.
3.46 GHz Hexacore Xeon W3690
24GB RAM
XFX 6870 Black Edition
Blu-Ray player (fu[k you, Apple!)
6 G SATA PCIe HBA (Rocket 640L - natively supported, but not advertised as such
Two 256 GB Plextor M3S SSDs, in RAID 0 volume on the PCIe HBA
Two 2 TB Seagate Barracudas
One 3 TB WD Green
I bought most of the components used on eBay (very carefully!) and the W3690 was huge score since I got it at what would be a great price for even a W3680. Total cost was LESS than your new iMac
Apple must release a new Mac Pro.
Assuming you bought the Mac Pro new, it was already at least $200 more expensive than the iMac without a display. If you bought everything used, you haven't paid Apple a single penny for the entire setup and yet you claim that Apple should make a new one. Presumably so you can wait until 2016 to buy someone's old 2013 model, not pay Apple any money and claim how superior it is to the 2016 iMac despite not having any warranty.
It would be like someone buying a games console and only ever buying used games. The console manufacturer makes a loss or breaks even on the console sale and the console manufacturer and games publisher make no money on the sale of the used games. Then the gamer complains about there not being enough good games to play and game studios closing up all over the place. It's a real puzzler isn't it.
it cannot replace the original meaning of "Pro" in the Mac Pro -- the iMac will never be a multiple-processor machine.
That's not the meaning of "Pro" as it's used on the Macbook Pro with a single CPU and the 13" one with integrated graphics. It's just a marketing name. When you talk about dual processors, you're really just talking about more cores. A dual quad-core setup isn't any more powerful than a single 8-core chip.
People tend to forget what the core technology inside computers is and focus on the boxes. The iMac is slim and the Mini is small so they are weak. The Mac Pro is huge so obviously it crushes everything (especially your foot if you tip it over) but they all use processors that fit in the palm of your hand.
It comes down to efficiency (performance per watt). Electricity comes from the mains goes through a power supply and this goes into the tiny wires inside every one of these small chips. With more wires and higher power going in, more heat needs to be dissipated. So most of the bulk that you see is just cooling equipment. If they used better conductors to make the chips or optical components or found a way to use fewer internal wires to get the same performance, the Mac Pro wouldn't need to exist.
They can probably make these advances right now but it's a business. They don't want to put a 50-core CPU in a laptop this year because you won't buy a new one until the thing dies, which could be 10 years away. They don't mind you buying a 12-core machine so long as you pay $6000+ for it because they aren't going to be seeing you for a while. This is obviously pretty expensive for most people so the volume of buyers isn't there and that's how they like it - they'd rather that people are left wanting more because it's the only way they won't go out of business.
[I] We'll see a new dual-CPU Ivy Bridge Mac Pro this year starting at about $3299. The base configuration will have a Fusion drive. It will hold up to four 3.5-inch hard drives. The design will also leverage the difference in size between a SSD and a 3.5-inch HDD. You'll be able to put up to eight SSDs in it -- SSD prices in the future may fall to the point where people would be able to do that. I think any new Mac Pro design has to recognize this changing technology.
Great post, but going from the top-end iMac at $1999 to a starting price of $3299 leaves a pricing gap big enough to drive a truck through.
It would be nice if Apple put dual cpus in all Pros, but the reality is that there needs to be an option at least around the $2200. mark.
Apple previously had a Pro machine at $1799 that sold extremely well. Whilst that's probably dead to protect the 27" iMac, if the Pros start at $3300 Apple may as well cancel the line. Because only really big business, scientific and government clients can afford that kind of pricing in the present economic climate.
Assuming you bought the Mac Pro new, it was already at least $200 more expensive than the iMac without a display. If you bought everything used, you haven't paid Apple a single penny for the entire setup and yet you claim that Apple should make a new one. Presumably so you can wait until 2016 to buy someone's old 2013 model, not pay Apple any money and claim how superior it is to the 2016 iMac despite not having any warranty.
So by now your 2009 Mac Pro and 2011 processor must be getting pretty obsolete now that it's 2013. What quality display are you using btw?
Why would I buy a new Mac Pro? Those things are a waste of money! When Apple makes a consumer desktop I'll buy it, but until then I'm not blowing $2500 on a stripped down desktop computer. You're damn right I'll be buying a used 2013 Mac Pro in 2015 or so!
As for my Mac Pro being obsolete, it would be if I were using it for Xeon workstation tasks. Instead I use it primarily for Lightroom and Photoshop. And make no mistake, it is better than the current iMac, and it will be better than the next iMac as well. Try adding 7 TB of fast storage to an iMac for about $350. Once you add the cost of TB enclosures like a Pegasus, you're looking at $1000+, and then that iMac isn't so thin anymore - might as well have been a tower if you have to add a storage tower next to it. Ive may be a brilliant designer but he's not so bright about practical matters.
My display is just a low end Dell IPS model, but it's got plenty of years left and it calibrates nicely with an hardware calibrater. I'd like an Eizo but it's hard to justify the price since for me photography is only a hobby.
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They don't mind you buying a 12-core machine so long as you pay $6000+ for it because they aren't going to be seeing you for a while. This is obviously pretty expensive for most people so the volume of buyers isn't there and that's how they like it - they'd rather that people are left wanting more because it's the only way they won't go out of business.
That's the problem with Apple's business model. It makes sense for the sub-$1000 market, but Apple insists on making everything below $2500 a disposable computer. As a result they alienate many serious users ("Power Users") who don't have $5000 to blow on a tower computer.
I personally know of several former iMac owners who loved Mac OS X but switched back to Windows after they upgraded the iMac's HDD. The iMac's hardware design is insulting to anyone who knows even a little bit about computers.
Why would I buy a new Mac Pro? Those things are a waste of money! When Apple makes a consumer desktop I'll buy it, but until then I'm not blowing $2500 on a stripped down desktop computer. You're damn right I'll be buying a used 2013 Mac Pro in 2015 or so!
So you want an iMac without the display, not a Mac Pro.
Try adding 7 TB of fast storage to an iMac for about $350. Once you add the cost of TB enclosures like a Pegasus, you're looking at $1000+, and then that iMac isn't so thin anymore - might as well have been a tower if you have to add a storage tower next to it.
You can get 6TB eSATA for $485 add it to the 1-3TB Fusion drive inside:
Ive may be a brilliant designer but he's not so bright about practical matters.
Practical matters like making money? If they sold a $2200 iMac without the display for maybe $1500, all you'd do is buy the display from Dell. Very few people will go the route you chose of buying a used Mac Pro.
My display is just a low end Dell IPS model, but it's got plenty of years left and it calibrates nicely with an hardware calibrater
No problem with doing that but the iMac offers a better quality display. If they sold the iMac without a display for $1499, you could buy a Dell now for $323:
It's 1080p but good value and you'd save over $350 but a lot of people don't want to shop around and Apple makes it easy by bundling a color-corrected, high quality display so they don't have to.
The iMac's hardware design is insulting to anyone who knows even a little bit about computers.
I don't like the internal storage or fixed RAM but I understand why they do it and I don't think they'll lose many sales because of it. I think they'd lose more money by building a low priced tower because everyone who's doing it isn't making a lot of profit.
You can see where computers are going. They will all end up with a single SSD boot drive, soldered RAM, an SoC chip and everything just plugs into it. That goes for computers from the low-end right to the high-end. They have to go this route.
It's 1080p but good value and you'd save over $350 but a lot of people don't want to shop around and Apple makes it easy by bundling a color-corrected, high quality display so they don't have to.
I don't like the internal storage or fixed RAM but I understand why they do it and I don't think they'll lose many sales because of it. I think they'd lose more money by building a low priced tower because everyone who's doing it isn't making a lot of profit.
I'm not sure that most mac pro owners fall into this. None of the ones I've seen (which is quite a few) went this route on displays. I don't completely hate the imac, but you really need to understand how much of that color corrected statement is marketing. They all color correct to some degree. You can talk about what devices are used, and it really doesn't mean anything. It explains so little. I'm not getting into all of it. Dell had an issue with the U2410 a couple years ago. They calibrated the displays at the factory, but their measurements were conducted solely over a small patch in the middle. It doesn't matter what devices you claim to use. Radiometers have remarkably fine tolerance, yet this doesn't tell us the pass/fail tolerance in any criteria (reproduction, uniformity, color temperature) for each display or how many points they measure to that tolerance. It also doesn't tell you if these displays are given time to warm up. You can't confuse marketing blurbs with quantifiable details. The other thing to consider is that all displays drift over time, so a lot of engineering time is often dedicated to minimizing this and providing a suitable method to modify or stabilize the output over time to a known target. This is why software like Basicolor, Color Navigator, i1 profiler, and Spectraview exists. I've spent more time reading up on and testing these things than you can possibly imagine, sad as it is.
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You can see where computers are going. They will all end up with a single SSD boot drive, soldered RAM, an SoC chip and everything just plugs into it. That goes for computers from the low-end right to the high-end. They have to go this route.
The high end will take longer due to the nature of the market. I pointed out already how intel backed off on the idea of forcing everything to BGA due to resistance from oems and motherboard manufacturers. It loads a lot of extra support costs downstream, thus the resistance. At the higher tiers, you have cpu packages that are shared between workstations and servers. Having servers in the mix there in EP configurations will keep those models socketed for some time. It would drive service costs up either way unless intel just absorbs board development and sells it as a single package. This obviously wouldn't allow for much flexibility.
Keep in mind you are saving at least $300 vs the entry Mac Pro. Over $500 once you include a cheap Dell display so it's practically free storage.
My view of external storage shift with the application. Even today it isn't always the right solution.
Practical matters like making money? If they sold a $2200 iMac without the display for maybe $1500, all you'd do is buy the display from Dell.
Or from a number of manufactures.
Very few people will go the route you chose of buying a used Mac Pro.
Actually the market for used Apple products is very strong. I've considered it in the past myself. At this point in time used Mac Pros might not be the best value but historically they could be seen as a good deal.
No problem with doing that but the iMac offers a better quality display. If they sold the iMac without a display for $1499, you could buy a Dell now for $323:
It's 1080p but good value and you'd save over $350 but a lot of people don't want to shop around and Apple makes it easy by bundling a color-corrected, high quality display so they don't have to.
I don't like the internal storage or fixed RAM but I understand why they do it and I don't think they'll lose many sales because of it. I think they'd lose more money by building a low priced tower because everyone who's doing it isn't making a lot of profit.
The need for an affordable desktop Mac has many parameters of which the monitor is just one.
You can see where computers are going. They will all end up with a single SSD boot drive, soldered RAM, an SoC chip and everything just plugs into it. That goes for computers from the low-end right to the high-end. They have to go this route.
Yes at the low end this is true. The Mac Pro however serves a different market. While I expect a smaller more integrated machine giving up configurability in a pro machine is hard to swallow.
What are we trying to do here incite rage? What people want is far removed from the iMac.
The post I was replying to was talking about a consumer desktop. That means the iMac internals in a tower form factor, which means a motherboard that doesn't accommodate a CPU with over 4 cores.
It can obviously have expansion slots, which I suspect is what you mean but performance-wise, it really wouldn't differ from the iMac.
The need for an affordable desktop Mac has many parameters of which the monitor is just one.
These threads always end up here though. It starts out talking about the need for the Mac Pro and how many pros are out there who need all the power of a Xeon and the bandwidth of dual processors and eventually it becomes about price. People want a cheap tower like Dell and HP offer so that they can buy a quad-core i7, put in their own RAM and SSD and a fast desktop gaming card at a very low price and attach a cheap Dell display to it.
That isn't going to happen. Ever since Apple introduced the iMac in 2000, it has outsold the desktop towers because it offers a simple, high quality solution in the price range it occupies and that appeals to a lot of people who don't want to source their own peripherals and it works better for Apple because they make a profit on more components.
The iMac was frustrating for years because they did miss out on high performance parts. They missed out the entire Core 2 Quad range of processors and the GPUs and video memory didn't go high enough in any configuration. They didn't offer expansion ports for fast storage options and PCI peripherals. They bundled a display which wasn't good value vs 3rd party options.
This isn't the case now. They offer the fastest desktop i7s, they offer GPUs with video memory that is in league with the fastest desktop GPUs you can buy, they offer SSD boot drives, you can connect fast peripherals over Thunderbolt and USB 3, the RAM limit isn't a problem and the display is good value.
It would be nicer if they didn't glue it shut, it would be nicer if they could cut the price down a bit - at the very least on the BTO options, but there is no longer an immediate need to have a cheaper alternative to the iMac in a tower form factor. The $1000-2000 tower is out for good.
Yes at the low end this is true. The Mac Pro however serves a different market. While I expect a smaller more integrated machine giving up configurability in a pro machine is hard to swallow.
I know this isn't a comparison people will like but when you use an iPad, at no point do you think about opening it up and upgrading the internals. That's the way all computers will be one day from low-end to high-end.
"Intel remains committed to the growing desktop enthusiast and channel markets,' Intel's Daniel Snyder told the site, and will continue to offer socketed parts in the LGA package for the foreseeable future for our customers and the enthusiast DIY market.'
Snyder went on to explain that he would not be commenting on 'long-term product roadmap plans,'"
It won't be for a few years but it will happen one day. In 2020, you just won't put a PCI graphics card in your machine because you won't have to. That's why NVidia is going the SoC route right now.
Marvin's got a point. Maybe a real solution for some of us is just to give up on the Pro buy the iMac/MBP, write-off the internal drive and just boot from an external.
It means you have a bunch of drives on your desktop (the G-Raid + a Time Machine backup) and you're wasting a new HD within the machine.
But if Apple won't allow swappable drives at a reasonable cost, the clunky approach is better than 5 more years of griping about it.
Marvin's got a point. Maybe a real solution for some of us is just to give up on the Pro buy the iMac/MBP, write-off the internal drive and just boot from an external.
It means you have a bunch of drives on your desktop (the G-Raid + a Time Machine backup) and you're wasting a new HD within the machine.
But if Apple won't allow swappable drives at a reasonable cost, the clunky approach is better than 5 more years of griping about it.
The Mac Mini has the MacMate, which added ports and hard drive access.
Perhaps if some enterprising third party created an iMac-specific companion, Thunderbolt-based with multiple (bootable) drives and PCI expansion, much of the midrange Mac market would be satisfied with that option.
The post I was replying to was talking about a consumer desktop. That means the iMac internals in a tower form factor, which means a motherboard that doesn't accommodate a CPU with over 4 cores.
No, the iMac is a weird desktop/laptop hybrid. If Apple just offered a headless iMac that would be an outrage. Mobile graphics on a desktop? Apple is mocking their users.
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Very few people will go the route you chose of buying a used Mac Pro.
That is not true.
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You can get 6TB eSATA for $485 add it to the 1-3TB Fusion drive inside:
A far inferior solution to the Mac Pro's four internal SATA bays.
No, the iMac is a weird desktop/laptop hybrid. If Apple just offered a headless iMac that would be an outrage. Mobile graphics on a desktop? Apple is mocking their users.
It comes down to how people use them. Desktop cards can offer better compute power but that comes at the price of a high power draw and heat output. Certainly the 640M/650M on the entry models aren't all that powerful but the higher ones are fine.
You can get 6TB eSATA for $485 add it to the 1-3TB Fusion drive inside
A far inferior solution to the Mac Pro's four internal SATA bays.
If you get the same amount of storage, it's not really any different. One big advantage is that it's easy to upgrade the computer. Unplug it from one and plug it into the other. Otherwise you have to transplant the raw drives and if you have any RAID system, you sometimes have to get the order right and always risk losing the RAID.
Look at how servers work these days, it's not CPUs and HDDs together because they scale differently. If you have massive amounts of video footage, 4 drive bays won't be enough. You can't fit the following inside a Mac Pro:
Perhaps if some enterprising third party created an iMac-specific companion, Thunderbolt-based with multiple (bootable) drives and PCI expansion, much of the midrange Mac market would be satisfied with that option.
You'd be able to partition any Thunderbolt storage for multiple boot options.
It comes down to how people use them. Desktop cards can offer better compute power but that comes at the price of a high power draw and heat output. Certainly the 640M/650M on the entry models aren't all that powerful but the higher ones are fine.
You think a lot of people are lining up to drop nearly $2000 on an old tower workstation that is a few years old from someone on eBay?
If you get the same amount of storage, it's not really any different. One big advantage is that it's easy to upgrade the computer. Unplug it from one and plug it into the other. Otherwise you have to transplant the raw drives and if you have any RAID system, you sometimes have to get the order right and always risk losing the RAID.
Older computers are only scary to computer illiterate folks. If you know how to troubleshoot hardware and hang new parts in a computer, then it rarely makes sense to buy new. The money saved on a used computer is nearly always more than any repairs that computer may need in the future. Obviously if you buy a lemon you're screwed, but eBay's policies now guarantee a buyer can return an item. Just be sure to test it thoroughly. Of course a studio is going to buy new because they don't have time to waste on repairs, but at this point Apple is making it hard for them to buy new.
Regarding external storage, it's often a better solution, but nothing is easier or cheaper than sliding a couple bare drives into a Mac Pro. The beauty of the Mac Pro is that you have the choice to add internal drives AND add external drives. Part of what makes the Mac Pro a "pro" solution is it's wide breadth of options.
I noticed later in your post you argued that mobile graphics in the iMac are just fine? Whoa, that's some serious denial man. Having the option to upgrade a computer's video card can add years of life to it, or simply make using it more enjoyable. Even some Adobe Lightroom plugins are GPU accelerated. When I upgraded from an Nvidia GT120 to a Radeon HD 6870 the difference was stunning, and I'm not even doing video editing.
The argument in favor of the iMac always seems to boil down to "it's good enough". That's a fine argument for something like the Mini, but most people I know who drop $2000+ on a computer want something more than "good enough". That an upgraded 2009 Mac Pro can still smoke a current high end iMac only illustrates how great the Mac Pro is and how crippled the iMac is.
Comments
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Originally Posted by MacRonin
Let's hope that the next Mac Pro makes a leap in style & performance as the latest Corvette does from the previous model…!
P.S. - Anyone got a spare US$60,000.00 sitting around…?!? I got a V8-fueled Fiberglass Fever…!
That is without question the most beautiful Corvette made in my lifetime. Finally, Chevy made a Corvette that looks as good as it goes.
Still, Chevy needs to EOL the Corvette. It's only a tiny fraction of their total sales and thus is not very profitable. Most of Chevrolet's business is with family cars like the Cruze, so that's where they should focus their engineering efforts. Furthermore, the Camaro can do 90% of what a Corvette can do, and for that last 10% the driver just needs to think ahead and use workarounds. Nobody needs a Corvette to get from point A to point B anymore than they need a Mac Pro to run Lightroom and Photoshop.
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/153695/2013-mac-mini-wishlist-imac-wishlist/160#post_2258101
I don't think profit should be the motivating factor in discontinuing models but buyers should realise that without a lot of profit, it makes the decision a lot easier.
The 680MX could probably have handled a higher resolution but the lower-end GPUs in the 27" would have to as well. The 680MX is scoring really well in tests:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/693683-nvidia-gtx-680mx-30.html
In a lot of the tests, it's actually faster than the desktop 680 in the Mac Pro.
"For everyone asking about heat and fan noise, I have literally been benching this non-stop for the past 5 hours and the only time the fan kicked on was while playing Crysis 2, and even then it really wasn't that loud. Some fans can just have the most obnoxious whine, this one isn't as high pitched as some macs I've owned in the past. After an hour of Just Cause 2, the back is slightly warm to the touch, but nothing as hot as last gens iMac."
No heat issues with the new design and great performance. The luxmark score is lower than the old Radeon though. NVidia really needs to work on their OpenCL support. That's a really poor show from a company that popularised GPU computing with CUDA. Even the Heaven benchmark is getting great framerates, though you'd have to run it under Bootcamp for the full test.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.
"A 27" iMac with a Fusion drive, 32GB RAM and 2GB GTX 680M is a workstation. A 15" rMBP with 256GB SSD and a 1GB 650M is a workstation.
In your mind, you have an association between the word workstation and the tower form factor but the definition has expanded over the years. There's a resistance to this just now because it's still in the early phases. We only got quad-core laptops and iMacs around 2010/2011."
Well, Marv' and Wizard. My New 27 inch iMac FINALLY arrived. (Yes, with external DVD player...)
Fusion.
8 gigs of Ram.
3.4 gig Ivy.
680 MX.
That's the problem with the iMac, it's gimped.
I bought a 2009 Mac Pro and upgraded it to:
3.46 GHz Hexacore Xeon W3690
24GB RAM
XFX 6870 Black Edition
Blu-Ray player (fu[k you, Apple!)
6 G SATA PCIe HBA (Rocket 640L - natively supported, but not advertised as such
Two 256 GB Plextor M3S SSDs, in RAID 0 volume on the PCIe HBA
Two 2 TB Seagate Barracudas
One 3 TB WD Green
I bought most of the components used on eBay (very carefully!) and the W3690 was huge score since I got it at what would be a great price for even a W3680. Total cost was LESS than your new iMac, and performance, expandability, and upgradability CRUSHES any iMac. A 6870 CRUSHES the iMac's ridiculous mobile graphics. It's not even close.
Granted, my Mac Pro didn't come with a new display, but I'm not in the habit of throwing out displays. I just plugged in the display I was using with a Mini. A desktop computer grows obsolete faster than a quality display, which is why the iMac design is STUPID for a high end workstation.
Apple must release a new Mac Pro.
Notes on the past, present, and future of the Mac Pro
It is helpful to think back a bit to differences between the original 2006 Mac Pro and the current version. In 2006 [1,1 and 2,1], there was a single base model which could be customized via build-to-order options for its dual CPUs, graphics cards, and so on. This approach continued with the speed increase in the 2008 [3,1] -- one dual-CPU base model with a limited but intelligent range of BTO options.
In 2009, however, the Mac Pro line was split into two base configurations -- a single-CPU machine and a true dual-CPU Mac Pro. This was an important watershed, away from the original vision for the Mac Pro. The original Mac Pro continued, but a low-end single-CPU server replaced the base configuration. In other words, in 2009 the base configuration for the true dual-CPU Mac Pro jumped from one price point to another -- from $2499 to $3299 [4,1] -- and today it is at $3799 [5,1]. The low-end $2499 base price point was filled by a single-CPU Mac Pro that was basically a server -- a shift that became clear in late 2010 with the final discontinuation of Xserve and the official introduction of the current "Mac Pro Server" (and "Mac mini Server"). Following in the wake of this server-hardware shift was the change in the Mac OS X Server software from a separate product to an add-on in Lion and Mountain Lion.
So today the choice is explicit -- you can buy a low-end single-CPU Mac Pro that is basically a server but has all the internal storage, memory, and expansion capacities of the dual-CPU Mac Pro, or you can buy a true Mac Pro starting at a somewhat higher price point.
In short, the original essence of the Mac Pro is the dual processors. As a result, a Thunderbolt iMac could well replace a Mac Pro for some users, especially those using single-CPU Mac Pro machines now -- but it cannot replace the original meaning of "Pro" in the Mac Pro -- the iMac will never be a multiple-processor machine.
What does this history mean for the future? I think the big questions are:
[1] Does Tim Cook's Apple see a true Mac Pro (which I've defined here as having more than one CPU) as a machine worth producing? I think the answer here is yes. I don't think he would have responded last year (June) with the "we're working on something really great for later next year" statement if he did not intend to continue the line. [I know nobody here is disputing this point, but I seem to remember a few people doing so in some of the other threads.]
[2] Will Apple continue to use the Mac Pro and Mac Mini form factors for its servers? I tend to think the answer here is also yes. It took them three years (2009-2011) to make the transition from Xserve/Mac OS X Server to the current approach. Tim Cook was in charge for much of that transition. I don't see them going back.
[3] Is it possible that the Mac Pro Server will be discontinued, absorbed by increasing speed and capacity in the Mac mini Server? This one is tougher. I think it is a possibility. It's hard for me to see it happening before Haswell, though:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/09/intels-haswell-cpus-will-fit-in-everything-from-tablets-to-servers/
A few more points:
[A] Obviously, Apple pulled the plug on Sandy Bridge EP (E5) processors last year after almost nine months of delays (originally due Q3 2011, they weren't shipped until Q2 2012). Intel is skipping Sandy Bridge EX (E7) altogether and going straight to Ivy Bridge EX (E7). While the latter doesn't affect the dual-CPU Mac Pro, my instinct is that Apple likes to keep its development options open and the Sandy Bridge Xeon bugs that resulted in its highest-end processors being aborted scared Apple away.
[B] I don't think it is at all realistic for Haswell EP (E5) Xeons to appear in time for a 2013 Mac Pro. So we're looking at the Ivy Bridge EP (E5) Xeons, which are next up -- the Ivy Bridge E3s are already out, and the E5s will come before (or together with) the E7s.
[C] In addition, any Ivy Bridge Mac Pro design will transition easily to Haswell, the "tock" to Ivy Bridge's 22 nm "tick" -- so there is no reason to wait for Haswell's engineering advances, like transactional memory:
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/02/transactional-memory-going-mainstream-with-intel-haswell/
Those programming benefits will come in a straightforward 2014 refresh of the 2013 design -- think 2014 WWDC.
PREDICTIONS:
[I] We'll see a new dual-CPU Ivy Bridge Mac Pro this year starting at about $3299. The base configuration will have a Fusion drive. It will hold up to four 3.5-inch hard drives. The design will also leverage the difference in size between a SSD and a 3.5-inch HDD. You'll be able to put up to eight SSDs in it -- SSD prices in the future may fall to the point where people would be able to do that. I think any new Mac Pro design has to recognize this changing technology.
[II] There may or may not be a low-end single-CPU Mac Pro Server option, as there is today. I think there is still a place for a 3.5-inch-hard-drive server in Apple's lineup, but I don't know how long that will be true -- the continuing development of SSD storage capacity will eventually kill the Mac Pro Server, IMHO. The day you can fit 4 TB of SSD storage into a Mac mini Server will be the end.
[III] Finally, as you might have gathered, while I'd love to see real innovation, I don't think anything truly different (like some of the things dreamed up in these various Mac Pro threads) is going to happen now. That's further off. What we have now is Apple adjusting the Mac Pro to the present and immediate future, not something more distant.
Assuming you bought the Mac Pro new, it was already at least $200 more expensive than the iMac without a display. If you bought everything used, you haven't paid Apple a single penny for the entire setup and yet you claim that Apple should make a new one. Presumably so you can wait until 2016 to buy someone's old 2013 model, not pay Apple any money and claim how superior it is to the 2016 iMac despite not having any warranty.
It would be like someone buying a games console and only ever buying used games. The console manufacturer makes a loss or breaks even on the console sale and the console manufacturer and games publisher make no money on the sale of the used games. Then the gamer complains about there not being enough good games to play and game studios closing up all over the place. It's a real puzzler isn't it.
So by now your 2009 Mac Pro and 2011 processor must be getting pretty obsolete now that it's 2013. What quality display are you using btw?
That's not the meaning of "Pro" as it's used on the Macbook Pro with a single CPU and the 13" one with integrated graphics. It's just a marketing name. When you talk about dual processors, you're really just talking about more cores. A dual quad-core setup isn't any more powerful than a single 8-core chip.
People tend to forget what the core technology inside computers is and focus on the boxes. The iMac is slim and the Mini is small so they are weak. The Mac Pro is huge so obviously it crushes everything (especially your foot if you tip it over) but they all use processors that fit in the palm of your hand.
It comes down to efficiency (performance per watt). Electricity comes from the mains goes through a power supply and this goes into the tiny wires inside every one of these small chips. With more wires and higher power going in, more heat needs to be dissipated. So most of the bulk that you see is just cooling equipment. If they used better conductors to make the chips or optical components or found a way to use fewer internal wires to get the same performance, the Mac Pro wouldn't need to exist.
They can probably make these advances right now but it's a business. They don't want to put a 50-core CPU in a laptop this year because you won't buy a new one until the thing dies, which could be 10 years away. They don't mind you buying a 12-core machine so long as you pay $6000+ for it because they aren't going to be seeing you for a while. This is obviously pretty expensive for most people so the volume of buyers isn't there and that's how they like it - they'd rather that people are left wanting more because it's the only way they won't go out of business.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TenThousandThings
PREDICTIONS:
[I] We'll see a new dual-CPU Ivy Bridge Mac Pro this year starting at about $3299. The base configuration will have a Fusion drive. It will hold up to four 3.5-inch hard drives. The design will also leverage the difference in size between a SSD and a 3.5-inch HDD. You'll be able to put up to eight SSDs in it -- SSD prices in the future may fall to the point where people would be able to do that. I think any new Mac Pro design has to recognize this changing technology.
Great post, but going from the top-end iMac at $1999 to a starting price of $3299 leaves a pricing gap big enough to drive a truck through.
It would be nice if Apple put dual cpus in all Pros, but the reality is that there needs to be an option at least around the $2200. mark.
Apple previously had a Pro machine at $1799 that sold extremely well. Whilst that's probably dead to protect the 27" iMac, if the Pros start at $3300 Apple may as well cancel the line. Because only really big business, scientific and government clients can afford that kind of pricing in the present economic climate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Assuming you bought the Mac Pro new, it was already at least $200 more expensive than the iMac without a display. If you bought everything used, you haven't paid Apple a single penny for the entire setup and yet you claim that Apple should make a new one. Presumably so you can wait until 2016 to buy someone's old 2013 model, not pay Apple any money and claim how superior it is to the 2016 iMac despite not having any warranty.
So by now your 2009 Mac Pro and 2011 processor must be getting pretty obsolete now that it's 2013. What quality display are you using btw?
Why would I buy a new Mac Pro? Those things are a waste of money! When Apple makes a consumer desktop I'll buy it, but until then I'm not blowing $2500 on a stripped down desktop computer. You're damn right I'll be buying a used 2013 Mac Pro in 2015 or so!
As for my Mac Pro being obsolete, it would be if I were using it for Xeon workstation tasks. Instead I use it primarily for Lightroom and Photoshop. And make no mistake, it is better than the current iMac, and it will be better than the next iMac as well. Try adding 7 TB of fast storage to an iMac for about $350. Once you add the cost of TB enclosures like a Pegasus, you're looking at $1000+, and then that iMac isn't so thin anymore - might as well have been a tower if you have to add a storage tower next to it. Ive may be a brilliant designer but he's not so bright about practical matters.
My display is just a low end Dell IPS model, but it's got plenty of years left and it calibrates nicely with an hardware calibrater. I'd like an Eizo but it's hard to justify the price since for me photography is only a hobby.
Quote:
They don't mind you buying a 12-core machine so long as you pay $6000+ for it because they aren't going to be seeing you for a while. This is obviously pretty expensive for most people so the volume of buyers isn't there and that's how they like it - they'd rather that people are left wanting more because it's the only way they won't go out of business.
That's the problem with Apple's business model. It makes sense for the sub-$1000 market, but Apple insists on making everything below $2500 a disposable computer. As a result they alienate many serious users ("Power Users") who don't have $5000 to blow on a tower computer.
I personally know of several former iMac owners who loved Mac OS X but switched back to Windows after they upgraded the iMac's HDD. The iMac's hardware design is insulting to anyone who knows even a little bit about computers.
Originally Posted by Junkyard Dawg
…might as well have been a tower if you have to add a storage tower next to it.
Except you don't. Nice falsifications.
So you want an iMac without the display, not a Mac Pro.
You can get 6TB eSATA for $485 add it to the 1-3TB Fusion drive inside:
http://www.amazon.com/G-Technology-G-RAID-Dual-External-Drive/dp/B004E9SGWM
This is probably a better example as you don't need a TB-eSATA or USB3-eSATA adaptor:
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10598
Keep in mind you are saving at least $300 vs the entry Mac Pro. Over $500 once you include a cheap Dell display so it's practically free storage.
Practical matters like making money? If they sold a $2200 iMac without the display for maybe $1500, all you'd do is buy the display from Dell. Very few people will go the route you chose of buying a used Mac Pro.
No problem with doing that but the iMac offers a better quality display. If they sold the iMac without a display for $1499, you could buy a Dell now for $323:
http://www.amazon.com/Dell-927M9-IPS-LED-27-Inch-LED-lit-Monitor/dp/B009H0XQPA
It's 1080p but good value and you'd save over $350 but a lot of people don't want to shop around and Apple makes it easy by bundling a color-corrected, high quality display so they don't have to.
I don't like the internal storage or fixed RAM but I understand why they do it and I don't think they'll lose many sales because of it. I think they'd lose more money by building a low priced tower because everyone who's doing it isn't making a lot of profit.
You can see where computers are going. They will all end up with a single SSD boot drive, soldered RAM, an SoC chip and everything just plugs into it. That goes for computers from the low-end right to the high-end. They have to go this route.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
It's 1080p but good value and you'd save over $350 but a lot of people don't want to shop around and Apple makes it easy by bundling a color-corrected, high quality display so they don't have to.
I don't like the internal storage or fixed RAM but I understand why they do it and I don't think they'll lose many sales because of it. I think they'd lose more money by building a low priced tower because everyone who's doing it isn't making a lot of profit.
I'm not sure that most mac pro owners fall into this. None of the ones I've seen (which is quite a few) went this route on displays. I don't completely hate the imac, but you really need to understand how much of that color corrected statement is marketing. They all color correct to some degree. You can talk about what devices are used, and it really doesn't mean anything. It explains so little. I'm not getting into all of it. Dell had an issue with the U2410 a couple years ago. They calibrated the displays at the factory, but their measurements were conducted solely over a small patch in the middle. It doesn't matter what devices you claim to use. Radiometers have remarkably fine tolerance, yet this doesn't tell us the pass/fail tolerance in any criteria (reproduction, uniformity, color temperature) for each display or how many points they measure to that tolerance. It also doesn't tell you if these displays are given time to warm up. You can't confuse marketing blurbs with quantifiable details. The other thing to consider is that all displays drift over time, so a lot of engineering time is often dedicated to minimizing this and providing a suitable method to modify or stabilize the output over time to a known target. This is why software like Basicolor, Color Navigator, i1 profiler, and Spectraview exists. I've spent more time reading up on and testing these things than you can possibly imagine, sad as it is.
Quote:
You can see where computers are going. They will all end up with a single SSD boot drive, soldered RAM, an SoC chip and everything just plugs into it. That goes for computers from the low-end right to the high-end. They have to go this route.
The high end will take longer due to the nature of the market. I pointed out already how intel backed off on the idea of forcing everything to BGA due to resistance from oems and motherboard manufacturers. It loads a lot of extra support costs downstream, thus the resistance. At the higher tiers, you have cpu packages that are shared between workstations and servers. Having servers in the mix there in EP configurations will keep those models socketed for some time. It would drive service costs up either way unless intel just absorbs board development and sells it as a single package. This obviously wouldn't allow for much flexibility.
Yes at the low end this is true. The Mac Pro however serves a different market. While I expect a smaller more integrated machine giving up configurability in a pro machine is hard to swallow.
The post I was replying to was talking about a consumer desktop. That means the iMac internals in a tower form factor, which means a motherboard that doesn't accommodate a CPU with over 4 cores.
It can obviously have expansion slots, which I suspect is what you mean but performance-wise, it really wouldn't differ from the iMac.
These threads always end up here though. It starts out talking about the need for the Mac Pro and how many pros are out there who need all the power of a Xeon and the bandwidth of dual processors and eventually it becomes about price. People want a cheap tower like Dell and HP offer so that they can buy a quad-core i7, put in their own RAM and SSD and a fast desktop gaming card at a very low price and attach a cheap Dell display to it.
That isn't going to happen. Ever since Apple introduced the iMac in 2000, it has outsold the desktop towers because it offers a simple, high quality solution in the price range it occupies and that appeals to a lot of people who don't want to source their own peripherals and it works better for Apple because they make a profit on more components.
The iMac was frustrating for years because they did miss out on high performance parts. They missed out the entire Core 2 Quad range of processors and the GPUs and video memory didn't go high enough in any configuration. They didn't offer expansion ports for fast storage options and PCI peripherals. They bundled a display which wasn't good value vs 3rd party options.
This isn't the case now. They offer the fastest desktop i7s, they offer GPUs with video memory that is in league with the fastest desktop GPUs you can buy, they offer SSD boot drives, you can connect fast peripherals over Thunderbolt and USB 3, the RAM limit isn't a problem and the display is good value.
It would be nicer if they didn't glue it shut, it would be nicer if they could cut the price down a bit - at the very least on the BTO options, but there is no longer an immediate need to have a cheaper alternative to the iMac in a tower form factor. The $1000-2000 tower is out for good.
I know this isn't a comparison people will like but when you use an iPad, at no point do you think about opening it up and upgrading the internals. That's the way all computers will be one day from low-end to high-end.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2012/12/06/intel-denies-bga/1
"Intel remains committed to the growing desktop enthusiast and channel markets,' Intel's Daniel Snyder told the site, and will continue to offer socketed parts in the LGA package for the foreseeable future for our customers and the enthusiast DIY market.'
Snyder went on to explain that he would not be commenting on 'long-term product roadmap plans,'"
It won't be for a few years but it will happen one day. In 2020, you just won't put a PCI graphics card in your machine because you won't have to. That's why NVidia is going the SoC route right now.
Marvin's got a point. Maybe a real solution for some of us is just to give up on the Pro buy the iMac/MBP, write-off the internal drive and just boot from an external.
It means you have a bunch of drives on your desktop (the G-Raid + a Time Machine backup) and you're wasting a new HD within the machine.
But if Apple won't allow swappable drives at a reasonable cost, the clunky approach is better than 5 more years of griping about it.
Marvin's got a point. Maybe a real solution for some of us is just to give up on the Pro buy the iMac/MBP, write-off the internal drive and just boot from an external.
It means you have a bunch of drives on your desktop (the G-Raid + a Time Machine backup) and you're wasting a new HD within the machine.
But if Apple won't allow swappable drives at a reasonable cost, the clunky approach is better than 5 more years of griping about it.
Sorry - triple post.
The Mac Mini has the MacMate, which added ports and hard drive access.
Perhaps if some enterprising third party created an iMac-specific companion, Thunderbolt-based with multiple (bootable) drives and PCI expansion, much of the midrange Mac market would be satisfied with that option.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
The post I was replying to was talking about a consumer desktop. That means the iMac internals in a tower form factor, which means a motherboard that doesn't accommodate a CPU with over 4 cores.
No, the iMac is a weird desktop/laptop hybrid. If Apple just offered a headless iMac that would be an outrage. Mobile graphics on a desktop? Apple is mocking their users.
Quote:
Very few people will go the route you chose of buying a used Mac Pro.
That is not true.
Quote:
You can get 6TB eSATA for $485 add it to the 1-3TB Fusion drive inside:
A far inferior solution to the Mac Pro's four internal SATA bays.
Originally Posted by Junkyard Dawg
Mobile graphics on a desktop? Apple is mocking their users.
I don't think Marvin has to roll the tape on the chips Apple is currently using again. You're just choosing to ignore everything being said.
So forgive us if we don't care about your "opinion".
It comes down to how people use them. Desktop cards can offer better compute power but that comes at the price of a high power draw and heat output. Certainly the 640M/650M on the entry models aren't all that powerful but the higher ones are fine.
You think a lot of people are lining up to drop nearly $2000 on an old tower workstation that is a few years old from someone on eBay?
If you get the same amount of storage, it's not really any different. One big advantage is that it's easy to upgrade the computer. Unplug it from one and plug it into the other. Otherwise you have to transplant the raw drives and if you have any RAID system, you sometimes have to get the order right and always risk losing the RAID.
Look at how servers work these days, it's not CPUs and HDDs together because they scale differently. If you have massive amounts of video footage, 4 drive bays won't be enough. You can't fit the following inside a Mac Pro:
http://www.aberdeeninc.com/abcatg/stirling-x888.htm
If you exceed the storage of an external consumer unit, you can get another one.
You'd be able to partition any Thunderbolt storage for multiple boot options.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
It comes down to how people use them. Desktop cards can offer better compute power but that comes at the price of a high power draw and heat output. Certainly the 640M/650M on the entry models aren't all that powerful but the higher ones are fine.
You think a lot of people are lining up to drop nearly $2000 on an old tower workstation that is a few years old from someone on eBay?
If you get the same amount of storage, it's not really any different. One big advantage is that it's easy to upgrade the computer. Unplug it from one and plug it into the other. Otherwise you have to transplant the raw drives and if you have any RAID system, you sometimes have to get the order right and always risk losing the RAID.
Older computers are only scary to computer illiterate folks. If you know how to troubleshoot hardware and hang new parts in a computer, then it rarely makes sense to buy new. The money saved on a used computer is nearly always more than any repairs that computer may need in the future. Obviously if you buy a lemon you're screwed, but eBay's policies now guarantee a buyer can return an item. Just be sure to test it thoroughly. Of course a studio is going to buy new because they don't have time to waste on repairs, but at this point Apple is making it hard for them to buy new.
Regarding external storage, it's often a better solution, but nothing is easier or cheaper than sliding a couple bare drives into a Mac Pro. The beauty of the Mac Pro is that you have the choice to add internal drives AND add external drives. Part of what makes the Mac Pro a "pro" solution is it's wide breadth of options.
I noticed later in your post you argued that mobile graphics in the iMac are just fine? Whoa, that's some serious denial man. Having the option to upgrade a computer's video card can add years of life to it, or simply make using it more enjoyable. Even some Adobe Lightroom plugins are GPU accelerated. When I upgraded from an Nvidia GT120 to a Radeon HD 6870 the difference was stunning, and I'm not even doing video editing.
The argument in favor of the iMac always seems to boil down to "it's good enough". That's a fine argument for something like the Mini, but most people I know who drop $2000+ on a computer want something more than "good enough". That an upgraded 2009 Mac Pro can still smoke a current high end iMac only illustrates how great the Mac Pro is and how crippled the iMac is.