Early 2008 Mac Pro here - 8 core, upgraded with 16 GB RAM, USB 3 card, upgraded apple ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics card running 2x 24" monitors, 1TB PCI SSD boot drive, 3x smaller SSDs (win 10 etc), 11 TB total large hard drives internal storage. It's still a relevant beast, and I don't want the un-upgradable new mac pro with no internal storage, and I don't want a laptop based iMac that I can't upgrade and have to junk the monitor after a few years. I just want a medium priced small form factor desktop i7. (analogous to a Dell Optiplex 9020 / XE2 small form factor which I support for another business). I'm sitting tight until it dies or apple releases something I want.
The only laptop based macs are the entry Mini and the entry iMac. I think you can upgrade the memory on the 27 inch iMacs easily. And they last longer than a few years.
Yes, all 27" iMacs have expandable RAM behind the power port (under the stand). Its really quick and easy to do. I highly doubt a 5k display will not last just as long as any standalone displays. It will certainly look better. The only thing laptop about the iMac is the mobile graphics. Other than that, its pretty much a desktop Mac. It has desktop Intel processors in them (and pretty good ones now too). I'd be willing to bet the iMac would actually out handle that Early 2008 MacPro with most tasks. I highly doubt you'll see any major changes as far as what Macs are available now. The days of upgrading your Mac are very limited and frankly, if you order it right the first time, I don't really see it as necessary.
if you order it right the first time, I don't really see it as necessary.
Agreed, but it wasn't always possible to order it right. Recently retired, I tried to rejoin the Apple ecosystem.
My MacBook Pro had a limit of 4GB memory, and I could not install (2) 4GB chips to bring it to 8GB. It's still a mystery why this machine was crippled this way.
The Fujitsu drive was unbelievably slow; every keyboard action would generate beachballs. On paper, this machine had adequate power and would no doubt run Windows pretty well :-) I expected El Capitan recent kernel optimizations might provide relief, but I saw no improvement. The noticeable benefit was support for my 25 inch dual display, but the machine was still too slow.
A week ago I attempted an upgrade to a 512GB SSD drive to derive some residual benefit from my purchase. A YouTube video expertly walked me through the beautiful hardware disassembly, but the machine would not power on. I'd just bricked the machine.
Apple repair brought the dreaded news: "we don't support these machines. Can't get parts."
But the machine was running fine and I still don't understand what part could have been broken. I'm fully aware of static issues.
The machine was running fine ( just slow ), and now I have to throw it in the trash.
The new MacBook Pros come with 16GB memory, Intel i7, terabyte ssd ... and yes, I agree purchasing the machine at maximum specs over the lifetime of the product is the way to go. After market upgrades are less expensive than Apple's markup, but definitely not worth the risk of bricking a machine that cannot be repaired.
The showroom MacBook rebooted with running apps restored in 24 seconds. Impressive.
My late 2009 iMac is the workhorse in my studio and has never had any problems. I've owned numerous Macs since the earliest models, and this one is by far the most stable and versatile. Best of all, it's easily upgradable (hard drive, memory, etc.), which is a necessity for music, photography, and graphic work. Apple should really reconsider it's policies- more people would be willing to pay the extra money for an Apple computer if they realized they wouldn't have to replace it in 2-3 years. Since the death of Steven Jobs, Apple's move away from content-producers to content-consumers just makes the company another windows competitor instead of being in a class of it's own.
if you order it right the first time, I don't really see it as necessary.
Agreed, but it wasn't always possible to order it right. Recently retired, I tried to rejoin the Apple ecosystem.
My MacBook Pro had a limit of 4GB memory, and I could not install (2) 4GB chips to bring it to 8GB. It's still a mystery why this machine was crippled this way.
If mobile controllers that support more RAM don't exist, then there is nothing Apple can do to install them at the time.
Often enough, Apple's RAM limits are just based upon what RAM modules are available at the time - my 2011 MacBook Pro officially supports 8 GB, but it's happily running 16 GB.
But on some machines, the limit is actually the controller - my 2007 MacBook can take 4 GB, but will only use 3 of that. This isn't "crippled"; it's simply the maximum mobile controllers could take at the time. The only laptops from then that use more RAM actually use desktop controllers.
The Fujitsu drive was unbelievably slow; every keyboard action would generate beachballs. On paper, this machine had adequate power and would no doubt run Windows pretty well :-) I expected El Capitan recent kernel optimizations might provide relief, but I saw no improvement. The noticeable benefit was support for my 25 inch dual display, but the machine was still too slow.
A week ago I attempted an upgrade to a 512GB SSD drive to derive some residual benefit from my purchase. A YouTube video expertly walked me through the beautiful hardware disassembly, but the machine would not power on. I'd just bricked the machine.
Apple repair brought the dreaded news: "we don't support these machines. Can't get parts."
But the machine was running fine and I still don't understand what part could have been broken. I'm fully aware of static issues.
If you had such awful beach balling issues before the upgrade, your machine was not working fine. The hard drive flex cable (hard drive/optical flex cable on earlier machines) is a common point of failure.
Did you just replace the hard drive, or did you install one of those OptiBay upgrades to replace the optical drive? They don't work properly with some of the 'Books' controllers. And installation is pretty fickle. Back in the day, I saw a handful of machines bricked by botched installations - I'm extremely wary of the OptiBay upgrades for this reason, despite all the positive reports.
Comments
Yes, all 27" iMacs have expandable RAM behind the power port (under the stand). Its really quick and easy to do. I highly doubt a 5k display will not last just as long as any standalone displays. It will certainly look better. The only thing laptop about the iMac is the mobile graphics. Other than that, its pretty much a desktop Mac. It has desktop Intel processors in them (and pretty good ones now too). I'd be willing to bet the iMac would actually out handle that Early 2008 MacPro with most tasks. I highly doubt you'll see any major changes as far as what Macs are available now. The days of upgrading your Mac are very limited and frankly, if you order it right the first time, I don't really see it as necessary.
My MacBook Pro had a limit of 4GB memory, and I could not install (2) 4GB chips to bring it to 8GB.
It's still a mystery why this machine was crippled this way.
The Fujitsu drive was unbelievably slow; every keyboard action would generate beachballs.
On paper, this machine had adequate power and would no doubt run Windows pretty well :-)
I expected El Capitan recent kernel optimizations might provide relief, but I saw no improvement.
The noticeable benefit was support for my 25 inch dual display, but the machine was still too slow.
A week ago I attempted an upgrade to a 512GB SSD drive to derive some residual benefit
from my purchase. A YouTube video expertly walked me through the beautiful hardware
disassembly, but the machine would not power on. I'd just bricked the machine.
Apple repair brought the dreaded news:
"we don't support these machines. Can't get parts."
But the machine was running fine and I still don't understand what part could have been broken.
I'm fully aware of static issues.
The machine was running fine ( just slow ), and now I have to throw it in the trash.
The new MacBook Pros come with 16GB memory, Intel i7, terabyte ssd ... and yes,
I agree purchasing the machine at maximum specs over the lifetime of the product
is the way to go. After market upgrades are less expensive than Apple's markup,
but definitely not worth the risk of bricking a machine that cannot be repaired.
The showroom MacBook rebooted with running apps restored in 24 seconds. Impressive.
If mobile controllers that support more RAM don't exist, then there is nothing Apple can do to install them at the time.
Often enough, Apple's RAM limits are just based upon what RAM modules are available at the time - my 2011 MacBook Pro officially supports 8 GB, but it's happily running 16 GB.
But on some machines, the limit is actually the controller - my 2007 MacBook can take 4 GB, but will only use 3 of that. This isn't "crippled"; it's simply the maximum mobile controllers could take at the time. The only laptops from then that use more RAM actually use desktop controllers.
If you had such awful beach balling issues before the upgrade, your machine was not working fine. The hard drive flex cable (hard drive/optical flex cable on earlier machines) is a common point of failure.
Did you just replace the hard drive, or did you install one of those OptiBay upgrades to replace the optical drive? They don't work properly with some of the 'Books' controllers. And installation is pretty fickle. Back in the day, I saw a handful of machines bricked by botched installations - I'm extremely wary of the OptiBay upgrades for this reason, despite all the positive reports.