Look, Im about to bite the bullet and purchase a Mac Pro fully kitted out, but I have a question...should I buy it now, or is something just 'round the corner like a new GPU or a 3.33GHZ processor upgrade, or a new iMac which is 3Ghz and has a very good GPU ?
Please enlighten me
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They have just upgraded the iMac and the Mac Pro. So I don't think theres something "around the corner".
At least not until MacWorld in January, there will probably be some speed bumps, upgrades and/or price drops... But we won't know until then.
So my advice is buy the Mac Pro it's a great machine and won't be made obsolete... that fast
(Im asking such a question because ive only been on the Apple ship for roughly 8 months, so Ive never come across a MacWorld.)
Are the speed increasements usually large at MacWorld ?
I mean basically...does MacWorld have a reputation for large unveilments/announcements ?
You just need to figure out whether you really can wait until January to find out.
The Mac Octo and a new FCStudio would be very nice come NAB.
Look, Im about to bite the bullet and purchase a Mac Pro fully kitted out, but I have a question...should I buy it now, or is something just 'round the corner like a new GPU or a 3.33GHZ processor upgrade, or a new iMac which is 3Ghz and has a very good GPU ?
Please enlighten me
If I were you I'd wait. Why throw three or four grand down the tube for a machine that premiered a month ago when you can wait indefinitely for the next gen machine that I have on good authority* will contain One hundred fifty core INTEL "Nagana" processors all running at 1 Kilowatt, 7 terabytes of RAM standard, 128 bit OS, four 1 gig graphics cards (photoshop don't you know), fifteen SATA 1 terabyte Hard Drives spinning at 30,000 RPMs, the remaining members of Led Zeppelin to play your iTunes playlist live, a collander with several wires attached for Bluetooth MENTAL standard input, A live chicken wearing a separate smaller collander to power the MENTAL input device, an Interocetor, a Warp Drive, four phaser banks, four wheel drive, seating for seven adults or 13 children, an integrated dishwasher, two toast racks, a coffee press, refrigerator, and whirlpool tub, its own nuclear furnace, and a complete set of the Civil War Chess Set from The Franklin Mint. And all priced at $4.
So yeah, wait just a bit longer.
* = my invisible rabbit Harvey
Buy when you need, not when you want. There is something to be said for waiting maybe up to a month if you're in the know. E.g., everyone in the Mac camp knew not to buy a PowerMac before WWDC in August, unless they knew they were going to be using them for heavy Photoshop (or other major non-Universal apps) work. So it wouldn't have been smart to buy in late July, even if you really needed something. In the meantime, you could rent or borrow or whatever. But if you really needed something in, say, early June, then it wouldn't have made sense to wait, even if you were sure the Mac Pros were coming in mid-August. That's months of productivity lost.
If, though, you are instead talking about want, and not need (except in the way someone needs a beer), then it's really a personal decision. With Apple now following Intel's roadmap, product bumps are much clearer.
We can probably expect a speed bump between now and November. Not a major one though. Maybe 3.33 by November, but probably only 3.16.
Intel announced they'll have quad cores out in November or December. Expect that to slide to Junauary or even February. And they'll probably make their way into the MP's (eight cores) by Feb or March 07.
There will probably be a new graphics card out by Nov/Dec that will make the current top end look "crappy." You'd have to follow ATI/nVidia sites to have a solid idea though.
I hope this helps. In general, being a Mac person now doesn't require nearly the tea-leaf-reading abilities it once used to for simple speed bumps. Welcome aboard!
It was fun.
Now where is my iphone?