Poll: Buy new Mac now or later?
Now that Leopard is delayed until October, are you changing your plans to buy a new Mac? Will you buy a new Mac now, when new ones come out or wait even longer for Leopard?
Will you:
Will you:
- Buy whatever is available now.
- Wait until Santa Rosa Macs come out.
- Wait until the Mac I want ships with Leopard.
Comments
I am inclined to wait for the new Intel architecture, but after today's news waiting to buy for Leopard to buy new hardware is a fool's errand. Tiger is good, and Leopard will only make the OS X experience better.
Whose to say new hardware will follow in the footsteps of Santa Rosa? Apple seem stretched thin to me. I wouldn't count on new hardware until after iPhone and Leopard. I for one am not that overwhelmed by Santa Rosa either. If I wanted or needed a new Mac (I don't my MBP is 6 months old), I'd just go ahead and get it now.
5) The delay really sucks and ruins my plans
This just about says it all for me. If I'm waiting till october for leopard I may as well wait for some better features in the Mac Pro.
Well, maybe if i'm lucky they'll do a decent macbook/mb pro update in that timeframe...
I'm wondering this--would it be unheard of for someone to buy a "temporary" low end mac in say july and then sell when leopard macs come out? Then buy the new one?
That a viable plan? Do people do this much? Is it worth it? Or should I just buy the better quality when I need it (before leopard, unfortunately for me)?
Think now I will just wait for Santa Rosa iMacs.
leave for college in september, wanted to get a macbook pro in the beginning of summer so i could spend the summer getting used to Mac OS X and copying all my dvd's so i can just bring dvd-r's to college.
4) I'll wait for new Macs to ship with Leopard\t
5) The delay really sucks and ruins my plans
This just about says it all for me. If I'm waiting till october for leopard I may as well wait for some better features in the Mac Pro.
This is similar to what I'm thinking, but I wouldn't say it 'really sucks and ruins my plans'. In fact, a delay just gives me some extra time to scrape together some extra cash for a better graphics card, some additional RAM, and maybe a Cinema Display (I've always wanted one).
I'm also hoping for some additional options, such as 1 TB hard drives, a high definition optical drive (Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, or some kind of Blu-Ray/HD-DVD combo drive), faster processors, and improved graphics cards (Crossfire or SLI would be a nice addition).
I've been back and forth on whether I want to buy another laptop as I've been using a PowerBook as my main computer for almost 8 years now and it's going to be a major adjustment moving back to a desktop. But I'd like the additional computing power and also think that it will last me a much longer time than another laptop will. Either way, it's going to be a Mac Pro or MacBook Pro for me in October.
This is similar to what I'm thinking, but I wouldn't say it 'really sucks and ruins my plans'. In fact, a delay just gives me some extra time to scrape together some extra cash for a better graphics card, some additional RAM, and maybe a Cinema Display (I've always wanted one).
I'm also hoping for some additional options, such as 1 TB hard drives, a high definition optical drive (Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, or some kind of Blu-Ray/HD-DVD combo drive), faster processors, and improved graphics cards (Crossfire or SLI would be a nice addition).
I've been back and forth on whether I want to buy another laptop as I've been using a PowerBook as my main computer for almost 8 years now and it's going to be a major adjustment moving back to a desktop. But I'd like the additional computing power and also think that it will last me a much longer time than another laptop will. Either way, it's going to be a Mac Pro or MacBook Pro for me in October.
I don't mean to sound critical but I don't understand your reasoning for waiting. If the funds aren't there then that's one thing. But holding out for a high def optical drive? That will be a while. I don't see that happening this year. Maybe next year. If your main machine is an eight year old powerbook, why not get a MBP now? You know better than I, that you should easily see a 10x performance increase. Is the extra 20% that Santa Rosa will (may?) provide worth the wait?
I don't mean to sound critical but I don't understand your reasoning for waiting. If the funds aren't there then that's one thing. But holding out for a high def optical drive? That will be a while. I don't see that happening this year. Maybe next year. If your main machine is an eight year old powerbook, why not get a MBP now? You know better than I, that you should easily see a 10x performance increase. Is the extra 20% that Santa Rosa will (may?) provide worth the wait?
To clarify, I had a PowerBook G3/500 that lasted me for a while but had so many problems that AppleCare eventually replaced it with my current 1 GHz PowerBook G4. My goal was always to buy a new Mac when Leopard was released and this delay just pushes back my time table and allows me to get a better Mac.
As for the high def optical drive, I will just buy a 3rd party internal Blu-Ray drive (which are already available) if Apple doesn't offer it when I buy a Mac Pro and possibly a 3rd party HD-DVD drive if they are offered by then. If I go the laptop route, a high def optical drive is less of a concern but would still be nice if possible.
Hi all! Long time lurker, first time poster. I was going to wait until leopard's rumored May/June release to get a Mac Pro, but I really cant wait until Oct. So other than mac pro what would be the biggest reason not to upgrade now? Are there any kind of hardware updates in the near future for mac pro, I mean we just got the 8 cores. Whats all this Santa Rosa talk? Should I hold out for at least that? I really need to replace this aging Mini that I am currently using!
Welcome to the boards Michael. The next major refresh of the Mac Pro will be late this year is Intel is ready. Santa Rosa is the next laptop platform coming in May. Stoakley is the next Mac Pro hardware coming with Penryn (45nanomenter CPU-today's CPU is 65nanometer).
The advantages of Penryn are
Cooler operation and higher clockspeeds 3Ghz+
Larger L2 cache (6MB per Dual-Core chip)
1600Mhz Front Side Bus
Improved Caching and support for 4 or more cores
Faster virtualization
SSE4 for boosted media features
It's a signicant upgrade but it really depends on if you're willing to wait. There's a chance it might not come until early 2008.
If you decide to buy a Mac Pro right now you'll be fine. What comes after Penryn/Stoakley is even MORE impressive. Computing tech never stands still but you will if you wait too long.
What do you plan to do with your new Mac?
Thanks for the tips! I think im safe to pick one up. I cant wait! Plans? I dont know. Im into music recording. I had an older G4 quicksilver that god knows why but I sold and got this mini and the mini seems so bogged down with all of my stuff now that I need an upgrade. I like the mac pros for thier ability to configure as many ways as you want! Again thanks for the tips!!
Cool man. Stick around...I'm there with you. I'm planning on grabbing Logic Pro with my next hardware purchase and I might check out Ableton Live. There's a lot of cool Audio and Video stuff on the platform.
I'm beginning to think I might have to get an entry level Mac Pro so that it can grow with me moreso than an iMac loaded up. I like the iMac but I'm just a bit worried about the GPU since we have to start looking at the GPU as a secondary application processor.