Programmer, I do agree with you that the macpro is price competetive with other Xeon workstations, as is the dual cored minmac, imac and probook/macbook. However, as I understand it the main advantage the Xeon has over Conroe is that multi CPUs are supported while for the conroe you are "stuck" with one CPU be it dual or quad cored.
And you do pay for that multi CPU founctionality of the Xeon with expensive fully buddered DIMMs etc
So the mini and the iMac cover the "dual core market" pretty well, the Mac Pro give good value in the octacore market, but less so in the quad core
I am not sayin that Apple should enter the low end tower market with razor thin margins, the Dell I compared to is 2 to 3 times Dells very cheapest towers. At that price range Apple should be able to both make money and a product to be proud of.
LOL, you're just not going to get it, are you LBB? There's more to this market than you seem to understand.
Yeah, I remember similar voices saying that about the 'low cost' Mac. Yet the Mac Mini we now have. And the anti-Intel argument way back.
(If they offered a decent quad mid-tower range I'm sure they'd sell twice the amount over the Mac Pros. But we'll have no way of knowing unless they make one.)
And the iMac competes and includes a screen.
Take the screen away and boost the specs to a quad and better gpu.
The 8800GT and Quad 2.4 gig Conroe are dirty cheap.
A decent £995 tower is a reality.
It's up to Apple.
It must sure be complicated for Apple to compete on GPUs...they strip down the ram and offer way out of date gpus like the 7300 while the 2600 Pro gets 256 megs instead of 512.
Ati and Nividia have new, cooler, better, cheaper, faster cards coming. I hope the Pro and iMac gets the option for them.
Programmer, your arguments are out of date. Apple are on Intel now. So they have to compete.
They'll probably add a sub-notebook and i hope they add a Mid-tower while they're at it.
Blue Ocean? Meh. I don't care as long as I get decent gpus and/or a mid-tower that gives me and PC owning friends more choice. It's about time they allowed us to fit a greater range of gpus. ie more than one for the iMac would be a start.
We'll see about the price range on the new Penryn based Mac Pros...but I'm not optimistic they're going to be any cheaper...
It must sure be complicated for Apple to compete on GPUs...they strip down the ram and offer way out of date gpus like the 7300 while the 2600 Pro gets 256 megs instead of 512.
Apple writes these blanket drivers for Nvidia cards that cover their whole spectrum. They need at least two drivers, one for Geforce, and one for Quadros - then they need to let the Macs boot BIOS and EFI so we can use the whole range of Nvidia cards from any manufacturer. ATI on the other hand writes their own shit, but I still say Apple needs to wake up, and shake up their desktop line by allowing this so Mac and Mac/windows Boot-camp users can choose the Mac as a gaming rig. It should open up to better Mac sales, not to mention the semi-pro single processor tower that many users would appreciate. With an adjustment like this in their line-up Apple could dominate desktop sales. And quit using the deskop market is slowing excuse to explain their desktop strategy failure.
Since no update to the Mac Pro's you would be a fool to not choose a 2.8 24" Imac over a Mac Pro.
Cost you're getting a free 24" Monitor!
Same price as the 2.6 Mac pro.
Others may disagree with you, but I know a Mac developer personally. He is planning to buy a 24 inch iMac for his work. In his words, it's fast enough. Sure the Mac Pro would be nice, but he cannot justify the huge price difference.
The only thing holding him back right now is the freeze problem with the iMac. As soon as he's confident with the iMac hardware stability, it's hello iMac for him.
Others may disagree with you, but I know a Mac developer personally. He is planning to buy a 24 inch iMac for his work. In his words, it's fast enough. Sure the Mac Pro would be nice, but he cannot justify the huge price difference.
The only thing holding him back right now is the freeze problem with the iMac. As soon as he's confident with the iMac hardware stability, it's hello iMac for him.
the iMac isn't a slouch... but it is laptop parts and it is limited to expandability and it is etc. Sure most people can get by with iMacs. Your developer friend must not compile very much or not do big builds, otherwise I'm sure he'd want the quad - octo cpus. There is nothing more frustrating than waiting 20 minutes for something to compile. Of course those are medium to big projects. But when you are compiling 50 times a day to debug, that time adds up.
the iMac isn't a slouch... but it is laptop parts and it is limited to expandability and it is etc. Sure most people can get by with iMacs. Your developer friend must not compile very much or not do big builds, otherwise I'm sure he'd want the quad - octo cpus. There is nothing more frustrating than waiting 20 minutes for something to compile. Of course those are medium to big projects. But when you are compiling 50 times a day to debug, that time adds up.
Well, he doesn't develop applications like Photoshop, but he was a key developer of Flip4Mac, for example. I have no idea how big a utility like that is on your scale, small or medium? He has said that he'd prefer a Mac Pro, but the cost difference is too much.
Well I know you and I (and probably him) can all agree that a desktop mac would fit this bill perfectly .
Flip4Mac comes in pieces, so I can imagine he'd only be re-compiling certain parts at a time. Either way, that is only one project. I'd imagine if he's smart enough to be on the Flip4Mac team, he'd be involved in stuff that would require large compiling times. A desktop mac (quad) sure would be nice .
Well, he doesn't develop applications like Photoshop, but he was a key developer of Flip4Mac, for example. I have no idea how big a utility like that is on your scale, small or medium? He has said that he'd prefer a Mac Pro, but the cost difference is too much.
I work on both a 2.66 Mac Pro quad (with the ATI X1900 and 5 gig of RAM) and the 2.8 Core 2 Extreme (with 4 gig of RAM). Running After Effects (CS3), I'm surprised at how speedy the latter machine is. In terms of previewing a complex series of layers, the iMac sometimes seems almost as fast as the Mac Pro. Crazy.
Of course, as beautiful as it is, the iMac nevertheless scares the crap out of me in terms of its present and future reliability. I've had one hideous garbled screen and fear more to come. Giving it a "workout" produces major heat on the back of the thin black outer crust. Just the other day I was projecting a QuickTime movie (H.264 codec, DV) when the audio and video ceased to synchronize properly. It happened not once but THREE times. Put simply, it's ridiculous to pay $2500 for a computer that may end up being a beautiful ornament. Needless to say, the 20 clients in my audience were not impressed by the synching problem on Apple's latest and greatest prosumer machine.
My point in all of this is that the Mac Pro remains a reliable workhorse, whereas the iMac strikes me as lovely but dodgy.
I have confused the issue. What didn't dawn on me until now is that the iMac would be the developer's 'personal' Mac, at home. Everything he uses at work is a Mac Pro. Sorry folks; I didn't mean to mislead everyone. Believe it or not, his current 'at home' Mac is a Quicksilver. The same thing I typing on now in my office, but his is a dual CPU.
the iMac isn't a slouch... but it is laptop parts and it is limited to expandability and it is etc. Sure most people can get by with iMacs. Your developer friend must not compile very much or not do big builds, otherwise I'm sure he'd want the quad - octo cpus. There is nothing more frustrating than waiting 20 minutes for something to compile. Of course those are medium to big projects. But when you are compiling 50 times a day to debug, that time adds up.
Off topic, but I have a question.
Pardon my ignorance, but this brought up a question for something I know nothing about. Would it be possible for said developer with the 24" iMac have the program compliled on an xServe or a Mac Pro over a local network in order to speed up the process?
Comments
And you do pay for that multi CPU founctionality of the Xeon with expensive fully buddered DIMMs etc
So the mini and the iMac cover the "dual core market" pretty well, the Mac Pro give good value in the octacore market, but less so in the quad core
I am not sayin that Apple should enter the low end tower market with razor thin margins, the Dell I compared to is 2 to 3 times Dells very cheapest towers. At that price range Apple should be able to both make money and a product to be proud of.
LOL, you're just not going to get it, are you LBB? There's more to this market than you seem to understand.
Yeah, I remember similar voices saying that about the 'low cost' Mac. Yet the Mac Mini we now have. And the anti-Intel argument way back.
(If they offered a decent quad mid-tower range I'm sure they'd sell twice the amount over the Mac Pros. But we'll have no way of knowing unless they make one.)
And the iMac competes and includes a screen.
Take the screen away and boost the specs to a quad and better gpu.
The 8800GT and Quad 2.4 gig Conroe are dirty cheap.
A decent £995 tower is a reality.
It's up to Apple.
It must sure be complicated for Apple to compete on GPUs...they strip down the ram and offer way out of date gpus like the 7300 while the 2600 Pro gets 256 megs instead of 512.
Ati and Nividia have new, cooler, better, cheaper, faster cards coming. I hope the Pro and iMac gets the option for them.
Programmer, your arguments are out of date. Apple are on Intel now. So they have to compete.
They'll probably add a sub-notebook and i hope they add a Mid-tower while they're at it.
Blue Ocean? Meh. I don't care as long as I get decent gpus and/or a mid-tower that gives me and PC owning friends more choice. It's about time they allowed us to fit a greater range of gpus. ie more than one for the iMac would be a start.
We'll see about the price range on the new Penryn based Mac Pros...but I'm not optimistic they're going to be any cheaper...
Lemon Bon Bon.
It must sure be complicated for Apple to compete on GPUs...they strip down the ram and offer way out of date gpus like the 7300 while the 2600 Pro gets 256 megs instead of 512.
Apple writes these blanket drivers for Nvidia cards that cover their whole spectrum. They need at least two drivers, one for Geforce, and one for Quadros - then they need to let the Macs boot BIOS and EFI so we can use the whole range of Nvidia cards from any manufacturer. ATI on the other hand writes their own shit, but I still say Apple needs to wake up, and shake up their desktop line by allowing this so Mac and Mac/windows Boot-camp users can choose the Mac as a gaming rig. It should open up to better Mac sales, not to mention the semi-pro single processor tower that many users would appreciate. With an adjustment like this in their line-up Apple could dominate desktop sales. And quit using the deskop market is slowing excuse to explain their desktop strategy failure.
Cost you're getting a free 24" Monitor!
Same price as the 2.6 Mac pro.
Since no update to the Mac Pro's you would be a fool to not choose a 2.8 24" Imac over a Mac Pro.
Cost you're getting a free 24" Monitor!
Same price as the 2.6 Mac pro.
LOL
24" LCDs are a whole ~$500 now. I'd much rather have the mac pro than a 2.8 iMac. Hell, I'd rather have a quad 2.0 Mac Pro than a 2.8 iMac.
LOL
24" LCDs are a whole ~$500 now. I'd much rather have the mac pro than a 2.8 iMac. Hell, I'd rather have a quad 2.0 Mac Pro than a 2.8 iMac.
On raw processing yes the pro is faster..on graphics performance it's 1%..
http://macspeedzone.com/html/hardwar...07/10_21.shtml
on the display..
it's £599 so that's what nearly $2000 of your us dollars? :-)
Since no update to the Mac Pro's you would be a fool to not choose a 2.8 24" Imac over a Mac Pro.
Cost you're getting a free 24" Monitor!
Same price as the 2.6 Mac pro.
Others may disagree with you, but I know a Mac developer personally. He is planning to buy a 24 inch iMac for his work. In his words, it's fast enough. Sure the Mac Pro would be nice, but he cannot justify the huge price difference.
The only thing holding him back right now is the freeze problem with the iMac. As soon as he's confident with the iMac hardware stability, it's hello iMac for him.
On raw processing yes the pro is faster..
Yep.
on graphics performance it's 1%..
http://macspeedzone.com/html/hardwar...07/10_21.shtml
on the display..
it's £599 so that's what nearly $2000 of your us dollars? :-)
You can get 24" displays for the $450 USD mark. Samsung has been running the price for over a month now. Which is 218.055 your price.
BTW I would never buy a mac pro with a 7300gt, I'd go x1900xt or bust.
Yep.
You can get 24" displays for the $450 USD mark. Samsung has been running the price for over a month now. Which is 218.055 your price.
BTW I would never buy a mac pro with a 7300gt, I'd go x1900xt or bust.
Sure, but lets compare apples with apples...
I can get a 24" display for 139, which is what $300 for a no-name brand. or £200 ($400) for a heard of brand, but that's not an apple display.
Sure, but lets compare apples with apples...
I can get a 24" display for 139, which is what $300 for a no-name brand. or £200 ($400) for a heard of brand, but that's not an apple display.
Most apple displays are OLDER samsung panels... I was comparing apples to apples.
Lets take that a step further. Lets compare Apple's outdated LCDs to Samsungs LCDs.
Apple Displays: 14ms Response Time
http://www.apple.com/displays/specs.html
Samsung Displays: 5ms Response Time
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824001234
Others may disagree with you, but I know a Mac developer personally. He is planning to buy a 24 inch iMac for his work. In his words, it's fast enough. Sure the Mac Pro would be nice, but he cannot justify the huge price difference.
The only thing holding him back right now is the freeze problem with the iMac. As soon as he's confident with the iMac hardware stability, it's hello iMac for him.
the iMac isn't a slouch... but it is laptop parts and it is limited to expandability and it is etc. Sure most people can get by with iMacs. Your developer friend must not compile very much or not do big builds, otherwise I'm sure he'd want the quad - octo cpus. There is nothing more frustrating than waiting 20 minutes for something to compile. Of course those are medium to big projects. But when you are compiling 50 times a day to debug, that time adds up.
Most apple displays are OLDER samsung panels... I was comparing apples to apples.
Lets take that a step further. Lets compare Apple's outdated LCDs to Samsungs LCDs.
Apple Displays: 14ms Response Time
http://www.apple.com/displays/specs.html
Samsung Displays: 5ms Response Time
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824001234
I'm not disputing the tech, I've got dell displays, I meant on the price of the 24" mac "display" to the mac pro without.
In the days of PPC one could understand.
But with the dirt cheap Conroe line? No excuse.
And another thing. Why is Apple skimming off the 'Ram' off the 512 meg Radeon Pro in the iMac? It's a 60 quid gpu. And they're skimming off ram?
WHY?!?!? Why do they do that? Blank look? Ram has never been cheaper...or GPUs for that matter...
Yeesh. At least give me the option to buy the 8800GT for another 90 pounds. I'd take that. Even under clocked.
Yeesh.
Lemon BOn Bon.
Power requirements would raise internal case heat latency. I wouldn't be surprised if their tolerances inside the case had to skim off the ram.
the iMac isn't a slouch... but it is laptop parts and it is limited to expandability and it is etc. Sure most people can get by with iMacs. Your developer friend must not compile very much or not do big builds, otherwise I'm sure he'd want the quad - octo cpus. There is nothing more frustrating than waiting 20 minutes for something to compile. Of course those are medium to big projects. But when you are compiling 50 times a day to debug, that time adds up.
Well, he doesn't develop applications like Photoshop, but he was a key developer of Flip4Mac, for example. I have no idea how big a utility like that is on your scale, small or medium? He has said that he'd prefer a Mac Pro, but the cost difference is too much.
Flip4Mac comes in pieces, so I can imagine he'd only be re-compiling certain parts at a time. Either way, that is only one project. I'd imagine if he's smart enough to be on the Flip4Mac team, he'd be involved in stuff that would require large compiling times. A desktop mac (quad) sure would be nice
Well, he doesn't develop applications like Photoshop, but he was a key developer of Flip4Mac, for example. I have no idea how big a utility like that is on your scale, small or medium? He has said that he'd prefer a Mac Pro, but the cost difference is too much.
I work on both a 2.66 Mac Pro quad (with the ATI X1900 and 5 gig of RAM) and the 2.8 Core 2 Extreme (with 4 gig of RAM). Running After Effects (CS3), I'm surprised at how speedy the latter machine is. In terms of previewing a complex series of layers, the iMac sometimes seems almost as fast as the Mac Pro. Crazy.
Of course, as beautiful as it is, the iMac nevertheless scares the crap out of me in terms of its present and future reliability. I've had one hideous garbled screen and fear more to come. Giving it a "workout" produces major heat on the back of the thin black outer crust. Just the other day I was projecting a QuickTime movie (H.264 codec, DV) when the audio and video ceased to synchronize properly. It happened not once but THREE times. Put simply, it's ridiculous to pay $2500 for a computer that may end up being a beautiful ornament. Needless to say, the 20 clients in my audience were not impressed by the synching problem on Apple's latest and greatest prosumer machine.
My point in all of this is that the Mac Pro remains a reliable workhorse, whereas the iMac strikes me as lovely but dodgy.
the iMac isn't a slouch... but it is laptop parts and it is limited to expandability and it is etc. Sure most people can get by with iMacs. Your developer friend must not compile very much or not do big builds, otherwise I'm sure he'd want the quad - octo cpus. There is nothing more frustrating than waiting 20 minutes for something to compile. Of course those are medium to big projects. But when you are compiling 50 times a day to debug, that time adds up.
Off topic, but I have a question.
Pardon my ignorance, but this brought up a question for something I know nothing about. Would it be possible for said developer with the 24" iMac have the program compliled on an xServe or a Mac Pro over a local network in order to speed up the process?