I bought my Mac Pro a bit before the cheese grater. But after the amazing laptops and the max studio, you really consider this the best max ever made? I admit it’s competing, at least for it’s time. But this article seems 3 years late. Basically this had internal storage and good pci expansion. That makes it the best mac ever made? Meh. It was important at the time. And I do respect that. But im Not sure it qualifies it for the honors you are trying to give it.
You... bought your Mac Pro before the cheese grater? I don't think you did somehow.
It was the best Mac for Pros who need expansion, upgradability, power and value. Unlike the current Mac Pro, it was very respectably priced. Furthermore, It was a machine without the outcomes of Apple's undesired "courage"; the current Mac Pro seems more like a tech demo than a real machine, with the resulting price tag to go with it.
You might want to lighten up. The "OG" Mac Pro was just the Power Mac with Intel Inside. Even people at apple were calling them Power Macs for a long time after they were Intel machines.
It's also huge. If you haven't seen one in person, it's almost certainly bigger than you expect. And heavy. And the "handles" have fairly sharp edges, which make it unpleasant to move around on a regular basis.
I used to lug around a G5 to different gigs, and you’re right. Those handles were brutal. i couldn’t afford a nice road case back then I think the machine weighed about 45 pounds.
The power distribution is pretty weird. The power supply has plenty of headroom, but you only get two aux power connectors for GPUs, and they have a weird capacity (120W each, rather than the more common 75W or 150W each). Some GPUs (e.g, the Radeon RX Vega 64) draw exclusively from the aux power connectors, which can cause the system to brown out, even though it has plenty of power budget left (the 75W allocated to the slot isn't used). Wouldn't be safe to draw more over the two aux connectors, which is why there should have been more than two.
A bit late to the discussion, but I was able to put a modern GPU in mine using the Pixlas Mod (splicing another line off the PSU). As you said, the PSU has plenty of headroom it's just not exposed by the motherboard. No one really could have anticipated the amount of power modern GPUs draw back then.
I still have my Mac Pro 2008. It was very upgradeable and best of all was very affordable. I upgraded the CPU, the Ram, the video cards, and had numerous PCI cards over the years. The current Mac Pro is not even close to being as affordable or expandible. My Mac Pro was under $3,000 if memory serves. I bought the dual quad core 2.8Ghz Xeon model and it was a beast at the time.
I have a 5,1 Mac Pro, and it's still my favorite Mac of all the numerous ones I've owned since 1994. The only drawback was the power consumption, my M2 Mac mini uses less power full-bore than my 2010 Mac Pro does at idle. Not to mention the heat... But even with those, I've been able to upgrade everything on this machine to keep it relevant. Amazing for a 14 year old computer.
I still have my Mac Pro 2008. It was very upgradeable and best of all was very affordable. I upgraded the CPU, the Ram, the video cards, and had numerous PCI cards over the years. The current Mac Pro is not even close to being as affordable or expandible. My Mac Pro was under $3,000 if memory serves. I bought the dual quad core 2.8Ghz Xeon model and it was a beast at the time.
Your old MacPro also has 1/64th of the power of the current Mac Pro too and uses 10x more power doing it so it's less necessary to upgrade.
For me, the Sawtooth line was the best desktop Mac ever released.
Rock solid, excellent accessibility and an internal firewire port which, sadly, Apple never bothered to take anywhere.
And designwise, beautiful for its time.
That design was so far ahead of its time, it was unreal. Like a futuristic dream machine. Now, it is outdated of course. But at the time, it was the most beautiful piece of computing hardware, light years ahead of everything else. That is the Jobs-Ive combo. A lethal one two punch, Always pushing the envelope, creating truly iconic designs that others tried to copy, but could never match. Legendary Apple.
The OG Mac Pro was and is also iconic. Even today, it doesn’t look a bit outdated. Performance was insane too. I bought one for my organization shortly after it was available. We were running notoriously unoptimized software that was barely chugging along on all of our systems, and the Mac Pro ran it like a hot knife through butter. A legend of its time.
That was a special machine. I bought one in 2000 and had lots of fun with it. Being able to modify it was very useful. I had multiple drives that allowed me to run Mac OSX betas without losing my original setup. First the public beta and then all the new beta as they got leaked out. Those were good days! I had that machine for over 10 years. Multiple drive upgrades, RAM upgrades and then finally CPU and video card upgrades. Each extended the lifespan of the machine but eventually it was too long in the tooth and I ended up swapping it out for a Mac mini.
Now my reverence has switched to the MBP. My needs have changed over the years and portability is very important now. I'm now using the M1 version released in 2021. 3 years old, still going strong. Not upgradable but so much power and legs to it. Battery life is unbelievable. I also have a couple of older intel MBPs that are still perfectly good.
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You might want to lighten up. The "OG" Mac Pro was just the Power Mac with Intel Inside. Even people at apple were calling them Power Macs for a long time after they were Intel machines.
But even with those, I've been able to upgrade everything on this machine to keep it relevant. Amazing for a 14 year old computer.
I continue to remember my 2009 Mac Pro fondly. It was a remarkably powerful and affordable beast.
I imagine I'll make a similar comment the next time this article reappears...
I had that machine for over 10 years. Multiple drive upgrades, RAM upgrades and then finally CPU and video card upgrades. Each extended the lifespan of the machine but eventually it was too long in the tooth and I ended up swapping it out for a Mac mini.
Now my reverence has switched to the MBP. My needs have changed over the years and portability is very important now. I'm now using the M1 version released in 2021. 3 years old, still going strong. Not upgradable but so much power and legs to it. Battery life is unbelievable. I also have a couple of older intel MBPs that are still perfectly good.