Apple to revamp desktop Macs Apple will refresh its Mac Pro and Mac Mini desktop computers in August, with the new range featuring Intel’s new Sandy Bridge CPUs and Thunderbolt, the company’s latest high-speed peripheral interface developed in collaboration with Intel. The unofficial news of these Mac desktop arrivals come from the Twitter account of CNet …
The MAC Pro update is late because of problems with the chipsets for the new Xeon processors.
It's a shame that the new MACbook Pro Quad core is faster than the current MACPro using xeon processors (and the current iMAC is too if you upgrade to the quad core), but that's the way it is at the moment.
We have been waiting for the new MAC Pro and are eventually using MACbook Pro as a stop-gap.
We'll still get a Mac Pro, but at the moment, rendering with the Macbook Pro beats the 8-core hands-down and is so close to a 12-core it's unreal. Given that the Macbook Pro is about the same cost as the 8-core and MUCH cheaper than the 12-core it's a no-brainer.
Ram is certainly an issue, and the price of 16GB for a Macbook should be illegal. Storage is not so much of an issue, because that all lives on a gigabit LAN, so that it is shared. Optical media is not used enough to worry about how many drives in a single machine. It's also true that the multiple GPUs in the Mac Pro also help rendering, but at the moment it's still loosing.
Also the Macbook will be a useful toy/tool for on-site demonstrations later.
...but I bought a MacPro (April 2010) for home use, so I could work at home - we use CS5 and I was up til then carrying on with my 2005 G5 dual2.0 and CS3 - I still have that and I do use it..
The MacPro works very well; it's been upped to 12GB RAM, and had an additional three 1TB drives added and a second optical - a Samsung with Lightscribe capability. It will, I believe last me for at least another 3–4 years barring anything really wild happening with software and rendering it not usable but I do think that's unlikely.
In around 4–5 years time I will be at normal retirement age, and with the cash part of my pension I might think about upgrading to whatever is then cutting edge but until that time, I really can't see any benefit to upgrading other than being able to say "I got the newest".
Apple have always had advance access to intel's new chipsets and CPUs since they switched from Power PC. But they also never upgrade the Mac Pro until something Significantly more powerful than the current model is possible. This is almost certainly going to be the E5-2600 Sandy Bridge Xeons (dual socket 2011), why would they go backwards and release a single socket workstation, seems pointless?
. . . when these new machines are tied to the cloud and what you do is as restricted as it's looking to be. Yippee won't be the word.
I have been purposely waiting for these new machines. And have a butt load of money to spend on them. But not under these conditions. PC's are looking good now. I DON'T BELIEVE I SAID THAT! Thanks Apple! You made me cuss.
Nobody in their right minds upgrades a perfectly good macpro just because a new one's come out. My mate has one that was 2ndhand 5 years ago running Logic etc (music producer) - a powerpc with an old OS - and it still performs like it was new - which is still easily good enough to run a home studio.
IMO new releases like this are for people making a genuine new-purchase decision either because their old one really isn't up to it any more or they are fed up with windows.
Anyone else is like those amateur photographers who have more hasselblad gear than a professional and gets the new kit every year - and proceeds to take holiday snaps with it all.
Paris - because it's time she was upgraded.
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