I finally resold that system last year (to another MacRumors forum reader, actually) - but it ran 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for me that whole time I owned it without a single hardware problem. In that respect, it was one of the best computer purchases I ever made.
I took out a personal loan to buy my first (2006) Mac Pro though, because I was that impressed with what Apple had done with OS X at the time, and wanted a high end system designed for it that would last a while. Yet I'm not one of the research scientists needing hard-core number crunching capabilities or an artist needing animation renders to take place as fast as physically possible. I'm definitely in the category of computer enthusiast and work in the field for a living. And apart from having to do a little hackery to get the most recent OS onto it, it's been pretty plain sailing all the way.
I'm delighted that my old beast still manages to pull its weight, and come pretty close to what most PC users would get if they bought a fairly standard desktop machine today. That to me is exactly what I bought it for. Now, 7 years later, at the back end of 2013, I have a Mac which can still keep pace with what's required for the work I do.
So, I pretty much went out and bought what was the best machine on the market at the time, reckoning that with upgradability and performance well ahead of the pack it would give me plenty of years of use before it became obsolete. They also made it clear that it would be my machine and I'd be able to keep it if I ever left the firm. When I bought by Mac Pro in 2006, I was lucky enough to have been pretty much given a blank cheque by the company I worked for to go out and buy a machine to allow me to work from home. I'm just putting a different perspective from a different user (hence "what this says to me"). I don't dispute a single word of that, but I'm not really arguing against your opinions. If Apple slapped megabuck charges for "extended support" perhaps, but they don't engage in that sort of business at all. "Fast enough" completely ignores support costs and development allocation issues. The Mac Pro 2008 ( and earlier) are already in this state.ĭesupported hardware doesn't tend to get new software. Where parts are going to come from to keep these systems running is from old system boneyards. Apple won't be able to buy them this time next year. Again leads to a general decrease in actually running deployed systems.įor example, the 3500/3600/5500 Xeons in 2009-2012 Mac Pros are being dropped from retail market this year. system die over time and not all of them get repaired or passed down. dwindling number of those systems in active deployed use. Support for old system has little to do with "fast enough".
But were folks who need mainstream computational power the targeted users for the Mac Pro? Slow for whom is the more operative question.