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Roughly? The Mac Pro has a workstation-grade dual-socket motherboard with Xeon processors, ECC FB-DIMM memory, and four PCI-E x16 slots. The build quality is al

Roughly? The Mac Pro has a workstation-grade dual-socket motherboard with Xeon processors, ECC FB-DIMM memory, and four PCI-E x16 slots. The build quality is also significantly better than most off-the-shelf PC hardware. Granted, this isn't important to most people buying their home system to dick around with, but it IS called the "Pro" for a reason. Go spec out the same hardware from Dell or HP and you'll find similar prices.

perlpimp 16y ago
Actually they don't use FB-DIMM ram anymore http://www.apple.com/ca/macpro/specs.html http://www.apple.com/ca/macpro/specs.html Seems that it has gone the way of rambus.
root 16y ago
>but it IS called the "Pro" for a reason Exactly, the money you safe on hardware you'll lose on support issues. If I were still a student I'd probably be running a hackintosh but my time now is too valuable to dick around with such a setup and afaik there are no firms offering support for hackintoshes.
- lamnk 16y ago
  Well with the money you save you can even build another hackintosh as backup. But if you value the time to buy parts and assemble them more then a mac is good for you.
drewcrawford 16y ago
Yeah, but you don't need that stuff unless you're Pixar or running production servers. I think there's a market for a midrange, expandable mac. A quad-core machine with a few extra drive bays and two PCI x16 slots. A software developer's box. A Mac Mini is underpowered, but the Pro is way overpowered, esp with regards to I/O. The quad-core iMac is a step in the right direction, but it's not really expandable. Apple has traditionally taken the position that there's not enough margin on this sort of market. But all those iOS developers have to run something. Couldn't Apple sell it at cost and write it off as developer evangelism for iOS?
- tptacek 16y ago
  Probably not. Even if you (unrealistically) assume that there isn't a huge amount of overhead to designing and maintaining another Mac product, there's a huge cost involved in complicating their product line and confusing customers. Part of Apple's computer product strategy involves an extremely simple product line with few options.
- statictype 16y ago
  Isn't a Mac Mini a perfectly valid choice for iOS development?
  - drewcrawford 16y ago
    There's a pretty big difference in compile time for large projects. If you're just hacking around, sure, works great. But if you make a living on iOS and do a few hundred compiles a day, it's a no brainer to buy a quad-core or eight-core machine.

perlpimp 16y ago

Actually they don't use FB-DIMM ram anymore http://www.apple.com/ca/macpro/specs.html http://www.apple.com/ca/macpro/specs.html Seems that it has gone the way of rambus.

root 16y ago

>but it IS called the "Pro" for a reason Exactly, the money you safe on hardware you'll lose on support issues. If I were still a student I'd probably be running a hackintosh but my time now is too valuable to dick around with such a setup and afaik there are no firms offering support for hackintoshes.

lamnk 16y ago
Well with the money you save you can even build another hackintosh as backup. But if you value the time to buy parts and assemble them more then a mac is good for you.

drewcrawford 16y ago

Yeah, but you don't need that stuff unless you're Pixar or running production servers. I think there's a market for a midrange, expandable mac. A quad-core machine with a few extra drive bays and two PCI x16 slots. A software developer's box. A Mac Mini is underpowered, but the Pro is way overpowered, esp with regards to I/O. The quad-core iMac is a step in the right direction, but it's not really expandable. Apple has traditionally taken the position that there's not enough margin on this sort of market. But all those iOS developers have to run something. Couldn't Apple sell it at cost and write it off as developer evangelism for iOS?

tptacek 16y ago
Probably not. Even if you (unrealistically) assume that there isn't a huge amount of overhead to designing and maintaining another Mac product, there's a huge cost involved in complicating their product line and confusing customers. Part of Apple's computer product strategy involves an extremely simple product line with few options.
statictype 16y ago
Isn't a Mac Mini a perfectly valid choice for iOS development?
- drewcrawford 16y ago
  There's a pretty big difference in compile time for large projects. If you're just hacking around, sure, works great. But if you make a living on iOS and do a few hundred compiles a day, it's a no brainer to buy a quad-core or eight-core machine.