“Anybody who tries to keep up with technology is familiar with this sad truth: Even the best computer will seem positively geriatric by its fifth birthday,” Geoffrey A. Fowler writes for The Wall Street Journal. “I pride myself on having future-proofed my last two computers—a custom decked-out PC I bought in 2003, and a top-of-the line iMac I bought in 2007. Last month, Apple began selling its new Mac Pro, a $3,000-and-up desktop rocket that looks like the love child of R2-D2 and Darth Vader. So I asked myself, could this be my best hope for defeating obsolescence in five years?”
“Yet after testing the Mac Pro alongside one of the best iMacs you can buy, both on loan from Apple, I learned a valuable lesson: You don’t need a Lamborghini when you can buy a Lexus for half the price,” Fowler writes. “If you buy a fancy Italian sports car to putter around the city, it may actually deliver worse performance than a more affordable car. The same applies here.”
“The Mac Pro is designed for professionals and [also] has an undeniable appeal for people like me with a nights-and-weekends hobby in photography,” Fowler writes. “But it can sometimes underperform against the iMac… My recommendation: Buy an iMac now. It is the Lexus of desktop computers, but trust me, it will handle whatever you throw at it. In two to three years, upgrade to a new one, when the technology has moved along. The price of two computers over five years will still be less than what you’d spend on one 8-core Mac Pro.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Like a set of tools, different Macs for different jobs. Mac Pro buyers know why they’re buying Mac Pros. iMacs for the rest of the desktops sounds just fine to us.