“While I still run into people from time to time who believe that Macs are sophisticated consumer computers and not suited for professional work, I’m sure most of you know that isn’t correct,” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl. “Regardless, over the years, it was generally assumed that an all-in-one Mac was useful for small business or consumers, while a Mac tower was the work machine that the content creators craved.”
“That, however, changed in late 2009, when a new lineup of iMacs came out with quad-core processors, reasonably speedy graphics, and expansive hard drives,” Steinberg writes. “As development of the Mac Pro appeared to have slowed, an tricked out iMac, customized with extra RAM and the more powerful processor and graphics chips offered by Apple, actually met or exceeded many Mac Pro benchmarks. Yes, I understand that having extra processor cores counts in some apps, but not in most.”
“After Tim Cook promised a great Mac Pro upgrade in 2013, there was a lot of anticipation and suggestions on how Apple might change the form factor, assuming there was going to be much of a change. The fashionably small black cylinder without much external expansion probably came as a surprise to most, although it may make sense for some that didn’t find the internal expansion to be sufficient,” Steinberg writes. “No matter. It appears the Mac Pro has taken off quite nicely, still backordered for several weeks on even the two standard configurations… But if you examine Mac performance up and down the line, you’ll see that most any model is capable of terrific performance, even a Mac mini. For serious business use, an iMac is a powerful beast, and should be taken seriously.”
Much more in the full article here.
In one sentence: my late 2012 i7 iMac runs Windows WAY better than my early 2013 i7 mobile quad processor with Intel 4000 graphics laptop runs Windows.
I want to be totally fair: my iMac cost a lot more then my laptop. A similar MacBookpro laptop would also cost a lot more then my laptop. The question is how much more? Less then 3 days salary for me. What do you get for that? Better performance and an employee whose eyes aren’t tired by the end of the day. Oh yeah, you get OS X and everything that goes with that. Including a great time saver called “Time machine”. 🙂
I understand, back when I was working desktop support, I was the tech with Mac experience. I the environments I worked in had few Mac systems to support, but nonetheless I worked on them made work within the network environment. Word quietly moved around that IT could make Macs work within the network, and that’s when I was unofficially informed to knock it off. Management was afraid of what they didn’t understand, but over time they had to support the Mac platform, burying me in the doghouse for my efforts?
I have had the “…But it can’t run heavy duty apps like Windows…”
That is when I boot up the (old 2010) MacBook Pro into Windows for Solidworks and quickly rotate a 300 meg assembly and section it in near real time.
There is usually silence after that point.
I use my i5quad iMac with 12gb RAM for music production, video and photo editing and 3D. It doesn’t even breathe hard. For the price of one uber-Pro I could buy 4 iMacs and that wouldn’t make sense to me….
Just watch NOVA and see what real scientists are using…Macs!
TimO
What 3D? Video editing in 3D, or just photo? What software does 3D video editing, on a Mac?
Own 3D tv., GREAT picture.
Yes, Mac hardware is definitely better for professionals than hardware from any other manufacturer, but Apple has got to stop stupidifying its software. The worst example is how they removed all the professional features from Pages to make an “upgrade,” leaving professional users high and dry. They didn’t learn anything from the other two other professional applications they did it too. Yes, they put features back in, but pissed-off users aren’t going to wait a year or two to meet tomorrow’s deadline. You don’t delight your customers when you discontinue version one two years before version two is feature complete. OS X Server keeps getting dumber, and Mountain Lion did away with the minimal GUI for Apache, and the UI is turning into a badly drawn cartoon. The MacPro is a technical masterpiece; no hardware manufacturer can touch it, no geek can build a less expensive homebrew clone, but if all you can do with it is write letters to grandma with pictures of butterflies, what’s the point? How many fourth graders need a Mac Pro?
Apple hardware and software is going in opposite directions. Stupidifying OS X and its applications is not a good way to sell to professionals.