My first experience on a Mac Pro
Yesterday I received a call that Apple Store UTC had demo units on the floor and I should come check them out. As any deserving person does to test the power of a system, I rebooted the thing. The system was up and running in under 10 seconds from a dark screen. Yeah.
Then I proceeded to open every application using the classic select all – command ‘o’ method. This unit had 23 applications open in 1:14s. Apps like Photoshop, Final Cut, DVD Studio, the entire iLife suite, and all the normal suspects. 3GB of RAM certainly helps this.
It’s a very impressive machine, hands down the fastest and best experience I’ve had on a Mac. Final Cut exported 15 minutes of HD film to H.264 like cutting butter with a hot knife.
Here’s the best part I was told. The stores have the full capability to perform build-to-order Mac Pro’s in house. That means if you want three hard drives, you can get three hard drives. Want 16GB of RAM – Fantastic. There is no need to order online and wait for shipping. Of course, the store has to have the parts on hand. Other than that, they can build the system however you like. In the past, the stores could only add RAM or Airport cards (before they were standard gear).
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I had the same experience today. I purchased one online and am waiting on it to arrive (Sept. 20th). I currently have a 1.8GHz iMac G5 and the difference was incredible. Granted, I never used one of the quad G5s, but the Mac Pro is fast… really fast. Some basic simple filters and processing in photoshop seemed pretty quick to considering it is not a native app. Overall I am happy to have purchased it and can’t wait for it to arrive.
Why did it only have 3gb of RAM? I thought they were supposed to have matching pairs for optimal performance.
The system comes with a marched pair of 512MB giving it 1GB. They added a matched pair of 1GB chips giving it a total of 3GB.
just called my local apple store in troy, michigan and they informed me the only thing they can do is install extra ram… if i want anything else, i have to order custom config. directly from apple… as i really want one of these but would like to make a few ordering tweaks, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated… apple.com is quoting me 3-4 weeks for delivery and that is simply too long…
The only way you can get a custom one earlier is if you order a base model and then purchase the other parts seperate. The X1900 video card and Airport adapter are creating the delay, not the towers themselves.
But you probably can’t get the educational discount…
My local Apple Store says you can get the education discount in-store, but apparently only on hardware, not software. I was pleasantly surprised, but ordered my MBP online, because I wanted the refurbished 2.0ghz (enough) with 256mb of VRAM – that configuration is no longer available new (unless there’s a secret way.)
My local apple store told me for all Mac Pros they can install only RAM at the moment. Though they will be able to install new HDD’s and other products in the upcoming months. The rep on the phone told me around January or when Leopard comes out.
– digg –
uh.. i’m sorry. did I just read that you tested photoshop booting up on the new intel mac pro? are you saying that you tested “similarly sized” programs with “similar resources” or is that apple store privvy to something that i’ve been desperatly needing since I got my macbook?
brain functioning slowly. need sleep. third possiblity: running photoshop in rosetta? if it runs functionally fast there as well then it is truly an amazing computer.