I have no doubt that I would have been content with the performance from a MacBook versus my MacBook Pro. Maybe that’s just me talking already having the Pro, but I can’t help but thinking that I have a lot of power in this machine that I am not utilising – I might as well have gotten the MB and saved a few hundred bucks.

Conversely, the MacBook Pro was the only machine to come in over 13″, which I do not regret – I love my 15″ of space.

Too to consider is how frequently you buy machines. Yes, you would be fine with an iMac, but what of people who buy machines only once every five years? Perhaps they do need that expandability of the Mac Pro (RAM, for instance, or higher end gfx, or the PCI slots – remember the parents actually used two of those for expansion when technology advanced and they needed the card to give the larger hard drive size capability) to carry them when technology advanced even (unbelievably) further.

Welcome to Macintosh, my friend…

First, recognize that this article was written way before Snow Leopard (in fact, I think it was written when Tiger was out). We are only just beginning to benefit from multicore computing in a large way.

Second, I get the upgradeability mindset. You’re talking to someone who upgraded the heck out of a G4 QuickSilver (see here). But the G5 and Intel Mac Pros don’t seem to have as much upgrade potential in the community as the G4. I almost would rather build my tower and go the Hackintosh route if I was going to have a tower that could be tweaked to the max.

RAM is indeed becoming increasingly important for a variety of prosumer tasks, but I still see the iMac’s limits meeting those needs.

The Mac Pro rocks. My parents have one and I occasionally help them with it, and we’ve done some awesome things with it. I just feel the iMac has grown to the point that makes it much more difficult to justify “needing” to pay the Mac Pro’s hefty price tag.

Just differing thoughts. Thx for your comment!

Sure, I could max out my 1st generation macbook pro to a whopping 2GB of RAM and replace the tired 100GB 5400 RPM with a much larger 7200RPM version… but that is it. No CPU upgrades, no additional RAM supported. I cant buy a logic board that will fit the chassis, the processors are soldered…you see my point? Hard drive and RAM are the only things you can replace. At least with a mac pro, you CAN replace the entire logic board if you want, you can pop in newer processors, you can continue to upgrade RAM beyond what is considered sufficient the year you bought it. Lets face it, a prosumer doesnt just play video games and encode audio. They use software that is RAM intensive (photoshop for example), they have many programs running simultanesously and you are comparing apples to oranges.

This prosumer would take a shiny new mac pro and probably skimp on a monitor until my rebate check came in. One makes a wonderful all-in-one home office computer and the other is a professional computer.

The difference is seconds. Exporting videos to your phone was never that fast. Image rendering takes, let’s be optimistic, 10 seconds less. I don’t think it’s worth shelling the 2200 € here in my place. I always wanted to have that silver beast of a machine, but thinking about it, I can’t just shell away that much.

Thanks for the article. I am stopping myself now every day from walking out of the store with a huge box. Gee.

So that means you can have a whole new computer 3 times for the same amount of money.. and its spread out over numerous years! You benefit all around.

As far as maintenance concerns for the iMacs.. Apple has the technology behind the compact nature of the iMac down real good.

Just thoughts. Obviously, my viewpoint is just one side of the coin.

I also agree with Jennifer, for those of us who don’t or can’t get a new computer every month we need a computer that can be upgraded. On another note just the design of the mac pro seems safer, what if something happens to the imac’s insides and you can’t afford coverage for it? with the mac pro you would at least have a slim chance of fixing it yourself.