The Mac Pro is the fastest and the most expensive Mac you can buy. It’s engineered and manufactured with power users in mind – those who need exceptional performance, expandability and hardware that allows them to perform demanding tasks such as high resolution video editing and RAW photo editing. Because of the hardware offered in the Mac Pro, it is by no means a ‘cheap’ machine – the base model starts at $1,000 more than the high-end 27″ iMac, and $1,700 more than the base model 21.5″ iMac.
Despite the price, the new Mac Pro is actually a bargain. Here’s why. The base model is $3,000, and the 6-Core and Dual GPU configuration starts at $4,000. With options added, these machines cost as much as $10,000-$12,000.
Back in 1990, Apple released the most powerful Mac available at the time. It was called the Macintosh IIfx and it started at $9,000 and configurations went up to $12,000. In today’s money, that’s about $16,000 – $21,400. Today, even an iPhone has tons more power, memory and capacity than you could have ever dreamed of getting from a IIfx.
What Apple has done with the new Mac Pro isn’t to be underestimated – the machine contains high-end workstation graphics that were never available in earlier models, in addition to high-speed PCIe SSD storage which was also not available as standard in earlier Mac Pros, and is not even available as an option on many PC workstations. But Apple offers both of these as standard features, for as little as $3,000.
Then consider this. The RAM, SSD, GPU and CPU are actually all upgradeable on the Mac Pro, despite its bespoke design and proprietary parts. There’s no doubt that OWC (Other World Computing) will be offering SSD upgrades in the future, and they are already offering cheaper RAM than you can get from Apple. It has also recently been revealed that the CPUs are socketed, and the GPU is also replaceable.
For the types of customers who will buy the new Mac Pro, rendering time is money. Video production is a costly business – and rendering real-time 4K is something the new Mac Pro is very capable of with the latest version of Final Cut Pro. Adobe has yet to update Premiere to take advantage of the new hardware, but an update will surely arrive in the future. What this means is, the Mac Pro actually saves its customers money by allowing them to do increasingly demanding tasks in less time than ever before. It’s the only Mac that allows you to do this effectively with 4K and incredible Thunderbolt expansion – making it rather special and unique.
So all in all…when you consider everything the Mac Pro has to offer, and compare the price tag with what we used to pay for high-end Macs, it really is a bargain.
In 2014 we’ll be finding the best Mac Pro hardware and upgrade deals as they become available and we’ll be posting them on this site. Stay tuned!
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