Home > Consumer Reviews > Apple Mac Pro MA356LL/A Desktop (Two 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processors, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive)

I was a Macintosh software engineer at Apple from 1987-1990 and a major Mac user until 1995, when I finally had to switch to Windows for business reasons (I develop corporate software and had to follow my customers to Windows). I've been in the Windows camp ever since... until now.

Faced with the expensive prospect of upgrading to Vista, and after receiving a compelling demo of a Mac running Windows from a good friend of mine, I started looking harder at the Intel-based Macs and came to the conclusion they're the only computer to buy today because you can truly have your cake + pie + donuts and eat them too (more on that in a minute).

Mac Convert has written an excellent review already and I second everything it says. The only difference is that I've been having excellent luck with Parallels, and it doesn't seem like beta software to me. I was able to replicate my high-end Sony Vaio workstation in Parallels, including its 1.5Gb of RAM and huge wide screen display, with no problems. And it blows my mind that I can use Visual Studio to build Windows software on the Mac even faster than I could on my PC. Everything just works flawlessly and frankly I didn't expect it to. It's just amazing.

With regards to cake + pie + donuts: with Parallels I can create multiple virtual machines on my Mac, each with a different OS if I want, and this has completely solved one of my biggest development problems, which is how do I develop and test my software on XP + Vista + Server 2003 without buying a ton of hardware? In Parallels I simply created a virtual machine for each and off I went. Now I can switch from a machine running XP, Visual Studio 2003 and .NET 1.1/2.0 to Vista, Visual Studio 2005 and .NET 3.0 just by clicking the mouse. Mind blowing.

Best of all, at long last I'll be able to make the most of my digital SLR and digital video recorder because I'll have access to all that cool Apple software for photos and video. I might even get my honeymoon video on DVD in time for my 5th anniversary next week! Every time I tried on my Vaio I'd crash the machine so I eventually gave up on that stuff in PC land. The Mac reopens these doors for me in a big way.

Putting Intel processors in the Macs is the smartest thing Apple has done in years - and for that reason buying a Mac is the smartest computer purchase you can make today. No matter what the Mac fanatics say we still live in a predominantly Windows world and it's awesome to be able to go both ways on the most beautiful and best-designed hardware on the market. Until recently you had to settle for either Mac OS or Windows, and neither one in isolation was ideal. Now that you can have both on the new Macs there's really no reason to buy anything else.

I upgraded from a Powermac G4 (Single 733 Mhz processor), so I have been using Macs for several years. In my opinion, the Mac Pro is the best desktop computer you can buy for multimedia design, as it has performed flawlessly with all the programs I have used thus far (Adobe stuff, Macromedia, etc.) In general, you get what you pay for, it might be expensive, but the craftsmanship is immaculate. I have had some crashes, but I think these will get less frequent with more OS updates and Universal binaries being released. Also, Leopard (10.5) should run great on the Mac Pro.

Pros:
Very quiet (it is great to have a computer that barely makes a sound, I hope it stays that way)
Fast (obviously one of the fastest computers out right now)
Aluminum instead of plastic
Several inputs (USB 2.0, Firewire 400 and 800)
Quad processor (it will be nice when programs start taking advantage of this)
Adding more RAM and Hard drives is a breeze (everything slides out, takes seconds)
64 bit

Cons:
Steel enclosure is large and bulky (I had to modify my desk to get it to fit)
RAM is expensive (the heat-sinks make it very costly)
Hard drive circuit boards are exposed on this new type, it seems vulnerable
Apple Care should be 3 years by default
A lot of the bundled software is not Universal

This is a truly beautiful machine. This very silent tower is powerful in ways I never experienced before. I mostly use Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack and I couldn't get it into the 100% region. Hard discs and rams are the limiting factors here. Do I really need Quad Xeon processors? No, I don't. I would say that this machine is too fast for what I do on a daily bases. Apple should build a dual version. It would be more in line with the power needs of normal people who need a tower for the ease of expansion but do not do any genome decoding. So, if you want to get the most bangs for the buck, this is the machine for you. (It retails 1000$ cheaper that a similar Dell). Just make sure to add more ram and set up the discs as an raid array. These are gone be the only limiting factors in your system.

I just went back to the DELL site to verify my claim. The very similar DELL Precision 690 equipped with quad Xeon costs now only 3,113$ down from 3463$. They must feel the pressure. I don't know how Apple does it. Maybe they get a very special deal on the XEON processors from Intel.

The thing is, that for less money, you get a machine you can use with OSX or Windows and runs very, very silently.

You may think this Mac is expensive, but try to build an identical PC on the Dell site. I did and found it cost over $3,000! At first I didn't believe it as I always thought Macs are priced at a premium (for the better quality hardware and software). But after a little research I found that this Mac is indeed a great value for the price. I figured I was getting the OS X software essentially as a bonus, and I was sold.

The stock model comes with 1GB RAM. I bought an additional 1GB and added it in (you probably want to, and there are places cheaper than Apple where you can buy the RAM). I run FreeBSD and Linux on top of Mac OS X (using Parallels Desktop - $79). The speed always amazes me. I push a hotkey and I have a FreeBSD server resumed from a suspended state in less than 5 seconds! Now I can run multiple operating systems without having to buy multiple ugly PCs and clutter my work area.

This machine is superbly designed and solidly built. Everything is well thought out inside and out, down to the detail. For example, the hard drives have no cables, you just mount them on trays, slide them into a slot and they snap right into the port connection. The optical drive trays are hidden behind automatic sliding metal-style doors (means different colored drives don't show on the front of your machine). You can check the manuals on Apple's site to see how easy it is to open and upgrade. For peripherals there are plenty of USB 2, Firewire 800 and audio ports - some conveniently located in the front and more hidden away in the back.

A useful upgrade is to add two or three additional disks and set them up with software striped RAID - that gives hard drive performance a super boost. The software based RAID is included in OS X. Using XBench disk tests on mine, a single drive scores 70 and three drives in striped RAID score 140. Difference in score for sequential read (with large block size) is more pronounced - single drive scores 56.6MB/s and RAID configuration scores 166.38MB/s. Instead of getting a souped-up version of this model, it makes a lot more sense to get the stock model and buy memory and hard-drive separately.

The airflow and cooling is great (also the Intel Xeon chips provide higher performance per watt than the older G5s) - this thing runs whisper quiet.

This is certainly not for small places - at 20" tall and 19" long, it is big and heavy. The top 'handle' in the front makes it easier to pull the 40-pounder out from under a desk.

The package includes the apple keyboard and mouse (neither is wireless) which I put away since I use my current ergo keyboard.

Overall I'm very happy with this purchase and am looking to many years of high-performance computing.

The Dual 2.67 MacPro configured standard is $2350 today at Amazon, free ship. Add $199 for three year Apple care=$2550

The Dual 2.67 Dell configured below (identical other than the graphics card, but using the cheapest, and similar one) is $3441 + shipping, or at least $900 more. I think the other guy forgot the second processor.

That does not include the required $79 annual subscription to Norton Antivirus... Even if you want to run XP, get a Mac...

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Dell Precision Workstation 490 MiniTower - 32bit
$3,441

Date 9/12/2006 9:37:45 PM Central Standard Time
Dell Precision Workstation 490 MiniTower - 32bit:
Dual Core Intel® Xeon® Processor 5150 2.66GHz, 4MB L2,1333
Genuine Windows® XP Professional, SP2 with Media
2nd Processor:
Dual Core Intel® Xeon® Processor 5150 2.66GHz, 4MB L2,1333
128MB PCIe x16 ATI FireGL V3400, Dual DVI or Dual VGA or DVI + VGA
1GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 667MHz, ECC (2 DIMMS)
250GB SATA 3.0Gb/s,7200 RPM NCQ Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst Cache
48XCDRW AND 16XDVD+/-RW, w/Cyberlink PowerDVD(tm) and Roxio Creator(tm)
No Floppy Drive
No Monitor Option
Dell USB Enhanced Multimedia Keyboard with built-in 2-port USB Hub
Dell USB 2-Button Optical Mouse with Scroll
1394a Controller Card