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 have the Mac Pro with 2 of the 2.66 chips, 500 GB of disk, 4 GB of RAM (667 MHz), and the Radeon X1900 graphics card. I got this specifically to run a professional home photo studio with Aperture and Photoshop CS3 (Beta that runs Intel natively). It runs like a dream. Photoshop runs with no delays, and Aperture is running with very small occassional delays with about 10,000 images in the Aperture library.

I recommend upgrading the standard Mac Pro to at least have the Radeon graphics card to run two DVI displays, and definately bump up the RAM to at least 2 GB.

If you are thinking of buying an ultimate desktop, this is it. I finally coughed up the money and made the purchase and it is well worth it. I put this baby to work every day (Final Cut, aperture, itunes, internet, video editing, entertainment center etc etc) only to tire myself out. I usually never shut the system down (just place it on the sleep mode) and it gets going with out the sluggishnes you will find on PC's. And the best part is, it is super quiet. One thing I will recommend is get as much as memory you can. other than that I agree with most of the other reviews.

I've owned PC after PC since I was a dorky kid with an electrical engineer for a father. I own a software company which develops products on the Microsoft/PC platform. But after purchasing a PC which began overheating within 3 months of ownership, struggling to find the problem, fumbling about with a poorly designed case trying to work through the maze of cables, I finally indulged in the Mac Pro.

Yes, it's expensive. Yes, it comes with the strange but reliable OSX. But here's the upside:

PROS

- Elegant external and internal design. It's laid out like a well-made server product. No tools are required to do most basic things like swapping a card, drive, or adding RAM. There isn't a cable in sight.

- Intel platform. I'm dual-booting and running both Windows Vista and OSX. I've never seen Vista run so well.

- Performance. This is a fast machine. I'm an avid Photoshop user and the 10+ GHz of processing power shines when editing huge image files.

- Reliability. I attribute partially to OSX, but in hundreds of hours of usage to date I have yet to see a full crash of the system (including when running Vista).

- Highly extensible. Most PCs on the market don't support 16GB of RAM or have 4 PCI Express slots.

CONS

- It IS expensive. I immediately spent another $200 to augment the measly 1GB of RAM provided.

- Video card options... there aren't many. While fully compatible with Microsoft operating systems and applications, compatible hardware is limited. The nVidia 7300GT that is provided works fine for most applications but it certainly isn't high end.

- Dual boot options. Apple Bootcamp (still in beta at the time of this writing) limits you to 32GB partitions for other operating systems. I have to point out that 1) I'm not an expert Apple user, and 2) I know there ARE other options (such as Parallels). But to the casual user this could present difficulties.

I paired the Mac Pro with an Apple 30" Cinema HD display, and it's the best machine I've ever owned, and my favorite one.

Highly recommended.

I have had my Mac Pro (purchased from Amazon) for a few weeks now and coming from 15+ years using Windows and non-Mac PCs, I am delighted in making the transition to a Mac. I purchased this primarily for photo editing and wanted some serious horse power for the work I'm doing. This "quad-core" PC is FAST! Some of the photo work I do requires some high activity CPU processing and this PC does it effortlessly using TWO dual core Xenon processors. I've added 4Gb of memory and I'm delighted in how fast this machine is now. Regarding the Mac architecture and simplicity of doing things (I keep saying to myself "Why can't Windows do it this way"). Adding two more (RAID) SATA hard drives took literally less then a minute, open the outer case, attach them to a slide-in drawer, slide it back into position close the outer cover and done! No cables to connect as the HDs connect directly to the Mac ports. The transition to Mac didn't hurt as much as I thought it would. A week or two and you will know your way around Mac OS X and how to do the same things you did in windows easier and faster. I also installed Parallel's Desktop software (the best price is through Amazon) to allow me to run Windows XP and some software I have on the Mac. It works perfectly. No hangs, no issues and both platforms can run at the same time unlike Bootcamp from Apple which requires booting to one platform or the other, but, not both at the same time. Another plug for Amazon since I shop there a lot and truly feel they are on top of customer service and have the best prices around. Also, for those who shop there often, I recommend getting Amazon PRIME. Two day free shipping on most everything (the Mac Pro arrived two days after ordering) and often you can order overnight (one day shipping) for $1.99 if it is at the end of the week. If you want it "yesterday", go PRIME. Bottom line is that I have not regretted this pricey purchase at all. If you require serious processing power for photo and video work (or gaming), the Mac Pro is at the top of the Mac hierarchy for sure and will have you wondering why you didn't do this before (other then the fact that now Macs are all INTEL and far faster then any Power PC processor Mac!!).

I've been using one of these for about a month and a half, and I have to say that I'm very impressed. The tower is almost silent. If there is no other noise in a room, you can hear the faint noise of the hard drive spinning. The computer also feels extremely responsive. It takes about 10 seconds to start up.

What you get for $2500 minus Amazon's rebate.
2x Xeon 5150 Processors
Intel 5000X chipset motherboard
1200 Watt power supply
NVidia Geforce 7300 GT (With a dual-link DVI port)
1 GB Fully Buffered DDR2 RAM
DVD Burner
250 GB SATA-2 Hard Drive
A sturdy, well designed case that makes upgrades easy
Mac OS X 10.4

I'd say it is worth the price.

This computer isn't perfect, there are a few things I would have liked to have seen:

1. There are 2 extra SATA ports on the motherboard, I would have liked to have seen an eSATA port on the case.
2. Ports for analogue surround sound (computer only supports surround sound through optical audio out).
3. The hardware supports hot swappable hard drives, but the software doesn't.

Boot Camp made installing XP very easy. I didn't even have to search around for drivers or anything. Apple even made that easy, but I find that I never need to boot into XP. The only program I need that isn't written for Mac OS X runs fine in DarWINE ([...]).