Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
how many people have a mac pro and a macbook pro? why??
- Thread starter gdeusthewhizkid
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I have a Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro, both about a year and a half old. I do most of my work on my MacBook Pro, actually, because of the portability and because I like to work on the couch, on the balcony, or some other enjoyable spot or another. But when I need to do some heavy-duty tasks there's no replacement for a well-equipped Mac Pro. It is awesome for multi-threaded tasks like video compression or building a large panorama, and also for working with very large Photoshop documents or a complicated Adobe Illustrator file. I also keep all my multimedia on the beast as it has about 4 TBs of storage. My MacBook Pro has a ~300 GB hard drive.
As you can probably tell digging through the answers here, the position on this is going to depend completely on what a person needs to do with their computer, and where. I imagine many non-professional Mac Pro owners don't really do the machine justice. A nice iMac or MacBook Pro is more than capable of handling most tasks, and handling them well.
As you can probably tell digging through the answers here, the position on this is going to depend completely on what a person needs to do with their computer, and where. I imagine many non-professional Mac Pro owners don't really do the machine justice. A nice iMac or MacBook Pro is more than capable of handling most tasks, and handling them well.
you have my ideal setup sir. I use logic studio. rip movies and im getting into final cut pro. I definately need the power...
Well, I was given a 2009 Macbook Pro at work, and for the longest time, that's the only computer I had. However, about a year a go, I realized I wanted my own desktop, and got a good deal ($1,350) on a 2006 quad-core MacPro. It already came with 7Gb of RAM, and 1.5Tb of disk, so, I just added 4TB ($250), an ATI 1800XT graphics card ($150), and two Dell 3007WFP 30" monitors ($950 for both), and I'm as happy as can be. I've thought about upgrading at some point to a newer one... but I honestly haven't found any reason to do that.
My day job is software development under Eclipse, and for that, the 2006 MP is roughly 2x faster than my 2009 MBP. If I get an SSD for the MP, most "slow" stuff will be significantly faster, since dev stuff is mostly bound by IO (loading huge amount of files into memory, writing compiled code back to disk, etc). So, spending $150 on that, should allow me to hold off on upgrading until at least 2012. At that point, I may just buy a gently used 12-core 2010 MacPro
The MBP is very useful when I'm traveling, but when I'm just around town, I very rarely use it. Most of the time, my phone is enough for a quick search. If travel was <10% of my time, I would definitely go for a nice MP rig at work too.
My day job is software development under Eclipse, and for that, the 2006 MP is roughly 2x faster than my 2009 MBP. If I get an SSD for the MP, most "slow" stuff will be significantly faster, since dev stuff is mostly bound by IO (loading huge amount of files into memory, writing compiled code back to disk, etc). So, spending $150 on that, should allow me to hold off on upgrading until at least 2012. At that point, I may just buy a gently used 12-core 2010 MacPro
The MBP is very useful when I'm traveling, but when I'm just around town, I very rarely use it. Most of the time, my phone is enough for a quick search. If travel was <10% of my time, I would definitely go for a nice MP rig at work too.
I have a 2010 Mac Pro, and while it isnt my main portable (which is a 2008 White MacBook), I do have the MBPs older brother in service as my photography laptop (It lives in my Camera Bag) - my PowerBook G4, and soon it will be upgraded to a 15" MBP as my main portable, and my White MacBook will become my Photo Laptop (I have a seperate laptop for this as its specially configured with a colour calibrated display (at least when on my desk at a certain angle), and only runs Aperture, Photoshop CS2 (only as anything newer brings it too its knees) and Mail, so its quick to start, quick to use and also has plenty of storage (I empty the libraries onto my Pro every couple of months)
as a photographer and video guy, I am dropping my MBP for an iPad.
I do all my heavy lifting on the MP and bragging all my work on an ipad.
HD video editing on MBP = suck/slow.
I do all my heavy lifting on the MP and bragging all my work on an ipad.
HD video editing on MBP = suck/slow.
as a purely video guy Id hate to give up the ability to create a rough cut on either a plane / train or in the back of a car... you must be lucky to do all your work without ever having to travel (or you sacrifice getting a cut together before you get to your desk)...
yeah, I don't have to travel. if i did have to, I agree in keeping it. But the 13" model is gutless. I'd get a 17" i7 if i was that much of a big deal.
*points at his poor White MacBook running FCP6* - Id do anything to move to even a 13"er (Pro came first, now its time for a 13/15" MBP upgrade im thinking of... with some luck Ill be able to upgrade later this year when my MacBook hits 3 years and leaves AppleCare.
I have a 2008 15" MBP and a 2008 8-core MP. As a video editor and DIT (digital imaging tech), I need both to work efficiently. MP as my cutting machine and rendering workhorse; MBP when I need to be mobile on cramped film sets where running a full workstation is impractical.
I also like having a laptop for around the house when I'm not working so I can play on the interwebs while watching TV.
I also like having a laptop for around the house when I'm not working so I can play on the interwebs while watching TV.
I'll be an outlier here and say that I saw no reason to own the Macbook Pro. My tower does all the heavy lifting I need, and I love the portability of my black 13" Macbook. With 4GB of RAM and a 750GB hard drive, it will run any program I need it to run on location (Vectorworks, Adobe CS5, Logic, Qlab and even FCP in a pinch), it holds all my music (60GB in compressed format), all the jpgs of my photography (RAW files stay on the home machine) and despite that, it is perfectly manageable to carry around.
It even serves as a show control machine when the primary machine is busy somewhere else. I've run many many dance shows off this laptop with Qlab running multiple channels of sound and a video projector, and sometimes even triggering the lighting console as well.
If I didn't have a desktop machine, I could see spending twice as much money on a MacBook Pro, but when I have 8 cores sitting at home, who needs to carry around that much weight and computer?
It even serves as a show control machine when the primary machine is busy somewhere else. I've run many many dance shows off this laptop with Qlab running multiple channels of sound and a video projector, and sometimes even triggering the lighting console as well.
If I didn't have a desktop machine, I could see spending twice as much money on a MacBook Pro, but when I have 8 cores sitting at home, who needs to carry around that much weight and computer?
I have a "Late 2006" MBP and a 2009 Mac Pro with a 3.2GHz processor.
Reasoning behind the MBP? I already invested a crap-tonne in software and the other computers where I live are Macs too, so it was just integrating into the environment.
In the end I realized that I was only doing documents and web-research when I was using it away from home, so I guess I put to much emphasis on the OS then I should have - a Dell Precision would have fared just as well.
Still, I spend many, many hours where I can't reach my Mac Pro everyday and the MBP is handy when I need to whip out Indesign.
Reasoning behind the MBP? I already invested a crap-tonne in software and the other computers where I live are Macs too, so it was just integrating into the environment.
In the end I realized that I was only doing documents and web-research when I was using it away from home, so I guess I put to much emphasis on the OS then I should have - a Dell Precision would have fared just as well.
Still, I spend many, many hours where I can't reach my Mac Pro everyday and the MBP is handy when I need to whip out Indesign.
I have a Mac Pro because I like to play steam games like CS:S and TF 2 on a bigger monitor 25.5" Samsung, and a Macbook pro so when I go places I can take it along and I use that out in the living room so I can also watch tv shows, and hang out with the family while I use it.
Mac Pro for power
MBP for portability
If I had choose between the 2 I would keep the Mac Pro and get an iPad.
MBP for portability
If I had choose between the 2 I would keep the Mac Pro and get an iPad.
For the last 3 years I've been using a 2.4 Core2 Duo MBP exclusively for all my work. It's served me exceptionally well but It just hasn't got the guts for the workload I have now so just bought a 3.3 6 core Mac Pro for 24GB of RAM and large Sata RAID storage capabilities.
I'm about to buy a Pelican Case 1640 to lug it around as my mobile workstation too for work. Just using the MBP for location work I can't use the MP for.
I too look forward to the day I can drop the MBP for an iPad
I'm about to buy a Pelican Case 1640 to lug it around as my mobile workstation too for work. Just using the MBP for location work I can't use the MP for.
I too look forward to the day I can drop the MBP for an iPad
Last edited:
QFT...
The mac pro is the ideal work horse for PS, Premiere and AE... the MBP is not. But the MBP makes it possible to either unload your 16gb card from the camera straight away, fire another 16gb and so on.
It's also nice to have the larger screen to judge sharpness, instead of that little puny one on the camera.
And if you fancy writing ideas down etc. while enduring transportation
then the MBP is nice to have.I wouldn't go for the 17" though... far too cumbersome, like said, portability is the key word.
So... When I get rich my money will drop on a 12 core mac pro and a 15" mbp with basic config (maybe maxed out in ram for speed)