For me, since the since them mid 1980's the mac has always been a tool, the P.C the project. It was a lot of fun tweaking P.C,s until you and to get some work done on them. Most of my professional career sun micro systems was the platform of choice, but the mac operating system sure would have been nice on a sun.
I converted back to a mac a little over a year ago and just upgraded my iMac with a mac pro. One of the issue with technology is creating a project out of a tool. When you understand the value of a standard high speed interface, from rs232 to thunderbolt, then realize the modular concept in the correct direction.
My Mac Pro was a impulse buy, when I went to look at the new 5K i Mac, and for the job I have to do, the Mac Pro was a better tool. I was ignorant where the technology was, but the Mac OS is a huge improvement over my dos machines. The Mac Pro is a better tool than my iMac.
There is a question if this Mac Pro platform will be the platform to drive modular computing. In using technology for a job, instead of building it, it is clear there is a drive to control technology for what ever reason, instead of building quality tools. It was clear in business, if you do not own your technology, you do not own your business.
This move to let the cloud own the technology will be a disaster. The cloud as a tools valuable. If thunderbolt 2 can actually drive pcie devices, than I have an expandable modular system. At the moment, I have 34 TB of external drives on 6 different drives. I have a five drive raid I just unplugged from my imac and plugged into mac pro. I also understand the work from moving a five drive raid from an internal system.
It sure makes a lot of sense to let the monitor handle the video processing for that screen, even though I will not like the price. An external rendering processor would also be great.
I bought the Mac Pro, because it has had the reputation of being a professional grade tool. I am not upset it does not have the latest gadgety of a P.C, or that is in not the top gaming machine on the market. I was upset that my Mac Pro started to automatically uploading photos to the cloud because I did not disable in on a user I set up. I was even more pissed when there was no way to delete those useless pictures from the cloud that I can find, and that they will now download to every users I set up, unless I disable photos on that user. As a tool, the cloud is a mess. I would rather have a local cloud and the option to sync part of my local cloud to the apple cloud.
The bigger issue with my Mac Pro, is I do not think the users of the Mac Pro have the support Apple. As a professional, when I move up into a professional platform, I want to know your 5 year plan for the project. You cannot sell to a large corporate customer without disclosing this. My project does not have the same clout as a Ford or GE, but I have the needs. That forward direction seems to be lacking from the Mac Pro platform and Apple in general. I do not what to be surprised by the next generation mac pro like an i phone.
I have 15 years worth of work, and just transferred all my raw videos in the FCP libraries. If Apple follows Adobe's model, I am screwed. You buy tools to do jobs, you cannot conform job to fit the tools.
I am also impressed with the quality of the Mac Pro. I love the coffee warming function and am glad most of the older people who would mistake it for an ash tray are not longer around. I have been moving and processing videos for a couple of weeks now and while the base unit is not barn burning fast, it runs cooler and quieter than the iMac. I may even move the drive farm behind the wall into the furnace room to make it even quieter.
The cheap 4k monitor is good enough, I can upgrade the CPU in a couple of years when the price is cheaper. A big thunderbolt external SSD would be great. So while it is not the bleeding edge it is a pretty good tool.
