MP 7,1 The Threadripper Pro workstation looks like good competition for the Mac Pro

[JMacHack]

Looks like there's finally a 1:1 competitior to the MP for as low as people quote prices for, nice.

Windows 10 is very stable on solid hardware and so was Windows 7. Windows has never crashed on my Macbook Pro in bootcamp and was very stable on my Mac Pro until the PCIe SSD temperature sensor and eventually the SSD itself too died.

Win 7 was stable until you really started pushing it, then odd bugs would happen. And even if it was stable, there's features that MacOS at the time had that Win 7 flat-out didn't (multi-monitor, multi-desktop support comes to mind).

Win 10 is much better in the stability regard, but (speaking from experiences my coworkers relate to me) it has a tendency to wrest control from you. Updates in particular are a big annoyance, they're never fast, and they'll sneak up on you when you get up to stretch or get a cup of coffee. Gimme a Mac any day over that.

My experiences with the hardware side of PCs have not been so rosy. I have one of these massive and heavy 17" laptops. After a year the motherboard and CPU needed to be replaced (under warranty) and more recently one of the fans died. Well it kept spinning at reduced speed and sounded like somebody was killing something inside the computer, so the bearing had gone. I replaced it myself and everything works, except that 3 times out of 5 when I put it to sleep it hangs. Usually there are no errors in the logs other than "Computer was restarted unexpectedly". Great. This never happens when the computer is running. I am quite sure it's related to hardware and I think that people who say it's not stable are also having hardware related issues. The other potential culprit is a driver. So it's a bit of a lottery depending on your vendor and what components they use.

That's another issue I had with the PC world. You have an abundance of choices, and all the benefits and drawbacks that come with that. One of the best laptops I ever had was a 2011 Dell Inspiron 17. I took it through hell and back and by the time I got a new laptop the plastic casing was mostly broken off. I'd run games that were waaaay above it's league too, and only cleaned it out when I retired it. It ran like a champ! I replaced it with a newer Inspiron 17, and it gave me headaches out of the box. By that time I had pretty much switched to Mac, so it sets on a shelf and only gets taken out when I want to torture myself with Linux distros.

I've told this story before to various friends, and they say "nah, don't get a Dell, buy ASUS!" or "ASUS is ****, get a Lenovo", etc. And in the world of desktops, you're pretty much a plebian if you don't build your own. Same deal with Linux distros too.

Frankly, I'll pay the Mac premium for the experience. (Not that I'm a Mac Pro buyer!)

 

[mattspace]

I've told this story before to various friends, and they say "nah, don't get a Dell, buy ASUS!" or "ASUS is ****, get a Lenovo", etc. And in the world of desktops, you're pretty much a plebian if you don't build your own. Same deal with Linux distros too.

Frankly, I'll pay the Mac premium for the experience. (Not that I'm a Mac Pro buyer!)

Whereas on the Mac, all you had was years and years of sub-merchantable-quality keyboards.

 

[JMacHack]

Whereas on the Mac, all you had was years and years of sub-merchantable-quality keyboards.

4 years, one full replacement in my case. I guess I got lucky, but going without my work computer for a week while it was being repaired sucked.

Still, playing tech support for Mom's Dell XPS 15 was less fun. But to each their own.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I agree the Windows experience when it comes to how it handles updates and wrestles control from you is horrible. I don’t mind using Windows sometimes, but on a regular basis I very much prefer macOS. I think I could live with Linux, but Adobe apps don’t work on it.

Do you think the current Threadripper Pro system could be upgraded with a Zen 3 CPU? I suppose it would depend if Lenovo added support in a bios update?

I also want to see how the next Mac Pro’s Apple Silicon chips compare to Zen 3, 4, or whatever is out then.