[geeks] Replacing a Mac Pro 2006

[Shannon]

On 1 Dec 2012, at 10:44 , Mark Benson wrote:

> I am looking into buying a 2012 Ivy Bridge Mac Mini sometime in the next
year
> to replace my Mac Pro. I love my Mac Pro dearly, it's been a total trooper
for
> almost 6 years but it is getting a little long in the tooth and won't run
10.8
> without a hack and that's the first sign that you're about to get left in
the
> Apple Tech Ghetto.

We are in the same boat looks like.

I had to re-assemble my Mac Pro this weekend to keep it running, various
boards and chips needed to be reseated, reset PRAM and SMC, and so on.

Its still running but several days of BONG bong bong bong on boot woke me up
to its age. It has the old 32-bit EFI so I can't run anything past Lion.

I really hate that Apple has such a limited selection of machines: either
notebook-in-a-box minis or overkill Mac Pro machines. I hate the integrated
iMacs. But that's how it is so I was looking at options as well.

The main issue for me with the Mini is the graphics are slow for certain
things, and not just games. OpenGL acceleration is used in even things like
web browsers, image editors, and so on. The entire Display PDF pipeline is
hardware accelerated for even a plain text editor.

Its hard to actually do much with a machine in a store, but just running stuff
here and there, you can make the Mini struggle even on some web pages. The
Intel graphics just aren't very good.

Right now I really don't have a solution for my own situation: a new Mac Pro
is overkill, I rather have better graphics than the Mini, and I don't like the
iMac systems.

I love Apple's gear, but they really need a mid-line that isn't an iMac, their
style BS be damned.

For now I'm in limbo the Pro seems to be working fine again but I really
would like to be running Mountain Lion, and I know its days are numbered.








--
"Where some they sell their dreams for small desires."