Early 2009 Mac Pro. The Final Shutdown.

Well I did it. I upgraded my “Early 2009 Mac Pro”! But wait, the new Mac Pro isn’t out yet..

As of about 2 weeks ago I was fully ready to buy the new Mac Pro to upgrade my aging Mac Pro. Launch date was set, we had pricing and I was just in waiting mode. As I was in waiting mode, I happened to be on the Apple Store and was playing around with building an iMac. To my surprise, you can build a wicked awesome iMac for not a ton of $$. After building the iMac and comparing it spec wise to both the new Mac Pro and my current Mac Pro, it was looking like, to my surprise, it made more sense to go with the iMac for my needs. The new Mac Pro was looking to be at the ~$5,000 price point, and I would still need to purchase a $1,000 monitor. With the iMac, it was coming out to about $2,750, and of course has a 27" screen built in; so with that $1,000 value, the computer itself comes out to only $1,750.

Now the specs.

• Processor: 3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost to 3.9GHz
• Graphics: GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5
• Memory: 16GB 1600MHz DDR3
• SSD: 256GB
• Screen: 27" Beautifulness

For $2,750!? AWESOME!

I am definitely not trying to say the iMac is anywhere near as powerful as the new Mac Pro, but it will definitely be perfect for what I use it for: Photo editing, light video editing, gaming, podcasting, etc. I don’t need to edit 4K video, or work on audio with 4,000 tracks. The iMac will be my main machine going forward, and I will use an iPad Air instead of a laptop for mobile.

Side bonus, the 27" iMac can be used as a thunderbolt display for any thunderbolt laptop as well.