Apple: Marketing genius

[PeterCH]

Sheesh dude.. It was an opinion. No need to rip another person's opinion to shreds!

You said Mac Pro buyers were STUPID for buying a pretty box yet yourself have used the word 'sexy' to explain WHY you yourself bought a Macbook Pro.

I said the MacBOOK Pro (the Notebook) was sexy.. and yes, why would I choose an ugly and cumbersome Dell or HP when the MacBook Pro outperforms them AND is more compact and looks better whilst doing so?
A large part of Apple's marketing relies on the design of their products.

Again you ripped the Mac Pro crowd for pretty much the same thing.

You didn't say what you do with your MBP. Note that's a Mac BOOK Pro
as you so eloquently pointed out.

First and foremost, the majority of Mac Pro users are graphics designers.

You forgot the video editors and effect 'renderers'.

The primary critera for a powerful graphics rig are GPU, CPU and RAM.
Secondly, the CPU, RAM and Motherboard components used in a Mac Pro are very closely-related to PC Server Hardware. You could build a desktop PC, using a server motherboard with multiple sockets, or even a specialized desktop board with multiple sockets (which do exist).

Your criteria are for a GAMING machine. A video and effects rendering and transcoding platform needs CPU power.

Taking a packages like Final Cut Pro and Shake - most of the processing gets done on the CPU not on the GPU. Some plugins have GPU assistance via way of FxPlug architecture but they're a minority and even those rely heavily on CPU power.

Please price me a high quality box with 1KW power supply, a server motherboard with two sockets and a twin quad core Xeon (i7 / Nehalem)
based system - use any online shop you want.

The older Xeon is based on the Core2 Microarchitecture, which includes the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad desktop CPUs. A 3.0GHz Core 2 Quad will give very similar results to your Xeon 5500, for a much better price. If you're talking about the brand-new Mac Pro with Nehalem architecture, it's the same architecture as a Core i7 CPU. PC hardware. I could use a brand-new Intel Core i7 CPU. Similar power to a 5500, at less cost. And if you do want that power, buy a Nehalem Xeon 5500 CPU or 2.

Exactly so how much would that cost.... got any links.... ?

Also it would not run Mac OSX.

You asked "Twin CPU motherboard?"
I could easily get something like an INTEL Desktop Board D5400XS. That has Dual CPU Sockets. If I wanted more, I could use a plethora of available desktop/server motherboards.
I could buy a couple of Xeons and slap them into that board or similar boards.

Right.... price with links and SAME PERFORMANCE ie SAME CPU. Put your money where your mouth is.

You asked "Decent case with quality 1KW power supply?"
The availablility of PC cases far exceeds the word-limit of posts on this BB.
Almost every PC accessory manufacturer makes cases, including the component manufacturers like Gigabyte and ASUS.
As for a powersupply, the ThermalTake ToughPower series are the entry-level within the "decent PSU" range. You could spend big money on better brands, but this should give you an idea:
ThermalTake 1000W PSU
ThermalTake 1200W PSU

Add it to the cost.

You asked "Cost?"
Certainly less than a range-topping Mac Pro with all the options.

Well show me....

You asked "Can it run MacOSX?"
Technically, yes. Legally, no.

Technically NO. Legally - who cares.
Yes you can make a Hackintosh and spend hours and days downloading
drivers and tinkering with it and have it crash at various stages .... but who has the time and the money to waste? Time = Money for people who make money from their hardware. These people don't mind paying a bit more because the ROI is big. They certainly don't buy Macs because they look 'sexy', I certainly didn't.

So what? There's Windows, Linux, BSD etc etc...
I'd not pay R35k for something, purely because it can run MacOS.

Then why buy a MacBook Pro? Because it looks pretty?
Build quality? Lenovo and SONY have great build quality on par or
possibly better than MBP.

Panasonic has the BEST build quality on the market, and if you've seen a crowded Tokyo subway you'd know that a MBP wouldn't survive a few seconds there.

You asked "Does the Nvidia board have EFI?"
Do you know who originally invented EFI?
Intel did. Due to the extreme amount of different configurations available in the PC world.. it does take time to release new standards. But it's on it's way.
However, neither EFI nor BIOS really matter once the OS has loaded.

No EFI, no work in Mac.

Something you didn't ask about, though, is Graphics Cards.
A $2499 Mac Pro with a measly 3GB of RAM.. only includes an NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB. That is hardly cutting-edge. My 10-month old GTX260 will destroy that, and you can still buy those for less than what it costs to upgrade to an ATI 4870 in a Mac Pro.

Destroy that at what? Games? If I want to play games I'll buy a cheap system from WinTel. That system won't run video editing, rendering and photo rendering stuff well and certainly won't run the packages I use.

I attend the odd gaming LAN every now and then. One of our mates has a Mac Pro and his machine is out-performed, in games, by those of us with Core 2 Duos / Core 2 Quads with decent graphics cards.

Well as said we're not talking about gaming machines. Gaming machines can be had for cheap.

Bottom-Line..
If money is no object, you can get much more powerful PC-kit.
But if money does matter, which I think it does to most of us, then you can save yourself a decent amount and still have Mac Pro performance in a

Bottom line is you don't know what you're talking about. Mac Pros are very powerful machines, to get the equivalent CPUs at NewEgg - heck I couldn't find any - you will pay almost the same. You will also get a brilliantly assembled box with no loose wires and ease to swap harddrives, capture boards (you'll need for some HD video work) and memory. However the big kicker is this, you get to run all this from the store with a great warranty and professional application support
(Final Cut Studio, Logic Pro, Shake, Aperture)
which is not available on Windows. So people can actually get some work done. In a world where time is money if you're any good at what you do,
you make up for the extra cost in a few hours or at best a couple of days,
and the rest is profit.

I'll summarise it for you. You bought a machine because it looks sexy and that's ok but get off your high horse and stop insulting people who bought expensive machines not because they look pretty but for the sake of function ie run applications which are only native to Macs and which need lots of CPU horsepower and relatively little GPU plus all wrapped with the reliability of server Xeon CPUs and ECC RAM.

 

[d0b33]

Ballmer is hillarious .

Ballmer is an idiot, the arrogance of this guy... he is like a typical MS fanboy.

I miss Bill Gates, he gave us XP and 2000 at least.