Who's buying the Mac Pro?

Basically: people who need to fill the slots to connect hardware that's as expensive as their computing platform and/or are running a software stack that can also cost as much as an iMac. In generally these people fit the 'Pro' suffix ;-)

High-end multi-channel audio interfaces and/or audio processing cards that accelerate audio plug-ins. Even Firewire or USB equipment works best if each device is using dedicated controller cards. (every Mac has only 1 USB/Firewire controller)

If you need to connect multiple 30inch Cinema Displays and still have proper performance (e.g. 3D) you need multiple GPU's. These cards often get replaced after a couple of years to boost performance.

And most often these kind of applications demand a lot of (very performant) storage so RAID controllers and lots and lots of hard-drives come into play.

If you're not buying a Mac Pro for these kind of workflows, you're just shopping for bragging rights I guess ;-)

And trust me: if you're using a Mac Pro in this manner you're not jealous about that very speedy iMac with that really nice display. It might me speedier, but it just can't do what your workstation was bought for.

And hey, maybe you'll buy one for the 'light web browsing' in your den ;-)

The current low end Mac Pro does kinda suck compared to the iMac. Indeed, I think it sucks compared to the previous Mac Pro, which I own.

I bought the "entry level" (the default entry level - you could do a downgrade to 4 cores for a small saving) Mac Pro almost two years ago - it's an eight core 2.8GHz Xeon. It benches better than the mere quad 2.66GHz Nehalem and was cheaper in 2008 than the current entry level machine! I think I got a bargain ;-)

I can only believe that Apple's in a limbo with the Mac Pro and getting ready to unveil something massive in the next several months. The Mac Pro has pretty much sucked since the latest Nehalem revision compared to what it was.

I think quite a few Mac users would have a genuine use for the Mac Pro's expandability, but have to satisfy themselves with dangling piles of peripherals off the USB and Firewire ports of their iMacs and MacBooks because they can't justify the cost of a Mac Pro -- and they aren't spending somebody else's money.

I would also like to take this opportunity to salute the author for his use of the word 'nichier.'

The 27" iMac is the anomaly in the equation, prior to that the iMacs were not nearly as comparable to the Mac Pro. And, the author is taking an existing hardware configuration and comparing it to a brand new release which has blown the doors off just about everything at its price point.

The benefit of the Mac Pro is obviously upgradability. I own one, it's a beast of a machine. The question to a buyer is, are you really going to own/upgrade it after ~3-4+ years, which is about when you start to realize the cost savings of said system vs. all-in-ones?

For most people the answer is no, so the iMac 27" is a much better deal.

They are being purchased by the creative departments for various ad, print and digital firms. I've done IT consulting for several of these types of companies, it's typical for them to spec out low(er) end Mac Pros and then load them up with third-party ram and disks. Sometimes they're purchased as a bundle through accounts with places like PC Connection.

Another compelling reason to prefer a Mac Pro over an iMac would be virtualization. Since I began using it a year ago, VMWare fusion has completely changed how I work.

I have 6 VMs set up on my Macbook Pro that I use regularly - they contain different versions of Windows along with Oracle, SQL Server, and various service packs. I don't think I will ever go back to setting up a bunch of dedicated machines for the testing and development that I do. If I wanted a desktop server, I'd definitely buy a Mac Pro for this.

The way I would use it, 1 Mac Pro == 8 or more PCs :)

"The Mac Pro's target market is probably among people doing research or running render farms"

and "Now if even hard-core enthusiasts like Matt and myself are turning to laptops and iMacs..."

Makes me think that the author's view of the world is very narrow.

Renderfarms are in fact a bad target for a Mac Pro -- part of the reason for the MacPro's cost is graphics hardware, which you don't need on a renderfarm... though that's probably going to start changing as the graphics processors continue to become compute clusters. That is, of course, why there's such a market for rack-mount headless servers.

Outside of research, there are as mentioned elsewhere in the comments the creative industry, which has much more need of memory, computing power, and graphics performance than the "hardcore enthusiasts" -- compositing and animation can be very intensive tasks... imagine the amount of data involved in just the models for the battle scenes in "The Return of the King" for example.

Almost no one. Total desktop sales have been drifting down for 2 years: http://images.macworld.com/images/news/graphics/143380-mac-u... Of the 800K desktops, over 600K were iMacs (no citation; sorry), and the average selling price was ~$1,250, meaning that Apple sold well under 100K Mac Pros. I would guess it's a ~250K unit/year business, shrinking slowly. They can probably keep swapping new processors into the existing design for years w/o significant R&D costs. My guess is high-end video-editing will keep it alive for some time.

My co-founders and I use beefy MacBook Pros to handle the work associated with ThinkCode.TV. We produce programming screencasts, so nothing too CPU/GPU intensive compared to some other companies. Well, our laptops barely make it. When working with video processing, the more powerful and future proof (read expandable) your hardware is, the better. I fully expect us to consider purchasing some Mac Pros in the future. How much time does a high-end Mac Pro saves us over a new iMac? Is that time worth the cost difference? If yes, we'll go with Mac Pros, if not we'll go for the iMacs.

One word, expandability. The top-end iMac is pretty much maxed out, whereas the low-end MacPro has plenty of room for expansion and performance upgrades. If I was in the market for a new high-end development platform, I'd be all over the low-end MacPro and then upgrade it myself. It's definitely cheaper to get memory and HD's from Newegg than Apple. Although I do have to say the 27" iMac is pretty sweet but I doubt I'd have enough desk space for it.

I have an early 2008 8-core Mac Pro with 8 gigs of RAM. I just don't like laptops much, since I'm always at my desk (and I have a Macbook anyway).

I bought a Mac Pro recently as an audio workstation. It's probably overkill for my needs but there were enough reasons to go for it. ECC memory, internal RAID, ability to drive more than 2 displays, lots of RAM capacity, optical input/output, etc. It is an extremely reliable well built machine. My biggest problem with the iMac is being unable to use two perfectly matching displays.

I think they are pushing the iMac to replace most of the high end use cases the Mac Pro had with the 27inch display, 16GB max memory, and Quad Core CPU options.

Some people here are saying the reason to buy a Mac Pro is that it is expandable - I think for that reason Apple would rather you kept buying new iMacs rather than upgrading your Mac Pro.

The new iMac does remove some customers from the Mac Pro, but if you need the fastest Mac available or need slots (more video people now then photoshop people) the Mac Pro is it.

Actually, I think the new Mac mini server will make some people think who might have purchased a Mac Pro instead of an Xserve.

A friend of mine composes music in his spare time and recently bought a Mac Pro just for doing this.

I think the author is a little out of touch. Who's buying the Mac pro? Hordes of preppy college students who will use it browse the web and write up papers in Word. It's far from uber-niche.