Apple just announced their latest batch of upgraded equipment, and among the mix is a "new" Mac Pro which is slated to ship in August. Apple is still trying to recover from the new iPhone4 debacle so the news about the Mac Pro release isn't on the forefront yet. After reading the specs for the new machines I'm not sure any of this even qualifies as news. As usual, Apple has only made a few very minor increases in speed and performance (i.e even more processors). The most significant increase comes in the form of solid state hard drives which deliver "2X the speed of a regular 7200rpm hard drive", and a 1GB video card.
The bottom line is if you already have a Mac Pro, the cost to upgrade to one of these newer machines won't justify the marginal increase in performance. For anyone out there who has to have a speed bump, the new video card(s) and solid state hard drives can be used in older Mac Pros to maximize their performance.
While I like the sheer power and expandability of the Mac Pro, the new iMacs have enough power to easily handle day-to-day design work. The fact that they cost a lot less than a Mac Pro is a nice plus as well.
I've been checking out the prices of internal solid state drives. Yikes. I guess I'll have to wait 5 years or so until the price matches the performance.
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