"New" 2012 Mac Pro (1 Viewer)

Guys,

Some time ago when it was finally announced that Apple is releasing a new Mac Pro, I was ready to buy after my 2005 G5 died in 2012. The water cooled system leaked! I did upgrade with a first generation 15" Retina MacBook Pro. But I needed a powerful desktop for my design work.

When the new Mac Pro was finally released I looked at it and couldn't quite commit. Part of my dilemma is the lack of the ability to add more internal hard drives. And being forced into the fixed and non upgradable video cards. Both issues for some reason nagged me and I never in the past worried about that.

A good friend is able to secure used Macs where he works in Academia. After a two year wait, he found a used 2012 Mac Pro being retired. I was waiting for such a find. It's a 12 core and loaded with RAM and a huge hard drive. I got a great deal on the price so I decided to put off a new Mac Pro and go for the older model. So now I am getting used to a new Mac because my Retina was never upgraded to the most current OSX. So it's like being away for a long time and trying out a totally new OS! Everything is different! I think this machine will be quite good and hopefully last a few years until maybe a new Mac Pro comes out.

Since I am a designer, I used the Retina MBP and an older 2009 MBP for my design and CAD work so I would shift between Mac and Bootcamp to run SolidWorks in Windows when I was/am freelancing. I started a new job at a company as a full time designer there. Given I'm using more Windows software for CAD work and rendering, I was able to borrow a nice HP workstation class PC for work at home. It's got a very powerful graphics card that I need for the rendering software that I'm using now.

So the Mac Pro doesn't have to run Bootcamp and I can strictly keep it in the Mac world. I'll be curious how the Adobe products will work out in this new machine. There is one rendering CAD application that works on both PC and Mac and that's Keyshot. That software would rev up the fans in the Retina MacBook Pro with only 4 cores and you could fry an egg on the case. The more cores the better for that software. So I'm curious how Keyshot will run on the new Mac Pro. And I'd like to possibly learn Premiere.

I know I'm not up to date and won't have Thunderbolt or USB 3 and cannot do Handoff which I wanted to do with my iPads and iPhone. But this will be a nice Mac for my design work when I'm working at home on personal and work stuff.

Yosemite is really different! iTunes is different! I transferred my library from my MacBook Pro to the Mac Pro. All the TV shows and movies I had ripped from DVD show up as home movies now! I'm not sure how I'll deal with that.

Well, I've only set this Mac up last night, so there will be some time for me to get familiarized with it. Hopefully the combination of this older system and Yosemite won't give me issues with the Adobe software I use and other software I'll he using.

Good luck with it. I hope you can keep getting OS and Adobe upgrades for it for a while, but it could get hairy fast!

I was curious what you might think Sam. This platform is going to be obsolete that fast you think? I imagine this machine will run for 3 or 5 years and I suppose at some point the OS updates will no longer be compatible with it like my 2009 MacBook Pro.

I suppose it will hold me over until the next Mac Pro comes out.

You probably have a bit of time. I chose the iMac route and zero regrets, but I'd like a trash can when I can get one for down to earth prices. Performance wise the iMac beat my old aluminum pro and I got a good chunk of cash for it, so it was a coin flip really between the two

If you do single-core processing, you're getting outdated. If you do multi-core processing, you're fine. But one doesn't buy a Mac Pro for single-core use. The Xeon chips iterate relatively slowly, it seems.


iMore says you're compatible with El Capitan (Mac Pro early 2008). Though you're probably missing the newest Handoff features from Yosemite.

Yes, missing Handoff. Good to know the machine can handle El Capitan. Regarding multicore use, definitely I have a couple of applications that need multicore which was the initial reason this machine was on my mind.