The old saying "there are two sides to every coin" and "the whole is more than the sum of it's parts"
both apply in this scenario. One major flaw in the Extremetech article is the premise that you can simply calculate the retail cost of hardware to make a build comparable to the Mac Pro and then determine what the best choice would be. It certainly took many hours, days and years to come up with the MP design and then to build and test it. Apple made a huge investment in these areas and I really doubt that any of that is factored into the final cost of the new MP. What really pays for those enormous costs is the sale of high profit margin iPhones and iPads. The two products that have helped Apple become the biggest market cap company on the planet. When you also factor in the costs of building it in the US with American workers it adds even more to the cost of bringing it to market.
I've looked at both options for a workstation class computer and I'll sum up what I've learned from many hours of research. If I was earning my living editing video using FCP X or even Premiere Pro I'd certainly spend the money on the New Mac Pro vs. building a CustoMac that was intended for the same uses.
In that scenario the choice is really a no brainer. For anyone in this situation with a budget for hardware
of $4,000 and up the 6 or 8 Core MP would be a great choice. What doesn't seem to get mentioned is that
after using it 2-3 years one could resell the MP for a fair sum of money and then use that to upgrade to a newer model then. Here's a hands on review from FCP.CO
http://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/art...th-apple-s-new-mac-pro-and-final-cut-pro-10-1
When you're looking at a situation where the budget is much smaller and it's not for pro video editing then the CustoMac approach seems to make a lot more sense. You can build a very capable machine that won't be limited to just external storage via Thunderbolt. You'll be able to work with 4K video and who knows, the talented members of this site are sure to eventually figure out sleep and power management for the socket 2011 X79 platform. So it all depends on each person's unique situation when choosing to go with a Mac Pro 2013 or a CustoMac Pro socket 2011.
The New Mac Pro is really revolutionary and will likely have many attempts to copy it in the next
five years or so. Everything new that falls into this category always creates a lot of controversy
and discussion which is a really good thing for Apple. If everyone was completely ignoring it then
Apple would have something to worry about. This 2nd Gen Mac Pro is going to do a lot of good things
for the entire desktop PC industry. I'm certainly giving Apple a thumbs up on this.
A desktop that
you can actually place on your desk, what a great idea
You're not going to believe what some very creative modder has done to make a Mac Pro
clone already. Check out this thread.
http://www.tonymacx86.com/mac-pro-mods/120757-mac-pro-late-2013-replica.html
