There was a time in my life where I would have sworn that these words would never pass my lips, but... I'm in the market for a good Mac desktop to do some heavy-duty development on. Unfortunately, I have no idea what the Mac market is like, what's a good machine for hacking, and so on - my total experience with modern Macs is screwing around with Xcode on a Mini. I'm looking for something that can handle modern, AAA-scale game development. Multicore is pretty much mandatory - at least dual core, quad is better. I don't know anything about video card hardware in the Mac world. RAID-1 would be nice. Gigabit ethernet is also mandatory. 4GB memory is a given. Where's a good place to shop for this kind of machine? What models should I be on the lookout for? What kind of price range can I expect?

As it's a Mac you're pretty much limited to 1 option, the Mac Pro. There's also the iMac and Mac Mini that can be used as desktops but if you're looking for a high end spec it's the way to go. Check it out at the apple store here.

I don't own a Mac of any description and never have done, but everyone I know who's owned one says the Mac Mini isn't cost effective and not worth it. It's apparently underpowered and it's no cheaper than a proper iMac (or the cost difference is negligible) when you factor in the cost of all the extra peripherals. Even if you have the extra peripherals lying around as spares, that doesn't get round the problem of it being underpowered.

I would go for some kind of iMac, apparently the line is about to be updated or so the rumour mills are saying. Or, as Monder said, you're looking at a Mac Pro for the absolute cutting edge of everything but those can get insanely expensive if you spec them up; my friend and I put on all the options to see how much it would be... £14k with an educational discount. To put that into perspective, my mother paid slightly less than that for her car.

Quote: Original post by ApochPiQ
There was a time in my life where I would have sworn that these words would never pass my lips, but... I'm in the market for a good Mac desktop to do some heavy-duty development on. Unfortunately, I have no idea what the Mac market is like, what's a good machine for hacking, and so on - my total experience with modern Macs is screwing around with Xcode on a Mini.

I'm looking for something that can handle modern, AAA-scale game development. Multicore is pretty much mandatory - at least dual core, quad is better. I don't know anything about video card hardware in the Mac world. RAID-1 would be nice. Gigabit ethernet is also mandatory. 4GB memory is a given.

Where's a good place to shop for this kind of machine? What models should I be on the lookout for? What kind of price range can I expect?

Apple hardware is made by apple. You can go to apple.com, look in their online store at prices for mac pro. I myself were looking at prices here.
However, beware: macs are 2 to 4 times more expensive than PCs of same specifications. In particular, mac pro of same specs as my desktop costs 3 times more *now* than my pc did cost months ago, and like 3.5 times than how much my pc would cost today. This is rather insane. If I had extra money, I'd donate to red cross, not to apple's ad campaigns!

I do develop for mac. My development platform is Linux based (quadcore, 4gb ram, etc etc), and I did set up cross-compilers for windows and mac. I can build any of or all 4 targets (windows, linux 32 bit, linux 64 bit, intel mac) from one IDE with press of single button, and make re-distributable packages with press of another. Productivity-wise it seems to be the best option. You do have to waste 1 or 2 days setting up cross-development tools, but it pays off IMO in the long run - i only wish i did that earlier, as i spent more time getting used to os x and xcode than i spent setting up crosscompiler . I have cutting edge toolchain with gcc 4.3.3, while what you get from apple is AFAIK still stuck with gcc 4.0.1

Hopping between two or three IDEs has very big negative impact on productivity. Especially, hopping between different operating systems. Same for using outdated compiler for one target but up to date for another.

Quote: Original post by Dmytry
Apple hardware is made by apple. You can go to apple.com, look in their online store at prices for mac pro. I myself were looking at prices here.
However, beware: macs are 2 to 4 times more expensive than PCs of same specifications. In particular, mac pro of same specs as my desktop costs 3 times more *now* than my pc did cost months ago, and like 3.5 times than how much my pc would cost today.

This is a completely false statement due to people not understanding hardware specifications. I priced the Mac Pro vs. Dell and HP of the same specifications and the Mac Pro was the cheapest option BY FAR. Now that is comparing exact specs, if you want to tell yourself a cheap Q6600 is the exact same as a Xeon processor, or that buffered/unbuffered DIMMs have no difference, be my guest, by you are NOT comparing the same thing. You could also try to build the system instead of looking at HP and Dell, but it was even MORE expensive buying your own dual processor board with two Xeon processors. On top of all that the Mac Pro is dead silent, compared to the PC alternatives which are insanely loud.

Although as previously said in the post you'll want to purchase the system from Apple, but don't upgrade the RAM, etc from them as you would be paying way too much. I bought 32GB of DIMMs from OWC for our Macs and it was incredibly cheaper.

EDIT: also if you are a student (even part-time) you can join the Student ADC for $99 and you get an amazing one-time deal on hardware, as you get 25% of the system off which is quite a good.

Well there's a giant gap left between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro, which you might be able to fill with a proper hackintosh, if you've got good google skills it's an option you should look into, although on the downside the legality of it is questionable and being tested in the courts right now(with psystar)

Quote: Original post by Saruman

Quote: Original post by Dmytry
Apple hardware is made by apple. You can go to apple.com, look in their online store at prices for mac pro. I myself were looking at prices here.
However, beware: macs are 2 to 4 times more expensive than PCs of same specifications. In particular, mac pro of same specs as my desktop costs 3 times more *now* than my pc did cost months ago, and like 3.5 times than how much my pc would cost today.

This is a completely false statement due to people not understanding hardware specifications. I priced the Mac Pro vs. Dell and HP of the same specifications and the Mac Pro was the cheapest option BY FAR. Now that is comparing exact specs, if you want to tell yourself a cheap Q6600 is the exact same as a Xeon processor, or that buffered/unbuffered DIMMs have no difference, be my guest, by you are NOT comparing the same thing. You could also try to build the system instead of looking at HP and Dell, but it was even MORE expensive buying your own dual processor board with two Xeon processors. On top of all that the Mac Pro is dead silent, compared to the PC alternatives which are insanely loud.

Although as previously said in the post you'll want to purchase the system from Apple, but don't upgrade the RAM, etc from them as you would be paying way too much. I bought 32GB of DIMMs from OWC for our Macs and it was incredibly cheaper.

EDIT: also if you are a student (even part-time) you can join the Student ADC for $99 and you get an amazing one-time deal on hardware, as you get 25% of the system off which is quite a good.

do you mac fans get paid for spreading advertisment fud or what?

And no, I'm not buying from Dell or HP.

The cost of apple system of very closely similar specs to my pc:
3,099.00 USD
(conservatively choosing next worse option whenever equivalent is unavailable, as so that this mac is unlikely to outperform my pc in a benchmark).
the price of my pc: 845 USD
the price of my pc specs draft was about 1000 USD (before performance/cost considerations), and it is out-speccing this mac.

The only thing that you can claim for mac pro is silence, which I sort of doubt is really that great for a system of such thermal dissipation.

And yes i agree if you choose really bad performance/cost components for a PC system (ones with a "stupidity tax"), then you can make a PC system that costs this much and has comparable performance. But if I needed speed, I would rather make a second and third quadcore pcs and use those over network as buildslaves (speeding up builds proportionally, unlike multicore on 1 bus)

Quote: Original post by Dmytry

Quote: Original post by Saruman

Quote: Original post by Dmytry
Apple hardware is made by apple. You can go to apple.com, look in their online store at prices for mac pro. I myself were looking at prices here.
However, beware: macs are 2 to 4 times more expensive than PCs of same specifications. In particular, mac pro of same specs as my desktop costs 3 times more *now* than my pc did cost months ago, and like 3.5 times than how much my pc would cost today.

This is a completely false statement due to people not understanding hardware specifications. I priced the Mac Pro vs. Dell and HP of the same specifications and the Mac Pro was the cheapest option BY FAR. Now that is comparing exact specs, if you want to tell yourself a cheap Q6600 is the exact same as a Xeon processor, or that buffered/unbuffered DIMMs have no difference, be my guest, by you are NOT comparing the same thing. You could also try to build the system instead of looking at HP and Dell, but it was even MORE expensive buying your own dual processor board with two Xeon processors. On top of all that the Mac Pro is dead silent, compared to the PC alternatives which are insanely loud.

Although as previously said in the post you'll want to purchase the system from Apple, but don't upgrade the RAM, etc from them as you would be paying way too much. I bought 32GB of DIMMs from OWC for our Macs and it was incredibly cheaper.

EDIT: also if you are a student (even part-time) you can join the Student ADC for $99 and you get an amazing one-time deal on hardware, as you get 25% of the system off which is quite a good.

do you mac fans get paid for spreading advertisment fud or what?

And no, I'm not buying from Dell or HP.

Really, do anti-mac fanatics get paid to call 'mac fans' idiots or something?

Go to apple and configure a mid range MacPro, then go to Dell and try to get close to a similar configuration. The Dell system came out over a grand more expensive for me, and I've used both work stations. The Mac Pro is far nicer case than the Dell system, and as long as you don't buy mac displays, then you are doing fine.


Don't like Dell? Ok then, price me out a system that is equal to a mid range Mac Pro. One that if something dies the system will be back, up and running in a day or two at no extra cost to you, and no time or real effort on your part.

"One that if something dies the system will be back, up and running in a day or two at no extra cost to you, and no time or real effort on your part."
I'm not in US. Most definitely, if something dies in a mac, it wont be up and running in day of two here, unless i fix it myself.

edit: And no I'm not configuring anything to match apple's irrational choices (default: 8 cores, only 2 gb ram, shitty graphics card, what the hell is that made for? I'm confident my system outperforms this in any real world test. edit: to elaborate. Games and 3D modelling, my system is certainly faster because of graphics card. Photo-realistic software rendering, 2gb ram is simply too little and it'll swap, especially with 8 threads. Software development, 2gb ram is certainly far too little for 8-threaded builds with gcc, you want large disk cache. Cracking passwords or computing pi to nth digit: this mac would outperform my pc, but probably less than 2x)
As for "anti mac"... I did quite a lot of real supporting to apple so far. For example, yesterday, I helped an open source project to set up building of working application bundles for OS X.
I'm simply a person whom does not see apple (or pc for that matter) ads on tv and in media.

[Edited by - Dmytry on February 28, 2009 4:39:40 PM]