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A New Kind Of Heist: Six Apps For Free

Those crazy MacHeisters are at it again, and this time the deal is even harder to resist.
The first ever MacHeist Nano won’t cost you a penny. You can download, without charge, fully licensed copies of ShoveBox, WriteRoom, Twitterific, TinyGrab, and Hordes of Orcs. If 500,000 people take part (which I think is a pretty safe [...]

Getting More iPhone Home Screens – And Keeping Them

A couple of weeks back, I wrote Temporarily Get More iPhone Home Screens Via Cunning Bug Exploit, but had heard staying away from the iTunes Applications tab within my iPhone was probably a Very Good Idea. Reader Larry Pressnell noted that since the most recent iTunes update, his extra screens have been accessible in iTunes.
Since [...]

Cult of Mac Favorite: MobileStacks Is the Best Reason To Jailbreak. Period.

I really like Stacks on my Mac. Stacks makes it fast and easy to find files, folders and apps right from the Dock. It makes managing a Mac pretty slick with all sorts of little UI tricks. That’s why I recently gave MobileStack a go on my jailbroken iPhone.
I must say that it lives up to the [...]

Gallery: Behind the Scenes From Two Classic Apple TV Ads

Is this Steve Jobs driving a tank in a classic Apple TV spot from the late 1990s? That was the rumor at the time: Jobs was making cameos in Apple commercials.
Ken Segall, the TBWA ad man responsible for naming the iMac and Think Different, reveals the truth after the jump. He also shares some rare [...]

MacWorld: Forget the Mac Pro, Buy an iMac

7:00 am, May 8th, 2008, Leander Kahney

133150-133150-imac_med2.png

Macworld has some interesting, contrarian advice about buying a Mac these days.

A couple of years ago, pro users would never consider a low-end iMac or MacBook portable for work: it just wouldn’t be powerful enough.

But because Apple is using powerful dual-core Intel chips across its entire line, the difference between machines is blurring.

After running a battery of tests, MacWorld concludes that for most people, a new iMac or MacBook Pro is good enough — pro, power users included. The savings add up to $1,000 or more.

… for most mainstay applications, the high-end iMac and MacBook Pro models are plenty fast (the 3.06GHz build-to-order iMac even beat the Mac Pro in some of our tests). Even Adobe Photoshop, a heavy-duty program that conventional wisdom has long argued should be run only on a high-end system, works acceptably well on just about any Mac (unless you’re editing gigantic files).

Posted by Leander Kahney in Hardware, iPod | Comment on this article

About the author

Leander Kahney

Leander Kahney is senior editor of Cult of Mac, editor of two books about technology culture, Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, and has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Observer in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

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6 comments

    Seeing as my year-old Mac Pro is noisy and bulky, and, it turns out, was damaged (something I only realised when going to install a new hard-drive, finding a mashed connector), and my ACD is starting to die after two years, I think I’ll head for an iMac next. I’m done paying for the top-line kit when I probably don’t really need it, and when a certain hardware company doesn’t respond in a remotely timely manner when issues occur.

    Craig Grannell, on May 8th, 2008 at 7:32 am

    I have five hard drives shoehorned into my first generation G5 plus a 1TB external drive. So, until they have an iMac with 3 or 4TB of storage, I’ll stick with the big box when I get a new Mac.

    Alan Christensen, on May 9th, 2008 at 7:10 am

    Craig:

    If your MacPro makes any noise at all it is likely sick. they are designed to be whisper quiet, so if you hear any fan noise, I’d get it serviced.

    Most likely cause of excessive (read: Noticeable) fan-noise: using non-standard RAM (that does not mean you need to buy OEM RAM, the stuff they sell at Macsales.com has great thermal performance).

    Leigh McMullen, on May 10th, 2008 at 6:46 am

    I too want the expandability of a tower. but don’t necessarily need a full MacPro (although I own one). It would be nice to see a Mini-Tower Mac driven by one of the Core2Quads at the 1500 dollar price point.

    When the Core2Quads hit the iMacs this summer/fall, we’re going to see them fully eclipse the 2007 model year MacPros. in everything other than high-end video editing, runing multiple VM’s or any other RAM intensive activity).

    Leigh McMullen, on May 10th, 2008 at 6:49 am

    Alan – Look into external drive enclosures, especially firewire. They’re cheap (as little as $30), and even more expandable than your Pro’s internals.

    As for the MBP, I thought I read that Apple designed these to “throttle down” the processors as a way to deal with heat. So there’s a threshold where the more you do, it actually goes slower – compounding the load already on the CPU. It was there way of dealing with airflow/fan noise and preventing 3rd degree burns on your thighs.

    But I’m not that reliable a source.

    imajoebob, on May 13th, 2008 at 10:59 am

    There are still great reasons for a Mac Pro. The iMacs, for example, will
    only take up to 4GB of RAM. Using more than that can help Photoshop
    performance, especially with larger files. How much RAM did they have
    in the Mac Pro? I can’t see it in their article.

    Also, the Mac Pro has a true desktop graphics card. That can be more
    important than you might think if you’re using Windows for the occasional
    game:

    “Currently AMD does not provide any driver support for Mobility Radeonâ„¢
    products. All driver and technical support for Mobility Radeonâ„¢ products
    is provided by the original laptop or notebook manufacturer. The drivers
    that are available for download at ati.amd.com are for desktop products only.”

    http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=26978

    And I could blather on and on about the other advantages, which I think the
    linked article underplay. That said, most of Apple’s current crop are fine machines,
    and if you’re in the group that needs a Mac Pro, you’ll likely already know that.

    Mr Wibbly Wobbly, on May 15th, 2008 at 7:23 am