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).
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac. Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
Leander has written for Wired magazine, Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle, MacWeek and many other publications.
