A Review of the Apple Mac Pro MA356LL/A Desktop

Apple has a couple different lines of PC's. This is from their Professional series and is designed mostly for individuals that spend a lot of time rendering graphics, editing images, videos and any other multimedia format you can imagine. As a result it comes loaded with unique features and a hefty price tag to match. The first thing I'm going to do is pop the hood, let's check out the stats.

Hardware:

Processors: 2 dual-core 2.66 GHz Intel Xeon processors

RAM: 1 GB RAM (expandable up to 16 GB)

Storage Space: 250 GB hard drive

Optical Drive: Apple's super drive (a CD burner R/RW with integrated DVD +/- R RW

Graphics Accelerator: Standalone NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT (With 256 MB of dedicated GDDR2 SDRAM)

Operating System: Leopard

There is certainly enough processing power here. It is very impressive and boots quite fast. The graphics card is great and has additional ports for the addition of more, if it isn't enough for you. The RAM is paltry but luckily Leopard doesn't really use RAM like Vista does. However if you're interested in setting up a dual boot you're going to have to get a RAM upgrade. Odds are if you're interested in getting the full potential out of this desktop you're going to need a RAM upgrade.

It seems to me Apple has just preloaded this with the basics and is letting the end user handle the customization (and the costs) to what they need. As it is runs Photoshop just fine, but once you start to do a little multitasking you can notice a little bit of lag, I attribute that to the limited RAM especially when you really start to dig your toes in and the graphics card starts to suck up some of the system RAM.

Connectivity:

2 Ethernet ports

2 FireWire 800 ports (newer firewire output)

2 FireWire 400 ports (for fast data transfer between 2 devices, older format)

5 2.0 USB ports (to connect any of your peripherals like a printer, iPod, or digital camera)

2 1.1 USB ports (these are located on your keyboard, go ahead and use these for your flash drives or wireless mice)

Audio out / mic in

Optical audio out / optical audio in

DVI

The connectivity is good, although I'd really like to see an HDMI output, although I don't know that Apple is down with HDMI. I dislike the way they do their displays through mini-DVI but it is just a matter of personal preference. The abundance of firewire ports seems to be a bit over kill although I'm sure someone out there needs all 4, it just isn't as many as those who need more than 1 GB of RAM.

For $2500 I don't really know who this is good for. It certainly isn't great for the general consumer at that price what you end up with is a little bit unfortunate. The hard core Apple professional probably needs a little more, but at 2500 bucks buy and upgrading this may be the way to go. The next available model is closer to 3 grand and doesn't really do much other than include a larger HD and RAM upgrade, something that can be done to this desktop with little more investment. Unfortunately I think this just may be another case of Apple ridiculously overcharging for their merchandise.