Used Mac Pro?

I've bought from Powermax before (actually picked up in-person cause I lived in PDX back then). Good people. I'd order w/confidence from them. Their prices are high-ish, but I think they stand behind their wares, so prolly worth the premium especially with used hardware.

> Should I have worry about discontinued support for newer OS?

I would, but I'm anal that way and am losing confidence in Apple by the minute. I think you'd be OK with a 2012 Mac Pro.

RE: #3, no idea...

 

#1 yes.
That is where I purchased my Mac Pro.

#2 I have a 2009 quad intel Xeon processor based platform.
I am running 10.9 and don't want to even touch 10.10 until the many and varied OS issues are addressed.

#3 I have no personal experience with video editing.
But with gobs of ram (get 16GB minimum) along with 4 processors and if you throw in a SSD to use as your boot volume you shouldn't have much of a problem.

By way of example I can have all of my apps (Firefox, Jriver, a whole bunch of utilities, email client, pdf reader, writing tools and more) all open and running and can perform a complete restart in ≈ 2 minutes.
And if you REALLY want to speed things up get a PCIe based hard drive, which are a bit spendy but Well Worth it.

JJ

 

I own a mac repair store. Get the newest mac that you can afford, the older macs become obsolete and unable to update operating systems. Macs currently are running osx 10.11, do not buy something that can only run 10.6. iMovie can probably do everything your family needs, and should be included with any mac you buy.

I just looked at those prices. They seem high. Are you married to the idea of a mac pro? If you got a macbook pro, I think for what you want to do with it, you'd get more bang for your buck. I bought a refurb macbook pro for myself directly from apple. I got a 2012 model that has a cd drive, I upgraded the hard drive to a 1tb solid state (the newer ones are harder to upgrade), and it comes with a years warranty from apple.

I would take a hard look at the iMac if I were you, since you have kids, its probably a better bet than a macbook pro. I never recommend the mac pro, they're over priced and apple does not sell a lot of them. One of my employees worked at an apple store and only sold two mac pros in three years. We hardly ever see them in the shop.

 

Take Ravenato's advice.

A 2009 Mac Pro for example is already declared vintage by Apple and't can't be repaired by an official dealer anymore.
Take a look at a decent iMac, new or second hand and beef it up with 16GB of memory.
I have 32GB, SSD and a 4GB video card in my over 2 year old iMac and it takes anything I throw at it.

 

The one thing that the older Mac Pro's have that iMac's etc don't is easy access to the internals and upgradeability AND they have a PCIe bus.
Most probably will never use this bus except for the video card…
BUT,
I have a SSD plugged into it and it flies.

This is a significant speed boost above and beyond just a regular SSD.

If this is a consideration, and it probably isn't for the majority of users, a Mac Pro of this older generation is the only option since the newer Mac Pro (Vaders garbage can) doesn't have this feature.

Just say'n is all.

JJ

 

Why not just build a hackintosh? I run El Capitan on a super micro motherboard with a Xeon and 16gb and the whole thing cost half as much as a Mac Pro. Tonymacx86.com has a pretty simple process for installing. Using Clover, everything works flawlessly.

Plus, if/when Apple falls out of favor, you can put Windows or Linux on it easily.

 

The iMac requires that the case be 'opened' which can be done but is a task best left to someone who has done it before.
Usually what happens is an external firewire or thunderbolt drive or drives are added.
This is MUCH easier and not all that much more costly, with WAY less risk of damage to the base computer.

Also be aware that some iMacs HAD overheating problems, which I assume has been 'fixed' by now, at least I would hope so.

JJ

 

Depends on how old you go. I wouldn't get anything older than 2010 or 2011. You have to remove the monitor with suction cups, so it's a little tricky, but doable.

Many of the newer ones have SSDs built in. You should probably contact me off-site