Taking a look at Apple's new professional computer, the 8-processor-cored Mac Pro behemoth, reminds me a little of the debate we started a couple of issues ago when comparing a medium-format digital SLR to a top-of-the-line digital SLR: one offers you pure power while the other gives you rugged portability. (There's a lot more to it than that, of course, but if you want to read the finer points, check out the May 2008 issue of PDN.)

Power versus portability: that's the argument in these days of supreme mobility, total access, and the constant need for speed. When you can capture and upload photos to your Web site right from a smart phone, any electronic device bigger than a bread box starts to look like a relic from the Eighties.

Of course, all this portability and mobility has its trade-offs. If you seriously think you can get a job by posting to your site those photos you just captured with your iPhone, you may want to consider a career change. Or, at least, your pricing.

Still, the debate continues. Why do I need to use something that's twice the size when I could just as soon use something half the size and get similar results? Manufacturers know this and they've responded in two ways: by making their big devices smaller and by packing them with so much power you'll have to give them a second look.

This was true of the 33-megapixel Leaf AFi 7 I reviewed in the PDN in May. It was more stripped-down and fully integrated than previous medium-format digital camera systems I'd looked at, though certainly it wouldn't be confused with a DSLR. On the upside, the Leaf AFi 7 offered such mind-blowing amounts of resolution, sharpness and great dynamic range, it was hard to argue with the results.

A similar debate could be hatched when deciding whether to buy a new Mac Pro workstation or a Mac Book Pro laptop. First of all, look at the names. One is a "workstation." It remains stationary somewhere and you use it to work. The other is a "laptop." It rests gently on your lap and you can take it anywhere. On the flip side, work makes you money, whereas noodling around with an expensive, superslim computer on your lap while sipping a frappuccino at Starbucks can cost you.

FAST WHILE STANDING STILL
And that's the argument for the new Mac Pro, the fastest and most powerful Mac ever (what, were you expecting the slowest and weakest?), with eight processor cores standard across the line, compared to the Quad-core entry-level Mac Pro from the previous generation. This isn't just a workstation, it's a fully loaded, blazingly fast workhorse that can be configured for up to four graphics cards to give it the ability to drive up to eight 30-inch displays. Use it to do all of your photo studio's heavy editing. You could edit video by day, and then have it transform your studio into a digital gallery at night.

Both Apple and Macworld magazine benchmarked the entry-level 2.8GHz Xeon 64-bit 8-core workstation model I tested as outperforming the previous generation eight-core 3GHz model. Though I did not have the previous model to compare it to, the Mac Pro I tried out, as expected, blew away my 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo 17-inch Macbook Pro laptop—with 3 gb of RAM—in a series of tests using Adobe Photoshop, Bridge and Apple Aperture.

The Mac Pro—like most "desktop" computers—also stacks up extremely favorably against my 17-inch MacBook Pro in terms of price. Though the laptop I use is now a couple of generations old, when it was released it carried the same $2,799-list price as the new Mac Pro.

Like everything though, it has its trade-offs, including the fact that Mac Pro does not, of course, ship with a monitor. In the end, this is a workstation. If, like me, you've gradually moved away from gear that keeps you tied to one spot, the sedentary Mac Pro takes some getting used to. But for something that stands still most of the time, boy, is it fast!

UNDER THE HOOD
The Mac Pro has the kind of specs that would make any true gearhead, not to mention Apple fan, drool. It features two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel (remember the hubbub when Intel came on board?) processors, each with 12 mb of L2 cache designed to increase speed while boosting power efficiency. With less need to cool the Intel processors compared to their G5 predecessors from several generations back, Apple has been able to further tweak the interior architecture of the hardware, adding dual independent 1600 MHz front side buses and up to 32 gb of 800 MHz DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM memory. The model I tested had a somewhat meager—by comparison—4 gb of memory.

Mac Pros all come standard with the speedy ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card with 256 mb of video memory. There's also a PCI Express 2.0 graphics slot that delivers twice the bandwidth compared to its predecessor, letting you swap in a graphics card from NVIDIA. In the case of the model I tested, it was fitted with the blindingly fast NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT with 512 mb of video memory (a $150 add-on).

Unfortunately, the Mac Pro doesn't have a built-in Blu-ray player/burner, which really would have put the NVIDIA card to the test. Even though the Mac Pro was released before the Blu-ray versus HD DVD format wars ended in February (with Blu-ray the victor), it was a notable absence, especially with Apple's long support of the Blu-ray format. Blu-ray would also have provided a huge-sized, now-standard disc format for photographers to back up images to or burn to for clients.

Another notable absence—at least in the standard model I tested—is the lack of an Airport Extreme Card in the base model. You can add the 802.11n wireless card for an extra $50, but be sure to do it before you order your Mac Pro since it has to be installed by an Apple store or at an authorized service.

I can understand the thinking: Most pros need the very fast network connections provided by gigabit Ethernet ports in the Mac Pro but this is 2008 after all. Shouldn't even the standard model have both a wired and a wireless option?

It was startling to look for and not find the familiar Airport cone in the top menu bar of the Mac Pro I tested, especially considering that connecting it to my wired network would mean stringing a bunch of Ethernet cables or moving my workspace with the Mac Pro tower and 24-inch LaCie monitor (also reviewed in this issue) from where it was. Either way—a big pain.

I also wasn't entirely keen on the wired aluminum Apple keyboard and Mighty Mouse that ship with the Mac Pro. Do yourself a favor and spend a couple of extra bucks to get the wireless versions. They'll further free you up from cables and cords, not to mention, they feel much more 2008.

MORE EXPANDABILITY
The other big change that came from switching to cooler Intel chips several years ago was that it freed up more room in Mac Pros for expansion. (Not to mention, without all those fans blowing all the time, the Mac Pro is now a surprisingly quiet machine.)

While the base model might not have enough storage to suit your needs—it has just a 320-gb hard drive—the Mac Pro has four internal hard drive bays with easy-to-mount sleds, providing enough room for four 1-tb Serial ATA hard drives for a total of 4 tb of storage. Not bad, but you'll definitely boost the base price by adding some of these drives to the slight 320-gb starter size.

The Mac Pro also has a 16x SuperDrive, as well as a range of ports on the front and back for adding on externals, including five USB 2.0 ports, two FireWire 400 ports, two FireWire 800 ports, optical and analogue audio in and out, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports and a headphone port. In a word: loaded.

SPEED TRIALS
In our head-to-heads between the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro, the workstation clearly won hands down by a fairly considerable margin across the board. We ran our testing in much the same way my predecessor at PDN, David Schloss, did in 2006 when pitting the first version of the Mac Pro back against a PowerMac G5 Quad for a review, putting the machines through a series of real-world photographic trials using Adobe Photoshop, Bridge and Aperture.

We did have the advantage of running Adobe CS3 on our test computers, which run natively on Intel-based Macs. In David's tests, CS2 needed to run through the slower Rosetta emulation program on his Mac Pro review unit from 2006, which bogged things down considerably.

The reason I mention that is because while our Mac Pro did significantly better than the MacBook Pro, CS3 runs so much better overall with native Intel support, though the differences in speed might not feel as significant to some users.

The Mac Pro was about ten seconds faster in launching Photoshop CS3, a cushion it maintained through most of our testing. The MacBook Pro fared a little better with Bridge, opening it just five seconds slower than the Mac Pro, but when we worked with an 60-mb RAW files, captured with a Canon 1Ds Mark III, the Mac Pro tore up the track like Big Brown.

Duplicating layers was at least eight seconds faster on the Mac Pro, as was flattening our files. Rotating a file was a couple clicks faster on the Mac Pro, which doesn't seem like much unless you've got a ton of vertical portraits waiting to be turned.

We also ran our images through the Gaussian Blur in Photoshop, which, as David noted in his 2006 review, is typically a very processor-dependent test. Once again, the Mac Pro ran ahead as it did when I chained together a bunch of actions, including a series of blurs, layer duplicates and arbitrary rotates etc. on a batch of images, finishing the series in about 10-11 seconds faster.

The same was true in our testing using Aperture with identical image libraries on both machines, with the Mac Pro consistently outpacing the laptop in displaying, tweaking, batch captioning and adding keywords on about 100 of our Canon 1Ds III files from a studio shoot with a model.

Not surprising, perhaps, but the head-to-head really drove home how much time you do save on individual jobs with the Mac Pro. It might be more cumbersome in terms of its physical size, but it will get you where you want to go in a hurry.

THE BOTTOM LINE
Having the Mac Pro around for a month of testing really revealed how much of a laptop guy I've become, for better or worse. I haven't had a Mac workstation since the days of the G5, and for the first week or so I had the silver Mac Pro tower stowed under my desk (where I kept accidentally ramming my knee into it); I referred to it as "the dinosaur."

But with extended use on particularly time-consuming photo editing jobs, the speed and power of the eight-core Mac Pro proved to me that while the days of the big powerful desktop machines may be on the wane, we still may have room for a dinosaur, particularly one that combines the power of a T. Rex with the speed of a Raptor.

Minor quibbles about no wireless card in the base model and a disappointing lack of Blu-ray options aside, if you're looking for a computer workhorse in the studio, the Mac Pro will definitely keep everything humming along.

Mac Pro

www.apple.com

Pros: Impressive processing speed; great expandability; runs very quietly; plenty of ports for externals; significant power for the price.

Cons: No wireless card in the base model; lacks Blu-ray support; entry-level model has meager 320-gb hard drive.

Price: $2,799 (base model)