Slick Operator

My Mac Pro would turn 5 years-old in April. I bought it during the MSH Meeting in 2013. It was still doing a great job but I had issues with space at my new study table. An iMac Pro would definitely clear some of the clutters. That was what got me interested.

Last weekend, I had my first encounter with the machine at on of the Mac dealer in town. Same size as the iMac 27 inch, great screen and all that. But the main muscles were on the inside. The workstation grade processor, full SSD storage with 32 Gb RAM, etc.

And that was only the basic model. And it was going at RM 21000!

That was some serious money. That cost more than my Mac Pro. Looked like I could never afford that ...

The New Desk

Following Ba’s passing, we decided to convert my old study room into a guess room. We didn’t have one before and with both Idlan and Irfan growing up fast, they deserve their own space and rooms. The extra room which I had been using had to go.

We bought a new bed and off one toy huge table we bought from Ikea a few years back. So, for the past 4 months, I didn’t’t have my own dedicated space to put my stuffs or do my work. Getting a nice work table at reasonable price was not easy. I went through few options but for one reason or another, none of them were taken up.

Finally a few weeks ago I plumped for one. It just got delivered today. It was at a nice height and width and it fit perfectly into our bedroom. I reassembled my Mac Pro - minus a second screen unfortunately - and so far it had been great. The view - straight through the window up the hill was not too bad either ...

I would still need to get myself a table lamp since the screens were a bit too bright to work at night. I could feel the strain after 20 minutes in front of the computer. The rest of the evening were spent updating the software and upgrading to High Sierra.

The New Workhorse

My current main desktop system was a 4 year-old iMac 23-inch, running Mountain Lion since it was the only OS which can connect to my P1 dongle for internet connection. Not ideal, but that was the best I could do in Gombak.

At the apartment, I have a 30Mb fibre connection and it seemed that all the bandwidth being utilised only on iPad and Mac Book was rather a waste. I decided to get a new desktop permanently stationed at the apartment. I thought about a new iMac, but I decided to go a step further than that. A system which could easily last me for another 4 years.

Walla, I ordered the Mac Pro and I received the delivery last week. I spent the time since then tweaking the peripherals and decided on which monitor to use. The main one was easy, I also ordered an Apple Thunderbolt display which also served as the main speakers, camera and microphone. I got a second similar-sized monitor from Dell. And I also installed a third monitor in the form of a Wacom Cintiq tablet. That provide touch interface for photo editing as well as an input mode for the whole system if needed. The dual graphics card system sorted the resolution out with minimal effort.

I also installed Parallels for running Windows 7 concurrently. No issues. I could run Windows on one screen while keeping Mavericks on the other monitor. And I was able to play games at maximum resolution and setting on the Windows part.

I also bought a Thunderbolt WD external hard drive connected to the Mac Pro. The on board SSD was only 256 Gb, hence I save space by using the external drive for my Aperture and iPhoto library. The 10Gb/sec transfer time meant that there was no lag even when I opened the photo for editing on Photoshop. I decided against wifi storage mainly for speed. When I have time, I might dabble into video editing - in 4K maybe.

A lot to discover still with the new system and it would take a while before I realise the real potential, as only a handful of the current crop of apps were able to utilise more than couple of processor cores, 64 bit operation and dual graphic processor. The system was no slouch ….

So far, I have yet to encounter any hardware issues with the system. I might add on more memories to the system in the future, but that would be about it.