Power(ful) Mac is back!

For years I've been using mid to low end Macs. My days of 'everything must be latest and greatest' have gone with my youth and I got to learn to settle with whatever Macs I had at the time and get used to the speed and power ceiling of 3 to 4 year old hardwares. Not so much so anymore, for I got to be greatly spoiled by the latest and greatest of Apple machines. 

Power Macs were abandoned as a serious workstation quite a while ago, because of stalling performance of PowerPC and relatively under-optimized os X back then. The company I work for finally decided to give Macs another spin, and gave me the mighty mac pro for the new project. Two quad core 3GHz CPUs (so 8 cores), 8GB RAM (gulp), 1.5GB graphics memory (another gulp), and almost 1TB internal harddrive..+ gigantic 30 inch Dell monitor. (ok. not apple monitor, but does it matter?)  I did apple store config to see how much this would've cost me and it's almost$8600 before 30" monitor and tax. 

 I got to run latest Maya 2009 in 64bit glory and other heavy duty graphics apps, and it feels so great to be backed by strong muscle while using OS X. Beside it spoiling my patience and wisdom I acquired from using powerbook G4 or Mac mini, it made me realize how my view on Mac platform has been like. Pro Mac desktop machines seemed to be reduced to a small niche market product, and I was interested in consumer media technology like iLife more than Apple's pro offering. I was a lot more used to using Mac in a portable form, and I even prefered powerbook G4 over intel mac mini. 

I think I've been seeing Macs more like a toy, just not in a condescending way. A toy that works well and can do a good or better job to embarrass professional tools, but I'm still not used to a toy with this much power and a $9k price tag. 

 There is a chance that I'll treat this Mac Pro more like a Windows PC for a while, meaning that I'll use it for just work and nothing else much. For everything else I'll still prefer my 2yr old Macbook Pro, because when your machine costs this much it becomes a little too serious and less fun to use. A bit strange psychology I know but.. 

 But unlike WinXP workstations, which never grew on me, Mac Pro is still a Mac OS X computer with a inner toy intact. When I get used it and take advantage of its full power to work / play / iLife, I'll be in trouble of wanting everything latest and greatest and fastest again. I'm ok only if my youth comes back with it.