Exactly
-The discussion so far, has ranged from which new iMac actually has a GPU, -what the old iMacs were like GPU wise, -which new Mac Book Pro’s have GPU’s, -what the older ones were like, -and which CPU’s are actually in the Mac Pro desktop (apple doesn’t actually self-publish the specific model/part numbers which makes them a little harder to look up/understand, MS does the same thing with the Surface Pro line and so do many other big vendors) -and how server centric Xeon’s in general compare to more moderately priced i7’s and i5’s for the purposes of most Blender/3D purposed workstations which aren’t offered as options in the current line-up for buying a full fledged OSX desktop that can run a full fledged desktop GPU -and the comparable cost of alternatives. This all adds up to some picture of what to expect in the future, very relevant, especially if you have important software that you can only run on OSX or are in the market for an upgrade.
The exact information you need to understand to make an informed decision for a personal purchase or a purchase for your business.
Now Waynestate brought up a great point. Support, and the distance of support, and the user’s/owner’s, of the machines, technical ability to trouble shoot. There is something to be said to being able to put an erroring Workstation tower in a car, take it down the street, drop it off at the shop for repair, and pick up a loaner to get back to the office and get back working, or the ability to make a phone-call and possibly get things straightened out that way, quickly.
One has to balance cost with their budget. In some cases it might be cheaper, or just in general more useful, to purchase or build 2 or even 3 machines for redundancy so that you don’t even lose that single hour on the phone or in the car! If you make a lot of money at your craft, it might not even be worth it financially to spend even an hour (let alone a day which I do a few times a year, at least) playing about to fix a stubborn technical issue. In these cases you should always get better support from a big box vendor (in particular Apple who has shops all over the place), or if it’s mission critical enough/your business is profitable enough, to have several serviceable machines and a freelance tech guy who can come to your office and fix one of them when it’s having problems, while never skipping a beat at the office because you have 2 other powerful machines at hand.
There are a few PC vendors who make systems that would qualify as pretty solid Blender workstations, and they do it at reasonable prices compared to what you would build on your own (they save money by buying in mass and volume licensing Windows or providing you with pre-installed Linux) you still pay a little more in the end, but if something goes wrong, you can drop the machine off at the post office and have it sent back later while you use a different system.
Personally, I like the 2-4 system redundancy option, but I fix any machine that is having issues myself -when time permits. I know full well, why this isn’t even worth some peoples free time and for most, is not a fun experience, -I get enjoyment out of it. Word of warning to the freelancers considering building their own workstation, it’s no fun at all to trouble shoot a system if you only have 1 machine, and you have deadlines and bills to pay! Redundancy is key.
