Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Apple Mac Pro ME253LL/A Desktop

Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2014

So I just received my machine and it started off great! Did the updates as normal and all of a sudden...BAM! locked up screen! I was getting a "Your system has run out of application memory" message...I've never seen that before...not off to a good start Apple.

At this point I've spent about an hour with the kind people at Apple trying to figure this out. They logged in remotely and took a look around. With only running Safari they found that my memory pressure was at almost 5gb...which was shocking for even them to see. Did a few more things and they suggested I re-install OSX and go from there. SO, new machine with a glitch somewhere within and new to the folks at apple...I'll update as soon as I get back up and running.

So, 3 stars for now because I have faith in these products and I'm sure we'll get it figured out.

Oh, and if you're a Mac hater....save your fingers and do something better with them. Have a great day!

4/16/2014 UPDATE
After two re-installations I've given up on this one machine. Not on the product overall, just this one machine. Seems this could have been a faulty product from the factory. Everything just seemed off with it...so I'm getting my replacement in two days. I will update on new machine.

5/5/2014 UPDATE
Allrighty! Been working on this machine for a couple of weeks now and I'm elated that this machine works like it should. The first one seemed to have had a bad RAM chip or something. Been editing both photos and videos on this thing and I can now say I am satisfied. Moved my rating up to 5 stars.

44 people found this helpful

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myfirst100

Lots of issues

Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2018

Verified Purchase

My first MacPro after may iMacs and MacBook Pros, not as quick as expected and tons of compatibility issues ... O could say I hate it for the money I spent

3 people found this helpful

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Adam S.

Good experience all told

Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2015

Verified Purchase

Computer came as described with original box. There was some confusion about setup of the Mac, but seller stayed in close communication and was helpful. Good experience all told. Solid 4.5 stars if that were an option.

One person found this helpful

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MumblyJoe

A clever design but balanced for a future that may be too far out to justify the price.

Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2014

Verified Purchase

Ok, i'm going to be the bad guy here. I love this design, most aspects of it anyway, but it has its challenges. The thing is quiet, and it is wonderful to finally have a design that fits on the desk and doesn't cover the delicate boards in dust, but rather sucks air through a tube in the middle. It's well balanced and snappy with the PCIe flash and a ton of power. However, that means that you end up with a gross nest of cables pouring out of the sleek little aluminum case and a ton of peripherals scattered about your desk. I ran out of USB ports immediately.

Again, it's a cool design but as the first of its line it needs some major fixes before it becomes the compact workstation I personally need.

1. It needs to support multiple CPU's. One of the biggest advantages of a Xeon system over Core i7 is that Xeons work in tandem. Limiting it to 1 processor makes it really hard to afford the cores you need and get them to operate at the speed you need when they all have to be packed into one chip. It also makes it hard to upgrade since you don't have nearly as many configuration options.

2. It needs more software support. This will come, I'm sure, but nearly a year since launch and Cinema 4D users, for instance, still won't see much benefit from the extra GPU. Instead they'll be hindered by the limited CPU until more packages support GPU rendering. Again, i'm sure this is coming but I'm also sure it will take a while since parallel processing is not easy to code and workstations with a ton of CPU cores are a cheaper option for many.

3. It needs to be cheaper and the thunderbolt and 4K displays it's designed around need to be cheaper. Really, this system and all it's massive GPU is great for running multiple 4K displays or multiple thunderbolt displays NOW, but with those being as expensive as they are Not many of my clients have them, not many of their clients have them, and as such they're more of a luxury than a necessity. Granted a nice big, high res display greatly enhances your workflow but Just a thunderbolt display puts the entire package well over $4000.

4. It needs to be balanced more towards NOW. Without at least 2 thunderbolt or 4K displays this Mac Pro's power is largely balanced towards the wrong place at the moment, with this entry model's 4 cores putting up disappointing benchmarks. 4K seems to be further off than I'd want in order to justify purchasing this system now. European analysts don't expect it to come into widespread use until 2019 and here in the U.S. we have bandwidth caps, generally poor infrastructure, poor penetration, the loss of net neutrality to deal with before 4K content will be something that most people can even get access to let alone afford. At the moment there's 0 competition between ISP's driving solutions to any of that stuff. Unless Google greatly ramps up its ISP presence or a bunch of cities go for the Chattanooga gigabit model this system's going to to be severely outclassed by the time 4K editing becomes a common concern.

5. It needs to have the power button on the front. I don't want to mess around turning this little pod around so I can reach the button every morning, then turn it back to hide the mess of cables in the back- all the while getting smudges on the reflective aluminum case and accidentally disconnecting things.

As a future investment this may be good, but with only one processor socket and upgrades that currently cost nearly 150% more than the machine itself today (and which may void your warranty to install) it's questionable. It's especially hard to justify when you consider that a souped up 27" iMac beats this lower end model on nearly every benchmark, (even beats the higher end models on some things,) has an *single* Nvidia GPU with CUDA and better 3'rd party support NOW, (particularly for single threaded apps) comes with a Keyboard, mouse and 2x the flash storage (or 12x the fusion storage) AND a built in 27" thunderbolt display, all for $150 less- $140 which you could put towards a 16 gb memory upgrade that you can add to the included 8 GB for 24 total. Of course if you live in a state that doesn't collect sales tax from Amazon yet it's roughly the same price as ordering a custom iMac from the Apple store after tax. you lose the possibility of 64 GB of ECC ram but that's a small price to pay for all the benefits of the iMac over this entry level model

I want to love this machine but ultimately returned it when it scored just 50 points higher than my Macbook Pro on Cinebench CPU tests and just 10 fps more on the Open GL tests. That's too much money for not enough immediate gain in terms of rendering, which I what I need a workstation for. In the end I ordered the custom iMac instead as the 6 core Mac Pro was out of my budget . I really, really wish they'd put 6 or 8 cores the entry level model and saved the futuristic GPU for the high end models, but they didn't. Maybe in 3 years or so, when the iMac's struggling to keep up the Mac Pro will have come into its own and I'll have the iMac to use as a thunderbolt display.

33 people found this helpful

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nick

The "Garbage Can" form factor perfectly foreshadowed how bad this thing really is.

Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2016

I have owned at least 10 different macs over the past 20 years. Without any doubt in my mind whatsoever, the 2013 Pro is the absolute WORST one I have ever owned. I spent over three grand on this thing, thinking it was going to "save me time". Quite the opposite. It has a very well-known GPU problem, which Apple refuses to acknowledge or even address. What this boils down to is, the rainbow ball. Rainbow balls when I'm surfing the internet. Rainbow balls when I'm editing photos. Rainbow balls when I'm typing documents in Word. Rainbow balls when I'm editing basic video in iMovie. Rainbow balls when I'm working with audio. Literally multiple times per day; and every single time, full-blown system crash requiring a restart. No OS or RAM upgrades have solved the problem. AT ALL.

Just today alone, I was recording a DJ mix when it crashed on me 79 minutes into it, forcing me to start all over again from scratch. Then as I was designing the cover art for the mix, it crashed on me again after 45 minutes of working on the project in Photoshop, forcing me to re-do that from scratch as well. This piece of garbage has caused me to miss deadlines, spend literally days re-doing things from scratch and has probably taken a year off my life by raising my blood pressure. I've HAD IT.

The fact that the shell of what Apple used to be (now that Steve Jobs...you know, the guy who did all the work, has died) calls this thing a "Pro" is reprehensible. They're selling it for the same price they did when it came out 3 years ago, even though the latest iMac and Macbooks benchmark circles around it. It's literally highway robbery, and it wouldn't surprise me if this ends up being the last "Pro" model we'll see from them.

The old, much larger pro towers and even the G4 towers before that could run for months without crashing. I miss those days.

8 people found this helpful

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Sultan

Apple has done it once again! A+!

Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2014

Verified Purchase

Opening the box for the first time, I noticed how heavy it is, talking about around 12 Ib but its not about the weight of this thing but the size of it. I have to say this thing is a piece of engineering, how could Apple fit so much power under this small tin can!!. Funny that i got compliments around the place that this thing looks like a luxurious trash can hahaha yes it is a compliment, no one would understand what this thing really is!?

Removing the plastic wrap covering the outer shell, showed how sext this thing is. Adding the glossy black finish makes this thing delicious hehe if you know what I mean, it is a prone to finger prints but to be honest I didn't notice any because of the dark black color. Before connecting it on my 4K tv, I had to take a look inside this beast, I flicked the lock switch on the back of the case and pulling up the aluminum outer shell, gave me a sound of the galaxies hehe totally alientastic!

What is inside is pure art, the video card, RAM, SSD, everything is neatly placed for our viewing pleasure. The RAM is user upgradable very easily done indeed.

Starting this thing up i noticed the 4k resolution, I have to say it looks good but not for me, the reason why is because running this machine at 30Hz is not fun at all, very blurry and slow, did I also mention everything is so soo tiny so i switched it back to the native 1080p Res under 60Hrz and everything looks more readable.

My conclusion of the display is not the slow form factor of 30Hz but how small things are because of the resolution, I work in final cut pro x a lot and i need to be able to read all the codes and commands clearly, so for now 1080p is great ;) I do have the option while watching a 4k movie is switching the resolution to 4k ;)

Talking about how fast this thing is, maaaan i was using a core i5 mac mini 2011 and under heavy rendering, you can't imagine how stressful it is. I know that the mac mini is not supposed to be used for heavy video editing but the comparison is vast! The SSD installed on this machine gives an instant start to all my apps, something which is truly a blast.

This machine is the very base model and gotta say so far it is great in responsiveness, I still am doing tests on this machine with final cut pro x, motion etc.

Love it !!

17 people found this helpful

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Don Fernandez

Speed matters no matter how techy you are

Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2015

Verified Purchase

Speed matters. I'm a Contractor. Money is made getting things built, not doing paperwork. I probably don't use this to its full capacity but I can get my paperwork done 25% faster than before. Just those seconds of waiting for things to open, load, save and quit can really add up. Used a Macbook Pro before and there is no comparison. Plus I get to play all the high powered games without a pause or glitch. Wish I'd gotten the bigger hard drive. Seem to get those 250 gigs filled up fast. Have to store a bunch on external drives. Don't miss the built in DVD/CD drive. My external LG drive works way better than any internal drive I had on previous computers. Nice looking too. Doesn't take any room and very quiet. It has already paid for itself in increased productivity.

5 people found this helpful

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Troy G. Barton

Buyer beware!! Not as advertised!

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2014

Verified Purchase

The computer was fabulous! However it DOES NOT have a 640 GB hard drive as advertised. It has 250 GB solid state storage ONLY. As much as I loved the computer it simply would not fit my needs with the smaller than advertised drive. I shipped the unit back today and I will re post as to how the refund process goes. By the way, this computer is so incredibly fast and versatile that using an external drive results in virtually the same performance as if it were an internal drive. My decision to return the computer had absolutely nothing to do with the unit itself, it's just that my particular needs require multiple backups and the small drive would have required a third external drive and an extra layer of a cumbersome copying process, yada yada. It really was a heart-breaker to send it back.

One person found this helpful

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Dave Allmon

Very fast and very quiet

Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2015

Verified Purchase

This thing is amazing. A Mac that runs as fast as other computers. It looks smaller in pictures. I put 64GB of Crucial RAM in it. If I had it to do over, I would get the larger internal SSD. Mine has 256GB, but 512GB would have been smarter. Still, it's as fast as my i7-4790K while being quiet as a church mouse.

One thing to be aware of: When you buy from Amazon (or any other retailer, I imagine), Apple assumes you bought it when Amazon bought it, so your 90-day free phone maintenance is already over. Apple takes care of it on your first call, so don't freak out when they tell you. I emailed my Amazon receipt and they changed the date for me.

10 people found this helpful

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Sabry Mason

No manual with it? A manual is a must ...

Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2018

Verified Purchase

No manual with it? A manual is a must to understand its operation. I would have kept it if the manual was available.

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