★ Marco Arment on Mac Pros, iMacs and MacBooks

Marco:

Laptops have all of the same limitations as iMacs.³ We’re fine with that, because laptops provide a lot of value in other ways, and they cost a lot less than Mac Pros.

I should really think of the iMac, therefore, more like a laptop — but one that trades its portability and small size for a much larger screen and slightly better hardware. And that doesn’t sound like a very appealing tradeoff, since you can plug laptops into external monitors, and since many iMac owners will still want to own a laptop for portability.

It’s worth thinking about this if you’re considering an iMac purchase: will you still want a laptop? If so, will you be better served by just buying a fast laptop and connecting an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor to it at your desk?

My answer would be “absolutely”, so an iMac definitely isn’t right for me. The question for me, therefore, isn’t “Mac Pro or iMac?”, but rather, “Mac Pro and a laptop, or just a MacBook Pro?”

One thing that occurred to me is the lifespan of a MacBook is far lower than an iMac as the iMac never moves and is never being thrown around. The cables you plug into an iMac rarely change and the Bluetooth keyboard & mouse are always paired. You plug it into a surge protector and leave it there and, for those of us with a lot of digital media, streaming from an iMac that’s always running to my AppleTV is far easier than getting home with my MacBook Pro, going to the office, plugging it in, pairing the keyboard and mouse and then leaving that laptop running all night (which means the fan basically will run constantly.

I bought an iMac in 2009 and realized that an always on computer with a spacious screen and a low AppleCare price was PERFECT alongside a low cost MacBook Air that serves me for day to day use. I believe a low-end 27″ iMac + 11″ MacBook Air will cost you around $2500 with discounts and you’ll have two fantastic machines. For $499 more, you can add an iPad to that and for only $199 more you can have an iPhone. You can have Apple’s complete spectrum of the latest and cutting edge devices for work & play for less than $3500. I know that sounds like an amazingly high price to pay but compared to the price of a single Mac Pro (before buying a monitor), this is a steal. You would never see me buying a Mac Pro ever. I owned one back in 2005 back when Intel CPUs weren’t out and the iPhone was 2 years away. It was a great machine but, even then, I still had a G4 iBook along side my dual 2.5Ghz G5.

If you have any amount of digital media and a real living room (most people over 25 have these things) and perhaps you have kids and are married, you’re going to want to have an iMac that is in the family room that everyone uses. There’s no password on it and it has digital media, a few user accounts, games for the kids and it’s an all around reliable computer that’s hard to bring down unless the kids somehow knock over the desk it’s sitting on. Then, Mom & Dad have their low price SSD powered MacBooks and the entire family shares an iPad and the teenagers have iPod touches while Mom & Dad have iPhones. This is the modern home computer setup and, if you’re in college, yes, a 13″ Macbook Pro is what you need but having a MacBook Pro that you attach to a keyboard, monitor & mouse is absurd for most adults.