That is the truth. I've had Ubuntu on my Dell laptop for years, and it was an entire learning experience to perfect the setup completely to my liking. It was great when I was young and had the time to play around, but recently I made the sad jump to a MacBook, because when it came time to actually work on real projects, I needed a rock solid desktop experience where I didn't have to constantly fiddle with my own computer. My Mac is nowhere near as fun or personal as my Linux setup, but it is what I rely on to do my work. Hopefully this Sputnik project makes Linux what Apple does in terms of the complete hardware/software package

I'd politely like to ask..

What, besides A/V work, is a 6+ core OS X machine necessary for?

Scientific computing, system modeling, numerics, CAD/CAM, visualization, developing highly concurrent software, event processors, rendering, machine learning (esp vision/video/spatial stuff), genetic algorithms, databases, GIS, crypto, traffic processing, theorem proving, compiling stuff, exploratory data mining. Gaming, maybe. I routinely saturate my MBP's 4 HT cores. It's also nice to develop on the same architecture you'll deploy to; helps with concurrency tuning.

Not that you can't run these on smaller devices; these are just easy ways to use up a lot of CPU.

Good reasons but I wonder is the current/new generation 12-core Mac Pro inadequate for this? It could be better but it still seems to serve its purpose.

Depends on what you're doing. I'd be satisfied with a 12-core Mac Pro for everyday development--but if a 128-core Xeon were available I'd take it gladly.

When I was working on quantum state diffusion, it took many hours on a 24-node cluster for a single run. In many of these tasks, the problem will expand to consume all reasonably available resources; more cores allow greater precision, wider sampling of parameters, higher fidelity, etc.

some of the iOS developers at my work use them just so they can compile faster.

then they're doing it wrong.

what? Clang parallelizes compilation 6 > 4. duh.

Ditto to Hackintosh. The Mac Pro never was a good buy.

Half the reason one buys an Apple product is because of the terrific build quality and design. That's extremely important in a notebook computer, something you'll carry around day in day out and have to depend on to not fail when you're in the field.

There's far less incentive in buying a terrifically sturdy and pretty machine that will sit under your desk and not be moved for years on end.

I dunno about you guys, but as a college student that frequently takes internships, I move every 4-6 months.

Having a really powerful desktop that can be thrown back into its (incredibly well designed) original box and shipped here, there, and everywhere while continuing to work perfectly and housing all my disks has been awesome.

Any desktop case can be put back into its box and shipped in the same fashion.

Actually, it's annoying to need a box for a desktop nowadays. But the trend towards ventilated cases makes it a necessity - there's no protection against the elements.

Heck, I have problem with mine sitting near the door after I come in from the snow.

Not really - most other desktop cases are much flimsier and don't come with as well designed packaging. I've had computers not POST after shipping because something was dislodged in transit, but that never happens with the Mac Pro.

Am I the only one for whom this never worked? It didn't work 6 hours ago and it's not working now. Still Hacker News'd or just me?

You, sir, are clearly thinking like an engineer.

Attributed to a certain Steven Duffy on this article. http://lifehacker.com/5913295/theres-no-speed-limit-the-less...

Why would they use the Mac App Store? To throw profits to Apple?

I was thinking Apple had this technology patented...maybe they have a licensing agreement that requires use of App Store.

Your note about using a cool UI animation as incentive is fascinating. Just. Fascinating.

I know it would work on me.

As a broad observation about everyone on this thread, I'd say* a small percentage of the population (me included) naturally notices and thinks through details like these. Most other people (users and developers) don't give a crap and function just fine in their lives.

*no scientific evidence

I agree; it's also very distracting to me.

The large, handwriting typeface works well for the list items as it makes you focus on it, but the "Today" heading should be different if only to clearly separate the middle section as your "list". Overall terrific design though.