At some point, it will be detrimental to my studio business, if I continue to ignore the clear signs of a failing Mac. Over the last 12 months, it has started to show some serious signs of ageing, not necessarily in computing power but in everyday performance and reliability. Sadly though, my Mac Pro's service will have to come to an end soon. Over the years I've upgraded the RAM, swapped the hard drives for SSDs, and it also houses my Pro Tools HDX & UAD-2 cards. I replaced it with a newer Mac Pro in 2011 and it is still my main Pro Tools computer and I must say it has served me pretty well. I used this first gen Mac Pro for four years until the logic board failed. At the time I was using a G4 Mirror Door which wasn't quite powerful enough for my Pro Tools LE system so I purchased one of the new Mac Pros. This was a big step up in computer power compared to the outgoing Apple Mac G5. In 2006 Apple introduced a new flagship powerhouse desktop computer - the Mac Pro. On the team, Mike and Dan still own and run Mac Pro 5.1 Pro Tools computers, with James having recently changed his cheese-grater Mac Pro for a Windows machine. In this article, we are going to explore the range of options open to those considering replacing our Apple Mac Pro 5.1 'cheese-grater' computers.
