Daniel Cooper

Except that any MacBook Pro is going to struggle to live as the center of my home, as my Mac Pro currently does. I've got 40GB of music and around 540GB of video in my iTunes collection (all ripped from physical media; I'm not a monster). Then there's my photos collection (many of which include my little girl), which runs to around 282GB when you include home video. Despite the fact that I have a hybrid HDD, 14GB RAM and a quad-core Xeon processor, it still takes an age for these files to load. Buying a MacBook Pro won't make any of those jobs faster.

Aaron Souppouris

Neither will buying a new Mac Pro. Part of the reason Apple is replacing the Mac Pro is that it's not very expandable. Upping the storage to handle all your media is going to add more than $500 to the price. It seems that your main bottleneck right now is the hard drive. The gulf between a hybrid and an SSD is pretty enormous. While you might see its solid-state portion matching an SSD in repeated tasks like loading the OS or a frequently used app, everyday computing is more random than that. The 500GB SSD inside Apple's high-end MacBook Pro will dramatically improve your day-to-day life, from loading apps quicker to supporting the RAM with fast paging speeds.

Whatever computer you upgrade to, I'd invest in a 2TB RAID system, connect it to the highest-speed port your computer has and forget about finding a computer to match your data-hoarding habit. Sure, file access will still be slow, but it won't bog down the system while they're loading.

Bottom line is the modern components of a MacBook Pro will keep pace, or exceed, the base Mac Pro in almost every task, for less money. The main sticking point with the current crop is battery life, but if you're using it as a desktop, that point is moot.

Daniel Cooper

Aah, aah, I've got you there, because for $2,999 I can get a six-core Xeon E5 processor, 16GB RAM and a dual FirePro D500 with 3GB RAM per side. The 15-inch MBP you're referring to costs almost the same ($2,799) with a quad-core Core i7, 16GB RAM and a Radeon Pro with 2GB RAM. I can also get a shitty keyboard, trackpad and display I don't need and a battery that'll get increasingly less useful over time. Oh, and I'll have to buy all new accessories, because nothing I own has USB-C.

Aaron Souppouris

Those fancy graphics cards you're swooning over are outdated, and the new MacBook Pro's GPU will keep OpenGL-enabled apps like Photoshop running at a clip. If you really wanted, you could up that to a Radeon Pro 460, which has 4GB of dedicated memory, and you'd still be spending less than a Mac Pro.

That's not to mention that the spec you just listed comes with a 256GB SSD, almost half the size of the MacBook Pro I want you to buy. The price difference between the two machines will cover the accessories you need and help fund that RAID system I mentioned. You don't really need to use this thing like a laptop: keep it plugged in behind your monitor if you want to. That said, I use a laptop with an external display and it works just fine -- think of it as getting a high-quality 15-inch display and trackpad to sit along your existing monitor when you need it.

Daniel Cooper

OK, how about this? Laptops are designed around balancing the different needs of power drain, thermal efficiency and performance. I guarantee you that the MBP's components will be throttled down to custard-like speeds to prevent overheating when I get on it. My daily routine is to have Chrome open with a hundred tabs, plus Pages, iTunes, Photoshop and Slack all running at once. Why would I knowingly submit myself to a bad computing experience?

Aaron Souppouris

Laptops have come a long way, with components that are far more capable of running at full pelt than they used to be. Ars Technica's review found that, even after 30 minutes running at full load, the i7 in the MacBook Pro didn't throttle. Not to mention that USB-C and Thunderbolt are so fast that the difference between internal and external accessory efficiency is moot. Oh, and talking of interfaces: The Mac Pro's I/O is limited to USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 2. The MacBook Pro's USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 ports are light-years ahead, and if you're using this machine as a desktop, then the dongle issue is really unimportant.

I know it's anecdotal, but people with far heavier workloads than you -- namely YouTubers like MKBHD and Casey Neistat -- have given up on the Mac Pro, and both switched to the latest MacBook Pros in recent months. These things are just better machines.

Daniel Cooper

How about the fact that those laptops -- with their integral batteries and tightly integrated components -- have a far shorter shelf life than desktops? As an investment, buying a desktop is likely to give you a better payoff, because it'll last much longer than its all-in-one brethren.

Aaron Souppouris

The battery definitely has a limited shelf life, but if you're permanently plugged in, what's the problem?

Daniel Cooper

Repairs, though. Have you seen iFixit's guide for repairing the MBP? It got a repairability score of 1 out of 10. Which means that if this thing breaks, It's quite likely that I'll have to buy a new one.