Feature:
There's a trick here. The old release is more heavily equiped than the new (old: 512MB memory, 160GB hard drive, PCI-X, and most importantly, 8 RAM slots; new, 256MB memory, 80GB hard drive, PCI, and 4 RAM slots). If you can buy the older release, refurbished, that's the one to get. The new does have a faster DVD burner, however--8x as opposed to 4x.
DVD burner standard and Firewire, a must for digital audio in my opinion. Plenty of places to plug in your USB and Firewire devices. I would recommend a memory upgrade (1GB or more) if you plan on using a lot of big synthesizers.
Quality:
I think it looks cool, even on the inside, but that issue is moot. Nothing seems prone to break, although I would have like a slot-loading Superdrive like in the Powerbooks. A heads up: this thing is really big. You'll probably be surprised just how big when you get it. I certainly was.
Value:
A lot of people will claim that Macs are more expensive than PCs, but a clooser look raised doubts. This is a very high-end computer and needs to be compared to high-end PCs (i.e. dual Xeon units). Also, remember that GHz aren't everything. Throughput is a true measure of a computer's speed, though it can't be expressed a simple number as processor speed can. That said, believe what you will about performance test results, these computers are more or less comparable to dual xeon computers, which are no cheaper when equally equiped and often much more expensive. Once again, the best value is the older release, refurbished.
Sound:
A computer this powerful means high-quality sound with negligible latency even when recording many tracks at once. I've heard of loud fan problems, but haven't experienced them myself. Perhaps this is something Apple has taken care of. It's quite enough to use for audio recording without any special casing.
Support:
I used the support site once with success. The support documentation on the computer isn't great or greatly organized.
Overall:
I'm more than happy with my purchase and with my decision to go with Apple this time around. And did I mention, no spyware, no viruses in OSX.
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