Mac Pro

I recently bought a new Mac Pro. My brother ordered it for me and had it shipped to my parents' home in Austin. Because my bro works for Apple. he was able to get be a nice discount. I also ordered extra memory and a second hard drive for the Mac.

The box is sturdy, and like most things from Apple, is made with a great attention to detail. Just from looking at the box, I knew I had purchased a quality product.

Let the sacred unboxing ritual begin!

Pretty cables.

The plastic foam bag around the computer was sealed with a sticker admonishing the reader that he must agree to a software license agreement before using the computer. Whether this is legally binding is up for debate.

Oooh, Ahhh.

Shiny!

The case, opened. I installed a second hard drive and two gigabytes of additional RAM.

The RAM is installed in pairs of FB-DIMMs on two riser cards.

The hard drive installation is so easy that other manufacturers would have to be stupid not to copy this design. The drive carriers come with the Mac Pro, and are made from a single piece of metal. The screws to affix the drive to the carrier are lovely little steel machine screws with a brushed finish. Everything about this machine has the feeling of quality.

Documentation, OS DVD, batteries, and cordless mouse were included in the black cardboard box at the top of the package.

I was pleased and a bit impressed to see that Apple included quality Energizer batteries instead of no-name ones. The two for the mouse are actually Lithium batteries. Nice.

The batteries, installed in the mouse and keyboard.

When I turned the computer on the first time, I was presented with graphical instructions on how to install the batteries and turn on the mouse. I had already installed the batteries, so i simply switched the mouse off and back on again. Then it paired with the Mac and began to work. I did the same thing enable the keyboard: I just switched it off and back on again.

Welcome to Mac OS X. Very nice.