Depending on what applications you rely on for work, your frequency of machine turnover, and what sort of deals you can find, the 2008 Mac Pros still offer a lot of value and power. A top-of-the-line '08 will offer similar performance in most areas to the newer ones; they have more RAM capacity and a slower SuperDrive, but Apple is offering ATI Radeon HD 4870 kits for the 2008s.

Apple deserves some kudos for being perhaps the first computer manufacturer out of the gate with Nehalem-based workstations, but that may have come at the cost of, well, cost. As Intel amortizes its development costs, we may see price drops on the new Xeon line. But early adopters have always paid that kind of price to get the newest and shiniest. And the new Mac Pros are, indeed, "the fastest Macs ever."

Dan Turner has been writing about science and technology for over a decade at publications such as Salon, eWeek, MacWeek and The New York Times.