Agreed about the price; I just don't see how Apple using their own parts for CPU and GPU would shave off $3,000.
Even if it says "pro" on the box, this probably isn't going to be a like-for-like replacement for the old $5000 iMac Pro. If Apple had been selling iMac Pros hand-over-fist at that price they'd have updated it or
at least built enough of them to keep on selling them until the Apple Silicon replacement was available. Meanwhile, the regular 5k iMac has seen a couple of major updates since the iMac Pro was released. Which one do you
think they're going to target wth the replacement?
Look at the starting prices so far:
M1 MacBook Air: same starting price as Intel, substantially better performance
M1 13" MBP: same starting price as Intel, substantially better performance
M1 Mini: $200
cheaper than Intel version, maybe reflecting more limited expansion
M1 24" Imac: same starting price as Intel (ignoring the old non-4k option), better screen, better performance.
M1 14" MBP: $200 more expensive than the Intel "4 port" MBP13 -
far better performance, better screen & now essentially a 14" version of the 16" rather than a replacement for the old 4-port 12".
M1 16" MBP: $100 more expensive than Intel - better performance, better screen.
So the track record is that the Apple Silicon machines outperform the Intel models they replace, often while adding a better screen, for 0-10% price rise. None of that suggests a 100% price hike for the forthcoming 5k iMac-replacement.
That doesn't mean that the
higher-end iMac options - just like the MacBook Pro - won't cost $5k or more by the time you've maxed out CPU, RAM and storage (especially if they offer Jade 2C or 4C options**) - or that they won't effectively replace the old iMac Pro, but the starting price will probably reflect the fact that this is a MacBook Pro on a stand with a bigger screen (but no battery).
The old iMac Pro was an Intel Xeon/ECC system with a "workstation class"-branded GPU - both of which command a hefty - and, arguably, artificial - premium, even in the PC world. Intel chose to keep some features like higher core-counts and ECC* exclusive to Xeon - Apple could have shaved off a fair bit simply by going to AMD Ryzen. That distinction really doesn't exist with Apple Silicon and the new iMac is quite likely going to start with the exact same M1 Max processor and graphics as the $2000 MacBook Pro (maybe with a slight gain from better thermals).
Much of the "iMac Pro" name rumour is founded on the idea that it would make a lot more sense if "Mac
Whatever" meant M1/M2 processors and "Mac
Whatever Pro" had "M1 Pro/Max" processors (presumably to be superseded by "M2 Pro/Max" in a year or two). It has nothing to do with being comparable with the old iMac Pro.
As for the display type/quality... the current iMac 5k display is pretty darned good and if Apple offered M1 Max iMac with the same display I think a lot of people would be perfectly satisfied
if the alternative was a massive price hike - especially if they
weren't primarily producing HDR media (for coding or music production HDR could be more of a liability than an asset...). But that may be moot seeing as Apple have already added mini-led displays to the MacBook Pros without massive price hikes.
(*...how essential is ECC? AFAIK there's no law against LPDDR RAM having ECC, but you'd have to look into the error rates for the non-ECC LPDDRX RAM as implemented in the M1 SoC to make a cost/benefit decision. It would be interesting to know. Meanwhile, the bullet point on the tender document that says "must have ECC RAM because Workstation" is right after the one that says "Must be Intel Xeon because Workstation" so Apple have already lost that sale)
(** but I've already called
Duo and
Quadra as the suffixes for Jade 2C and 4C machines...
)
