Apple Demos iMac Pro at Final Cut Pro X Creative Summit

[MacsRuleOthersDrool]

Apple has completely missed the boat for pro users once again. I don't know one professional that wants a computer with a built in display. We use very specific displays in our various industries, whether it's video, audio, 3D, etc. We also need to be able to swap out drives, upgrade RAM, etc. when necessary. Buying some all-in-one iMac on steroids for a huge amount of money is asinine.

Stop trying "new things" and just go back to the tower we all knew and loved, and put some beefier components inside. Otherwise, we'll all keep sticking to our upgraded 2010 Mac Pro machines that are now rivaling the initial Geekbench scores of this new iMac Pro.

Oh really?

Where, pray tell, are you getting Geekbench scores for an iMac Pro that won't be released for nearly two months?
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The Vega 56 requires 210 watts, and the Vega 64 requires a whopping 295 watts!! They should go with Nvidia cards because that is one area they ALWAYS have beat AMD at, power usage! The Nvidia 1080 only requires 180 watts.

I would imagine they went for AMD on the iMac for the same reason they did on the new MBPs: Superior ability to drive multiple external displays, as compared to NVidia.

 

[J InTech82]

Which begs the question...what is the intended market for this system? It is priced like a professional workstation while not meeting the needs of many users in the market for a professional workstation. The iMac Pro is the answer to a question nobody asked.

I guess you missed the statement from Apple where they surveyed a very large number of professionals who DID ask for such a system (iMac Pro) and have no need for a MacPro. Someone else could correct me if I am wrong but it was something like only 3% of professionals needed an updated MacPro while the remaining would be satisfied with a beefed up iMac, which is exactly what the iMac Pro is.

 

[travelsheep]

Or should it be called ... THE BEZEL PRO ?

.. and where's the frikkin Touchbar + TouchID on that dark keyboard? Consistency much, Apple? Or all courage? I guess the charging port for the keyboard is on it's backside ...

 

[Greymacuser]

I bet you that this is the "professional" desktop that Kook promised they were working on.
What a joke.

 

[jonnysods]

I will say this - good to see that you don't need a whack of dongles for this iMac.

The space grey is crazy gorgeous, absolutely phenomenal.

 

[iregret]

Or should it be called ... THE BEZEL PRO ?

.. and where's the frikkin Touchbar + TouchID on that dark keyboard? Consistency much, Apple? Or all courage? I guess the charging port for the keyboard is on it's backside ...

They could add the Touch Bar, but not TouchID. That requires the enclave and all that. It'd be neat if they installed FaceID in the new iMac Pro.

 

[SRLMJ23]

Oh really?

Where, pray tell, are you getting Geekbench scores for an iMac Pro that won't be released for nearly two months?
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I would imagine they went for AMD on the iMac for the same reason they did on the new MBPs: Superior ability to drive multiple external displays, as compared to NVidia.

Yes, but if it is going to cause a potential thermal issue, is it worth it? We all know iMacs are not great at thermal cooling as it is, now you are putting 8 core which should not be an issue, but the VEGA paired with a 12 or 18 core Xeon under the same thermal cooling system...I do not know about that one. We shall see, I just hope people do not spend $5,000+ and experience CPU throttling because the system gets so damn hot.

 

[Zeitkind]

Another Pro fail. gg Cook.
I *could* understand, that a thin *portable* laptop is better than a thicker one. Not for me, but well, for some people. I still prefer a 17" screen over some more grams.
But a stationary workstation? C'mon, this is ridiculous. Soldered RAM? Soldered disk? Fixed GPU?
*facepalm*

 

[tipoo]

These look promising. But wouldn't these CPU's and GPU's throttle a lot in this thin chassy/display? As these are meant for Pro's and they are stationary computers wouldn't it be smarter to do something in order to achieve better thermal design? I don't think the intended audience really care if it got a slightly thicker design?

Just like the Radeon "Pro"s in the rMBP 15, which are lower clocked than their Radeon 555 and 560 bretheren, the Vega 56 and 64 chips in here are dialed back to a more favorable performance per watt ratio. Give up some performance, but a bigger proportional win on reducing power use.

 

[MacsRuleOthersDrool]

the grey look is soooo much nicer, hopefully when they redesign the imacs (should be this coming year, sicne they are what 5 years old?) then maybe we will see it

iMacs were just redesigned this Spring.

 

[SRLMJ23]

I guess you missed the statement from Apple where they surveyed a very large number of professionals who DID ask for such a system (iMac Pro) and have no need for a MacPro. Someone else could correct me if I am wrong but it was something like only 3% of professionals needed an updated MacPro while the remaining would be satisfied with a beefed up iMac, which is exactly what the iMac Pro is.

Truth.

 

[tipoo]

iMacs were just redesigned this Spring.

They probably mean the chassis, not the internal chip update. The silicon update was appreciated, but when all their other products are reducing bezels the iMac design does start to look long in the tooth. If they need all that space for thermals, the display could extend into the bezels more.

 

[jetjaguar]

The screen should have been 32"

 

[George Dawes]

where's the slots at the top of the display - heat does rise after all , i can see it getting trapped inside causing all sorts of issues

 

[curmudgeonette]

But a stationary workstation? C'mon, this is ridiculous. Soldered RAM? Soldered disk? Fixed GPU?
*facepalm*

Socketed RAM. Likely socketed SSDs. Almost certainly socketed CPU. (You would however need to pay a technician to open up the iMac Pro and change these things.)

 

[576316]

I wish Apple would sell the space gray accessories so I could have ones that match my MacBook.

But then how else would anybody know that you'd bought the most expensive iMac if it weren't for your exclusive and premium Space Grey peripherals?

 

[SRLMJ23]

where's the slots at the top of the display - heat does rise after all , i can see it getting trapped inside causing all sorts of issues

They did a complete redesign of the iMac Pro thermal cooling system. Take a look here, at the last picture it shows the thermal cooling system, even animated!

https://www.macworld.com/article/3199549/macs/imac-pro-features-faq-pricing-specs-release.html

 

[eoblaed]

Ridiculous amounts of want.

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

Not the processors anymore, since very marginal performance gains come every few years, but the GPU's which are being used for more and more things now. So you get VEGA 2017 GPU's in this machine. When AMD releases a killer GPU in 2 years, you cannot upgrade to it. Say it has some features that would really benefit the people this machine is aimed at, they cannot upgrade the GPU.

In theory, at least, you could buy an external GPU enclosure and run the latest card with that. Assuming that:

1) Apple irons out all the kinks and allows for acceleration of the integrated screen.
2) Apple eventually stops sandbagging nVidia support.

Of course my current iMac, which was maxed out when I bought it two years ago, didn't ship with TB3 ports. Running the current-best ATI card externally on TB2 is actually slower than the internal graphics that have half the speed and memory.

With the same enclosure I've run a GTX 1080 on my 2017 MacBook pro with good results under Sierra with a hack (4x the iMac's benchmarks), but the noise from the CPU fan gets very bothersome. Plus the system crashing when waking from sleep, or hot-unplugging the cable gets old very fast.

 

[Music Ambulance]

A 27" inch display is just not going to cut it for video production work.

Is anyone ever going to mention Eizo?!
Apple don’t make pro monitors and never did. Also it seems like the mouse and keyboard are more popular than the machine.

So in 2017/18 the pro user can’t use a laptop because Intels chips are stagnant; can’t use a desktop because that pricepoint demands upgradability. So the only option is windows or a second hand interim computer.

I seriously hope Apple find some empathy toward humans when they unveil the Mac Pro.

 

[MacAwesome88]

I don't understand this machine, at all. Zero upgradeability, literally none. I can (barely) understand this mentality in a MacBook Pro as you want to have it thin and light, but what's the reason you cannot even upgrade the RAM in this? Add a back panel, let us add more ram and an additional stick of NVMe storage.

If you need more than 128 GB of Ram then I suggest you buy a WinBlows machine... and you can upgrade it however you see fit.. however most Post Production Companies Including Mine, never Upgrade their Macs.. We still use some that are 4 years old and they still make us money and do their job... Only Gear Heads need to tinker inside. The rest of us have Work to do and Money to make.. which pays for new Macs a few years from now.

 

[Trusteft]

I don't know or care about the haters. All I know is if I could afford this I would buy one in a heartbeat. Perhaps not with max ram, but a 32GB one and say 512GB SSD with maxed CPU.
I would sell my 3 other editing systems lol. (2 PCs 1 Mini)

 

[tillsbury]

I cannot understand why people think this machine is expensive. The first Macintosh was $2500 with a single floppy drive, and that's back when $2500 was a lot of money. With inflation, almost $6k.

The iMac Pro is at least as impressive a machine in the current world of computing as the Macintosh was back then. It could do some slow and basic word processing in pretty fonts and draw rubbish pictures. That was about it, when the alternative was spending $2500 on a computer to do serious work instead, with WordStar, WordPerfect, Lotus 123, etc.

A decent computer is easily $5k, always has been, probably always will be.

 

[Music Ambulance]

Which begs the question...what is the intended market for this system? It is priced like a professional workstation while not meeting the needs of many users in the market for a professional workstation. The iMac Pro is the answer to a question nobody asked.

This is the most elegant appraisal. Thank you for the ah ha moment.
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This does not make any sense. Let's say you have a team with 5 iMac Pros with medium specs, which actually puts the machine in the $10k range. Each. That's $50k worth of equipment that you have to replace (resell preferably) if you happen to need more RAM or more powerful graphics. Not very efficient financially speaking.

If you're pro team, you'd want your investment to last a bit longer, not throw away the entire computer just because you run out or RAM or the CPU is not performing as you need it to.

There’s surely a few Apple employees on this thread who should rightly be pooing* their pants* because this thing is going to flop—directly after #dustbingate.

* Alas, no emoji support

 

[rumplestiltskin]

$5000+ for a non-upgradable iMac. *BZZZZT* Wrong answer.

As I stick with my existing upgradable and fixable 2012 mini, 2011 27" iMac, and 2015 MBP (a unit I brought back from the dead after a liquid spill), I am also preparing for the transition over to Windows with two inexpensive yet powerful machines: A Core i7 HP Desktop with 32" HP display (the mini also uses that with a KVM) and a 17" Acer ROG with Nvidia Ti1040 graphics.

I'll note that I am also taking all steps necessary to use application software that isn't from Apple (and Adobe) and that runs properly on both macOS and Windows 10; so when the time comes that Apple produces nothing but purely disposable items, I'll be ready to make the move entirely to Windows with no trouble.

I've already switched from an iPhone to an Android phone as I couldn't see spending ludicrous amounts of $$ for a damn phone. Really, as long as I can get my contacts and calendar sync'd between Desktop and Mobile, I'm okay with not-an-iPhone for a camera.

When the MBP decides to shuffle off its mortal coil, there are small portable Windows notebooks that would love to travel with me for less $$ than a MB/MBP that only wants me to become locked into Apple's vision of pay-for-those-services-forever with tools that are incompatible with anyone and anything else that isn't.