Apple Demos iMac Pro at Final Cut Pro X Creative Summit

[Guy Clark]

Too much High end equipment coming from Apple presently. The 27" 5k iMac is an awesome piece of kit but this is too much.

Apple should concentrate on a decent Mac mini release which is long overdue. There has not been a decent Mac mini release since 2012.

The 2014 release was under powered and an insult to the Mac mini faithful. Tim Cook claims the Mac mini still has an important but thus far there is little evidence of this.

 

[nick42983]

As an engineering business owner that uses their Macbook Pro 10+hours per day, I would consider a Pro desktop (with better CPU / RAM) - for running simulations, but his iMac Pro represents poor value for money. I can afford it - just like I can afford a 10k oscilloscope without financing - for my business, but I'm not interested in wasting money on machine that, for me - and many other professionals outside of Apple's narrow music producer / photopgrapher view point is thoroughly underwhelming and a poor fit to our needs.

It's like the Touchbar on the MBPs - another Apple "innovation" that I've not heard any pro being excited about - they (we) would much rather have a more reliable keyboard, additional USB-A ports and better battery life!

NB the reason I'm ranting about this is because within the few years since Tim Cooks Apple has taken over from the previous administration - I see the platform that I rely on for my daily work shifting further and further away from a useful productivity tool and into something that no longer servers my purpose, without a clear alternative to move over to.

If I were in your shoes I would voice my grievances directly to tcook@apple.com and/or the relevant managers at Apple on a regular basis until you get a reply or they announce more details about the upcoming Mac Pro. It's early enough in the process that you, along with the voices of many others, may be able to influence the direction of its development.

 

[Rockadile]

How about i7 8700k + Vega for us mere mortals?

 

[Jeff4Now]

Apple set up an iMac Pro at the third annual FCPX Creative Summit in Cupertino, California over the weekend, providing attendees with a closer look at the powerful workstation ahead of its December launch.

Apple appears to have allowed attendees to take pictures of the iMac Pro at the event. French blog MacGeneration rounded up some of the photos shared on social platforms like Instagram and Twitter.

iMac Pro via Twitter user Softron Media​

iMac Pro shares the same design as the standard iMac, but with an all-flash architecture, a new thermal design, and four Thunderbolt 3 ports. It's also distinguished by its sleek, exclusive Space Gray enclosure.

The all-in-one computer is bundled with matching Space Gray accessories, including the Magic Mouse 2, Magic Trackpad 2, and a wireless Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad introduced at WWDC 2017 in June.

iMac Pro via Twitter user Chris Fenwick​

Apple said the iMac Pro will also feature up to an 18-core Intel Xeon processor, top-of-the-line Radeon Pro Vega graphics, up to 4TB of SSD storage, and up to 128GB of ECC RAM, with a starting price of $4,999 in the United States.

The FCPX Creative Summit, hosted by Future Media Concepts, featured three days of training on Apple's professional video editing software Final Cut Pro X. Apple itself announced that Final Cut Pro X 10.4 will launch later this year.

iMac Pro via Instagram user runehansen​

Final Cut Pro X 10.4 will include new color tools, like color wheels and a white balance picker. It will include support for HEVC, the new video format introduced in iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra, and direct import of iOS for iMovie timelines. The new version of the software will also support VR and HDR workflows.

Article Link: Apple Demos iMac Pro at Final Cut Pro X Creative Summit

[doublepost=1509791396][/doublepost]iMac Pros need one of two things:

- Proven ATi drivers that work reliably with TensorFlow (OpenCL does not work currently) or

- An nVIDIA GPU (CUDA) that we know does work with TensorFlow.

Any new 'workstation' computer that disregards Machine Learning as an application space is dead on arrival.

Anyone who buys a professional computer without genuine ML capabilities will be doomed to replace it sooner than they would like.

I fully expect to see iMac Pro gen 2 with a CUDA-based GPU. It might take a couple of years though. In the meantime, a bog-standard Linux box with the latest CUDA GPU will cost much less than an iMac Pro and provide far superior performance for ML. Apple: wake up please; I really would like to buy an iMac Pro but not as it is currently configured

 

[bxs]

I'm a little puzzled by people here saying the iMac Pro cannot be upgraded such as RAM and SSD or even processors. I bet iFixit will quickly determine how the iMac Pro can be disassembled and re-assembled to allow upgrades to the big RAM sticks and possibly the SSD if not Apple proprietary.

Yes, there's no door on the backside because as others here have stated and assumed, the RAM modules aren't in same place as in previous iMacs and are too large. However, as for current iMacs that can be taken apart the iMac Pro machine can surely(hopefully) be taken apart as well (may not be easy for the average Joe) to upgrade or fix things. Replacing processors in the old silver/gray Mac Pro towers (e.g., MP5,1) was possible for the tech savvy and I suspect the same savviness can be applied to this iMac Pro.

Having 36 cores for a rendering task will/could shave off valuable time for tight project schedules that always seem to arise in Pro Shops. No current Macs can match this performance and we have to wait a full year or maybe 18 months before the new Mac Pro arrives.

I'm sure there will be people and businesses who will see the benefit of this new iMac Pro.

We should at least give some credit to Apple for addressing the performance gap between late 2013 MP6,1 and it next iteration in 12 to 18 months from now; some 5 yrs between MP6,1 and MP7,1. Designing this new iMac Pro was quite likely a much easier task and less R&D cost for Apple than for designing a whole new Mac Pro. A PC with similar specs to the new iMac Pro is quite likely a similar cost and yes.... it might be or is easier to upgrade.

It's understandable that many people posting here are ones that see no benefit in this new iMac Pro and have to believe they are part of the majority of Mac users that simply cannot make use of the iMac Pro's capabilities or simply see it as above their computing budgets. That's fair enough, but this new iMac Pro will make sense to some professionals who are desperate for more performance in a Mac computer that can run the latest macOS version(s).

 

[tillsbury]

The only downside I see from this is that it encourages Apple to hold off on the Mac Pro until the iMac Pro news is done. I can't be the only one who would probably have gone for this iMac Pro but now I feel like waiting until we see what is going on with the new Mac Pro. If the range is announced soon then I can make a choice either to go for this or to wait. If there's no news on the Mac Pro then I'm tempted to avoid buying the iMac Pro now in case I regret it.

Fortunately my iMac is fine at the moment, but I'll be getting itchy next year...

 

[bxs]

The only downside I see from this is that it encourages Apple to hold off on the Mac Pro until the iMac Pro news is done. I can't be the only one who would probably have gone for this iMac Pro but now I feel like waiting until we see what is going on with the new Mac Pro. If the range is announced soon then I can make a choice either to go for this or to wait. If there's no news on the Mac Pro then I'm tempted to avoid buying the iMac Pro now in case I regret it.

Fortunately my iMac is fine at the moment, but I'll be getting itchy next year...

I understand your reservations.

My guess (and it's just a guess) is that the new iMac Pro does give Apple some breathing room to get the new Mac Pro's design right, deal with teething issues, making sure some 3rd party shops are on board, and so on. Having some breathing space is important to allow Apple to hopefully get things right for the new Mac Pro. If it means an extra 6 months pushing its release to mid 2019 that is better than having a new Mac Pro with issues. In the meantime (and it could be close to 2 yrs) we have this new iMac Pro beastie. The difference between its current cost and its resale price in 2 yrs time is simply an investment to cover the waiting period. Having the use of a max of 36 threads isn't anything to sneeze at for sure for an 18 to 24 month period. Personally I run CFD in-house codes that simply bog down on my MP6,1 6core & 12core models. I personally crave for more CPU performance, better RAM speeds and especially more cores/threads for my workloads.

The 10GbE port is a nice addition but as I use Thunderbolt Bridge between my Macs this really is not a feature of great importance to me, plus I have no 10GbE storage devices to benefit from it. I use Thunderbolt 2 Promise Pegasus arrays that would simply plug and play with this new iMac Pro.

I see this new iMac Pro as a stop-gap solution while waiting for the new Mac Pro within next 2 years.

This new iMac Pro is targeted at a very small Apple customer base and not the 99% of the Mac community who likely use their Macs for such things as Web browsing, Photos, Mail, Messages, iTunes, iBooks, Calendar, Notes, Contacts, Numbers, Keynote, MS products and Parallels. For Apple to actually deliver something like this new iMac Pro to it's 1% customer base should be applauded IMO. What would be worse would be for Apple not to have produced this new iMac Pro. It indicates to me that Apple DOES provide some focus on the Professionals that need high performance computing.

 

[zoffdino]

Assuming I drink the Apple kool-aid and am OK with the form factor, my biggest worry is how often Apple will refresh it. Given its non upgradability, I have to trade in the old for the new one every 2 - 3 years. And I know Apple has a dodgy history on upgrading its pro hardware. The last real upgrade for the cheese grate Mac Pro was in 2010, then Apple made a minor upgrade n 2012 (that's more like a slap in the face), then the trash can Mac Pro in 2013, and... that's it, until end of 2017 at least.

Apple either does not care or does not understand the pro market. I don't want a good-looking revolutionary machine destined for the MoMA. I want a boring box that happily humps along as my business needs change. Half of the cheese grate Mac Pros in my company has been replaced with Dells. They are boring rectangular boxes but at least I can look forward to getting them with the latest CPU whenever Intel rolls one out, and plug in the latest GPUs from AMD or NVIDIA should I choose to. I don't want to wait another 4 years for Apple to come out and say "sorry we screwed up the last iMac Pro but there's a better one in the offing, only that it is not ready right now".

Design is important but so is dependability.

 

[kingjames1970]

Just release it already!

 

[Naimfan]

Just waiting on Apple to announce a delay in the iMac Pro.

Seems inevitable . . .

 

[PickUrPoison]

Just waiting on Apple to announce a delay in the iMac Pro.

Seems inevitable . . .

Maybe, but two products were due in December, HomePod and iMac Pro. In mid-November Apple announced a delay only for HomePod, and not for iMac Pro. So it would seem more likely that it will available as previously announced.