It just failed. On startup the screen would have large green vertical lines and it wouldn't boot up. It was such a common problem that Apple actually had a replacement program for that particular model of AMD video cards, but they wouldn't extend the free replacement to models older than 4 years old. It would have cost $600 to replace the GPU to keep my computer running. Make sure you have backups because it's probably just a matter of time before yours fails.
Apple Reveals New 'iMac Pro' Built for Users With Demanding Workflows, Starting at $5K
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Spectrum
macrumors 68000
I'm not sure who this is meant to appeal to...? Base price of 5K is very high for an 8-core machine with probably only 16GB RAM and a 512 GB SSD. For sure, it will be powerful...but I just purchased a standalone Linux box for that in my lab. It crunches all our sequencing data.
I also severely question the logic of wanting to put such power hungry components into a slim chassis that isn't easy to open and repair.
A great benefit of a true workstation (like the old tower Mac Pros) was their modular ability to pop-out processors, RAM, HDD, SSD, Optical drive, graphics card, whatever. Depending on what was needed and should any individual component fail.
I'm also still left here waiting on what to replace my 2011 quadcore i7 mac mini with. I already have two external displays with it (27" + 24"). And it accepts up to 4 TB (2x2TB) of plenty fast SSD disk space from crucial (for only £800). That is a bargain compared to the upgrade cost of the SSDs in these new Macs (which, while fast, are faster than are needed for most applications/jobs).
I also severely question the logic of wanting to put such power hungry components into a slim chassis that isn't easy to open and repair.
A great benefit of a true workstation (like the old tower Mac Pros) was their modular ability to pop-out processors, RAM, HDD, SSD, Optical drive, graphics card, whatever. Depending on what was needed and should any individual component fail.
I'm also still left here waiting on what to replace my 2011 quadcore i7 mac mini with. I already have two external displays with it (27" + 24"). And it accepts up to 4 TB (2x2TB) of plenty fast SSD disk space from crucial (for only £800). That is a bargain compared to the upgrade cost of the SSDs in these new Macs (which, while fast, are faster than are needed for most applications/jobs).
CWallace
macrumors G5
I see it selling into markets like scientific visualization, graphic design, video production and others. Clearly it won't appeal to the entire segment of each of those markets, but it is going to appeal to enough that I believe Apple will move a decent amount (hundreds of thousands a quarter).
newhorizons2020
macrumors newbie
no, the 8 cores CPU is $600 where did you get that $2000 from ? the 18 cores is the one for $2000 , and Imac pro STARTS at $5000 this means the 8 cores one , expect the IMAC pro with 18 cores to be in the $7000 range.
here are the new i9 CPU see the table and prices :
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11464...ging-18core-hcc-silicon-to-consumers-for-1999
as for the macbook Air , you are mistaken , the mac mini uses a more powerful Processor , not the Mac Air one , and it performs good at rendering movies and other tasks 2 times faster than the Mac book air.
The Mac mini CPU is Macbook Pro Grade .
honeycombz
macrumors 6502a
The iMac Pro will look cool at CTU on shows like 24. With some animations of fine red lines at 45 degree angles moving across the screen and fake command line windows pretending to show sophisticated network activity.
CWallace
macrumors G5
http://ark.intel.com/products/92979/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2667-v4-25M-Cache-3_20-GHz
The 18-core unit lists for $2700: http://ark.intel.com/products/91755/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2697-v4-45M-Cache-2_30-GHz
The iMac Pro is not going to use Core i9 CPUs though.
Apple has stated that 80% of all Mac sales are laptops and the MacBook Air is the best-selling Mac laptop. If Apple sells around 5 million Macs a quarter, that means 4 million are laptops. And if the MacBook Air is the plurality of those sales, that means it pushes over 1 million units a quarter.
Compare that with the Mac Mini, which ranks third in desktop sales (around 1-2% based on the #2 Mac Pro selling in the "low single digits" per Apple) - so around 50,000 to 100,000 a quarter (and probably far closer to 50k).
melendezest
Suspended
I believe you're somewhat right here, but Apple is somewhat limiting itself and complicating things for users by crippling both OSes and not offering the right form factors for each.
Switchers are going to continually expect a touchscreen Apple laptop; that's what I propose the iBook to be. An iPad as a form factor requires you to jury-rig something to make it a laptop (replacement).
So the obvious choice is an iOS-based touchscreen laptop/all-in-one aimed at consumers that don't need the horsepower of a Mac but the iPad is too small/cumbersome due to it's handheld nature.
Same with an iOS iMac, like the Surface Studio is. The iOS infrastructure lends itself to a sealed, more thermally efficient setup, I would think. And an IOS iMac is in spirit with what the original iMac was: an easy to use, simple all in one for "the rest of us" non-pros. Apple has been trying to turn the iMac into something else for too log. This iMac Pro is the culmination of that error, cool as it is.
I'd rather pay $5K for a non-sealed box with similar aesthetics and a matching monitor, and I'm pretty sure most pros would too.
newhorizons2020
macrumors newbie
The next Generation Xeons we are talking about are the same i9 chips with same prices. they are not the Dual CPU sockets ones you put there , those are 2 cpu enabled thats why expensive .
The one used in the IMAC pro are single socket one CPU Xeons. and those are the same prices of the i7 and i9.
you are giving me wrong link and wrong CPU.
The single CPU XEONS are the same price of the i7 and i9 with the same core counts and the same frequency.
There is no benefit of adding a dual CPU Xeon CPU that is double price in a single CPU machine.
in the past , before the i9 , Apple used the Dual CPU xeons in their MAC Pro desktop because there was no single CPU chip more than 4 cores . now we have the i9 series , their Xeon same priced Chips will come.
More over ,the IMAC pro states max memory of 128GB (same like the i9) , Thats a different chip , not your Xeon chip that can take upto 1.5TB of Memory !! 4 Dimms on youer xeons can offer upto 256GB of ram using 64GB Rdims each.
and I still say MAC Mini should stay for people who want mac software and low on budget. if they cant sell enough they should lower its price and will sell like crazy.
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danielwsmithee
macrumors 65816
No they are not single CPU Xeon E3s top out at 4-core designs. You have to move up to E5 to get 8-core.
The i9 is a consumer enthusiast processor. The Xeon equivalents and their pricing has not been announced. So we don't know anything yet about price points or whether it is an E3 or E5 part.
If these are the i9 equivalent Xeons the price points will be higher because i9s can't run ECC RAM. We also give no idea what chipset/socket this would use.
Most likely these are the rumoured Xeon E5 v5 chips (purley) which are rumored to have a TDP of 135 Watts, and be roughly based on the same Skylake platform as the i9 but support a different socket/chipset and add ECC Memory.
I would expect the 8-core Xeon used in the iMac will reatail for ~$1200-$1500, and be less crippled than the i7/i9 chips with regards to PCIe lanes. The iMac Pro will need 40 PCIe lanes at a minimum based upon the already released IO.
Don't confuse what a chip is capable of supporting with Memory and what a vendor Apple in this case is willing to support in standard product configurations.
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It will be 32GB/1TB. Otherwise I agree with your points.
Spectrum
macrumors 68000
Hundreds of thousands...? I think that is very optimistic. But let's see...
Even though I have control of my IT budget, and use my work computer all day, I really don't think I can justify the base cost of one of the iMac Pros. The 4K iMac I use at home died last month and it took 2 weeks for our local University support team to get it repaired and back to my office. If this had been my main computer, that is a big problem. Whereas, a modular mac (or even the Mac mini that I use in my office), I can quickly replace the SSD, RAM, GPU, and display should any one of those components individually fail.
Of course, the longer that there is no mac mini replacement, the more and more I am feeling pushed into buying an iMac for my office...
Blair Paulsen
macrumors regular
The iMacPro should suit a lot of users. Folks like us that spend time on tech forums are often over focused on specs. Many of the folks I work with in production will be very happy with the iMacPro as it will be plenty fast enough for their use case and they'll dig the slick packaging/nice display/AIO form factor.
Is the iMacPro a "stop gap" offering to keep those of us who prefer OS X in the fold until the mMP ships? Perhaps.
With the power of modern laptops, making a workstation class AIO for desktop applications makes sense to me. If you aren't offering me a significant performance bump from an MBP, why am I coming to the party?
Biggest question in my mind is whether they have really sorted the thermal issues...
Is the iMacPro a "stop gap" offering to keep those of us who prefer OS X in the fold until the mMP ships? Perhaps.
With the power of modern laptops, making a workstation class AIO for desktop applications makes sense to me. If you aren't offering me a significant performance bump from an MBP, why am I coming to the party?
Biggest question in my mind is whether they have really sorted the thermal issues...
danielwsmithee
macrumors 65816
We buy 100s of machines that are workstation class ranging from $5k up to $15k. It is just part of doing business and makes a lot of sense when compared to the labor rate of an average engineer/scientist ~$200 /hr.
If you need to wait 2 weeks for your IT response they are doing it wrong... just clone the drive onto a new system, or use one of your hourly backups...
Spectrum
macrumors 68000
I hope so, but mostly doubt it. The current 6-core and 8-core Mac Pro ship with only 16 GB and 256 GB SSD.
And they are priced about where the iMac Pro is (sans screen).
The current 8-core Mac Pro + 32GB RAM + 1TB SSD is exactly $4999. Is Apple really going to give away their premium 27" 5K display for free...?
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Yes - that's a great solution, but it would require me purchasing a backup iMac system to be used in the event of a failure. Our IT provide Mac support for repair via AppleCare (our authorised service centre took the 2 weeks - actually more like 10 days from drop off to collection), but not replacement machines.
My question/interest to you is whether you would buy 100s of sealed workstation class iMacs at 5-10k a piece?
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danielwsmithee
macrumors 65816
There is no hope about it Apple published the exact specifications (with limited detail) of the entry level iMac Pro $4999. It is an 8-core Xeon Processor, 32GB of ECC RAM, 1TB of NVME Flash Storage, 4 TB3 ports, and a 10GB Ethernet port. They also confirmed that internally it has 2 NVME Flash storage ports to get to the 4TB SSD configuration.
That is unfortunate the way your IT is treating Macs then. Currently our IT replaces MacBooks with replacement loaners same day. If the loaner is the same configuration or better you keep it, if it worse you get to swap back after the repair is complete. They only do this with Macs and MS SurfaceBooks that have pretty standard configurations.
My guess is it will take some greasing of all the people involved in purchasing. I expect it to start with probably only ~10 or so in the first year, but move up from there. There are teams that use iMacs pretty heavily now, and are upgrading on a bi-yearly basis for performance. If those teams can upgrade once every 5 years with the iMac Pro I think they will.
Floris
macrumors 68020
It's out of my budget, and as a pro-sumer I can't earn it back like some casey neistats does in one youtube video, or some awesome creative person with just one or two projects. So I will never have one, and I can't sleep at night knowing i could have changed my life with 6k euro vs putting it all in one machine.
That said, wow.. I love the color, I love that Apple did this, I love that there's a Mac Pro still coming in 2018, and I love that it's a xeon cpu with ecc ram and 4 tb3 ports, etc. Savage. That said, starting price 5k, eh, you can get sli 1080 nvidia capture and stream boxes for twitch and 6k video editing completely maxed out .. two of them .. basically. So, it really is nothing but wishful thinking and out of reach.
If only.
But that's why I am pretending it doesn't exist, ITS FAKE! .. go away drool.. and I got the imac they just released instead. As if that's a bad machine, lol. holy crap
It even comes with a headphone jack.
That said, wow.. I love the color, I love that Apple did this, I love that there's a Mac Pro still coming in 2018, and I love that it's a xeon cpu with ecc ram and 4 tb3 ports, etc. Savage. That said, starting price 5k, eh, you can get sli 1080 nvidia capture and stream boxes for twitch and 6k video editing completely maxed out .. two of them .. basically. So, it really is nothing but wishful thinking and out of reach.
If only.
But that's why I am pretending it doesn't exist, ITS FAKE! .. go away drool.. and I got the imac they just released instead. As if that's a bad machine, lol. holy crap
It even comes with a headphone jack.danielwsmithee
macrumors 65816
Love it. The thing I like most about this is they removed the space for the ancient spinning disks and replaced it with presumably better cooling.It's out of my budget, and as a pro-sumer I can't earn it back like some casey neistats does in one youtube video, or some awesome creative person with just one or two projects. So I will never have one, and I can't sleep at night knowing i could have changed my life with 6k euro vs putting it all in one machine.
That said, wow.. I love the color, I love that Apple did this, I love that there's a Mac Pro still coming in 2018, and I love that it's a xeon cpu with ecc ram and 4 tb3 ports, etc. Savage. That said, starting price 5k, eh, you can get sli 1080 nvidia capture and stream boxes for twitch and 6k video editing completely maxed out .. two of them .. basically. So, it really is nothing but wishful thinking and out of reach.
If only.
But that's why I am pretending it doesn't exist, ITS FAKE! .. go away drool.. and I got the imac they just released instead. As if that's a bad machine, lol. holy crap
Like all product what is premium comes down the product line quickly. Won't be a but a few years and they will be shipping updated iMacs using Core i7 cpus in slate grey without spinning disks...
Currently a loaded standard iMac with the 7700k, and upgraded RX 580 GPU with TB3 makes a pretty great value configuration when you consider.
iMac + 2nd 5K Display + TB3 Raid Array === $$$ === iMac Pro
dotnet
macrumors 68000
Alright, here's my prediction:
Up until now MRF has been awash with complaints that Apple is neglecting the pro market. This will now change and we better brace ourselves for incessant moaning about Apple making pro gear that is too expensive for home users to buy. Either way, the whinge-wheel will keep turning.
Up until now MRF has been awash with complaints that Apple is neglecting the pro market. This will now change and we better brace ourselves for incessant moaning about Apple making pro gear that is too expensive for home users to buy. Either way, the whinge-wheel will keep turning.
Abazigal
Contributor
I just don't understand Apple.
The iMac was meant to be a consumer-level device that was "powerful enough". Only because Apple neglected their real desktops was the iMac able to "surpass" their "Pro" machines, which says something in itself.
I just don't get this "iMac Pro" with it's ridiculous price tag and over-the-top specs, while being COMPLETELY sealed like an iOS machine is. Apple's promises of thermal innovation have ALWAYS fallen short.
It looks and sounds cool (in theory), no question, but to me this machine makes no sense.
I still find the Surface Studio to be a more innovative device.
The way I see it, Apple should make the iMac a (relatively inexpensive) iOS Device with the power features that are (still inexplicably) missing from iOS (and Pencil support) and they should be good.
And offer a REAL Mac Pro (and matching display) for those that ACTUALLY need a truck (and price THAT accordingly).
No more of these stop-gap, crippled-in-some-way, hyper-expensive, in-between machines.
But that's just me. I think they could OWN the market if they quit screwing around like this.
This is what I'd like to see:
iOS-based, USB-C/TB3-ported, affordable-ish iPhones, iPads, iBooks, iMacs, miniMac
macOS-based, upgradeable, multi-ported, expensive-ish PowerBooks and PowerMacs (miniMac here too maybe?)
Done, and done.
Fun to think about, no?
Where I think Apple's product roadmap is headed.
Yeah, I've just found that things tend to reach end of life at the same time. By the time I need more ram, I also want faster ram, and the next gen processor and next gen video and need a new logic board that supports all that.
If I have a bad component I'd just get Apple to replace the machine.
tech4all
macrumors 68040
Upgrading your computer allows you to extend the life of your system. I recently had RAM go bad on my Mac Pro, I was able to go through a third party, which I've used before, to get new RAM and resolve the issue myself. IMO this is the way a computer should be. I'd prefer to do this than give my whole system to Apple or some other company for servicing. Some might not care, but some do. Which is why Apple is alienating some of their customers. We'll have to see what this "modular Mac Pro" will be like.
JamesPDX
Suspended
Yep, my 2012 Mac Mini's are sparkly-clean. No cheese-n-fur inside or out.
Spectrum
macrumors 68000
Thanks for the info. I'd missed that they had published the minimum spec. In that case, it sounds good value (on paper) compared to the current MacPro, considering that the iMac Pro has better connectivity and a very high quality screen.
As a point of comparison, a current top end i7-7700K iMac (up to 4.5Ghz) with 32GB RAM and 1TB disk comes in at $3699.
So, $4999 is still quite a big increase ($1300) for a move to the 8-core Xeon and ECC RAM. But I guess, for those that want the extra cores, it makes sense. It will be interesting to see how the 10-core and 18-core are priced.
If one needs max 128GB RAM (which it appears probably needs to be installed by Apple) could make the price really hike up based on current Apple pricing.
Re:IT. The Uni probably has a better programme for all the cluster rooms for students which are hot-desking and where you log in via a network. But for people like myself that go it alone in my office with a local OS installation and local software (avoiding me needing to rely on network access to log in - which dramatically improves my user experience!), they don't have a solution. Hence why it feels somewhat safer (to me) to have a somewhat modular Mac mini compared to the iMac.
But we'll see...my 2011 Mac mini is noticeably slower compared to the 2016 4K iMac...not massively, but noticeable during R scripting. So, I must say I am tempted by the new 7700K iMac 27 inch...whereas a move the Mac Pro in December...? It's hard to say, but I think that $4999 is probably just too much cost tied up in one box for me to justify. Plus that not much of what I do requires serious graphics or deep multithreading.
Having said all that: a i7-7700K in a mac mini for $2000 with upgradeable RAM and regular SATA storage (2xBays) would be awesome! But I don't see that ever happening.
cpfoto2005
macrumors member
My IIci had 4 MB of RAM and a 40 MB hard drive. And it cost more than $7000! Without a monitor.
And those were 1990's dollars.
danielwsmithee
macrumors 65816
There is no question an iMac Pro is expensive, the 27" i7 iMac has a lot more value per dollar at this point. The extra $1300 does double the core count which is likely the most obvious upgrade, but I think what people really pay for is extra IO (PCIe lanes) that enables 4X TB3 ports and dual SSD modules... The idea that this thing can drive two additional 5K external Displays and still have two TB3 ports left over for RAID Arrays, eGPUs, or other capture devices is going to be very appealing to a lot applications. Not your average home user or office user though.
Personally for modularity and performance with a Mac Desktop. I'd go with a 27" i7 iMac with the smallest 512GB SSD, and upgrade the RAM from a third party to 32GB. Once you remove the Hard Disk the iMac itself is very reliable. Then use an external TB3 JBOD/Raid enclosure with SATA drive bays. Keep a clean OS and user account on the internal SSD and store most of your working data on the external enclosure, also make regular backups of the SSD onto the TB3 enclosure. In that scenario you can 1) easily upgrade replace a drive 2) easily upgrade a replace RAM 3) the actual machine is more reliable and if it does have a problem it is extremely easy to restore from a backup.
I'm not a fan of putting spinning disks in a place that is difficult to access which is why I will never by an iMac again with a HD or Fusion Drive. Swapping the HD out on my iMac for an SSD is the best upgrade for performance and reliability that I have ever made.
The overwhelming majority of all user upgrades are RAM, and Hard Drives, the current 27" iMac using TB3 ports gets you that. Now that eGPUs are supported via TB3 you also get the ability to upgrade a video card.
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