I have a TV as a second monitor for my work set up. An HDMI port is awesome for me, and likely many others. So that port may be utterly pointless for you, but thankfully we're all different.
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Apple's Next iMac Pro: Everything We Know
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It’s still available on Amazon. Apple carries a very limited selection of third-party products. That’s not where they make a lot of money.
Let me guess this straight. Laptops have caught up in terms of performance — so, you expect them to command *less* of a premium than they did in the past?
People who are concerned about productivity don’t spend all their time staring at and obsessing about the chin or the notch. They care more about the display quality and also the price, not necessarily in that order. Looking like a piece of modern art is a distant third.
Gaming? People keep saying you can’t do that on a Mac. Of course, that’s nonsense. There are plenty of games you can play on the Mac, even if they aren’t the AAAA games people coo about. If you’re someone for whom “gaming is life”, of course you want the largest monitor possible, but you also want a PC or console for the newest and widest assortment of high-end games. But if you just want to kill a little time while you’re waiting for code to compile or a client to show up for a meeting, 27 inches is more than adequate.
Don’t get too hung up on the “Pro” name. Pro doesn’t mean it’s only for scientists running CFD codes. It’s just a label Apple can hang on any product they choose. They aren’t killing the 27inch iMac, they’re just rebranding it as ”iMac Pro” (if the rumors are true). The people who say “an iMac Pro needs to have *at least* a 4x M1 Max” are talking through their hats.
The four port 24 iMac $1499 so in the 'ballpark range' of $2,499 is pretty close to being "around $2K".
But that was in the context of there being a "regular" 27" iMac. The "Pro" one had to be more to clear most of the 'regular' BTO options . Also really wasn't something new sitting above the iMac Pro either ( so Apple pulled peoples into higher prices also ). So while Apple doesn't normally separate pricing gap by completely clearing above BTO zone, the top end of the non-laptop Mac market so messed up by their missteps on the Mac Pro 2013 market response , it was just way easier to take fatter profits. [ Apple also experimented a bit with the iMac Pro as that was first apperance of the SSD NAND modules and taking away nominal RAM upgrades by the users in a very high end pro product. The risk of lower sales is offset by higher margins ]
Most of that isn't here. The larger screen iMac probably has a very technological logic board and SSD. Apple is going to take the MBP 16" logic board and push it into a different form factor and re-orient the ports. ( some work , but not extra-ordinarily expensive work ) . The screen tech is new but leaving this to after get many of the kinks out with the 16" MBP.
However, if they completely skip the "regular" 27" iMac there is no 'lift' to clear from the bottom of the product placement. There is talk of Apple refreshing both the Intel Mac Pro and producing a "half sized" M-series one. That is almost the complete opposite of the 4 year old , "painted into a corner' Mac Pro 2013 situation.
More likely, Apple will be looking to push the "half sized" Mac Pro into that $4-5K zone. Decent chance they want the "iMac Pro" out of that zone to lower the fratricide between the products.
That should push iMac Pro pricing down. If the "iMac Pro" is largely a MBP 14-16" major components just rotated 90 degrees vertical then iMac Pro can bow wave off of MBP economies of scale.
If there was talk of Apple doing a "regular" 27" ( e.g., powered by M1 and non mini-LED screen , 24" like color schemes ) then there would be a push to take iMac Pro pricing a bit higher closer to $3K. While there is not "regular" 27" the 'iMac Pro' will get dragged into covering a portion of that regular role.
By hundreds , not thousands. The current entry 27" starts at $1,799. Pushing that up to $2,299-2,499 would be an increase. Pushing it from $1,799 to $3,299-$3,699 would likely cause a ton of blowback.
When Apple pushed the Mac Pro price up 100% ( 2,999 -> 5,999 ) there were lots of complaints from the folks who used to buy in the $2-4K zone. Lots. And that is a much smaller userbase than the entry 27" iMac are ( latter probably an order of magnitude bigger).
With the M1 Max , 64GB RAM , 4-8TB BTO options piled on this "iMac Pro" , it will be back in the old iMac Pro price range bracket. It just won't start there. if they don't cripple the thermal cooling abilities and allow for a larger logic board to host a Jade2C ( Max 2/Duo ), then they probably cover all of the old iMac Pro price range.
If it is primarily the same major components that appear in the laptops there is not going to be a ton of "value add" that Apple can use to hand waving Apple could do about why the desktop packaging of basically the exact same chips is $1-2K higher. if going to base the iMac on laptop chips then going to get coupled to laptop pricing. To a large part, it is just a bigger container of the same stuff.
Apple would need some non laptop components in this system to get some very large separation from the laptop pricing zones.
Current Mac Mini enclosure ( Mini Pro) with a M1 Pro plus 3rd party Monitor would work fine.
Apple backing away from the limiting Mini fratricide of the iMac in that specific price zone. ( $1,500-2,000) . Everything has Apple laptop chips anyway, so they are less afraid of the fratricide impacts on bottom line.
P.S. To some extent Apple didn't care much about this area before either. They didn't attach the specific CPU+GPU combo of the 21.5" iMacs to the a 27" screen. They always pulled folks into bigger CPU+GPU combo if just wanted bigger screen or vice versa. This won't be new at all with the M-series gap on the 24" to 27" divide.
P.P.S. if the M1 ( or M2 in the future ) is a good enough... then the larger screen size option is the "regular" Mini. (which again is the same SoC as the laptops and basic iMac ). Apple will probably thin out the consumer version of the Mini but can pick your own screen if the single option that Apple presents doesn't work.
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With their obsession of thin iMac, my next upgrade will probably be a macmini with their display or third party.
it seems the team members advocating thinness has have been shifted to iMac.
it seems the team members advocating thinness has have been shifted to iMac.
You might want to hope they keep the current classic Mini form factor for a "Pro" version. ( maybe go to 'front to back' cooling with a M1 Pro ). The rumors around the Mini is that there is a massive "thin out" coming for that too.
It isn't the "thinness" people have been assigned to the iMac . It is starting to look like Apple is taking laptop design further into the desktop zone. The iMac is basically a vertically mounted laptop base on a pedestal. So "packed" like a laptop. The Mini is a laptop base packed into a smaller desktop footprint because can ditch the keyboard ( don't have to accommodate full sized hands ... footprint shrunk).
The leaked "Mac Pro" solution is at least "half sized"... again not just 'thin' as much as trying to toss as much volume as they can get away with. Smaller.
I suspect there is decent change they leave something with the same dimensions as the current Mini around since there are more than several tens of thousands of rack/embedded/etc placements of the form factor that sliding a newer box of same size into would just be loads easier (and profitable for Apple also). Clients who individually do 4-5 digit large bulk buys might have enough leverage to offset the "smaller system" politburo board.
The primary focus of the m-series SoCs is laptops. 75+% of what Apple sells is laptops. The laptop design principles increasingly permeate about every design step. ( and the spillover from the iPad and iPhones only adds to that impact ).
I have never understood the fixation that Apple and customers have with thin once a device reaches a certain thickness, which I describe as being as thin as practical without reducing structural integrity or adversely affecting components or battery capacity. But people have been thrilled that a device is 1 mm thinner than the last model. 1 mm is basically 1/32nd of an inch, enough to see if you look closely but not enough if you hold the “thicker” model in one hand and the thinner model in the other and ask someone to tell you which one is thinner.
After all these years, I still don't understand the ultra-weird obsession with the "chin".
Less of a premium over the new desktops for a given level of performance? Yes.
That doesn't mean that laptops will get cheaper in absolute terms. They're certainly offering more bangs-per-buck than the Intel ones used to, and there's now less performance difference between an $1299 M1 iMac and a $1299 M1 MBP that between their Intel predecessors - yet the prices haven't changed => the "laptop premium" has reduced.
Yep. I always think I'll use a laptop to be more mobile but the truth is, the apps I use a lot really benefit from a large display (FCP, Logic, PS, ID) so my workflow tends to stay at the office. When I had MBP's they sat on the desk cooking away driving the old 30" ACD. On that note, a larger-than-27" iMac option would sure be great.
It's for my sticky notes. I've flooded Tim with emails about this, so it's staying.
The base 14" MacBook Pro at $1999 was the same price as the 13.3" 4-Port MacBook Pro upgraded to the Intel i7 CPU (the $1799 base model had an i5). And the 8 CPU core has better CPU performance than the Intel i7 and the 14 GPU cores annihilate the Intel iGPU the 13.3" came with.
There is no compelling reason why Intel can't launch an 8/14 M1 Pro in a new iMac 5K 27" for $1999. And if they want to get cheeky, they charge $2299 for it, which matches the i7+5500XT model's price.
Starting it at $2999 is not going to happen unless it comes with a 16/32 M1X as the base SoC and Jade2C-Die (32/64) is the upgrade and I don't see why Apple would do that.
Hence why I am convinced the 27" will start with the 8/14 core M1 Pro to reach a $1999-2299 starting price.
That is what the Apple Silicon Mac Pro will be for with 64 and 128 GPU core options. That is the machine I expect to start at $2999, not the iMac Pro.
And for many tasks, the 32 core Apple GPU outperforms the 5700XT based on all the video benchmarks being posted so for a fair number of people, an M1 MAX will be a (significant) graphics upgrade from a 5700XT.
Apple will almost certainly put M1 Pro and M1 Max options into an iMac. Why wouldn’t they? And they will quite likely call it the “iMac Pro”, based on both rumors and their current naming pattern with iPhones, iPads, and laptops. That doesn’t mean it has to be as high-end as the old, discontinued iMac Pros. It just has to be higher than the 24-inch non-Pro iMac.
I suspect we’re also likely to see at least one new processor option (e.g., a dual M1 Max), for one simple reason. Screen size. Apple will want to ensure that this 27-inch display is at least as fast as the 14- or 16-inch MacBook display. That means adding more GPU cores or, at the very least, increasing the clock speed.
I suspect we’re also likely to see at least one new processor option (e.g., a dual M1 Max), for one simple reason. Screen size. Apple will want to ensure that this 27-inch display is at least as fast as the 14- or 16-inch MacBook display. That means adding more GPU cores or, at the very least, increasing the clock speed.
Me neither. Where else are you going to post-it note passwords and other sensitive stuff.
But honestly, I do use the 'chin' for post-its. Sometimes I have so many, they start going up the sides of the screen, and sometimes I end up writing the note on the wrong side of the post-it, so it's on the screen upside down.
I'm human, I use post-its, I have a mac with a chin. My monitor doesn't have one, but it's on a VESA mount and at the same level as the IMP. I somehow don't lose my mind over the whole massive strip of metal at the bottom of one of the screens. I honestly don't. Yeah, I don't get the 'war on the chin', the 'freakout on the notch', and why 'Boba Fett' wasn't called a 'Mandalorian' in any of the Star Wars movies, but I survive it. Somehow...
I would think just the fact that it will likely have M1 Pro or Max processors makes it beyond the high-end-ness of the former iMac Pro. Perhaps sales for 27" sizes and beyond are less common for average non-pro consumers so they will migrate to keeping "iMac" just for 24" and "iMac Pro" for the 27"? Streamlines the marketing?
Because complaining is their favorite hobby. Can you imagine how nuts they’d go if Apple increased the base price of the 27-inch iMac by a thousand dollars, as some people are suggesting?
(On the other hand, it does bug me when people keep misspelled Bubba as “Boba”. Get it right, Disney!)
So you basically proved my point in your first sentence of your reply. That Apple have increased the starting price of the new MacBook Pro, if you guys really think Apple aren’t going to increase the iMac ‘Pro’ starting price significantly from the iMac then your all on cloud cuckoo land. This is Apple, they charge you a grand for a monitor stand for its ‘Pro’ monitor, 700 for some small wheels, 30 dollars for a microfibre cloth…
A machine starting with the M1 Pro chip, 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM, and a 32” if true screen with mini LED, it’ll be 3 grand easy. Or maybe it’ll start with 32GB Ram and a terabyte HDD.
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I'm sorry, but if Apple does a new IMP, it had darned well better be AT LEAST a 32 inch screen!!! They could put 10 M1 Max SOCs in it, but it HAS to be bigger!!!
If Apple comes up with a design that can handle the large increase of power/thermals of dual or quad packaging. A Mac Pro yes, larger iMac might not be doable given the goal of it being M1 Pro/M1 Max based with a large promotion screen.
It’s still available in AppleStore. Do you think pro display XDR is a commercial success?
If there will be a “light” MacPro / “ boosted” Mac mini, there should be a matching screen from Apple.
Originally the rumor was a 30" screen, then its 32" maybe. Now we are back to something akin to a 27" but promotion. If its like the MBP, it could be a edge to edge screen larger then the 27" but still not that much bigger than the current 27" without the large dark area around the display.
The other issue is with the lack of more economical XDR monitors that Apple could sell. Instead you have $700 24" 4K and $1300 27" 5K UltraFine LG displays is all they offer besides the $5000 standard glass XDR display and $6000 nano textured glass XDR display with a $1000 stand for each.
Doesn't imply Apple going big anytime soon.
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This is what I am thinking. We may be going back to the old "product matrix" where there are "Consumer" products and "Professional" products, except now, "professional" is identified solely by feature sets and not intended workloads.
Yes, compared to the $1799 entry-level Intel iMac 5K, this Apple Silicon model is almost certainly going to be more expensive - probably by $200-400 more. But it will come with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD, which would cost you $400 if you wanted them on that $1799 iMac (and you can't actually get 512GB on that iMac - you have to buy the $1999 model). So in the end, you're paying the same amount - and the M1 Pro has better performance than the Intel CPUs and AMD GPUs, so that is actually "free".
I do not believe it will have a 32" display because that really would drive the price up - MiniLED 4K monitors start at $3000 without a computer attached to them.
And yes, the 27" MiniLED ProMotion 5K panel is going to cost more than the 27" 5K panel in the iMac now. But Apple will also not be paying Intel hundreds for the i5 CPU and AMD hundreds for the 5300 GPU and those savings can be used to offset the extra cost of the display.
When Apple went from Intel to Apple Silicon for the 16" MacBook Pro, the price went up $100 (and it came with the 10/16 M1 Pro, which is a $300 option on the 14"). Why? Probably because the savings from losing Intel and AMD (and the Touchbar) helped pay for the more expensive chassis, keyboard and display panel. I fully believe we will see the same here with the 27" Apple Silicon iMac Pro and therefore will see (effectively) no price increase (after factoring in the additional RAM).