Apple's Next iMac Pro: Everything We Know

[theluggage]

To be fair, some of those had previously seen price increases.

Sure, but it’s still not straightforward - e.g. 2012 saw a switch to Retina display and SSD storage as standard, so it’s not really comparable with the “classic” low def, spinning rust model that came before. The 2019 model went to 16” with no price increase and, as I recall, offered somewhat better bangs-per-buck.

Looking further back, I paid the equivalent of $2500 for my 17” MBP in 2011. The 2021 16” blows it out of the water for the same price... so how far back does it make sense to go? Looking at a PowerBook G4 or something would be absurd, but (if the GPU hadn’t blown) the 2011 17” would still feel much like a modern Mac 10 years later. (C.f the evolution from Apple 2 to the original Mac over less than 10 years).

Thing is, we’ve had 40 years of hyper-deflation of computers (if you take the growth of specs into account) - huge price drops in the first 10 years, stable “numerical” prices - with mushrooming specs and no regard of general inflation. I think the “chip crisis” and slowing down of development (harder to get people to upgrade) may be the end of that.

 

[Aries79]

“Gaming tasks” are professional? But managing a doctor’s office (which does not require 64 or 128 GPU cores) isn’t?

This is getting silly.

it's not silly at all: Pro means powerful. And gaming is a power hungry task.

 

[Aries79]

Well the only gaming you are going to be doing in Apple Silicon is with Metal and the M1 family Metal scores are incredible so...

And 3D is also looking hyper-impressive. MaxTech just posted a video where a 16" MBP with an M1 MAX and 32GB of RAM pretty much embarrasses a $15K 2019 Mac Pro with a 12-core Xeon, 192GB of RAM, a Vega II Duo video card and the Afterburner card.

Metal scores are not that better than the 5700XT, and are worse than the 6800XT that many Pro bought for the Mac Pro.

The Vega II is not that great videocard, the dual configuration is not even used by many apps.

The 32 cores Max is very good for a Pro laptop, but it's not enough for a Pro desktop.

 

[Pezimak]

You’re agreeing with yourself? That’s nice.

I agree with Apple. With people who were hired by a trillion-dollar corporation to make marketing decisions.

If Apple’s marketing team wants to call a $300 video editor or a $1300 laptop “Pro”, that’s what they should do.

Your approval was not requested and is not required.

Calling the M1 MacBook Pro “old technology” is nonsense.

Whining about the case design is also nonsense. Especially coming from someone who’s so hung up on the word “pro”.

Real professionals don’t buy computers in order to have the latest, hippest, most modern case design. They buy computers to get work done.

You must be confused if you think your agreeing with Apple.

 

[CWallace]

The 32 cores Max is very good for a Pro laptop, but it's not enough for a Pro desktop.

Depends on what "pro" work you do. 32 cores seems to be more than "pro enough" for video editing in 4K and 8K, for example.

We're also seeing that synthetic benchmark scores are not really representative of Apple Silicon's prowess. The ability of the GPU cores to address 32 or 64GB of RAM directly and to swap information with the CPU cores with no delay (as both are on-die and sharing pooled memory) means many "pro" tasks are significantly faster on Apple Silicon than on machines with much more powerful Xeon and AMD/nVidia GPUs.

And for those who need more than 32, there will be 64 and 128 with the Mac Pro so that is the machine they can buy.

 

[LonestarOne]

it's not silly at all: Pro means powerful. And gaming is a power hungry task.

No, “pro” does not mean powerful. It means professional. Someone who does work and gets paid for it. Look it up in the dictionary.

And you don’t need as much power as you think in order to play games. Several years ago, I had to set a project running an experimental flight sim model on X-Plane. I was expecting to get PCs with high-end graphic cards, but instead, we ended up with Mac Minis. No graphic cards, no M1, just plain old Intel. I was skeptical until I saw the results, which were perfectly acceptable.

Of course, the users weren’t AAA gamers. They were just engineers, test pilots, and astronauts. In other words, professionals.

 

[LonestarOne]

You must be confused if you think your agreeing with Apple.

Apple thinks the 13” Macbook is a Pro machine. I think it is a Pro machine. You think it isn’t.

You must be confused about what the word “agree” means.

 

[Luis Ortega]

Apple's 2022 iMac Pro​

View attachment 1909350

That's one hell of a notch.

 

[CWallace]

So MaxTech just posted a video where they are now convinced Jade2C-Die will be (a BTO option) on the iMac Pro...

 

[LonestarOne]

So MaxTech just posted a video where they are now convinced Jade2C-Die will be (a BTO option) on the iMac Pro...

But will he shave his beard if he’s wrong this time?

He was also convinced Apple would introduce new MacBooks at WWDC.

I think there’s a good chance he’s right, but honestly, we’re both guessing at this point.

 

[CWallace]

Having watched the video, an interesting takeaway is the appearance that you can link two M1 MAX together, but not four. So Jade2C-Die will likely be two M1 MAX connected together, but Jade4C-Die will have to be something different - perhaps two Jade2C-Dies in a chiplet or some other package.

So that means Apple could launch Jade2C-Die in Q1 of 2022 with the iMac Pro (and Mac mini Pro?) and not mention the Mac Pro. Then at WWDC they could announce the Mac Pro and Jade4C-Die together (since Mac Pro will likely be the only application and case design that can handle it).

 

[CWallace]

He was also convinced Apple would introduce new MacBooks at WWDC.

To be fair, I was convinced they would launch at WWDC and I still believe this was the plan, but supply chain delays required a delay until October - and will these issues hinder Apple launching the iMac Pro / Mac mini Pro in Q1 2022 as supposedly planned?

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

2 M1 Max SOC in a single computer? I doubt it. How about a Max+ with a few more cores, but not completely two of them lashed together. You can throw more cores at a problem, but eventually you reach a point where you have too many cores, and performance takes a hit. I remember reading about that when I was in university. They had a professor that did some of the research as I remember. He was 'so brilliant', he was lured away shortly after. *shrug*

Look at the 'human computer'. So amazing, and amazingly complex. Does the human computer have tons of cores, or tons of sensors, or something even more bizarre.

Apple could put 10 Max dies in a system, but what do you have after that? Is macOS capable of massively parallel processing? I would assume that macOS will have to grow up quite a bit to support that kind of configuration. Even 2 Max dies might push macOS too far.

 

[chucker23n1]

No, “pro” does not mean powerful. It means professional. Someone who does work and gets paid for it. Look it up in the dictionary.

The dictionary is irrelevant. Pro means “Apple charges you more for premium products that may or may not be more suited for certain processional uses”. An iPhone Pro isn’t more pro unless you use the camera a lot. A MacBook Pro isn’t more pro unless you have high-end CPU or GPU needs.

 

[Realityck]

The dictionary is irrelevant. Pro means “Apple charges you more for premium products that may or may not be more suited for certain processional uses”. An iPhone Pro isn’t more pro unless you use the camera a lot. A MacBook Pro isn’t more pro unless you have high-end CPU or GPU needs.

Just to reinforce your comment. As previously posted

The term pro was just a naming convention change from the time of PPC. They used to be called PowerBook and PowerMac. When Intel models returned they renamed the models to be MacBook Pro and Mac Pro. It's not like they were meant for power users later pro's.

Its just a naming convention to symbolize that they are capable, not exclusive to a particular usage. But lately we gotten it into our heads that more pricy Apple computers are only meant for Pro's like your comment. They can be for anyone that wants one.

 

[quarkysg]

2 M1 Max SOC in a single computer? I doubt it. How about a Max+ with a few more cores, but not completely two of them lashed together. You can throw more cores at a problem, but eventually you reach a point where you have too many cores, and performance takes a hit. I remember reading about that when I was in university. They had a professor that did some of the research as I remember. He was 'so brilliant', he was lured away shortly after. *shrug*

There is a limit of how large they can make each die. It seems that the M1 Max is at or near the limit, so stuffing more cores into the die is probably not possible. The only solution is to string many M1 Max dies together to get more performance.

 

[Realityck]

But will he shave his beard if he’s wrong this time?

He was also convinced Apple would introduce new MacBooks at WWDC.

I think there’s a good chance he’s right, but honestly, we’re both guessing at this point.

I think Maxtech is trying to spin himself into a another Mark German. I hope he gets a enough sleep as taking a bunch of comments and then trying to apply various comments as somewhat factual is a stretch. But if you make enough guesses he bound to be right on something.

 

[chucker23n1]

Just to reinforce your comment. As previously posted

Yup. (Mind you, “Pro” as a suffix isn’t even that new for Apple. There was FileMaker Pro in the early 90s, and Final Cut Pro vs. Final Cut Express vs. iMovie were a clear delineation in the early 2000s. Nobody asked “oh, but if I’m a medical doctor, I’m a pro, so I need to buy Final Cut Pro, right”?)

The Power prefix was indeed more of a 90s thing. PowerBook, PowerTalk, PowerCD, etc.

 

[MacGizmo]

After reading the article I've determined that "Everything you know" is pretty much nothing, other than it'll be called an iMac and made by Apple.

 

[chucker23n1]

After reading the article I've determined that "Everything you know" is pretty much nothing, other than it'll be called an iMac and made by Apple.

Yup. The article is all "it might look like the 24-inch iMac! Or it might look like the Pro Display XDR. Or both. Who's to say!" "Next year's iMac will come next year! Maybe early. Maybe not!"

 

[Juuro]

2 M1 Max SOC in a single computer? I doubt it. How about a Max+ with a few more cores, but not completely two of them lashed together. You can throw more cores at a problem, but eventually you reach a point where you have too many cores, and performance takes a hit. I remember reading about that when I was in university. They had a professor that did some of the research as I remember. He was 'so brilliant', he was lured away shortly after. *shrug*

Look at the 'human computer'. So amazing, and amazingly complex. Does the human computer have tons of cores, or tons of sensors, or something even more bizarre.

Apple could put 10 Max dies in a system, but what do you have after that? Is macOS capable of massively parallel processing? I would assume that macOS will have to grow up quite a bit to support that kind of configuration. Even 2 Max dies might push macOS too far.

You know that we have already today a Mac Pro with 28 CPU cores. 2 M1 Max dies have only 20 CPU cores. I think macOS will be perfectly fine with those cores.
It is much more complicated for Apple to just add "a few more cores" than to use a couple of the same cores. The beauty of the M1 line-up is that each and every chip uses the same core-design and there are only two die designs. One for the M1 and one for the M1 Pro and M1 Max. The M1 Pro is just a chopped version of the big hence its name Jade C-Chop. So it would be great for Apple to be able to use this M1 Max die in even more chips. And it seems like they are planning to do so.
Also we have code names for a 2 die M1 Max (Jade 2C-Die) and for a 4 die M1 Max (Jade 4C-Die). The M1 Max was the Jade C-Die. And we have a developer who says the M1 Max is already in theory capable of managing a second die. So it is pretty clear that there exists a chip at Apple that consist of two M1 Max dies. The question here is if this chip will be offered in the iMac or if it will be exclusive to the Mac Pro.

I'm more and more confident that it will be appear in the iMac in march first as @CWallace explained:

Having watched the video, an interesting takeaway is the appearance that you can link two M1 MAX together, but not four. So Jade2C-Die will likely be two M1 MAX connected together, but Jade4C-Die will have to be something different - perhaps two Jade2C-Dies in a chiplet or some other package.

So that means Apple could launch Jade2C-Die in Q1 of 2022 with the iMac Pro (and Mac mini Pro?) and not mention the Mac Pro. Then at WWDC they could announce the Mac Pro and Jade4C-Die together (since Mac Pro will likely be the only application and case design that can handle it).

??

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

You know that we have already today a Mac Pro with 28 CPU cores. 2 M1 Max dies have only 20 CPU cores. I think macOS will be perfectly fine with those cores.
It is much more complicated for Apple to just add "a few more cores" than to use a couple of the same cores. The beauty of the M1 line-up is that each and every chip uses the same core-design and there are only two die designs. One for the M1 and one for the M1 Pro and M1 Max. The M1 Pro is just a chopped version of the big hence its name Jade C-Chop. So it would be great for Apple to be able to use this M1 Max die in even more chips. And it seems like they are planning to do so.
Also we have code names for a 2 die M1 Max (Jade 2C-Die) and for a 4 die M1 Max (Jade 4C-Die). The M1 Max was the Jade C-Die. And we have a developer who says the M1 Max is already in theory capable of managing a second die. So it is pretty clear that there exists a chip at Apple that consist of two M1 Max dies. The question here is if this chip will be offered in the iMac or if it will be exclusive to the Mac Pro.

I'm more and more confident that it will be appear in the iMac in march first as @CWallace explained:

??

Surprisingly I understand what you and others are saying, but gluing two Max chips together sounds interesting, but there will need to be some tech to support that duo SOC system. I could actually believe them using both the Max and the Pro together, rather than two Max SOCs. But with the mention at 9:14, it's possible Apple has planned ahead, or has provided the beginnings of pulling it off. But two MAX SOC's? Heat wouldn't be a huge issue, but they would have a system that would be so over powered for what's available today. Why? I would see that Apple could do this, but I'd expect the SOC's to be hobbled in some way to make it easier for them to integrate them. But who knows, they might just do it. But would it be a new iMac Pro, or a new Mac Pro? Hmm... It sounds like a very powerful system that would potentially dwarf the current Mac Pro, and that is product suicide, and would really have a lot of 'pros' that have the Mac Pro gnashing their teeth. Paying the big money for a Mac Pro, to have 'an iMac' beat it senseless is not going to win ANY friends...

 

[CWallace]

Surprisingly I understand what you and others are saying, but gluing two Max chips together sounds interesting, but there will need to be some tech to support that duo SOC system. I could actually believe them using both the Max and the Pro together, rather than two Max SOCs.

Main reason we assume it will be 2xM1 MAX for "Jade2C-Die" and 4xM1 MAX for "Jade4C-Die" is the Bloomberg article that first broke all these codenames.

They were correct in their claim that "JadeC-Chop" would have 10 CPU cores and 16 GPU cores - this was M1 Pro. And they were correct in their claim that "JadeC-Die" would have 10 CPU cores and 32 GPU cores - this was M1 MAX.

"Jade2C-Die" is said to have 20 CPU cores and 64 GPU cores and "Jade4C-Die" is said to have 40 CPU cores and 128 GPU cores. So by extension, "Jade2C-Die" would be two M1 MAX and "Jade4C-Die" would be four M1 MAX.

And now that we have developer insight that M1 MAX has an extra set of connections necessary to link two M1 MAX SoCs together, it makes some sense that this is what we will see with "Jade2C-Die". That it does not appear to have the connections to link four M1 MAX together implies that "Jade4C-Die" will have to be something different and not four M1 MAX merged together. My guess is a chiplet or "System In Package" with two "Jade2C-Die" SoCs.

 

[Juuro]

Hmm... It sounds like a very powerful system that would potentially dwarf the current Mac Pro, and that is product suicide, and would really have a lot of 'pros' that have the Mac Pro gnashing their teeth. Paying the big money for a Mac Pro, to have 'an iMac' beat it senseless is not going to win ANY friends...

When the M1 was released it was also faster than most existing MacBook Pros. The same will be the case with the Mac Pro. But if a Pro bought a Mac Pro thats fast enough for the tasks one will give it in 2021 it will still be fast enough for those tasks in 2022. A faster available computer will not change that. Also if Apple releases the new Mac Pro at WWDC the iMac will only be faster for about three months. I think Apple can live with that, especially in a situation where everyone knows by now that there might be a completely new Mac Pro with Apple Silicon in it.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Main reason we assume it will be 2xM1 MAX for "Jade2C-Die" and 4xM1 MAX for "Jade4C-Die" is the Bloomberg article that first broke all these codenames.

They were correct in their claim that "JadeC-Chop" would have 10 CPU cores and 16 GPU cores - this was M1 Pro. And they were correct in their claim that "JadeC-Die" would have 10 CPU cores and 32 GPU cores - this was M1 MAX.

"Jade2C-Die" is said to have 20 CPU cores and 64 GPU cores and "Jade4C-Die" is said to have 40 CPU cores and 128 GPU cores. So by extension, "Jade2C-Die" would be two M1 MAX and "Jade4C-Die" would be four M1 MAX.

And now that we have developer insight that M1 MAX has an extra set of connections necessary to link two M1 MAX SoCs together, it makes some sense that this is what we will see with "Jade2C-Die". That it does not appear to have the connections to link four M1 MAX together implies that "Jade4C-Die" will have to be something different and not four M1 MAX merged together. My guess is a chiplet or "System In Package" with two "Jade2C-Die" SoCs.

But it involves trusting Bloomberg. I guess I don't have that much faith in what they have to say. *shrug*