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Buy iMac Pro, iMac, or wait?
- Thread starter badlydrawnboy
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It was never Apple's intention to make iMac Pro the "final answer". The iMac Pro was always ment as a stop gap, since the Mac Pro (still) is delayed, and people were complaining about the lack of "pro" desktop products from Apple.
You would think that is the next logical step. And I would have already suspected that as well, but here we are.
Possible. Nevertheless, the lack of options brings me to consider buying a PC again, as we need a new computer now. Getting a core-x i7-9800x or i9-9900x processor with higher performance for PS and LR + better graphics card in a package which is considerably less $ (and easily upgradeable) than the iMac pro is tempting. The lack of upgrade-path is annoying me. I really like macOs, but I am doubtful Apple will introduce a modular macPro for a competitive price.
I certainly think the Mac pro will be modular. But I don't think it will be as upgradable as people think, or hope for.
Apple want to continue to squeeze money out of their customers. Hence, while I do think we will be able to upgrade the GPU, for example, quite easily, it will probably be in such a non-standard design that the upgrade path/choice will be very limited, and available via Apple only...…..with that premium of course...…
Considering they have moved towards an 'everything soldered on' design over recent years, Im interested to see just how 'upgradable' this new Mac Pro will be....
I think that revisionist history.
Go back and look at the timeline. In late 2016, when pro's were clamoring for when the next 'pro' mac would show, Tim Cook specifically mentioned the iMac line, and notably left out any mention of a Mac Pro: https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/19/14017952/apple-ceo-tim-cook-imac-mac-pro-desktop-computers
Then it was in mid 2017, shortly before they announced the iMac pro, when they finally announced they were also going to START working on a new Mac Pro as well.
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/04/04/apple-updates-mac-pro-and-more/
If that's not enough, consider that the release of the mac pro will come a good year and a half later than the release of the iMac pro. So to suggest the Mac pro was in development before the imac pro, and the imac pro was just a 'stopgap' ... and they whipped together an iMac with an entire internal redesign in a fraction of the time it's taken them to make a new Mac Pro ...well that's just patently absurd.
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I have to agree with this. The quality of parts that they built the iMac Pro and the long (ongoing) delay of a Mac Pro strongly suggest that the original intention was for the iMac Pro to be the top of the line.
Which for me personally works out quite well, but my use-case isn't everyone's.
Incorrect, Apple said at the conference where they presented iMac Pro, that Mac Pro was coming the next year. Go back and watch it.
That proves my point.
The imac pro was already a finished design when they announced tbey would START working on a mac pro. Thats a fact.
If the imac pro was a ‘stopgap’ as you suggest, that would mean it was whipped together sometime after they had started designing the mac pro.
So they designed and released a imac pro with totally re-imagined internals and got it to market in 2 years less time the they will have taken on the mac pro. Yea right.
And yet you assert the imac was planned as a ‘stopgap’ while we waited for the mac pro. Ridiculous. If they had planned the mac pro when they planned the imac pro, or even earlier as you seem to assert, they would have been released at about the same time. Or the mac pro would have been released first.
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False.
The Mac Pro being created after was announced in April 2017. The transcript from that interview: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/06/t...-john-ternus-on-the-state-of-apples-pro-macs/
"Next up: we have plans on iMac, to move that line ahead, and do great things on iMac. It’s core to our Mac business and our customers, including making configurations of iMac specifically with the pro customer in mind and acknowledging that our most popular desktop with pros is an iMac. We want to do things with the iMac in the future to help address those pro needs, and make it… not only continue, but more of a capable machine for pro customers."
indicating they were working on an iMac Pro of sorts. They also said:
"With regards to the Mac Pro, we are in the process of what we call ‘completely rethinking the Mac Pro.’ We’re working on it. We have a team working hard on it right now, and we want to architect it so that we can keep it fresh with regular improvements, and we’re committed to making it our highest-end, high throughput desktop system, designed for our demanding pro customers."
So no, the iMac Pro was not finished when they said they were starting on the Mac Pro, in fact they started working on the two products roughly around the same time. However it was easy to iterate on the existing iMac architecture as opposed to designing the new Mac Pro from the ground up. Your version of history is revisionist, not his.
Your logic is bonkers. Think what you will, but I think its obvious the imac was developed long before the mac pro and was apples intent to make that the ‘final answer’, and then reconsidered in spring of 2017, once they already had fhe imac pro design finalized.
If the design was finalized in April, why did it take until December to release it, and why did it use parts from AMD that had not been released until Q3'17, and a CPU that had not been released until Q3'17?
It was not final at all.
They announed the imac pro and its whole internal design in june of 2017 genius.
Here we are a year and a half later and they STILL havent announced the design of the mac pro. Think about it.
You're correct, it was announced and finalized in June. But all they did was update the internals and refresh the cooling with systems that had already been established. They still used the same 5k screen and shell form factor, saving them factory time and money on those two components. The rest of the internals would not have taken that long to design around. They likely just needed to talk to AMD and Intel to get the specs for their freshly designed GPU / CPU respectively.
The real question is why it is taking so long to design a computer tower. It should not take 2 years to do that, but they have taken that long. But regardless, your assertion that somehow the iMac Pro was designed as a 'final solution' is utter nonsense.
Riiiight. The mac pro by even optimistic guesses will cone out in june 2019 (likely later) at least a full two years after they announced the new imac pro.
So it takes them a full two years LONGER to develop a new design for a mac pro than it took them to do a major resdesign of the imac pro internals.
By all accounts the orginal iphone took about two years from first conception to the time it was announced. And yet, you’re saying it takes apple much longer than that now to just redesign a desktop computer, a product line they used to churn out twice annually (back in the powermac days).
Again, your logic is bizarre.
The plans for a 2019 mac pro was an afterthoght. A desperate reaction in the spring of 2017 to pros who were calling for blood.
April 2017 -> January 2019 is a little under two years. They can announce at any time (might help their investors too). If they do a Spring launch event (other products are due for a refresh too) of the Mac Pro, it would be almost 2 years exactly. They might also just not be announcing it, and surprising us all with sudden availability. But I'm equally as skeptical about that, because we have not heard supply chain rumors about that yet.
But that's speculation. I agree it is odd that they have taken so long to redesign the Mac Pro. Granted they said that they were "completely rethinking" the machine, but I don't think that's an excuse for Apple taking as long as they have.
One possibility was they were waiting for the AMD-exclusive contract for GPUs to fall off at the end of 2018. Then in 2019 they announce NVIDIA options for the Mac Pro, and eGPU support as a consequence. That might be wishful thinking on my part though.
Another possibility is they strategically delayed the Mac Pro to also absorb iMac Pro replacements for fast-upgraders.
The reason its taken so long is that when they said in the spring of 2017 that they were going to make a new mac pro, the brass probably had made that decision a couple days before and no engineers or designers had even been assigned to the project ... because it wasnt in their plans until then. So if you consider that it wasnt decided until then, LONG after the imac pro was born and designed, then it makes sense it would take two years. They probably had to re-assign designers and engineers to start working on this project, which had not yet been discussed. thats why it has taken so much extra time.
I laugh when I see the talk Apple talk, they promote pros and the iMac, and then sell you one you can’t uograde a thing on including the memory, yet you can on the none ‘pro’ iMac? Apple have very strange ideas of what ‘pros’ want and what a ‘Pro’ computer is. It’s why I don’t trust them to make a new Mac Pro that is easily upgradable, but we will see..
I’m kinda excited to see what they come up with, but yea knowing current day Apple it will likely have a number of ‘gotchas’ that pretty much ruin ot as a viable ‘pro’ machine for many.
I don't think it'll generate a lot of supply chain rumors. First of all, the volume isn't huge (the reason the iPhone generates so many leaks is that there are hundreds of thousands of people, largely at poorly paid subcontractors, involved in putting it together). There will probably be 100 people building Mac Pros (Apple may even build them themselves in the US - I think they do for the trash can) - not hard for a machine that probably sells in the tens of thousands annually.
The components will probably involve some custom orders (a graphics card in an odd form factor from AMD, a motherboard from Gigabyte, ASUS or somebody else). Some thousands of motherboards or graphics cards that are a modification of existing designs isn't anything like millions of fully-custom iPhone parts. This is a biggish custom order, but not a huge one (and it's no more custom than, say, a Surface Studio board). It may actually be hard to tell from a PC workstation motherboard. If you were at the board supplier and inclined to leak, you might say "well, I think this may be a Mac Pro board, but it could also be a new HP Z".
The graphics card will be easier to tell, because it will inject video onto Thunderbolt - which very little else does. The GPU, memory, etc. on it will be standard Vega or Navi, though.
The components will probably involve some custom orders (a graphics card in an odd form factor from AMD, a motherboard from Gigabyte, ASUS or somebody else). Some thousands of motherboards or graphics cards that are a modification of existing designs isn't anything like millions of fully-custom iPhone parts. This is a biggish custom order, but not a huge one (and it's no more custom than, say, a Surface Studio board). It may actually be hard to tell from a PC workstation motherboard. If you were at the board supplier and inclined to leak, you might say "well, I think this may be a Mac Pro board, but it could also be a new HP Z".
The graphics card will be easier to tell, because it will inject video onto Thunderbolt - which very little else does. The GPU, memory, etc. on it will be standard Vega or Navi, though.