Ungh. No Mac Pro, but sassy Siri. Apple knows what I want.
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iMac Pro Appears to Include A10 Fusion Chip for Always-On 'Hey Siri'
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To be fair, not reasonable to expect Apple to base any of its product decisions on whether or not it affects hackintoshes. They make zero money from them.
Interesting enough, this processor and what it does is enough of a feature to have been talked about on the keynote. If it wasn´t, maybe it means there´s an upcoming keynote (smaller one?) and that might be a good place to introduce the new nMP. That would be cool.
Interesting. On the one hand, having a machine listening in on you even while it is not active defines the word 'creepy', so I hope Apple clarifies its privacy policy about this and gives the user the ability to turn it off. And I do mean turn it off, as in cutting power to the circuit. On the other hand, using the ability of the ARM chips to do machine learning or other intensive computations would be an amazing way to boost the performance of the machine. And of course there might be an advantage to having iOS app running on a Mac, particularly if one is developing apps for iOS.
I'm tossing up between a top of the line iMac 2017 with 1TB SDD which will cost about £3k + 64GB of 3rd party RAM or a bottom of the line iMac Pro which will cost £5k + 32 extra GB of Apple (or 3rd party if poss. RAM)
For the extra 2k I get a much more powerful CPU with 8 cores, Vega graphics and 4 TB3 ports.
I don't think it is silly to consider the iMac Pro even if it is an all-in-one. It's actually a tough choice as my professional work has recently taken a turn towards 4k video production and those extra cores and Vega graphics would be useful. I also need to think about not just what I need now, but what I will need in 2-3 years time.
It may well depend on what Black Friday deals I find on the 2017 iMac - if I find something too good to pass up or not.
I suppose I could always ask Siri...
According to some digging into Apple's "BridgeOS 2.0" code and macOS this weekend by Jonathan Levin, Steven Troughton-Smith, and Guilherme Rambo, the upcoming iMac Pro appears to feature an A10 Fusion chip with 512 MB of RAM. While the full functionality of the A10 chip isn't yet known, it appears the chip will enable support for "Hey Siri" functionality, potentially even when the iMac Pro is turned off.
As noted by Troughton-Smith, the A10 will manage the booting process and security for the iMac Pro, and with hooks into system audio, he theorized that the chip might support always-on "Hey Siri."
The "Hey Siri" theory was quickly confirmed by Rambo, who shared both a boot chime for BridgeOS and the setup process for "Hey Siri" discovered within macOS.
Rumors of ARM-based chips being included in Macs have been circulating for some time, and with the T1 chip appearing in the MacBook Pro to drive the Touch Bar last year, the rumor began coming to fruition. The T1 was just the first step in the process, however, with Bloomberg reporting in February that a custom "T310" ARM-based Mac chip similar to the T1 could be included in future Macs and take on some additional functionality such as handling "Power Nap" low-power mode functionality.
In June, Pike's Universum reported that the upcoming iMac Pro will include a Secure Enclave, suggesting the machine would indeed include an ARM-based coprocessor as on the MacBook Pro.
Unveiled at WWDC in June, the iMac Pro is scheduled to launch next month, but Apple has yet to give a specific launch date for the high-end desktop that will start at $4999.
Article Link: iMac Pro Appears to Include A10 Fusion Chip for Always-On 'Hey Siri'
It would seem to me a logical use in combination with Siri to be face recognition?
FaceID is very close in implementation to Face over IP (the system Star Citizen uses to map a gamer's facial expressions to their avatar's), and the same recognition and tracking technology could be used for face/eye tracking, which TrackIR and Tobii currently do.
It'd be strange to have gaming technology built into a "Pro" Mac, but maybe it's just a testing ground?
Could the Animoji technology be used for avatars in 'professional' teleconferencing? (shudder!)
I doubt FaceID on a desktop or laptop would be always on (there's no point), so the only radiation your eyeballs would be bathed for hours on end in would be whatever spectrum gets emitted by the LCD screen (mostly visible light).
No more conferences. Apple have already confirmed this.
Can't wait for another one of those "oops" scandals where Apple will get blamed for a Siri "bug" uploading private conversations to Apple's servers, and they get accused of corporate espionage.
What could that processor do while the computer's off?
And why would you need an extra processor just to wait for 'hey siri' in that kind of computer?
And why would you need an extra processor just to wait for 'hey siri' in that kind of computer?
You don't know what features this is for so your comment is off base.
You guys who actually believe Apple would add an A10 Fusion chip just for Siri are insane.
Maybe you'd like to buy this?
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/d/surface-studio/8xcw9bbpvfv9/5T1N?activetab=pivot:overviewtab
We might be looking at the inclusion of face-recognition for the Pro too 
But lets face it, native app development would be a big gain!
But lets face it, native app development would be a big gain!
At least with the Surface Studio you're getting a nice tablet-like screen with multi-touch and pressure sensitivity. On the iMac Pro you're getting an iMac with "Hey Siri".
He was talking about tax year..ie people who want to claim the purchase in 2017.
Here (Canada) and in the US, personal income taxes match the Calendar year despite both countries having a different financial year. Do you know of any countries where this isn't the case for *personal* taxes?
Price-wise, very poorly.
They ship with AMD Vegas, but the 'Pro' versions, which are slower due to heat concerns. Vegas are inefficient compared to Nvidia 10x series. AMD still can't produce GPUs faster than Nvidia, despite Nvidia 10 series being out for over 1.5 years or so.
Things like this is what will keep me on the Apple platform. A wholly singularity to all my devices, desktop/ipad/iphone/tv.
Yes. Seriously.
What part of what I said do you not understand? The first iPhone was released with a non-mechanical keyboard and people here raged against it. Why in the world are you going on about other phones?
And...the computer “never turns off” even if you power down so Siri can hear you to wake...
Yeah right...always on...will have to unplug the computer every time I want the system not able to access the internet or to gather information when I am sleeping....
No thanks...Pro’s don’t have time to talk to their production computers, especially in an office...kind of strange to hear “hey Siri” Next to you when editing an important flick...
No Siri on production boxes....
You appear to have a highly romanticized and extremely narrow real-world view of what a professional who uses a computer in their work, is.
It's not about users upgrading GPUs or how to service a computer that has failed, apparently believing that's the sole domain of the computer user.
Professional computer users span a huge range of disciplines. The majority of which are not tinkerers that hang out on computer forums.
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