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iMac Pro Described as Blazingly Fast, Quiet, and Fairly Priced, But Lacks Upgradeability

melendezest said:
As far as Steve Jobs hating upgradeability, see the G4 Cube, the tabletop iMac, the first "iPod" iMac G5, every subsequent iMac until his death
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NONE of these things are officially upgradeable and the 27" iMac is just as upgradeable as it ever ways when Steve was around.

There was I day I tinkered and did unofficial hacks, like ripping the DVD drive out of my MacBook and iMac to put something useful there (dual SSD's at the time) but there's just no need now, Apple caught up with me.

You like to tinker, I don't have time anymore, my time is too valuable and it's not a hobby of mine - so I buy the best I can buy and then I replace it a year or two later when something better comes out.

Not buying an iOS device because it doesn't have an SD card slot is probably one of the stupidest things ive ever heard though, but each to their own.
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HarryPot said:
As for not having a PCI-E-SSD at hand.... this is part of the problem. Just use normal drives that are much more affordable and as fast as most people need.
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What? No! I want the fastest PCI-E SSD available, not some 500Mb/s 2006 technology SATA drive just because it's fast enough for you! "Normal drives" christ. Mental.

And I drive a Tesla, so yeah, i'm used to having to take it to the service centre to sort things out (changing things that wear out is not upgrading)
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jwpoof said:
There's a lot of truth to this. I appreciate computer enthusiasts, and can remember a time when tinkering was worth it from my own perspective. Apple isn't offering tinkerers much to play with anymore. So it goes...
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Indeed.

If you want to take things apart and change them, this isn't the system for you simple. Don't start writing "OMG £5000 AND I CAN'T CHANGE THE SSD" in the comments, it makes you look about 13.

This is aimed at a 1-2 million customer base, if you want to build things from scratch it's not for you.
 
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Woyzeck said:
I don‘t understand what the market for such a machine would be. Those who need bare processing power have already gone to PCs where it‘s much more affordable, or they shifted their hardcore computations to the cloud. In my opinion they just repeat the same strategic mistake that ruined the last-gen Mac Pro, just in another enclosure.

However, i can understand what the market for the cheese grater was - professionals.
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So professional users should've stuck with the G5's? And professional users have all gone to PC's, really!?
 
aaronhead14 said:
I just want the modular Mac Pro already... :(
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This. Before the latest MacPro came out, I wanted a MacPro "box" where you can upgrade video, RAM, perhaps CPU, and a slot for an SSD. They wouldn't even have to update it often, as we could do that at will. I ended up with the iMac 5K, which I love (Thunderbolt bay with 4 5GB drives).
 
I think you can upgrade the RAM

imacpro.jpg
 
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Thunderbird said:
Actually the base configuration for that HP workstation is $2439. http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations-z8/index.html
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Sure, the base Z8 is $2,439—with a 1.8 GHz Xeon, 8 GB of RAM, a 7200 spinner, a low-end graphics card and no monitor :(

Configure it with 32 GB and a 1TB SATA SSD and you’re at $4,562. But you’ll still have a machine much less powerful than the $4,999 base iMac Pro, since:

  • You’ll only have a 1.8 GHz Xeon, not the 3.2 GHz 2140B
  • Your SATA SSD drive will be much slower than the iMac Pro’s PCIe SSD interface
  • You’ll only have an AMD FirePro 2GB W2100 graphics card. For those unfamiliar with this 3 year old card, it’s 400Gflops don’t even begin to compare to the 10Tflop Vega 56.
  • Only 1 Gb Ethernet compared to the iMac’s 10 Gb
  • You’ll have zero Thunderbolt 3 ports, not 4
  • No 27” P3 5K monitor

On the other hand, the Z8 is very expandable! :D

I kid, but don’t get me wrong; the Z8 is a nice workstation, no question. But it’s not price comparable to an iMac Pro. If the iMac Pro fits your requirements, it’s actually a helluva deal imo. (As is the regular 3.4 GHz 27” 5K iMac—at $1,799 it costs little more than you’d pay for just the monitor.)

The Z8 is a traditional workstation. If you’ve got $100,000, it can be a dual, 28-core (total 56-core) Xeon monster with 3 TB of RAM. But it’s really in a different category from an iMac Pro all in one, so I’m not sure why anybody started this comparison in the first place.
 
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I’ve bought two reliable used AWD cars this year. A BMW and a Mercury, both premium trim, heated seats, lots of speakers, leather, ect... both of which cost less than this in it’s most basic form. I get that it’s for professionals who can pretend that it’s a required cost of operations, but really, is it?
 
sexiewasd said:
I’ve bought two reliable used AWD cars this year. A BMW and a Mercury, both premium trim, heated seats, lots of speakers, leather, ect... both of which cost less than this in it’s most basic form. I get that it’s for professionals who can pretend that it’s a required cost of operations, but really, is it?
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If it would help me bill an extra hour at $750/hour per week, the cost would be a rounding error. It does not do that for me.

But for others, where it could save them significant time, yes, it effectively is.
 
Naimfan said:
If it would help me bill an extra hour at $750/hour per week, the cost would be a rounding error. It does not do that for me.

But for others, where it could save them significant time, yes, it effectively is.
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About the only place that it could save time is in rendering, where a farm is going to be far faster and more cost effective anyway.
 
Thunderbird said:
Actually the base configuration for that HP workstation is $2439. http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations-z8/index.html
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Since when do any of those professions (except for maybe engineers) need a pro workstation computer?
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There are scenarios where any one of those professionals could use the power of a pro work station.

I know Physiotherapist that could even use a pro workstation.
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HarryPot said:
I would expect something different from a desktop priced at $5,000.

As for the MBP, I'm also of the idea that they should be user upgradable. At least RAM and SSD. Just like they used to be.
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If my current MBP weren't upgradable it would have been useless right now. It had 8GB RAM and a HDD, I upgraded to 16GB RAM and an SSD and it is almost a new machine.

I think the pros are the ones that do tinker with their computers.
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The retina MBP’s set a new standard for Laptops. Your example is very outdated.

The jump to SSD’s were big and there was a quick transition to larger ram modules.

But if you bought the 2012-2013 rMBP, you would not need to upgrade as quickly as you did with your HDD. Unless you were pushing your Ecu to its limits
 
citysnaps said:
Since whenever the processing power will save them loads of time. And money.

My architect is a great example. There are many more.
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The processing power of an iMac Pro isn't going to save most of those professions any time, because they would never use that amount of processing power.
 
Thunderbird said:
The processing power of an iMac Pro isn't going to save most of those professions any time, because they would never use that amount of processing power.
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Not true at all.

My architect, just as an example, uses a hacked-together high-performance pc to do his walk through video renderings for his complex projects and drone coverage, each one taking 15-20 minutes. Being Mac-based, he'd much rather use a high-performance Apple computer.

I could go on...

Any process involving modeling, simulation, rendering, design, development, video editing, music production, etc can take advantage of that kind of power. Just because you have no need for a high-performance computer does not mean others don't.
 
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citysnaps said:
Not true at all.

My architect, just as an example, uses a hacked-together high-performance pc to do his walk through video renderings for his complex projects and drone coverage, each one taking 15-20 minutes. Being Mac-based, he'd much rather use a high-performance Apple computer.

I could go on...

Just because you have no need for a high-performance computer does not mean others don't. Anything involving modeling, simulation, rendering, design, development, etc can take advantage of that kind of power.
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Not true. Our pipeline designers at work use 7 year old computers running Navisworks, and they work just fine without the processing power anywhere close to an iMac Pro. Your architect doesn't need a iMac Pro to run 3d software for his marketing walk-throughs.

And neither do most of those other professions. It's pure B.S.
 
Thunderbird said:
Not true. Our pipeline designers at work use 7 year old computers running Navisworks, and they work just fine without the processing power anywhere close to an iMac Pro. Your architect doesn't need a iMac Pro to run 3d software.

And neither do most of those other professions. It's pure B.S.
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OK, there you go. Nobody needs an iMac Pro. Why? Because your project review software and company don't.

Nice that you can speak for everyone else. Somebody, please let Apple know there are no customers needing an iMac Pro. Stat!
 
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sexiewasd said:
About the only place that it could save time is in rendering, where a farm is going to be far faster and more cost effective anyway.
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Not really. Certain workloads are amenable to high core count CPUs, including virtualization, transcoding, compression, certain scientific simulations and CAE—e.g. MATLAB (PCT, parfor, vectorized ops), Solidworks (FEA, Fluid Flow, also Photoview 360), ANSYS Mechanical, and other highly multithreaded applications like Logic Pro, Blender, Maya (Arnold). I’m sure many others.
 
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peppespizzapie said:
Ever conciderd a hackintosh for 1999.-? 20% faster AND upgradable whenever you want.
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The iMac Pro is for corporate/business use: people that work for or have their own company, and need the power of a workstation. They don’t steal software, and they’re more than willing to pay for warranty/support as well.

The few hundred tax deductible bucks a month for this computer is easily afforded, and is a bargain compared to the $5-10k per month the company spends on the salary of the person at the keyboard.

That said, many corporate/enterprise users don’t need the power of an iMac Pro. The regular 27” 5K 3.4 GHz iMac is a bargain at $1,799. Just 50 tax deductible dollars a month for a computer that’s more than sufficient for most administrative, managerial and executive users. That’s amazing when you think about it.
 
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Is it known who provides the 10G Ethernet controller? Is it Aquantia? Intel?
 
It would seem to me to get a quad core iMac 21" with EGPU support with higher end graphics card. More and more rendering being done with graphics cards so the price of this seems extremely high by the time you spec it out. You could spend half the money.

My setup is a 21.5 iMac with 4k support, have and hp 32" monitor 4k, with EGPU comes out to $4k canadian...
 
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