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iMac Pro Described as Blazingly Fast, Quiet, and Fairly Priced, But Lacks Upgradeability
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I am the wrong person to answer that one. I am not a fan of the AiO concept on principle alone. I doubt any of them are really upgradeable.
Not sure if watching the video tells the specific config of this test unit (the first minute sounded more like an advertisement than a review so I stopped), but another site explains that "Brownlee has been using the device for a week editing video. The unit he was provided for video has a 3.0GHz 10-core Intel Xeon W processor, 128GB of DDR4 ECC RAM, 2TB of SSD storage, and a Radeon Pro Vega 65 with 16GB of video RAM."
One can only imagine how much Apple will be charging for this configuration. A $5100 similarly specced PC is a bargain (half the price, probably).
One can only imagine how much Apple will be charging for this configuration. A $5100 similarly specced PC is a bargain (half the price, probably).
I agree that Pros need a more modular computer, and, unfortunately, Apple doesn't seem to care about those kinds of people. Too niche for them, I guess. Why spend millions on R&D on something that brings in little revenue?
I can see the Pro desktops as being a bit of a loss leader, letting the pros create the content to help drive sales of Apple's other, more profitable products. Too bad Apple can't or won't see that.
I was sad when Apple axed the Xserve. Decent Mac server. Heck, Virginia Tech even bought a bunch to build one of the most powerful supercomputers at the time. But, alas, it's too niche and not sexy enough. Maybe a bit of a catch-22 where people didn't buy it because Apple didn't upgrade it frequently enough & Apple didn't upgrade because not enough people bought it. Whatever. Also sad that they axed Workgroup Manager. It had quite a few more granular controls for server use. I like some of the stuff Apple has added like DEP/MDM support, but the basic Server app is just a shadow of what we could do 10 years ago.
It’s easy to justify a new machine every 2 years if you’re actually a professional or business. Every company I’ve worked for did exactly that.
I’ll use my previous example from the last iMac Pro thread. Let’s say you have an employee you pay $50K per year to do creative work (let’s say video editing). You buy an iMac Pro configured nicely for $10K. That employee salary is $100K for 2 years, so the iMac Pro represents a 10% increase in costs for that employee.
Do you think the productivity for that employee would increase by only 10% using the latest machine? Would it help with rushed deadlines by allowing you to complete projects quicker?
This doesn’t even take into account the tax deduction a business would be able to take on that iMac Pro purchase, making their final purchase price less than $10K. Or maybe they’ll lease it instead. Regardless, it’s very easy to justify new hardware for employees every 2 years. If they’re actual “professionals” using it to make money.
I agree. But it does two things:
1) it allows high end FCP users to wait for the Mac Pro next year. Real professionals won’t moan about the price, this is fairly cheap by the standards of computers they require and use.
2) it sends a statement. The statement is: we still like making powerful computers, we’re not just a company that makes ugly gold coloured gadgets.
i totally agree, ram, hdd/ssd are really basic thing that should be upgradable and they are totally standard versions, the ones available elsewhere for pc. Infact for pro, graphic card too should replaceable. But at-least ram/storage should be definitely.
I think it's because computer nerds who hang out on tech forums have this romanticized notion of what a professional is. And believe it's only people who like to tinker with computers. And not understanding that the term "professional" covers a huge swath of people who use computers in their profession.
They just want a computer powerful and flexible enough to get their work done. This iMac certainly has that covered, offering a lot of power and flexible I/O options.
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Not to mention, they aren't available for order yet. You see these idiotic posts every time Apple gets ready to release a new product.
Nobody is using the internal SSD in an iMac Pro for anything else than a scratch disk. You obviously have no clue about what a workstation is being used for if you think a replacable SSD/HDD is of any importance. Thunderbolt 3 and 10 gigabit ports are there for the storage solutions.
Ram would be nice though, but even then upgrades are usually not being done in the workstation world. Because by the time you need new RAM you also need a new mobo/cpu with new sockets for the CPU and the RAM. So the only interchangeable thing should be the screen, everything else may sound nice to you but is of no importance to companies buying these types of workstations.
Upgrades to workstations just happen seldom, usually the big users just buy a whole new system when they need one. Remember that is is not a PC this is a workstation. The only problem is just that people now also have to buy a new screen when they upgrade to a new workstation.
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I guess it depends on what you use your machine for... and why you are upgrading the hard drive.
Did the hard drive fill up? That sounds like a data-management issue. Do you not have a NAS or some other network or external device for long-term mass storage?
Video editors, in particular, don't like to use internal storage for video projects anyway. Even a "slow" USB 3 SSD would be better as an editing drive or scratch drive rather than having the OS, and software, and video files on the same drive.
Oh... and with Thunderbolt 3 for RAID and also 10Gig Ethernet... the iMac Pro has more options than ever for fast external storage (which is preferred for the reasons I outlines above)
So I get it... you can't upgrade the hard drive in this "pro" machine.
But outside of a pure hardware failure... I'm not sure why you'd every need to.
I ordered 50 of them and then found out.....No VGA port.....Cancelled my orders too
Apple should really pay attention to the pros and re-relase the Mac Pro to match the new HP Z8 workstations. Damn those things are incredibly upgradable and massively powerful. Just imagine running macOS on up to 56 cores, 3TB of RAM and a RAID0 of 4 PCIe SSDs. If only you could virtualize High Sierra on ESXi you could potentially run 8 iMac Pros off of a single Z8.
Anyway. I can only hope the new "modular" Mac Pro will be as good.
Anyway. I can only hope the new "modular" Mac Pro will be as good.
Yep, and the one item that stands out to me is the lack of upgrade-ability, The key thing that made the nMP pretty much a no go.
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When you buy in bulk the prices go down. Costco had a sale recently...
Got mine at a sale at BJ's....err, was it the other way around
Okay then, do some research and come back with a price on PC hardware that matches these specs exactly, including the price of a 27” 5K monitor with the same specs. Back up your claim please.
Apple upcoming Mac Pro is suppose to be just that - a more modular computer! Apple is going to charge you a lot for that type of convienences since it will not become outdates so soon! Think $10K-$15K range!
It seems your posting that link overloaded the server. "Server not found" error.
Depends on your needs I guess. If you have to have a display, this isn't that bad of deal, but if you have one and you really just need the most horsepower for the buck, its a pretty terrible deal.
I've been pricing out a Dell 7920, 2x10 core Xeon silver, 96 GB of RAM, a smallish SSD for boot and 2x10TB HGSTs (thinking a RAID1, these high capacity drives are sure nice to now not need so many drives in RAID10 or RAID5 to get much capacity) came to about 5300 with education discounts.
My point is that the machines are exactly the same if they haven't been updated.
For instance, it doesn't make sense to replace a 2013 Mac Pro with a "new one" in 2017 because it's the same computer, even though 4 years have passed. Or replacing a 2014 Mac Mini with a "new one" in 2017 because it's been 3 years -- I guess it's time to get a new one, right? The 2014 is old... except that they haven't changed it one bit in 3 years.
Sure, companies typically replace their computers every 2-3 years (often a lease program). It's just funny that they would probably end up with the same machine, or one that's so similar that it makes no difference.
Using things to make money doesn't justify wasting money on things, either. There has to be a measurable benefit to the decision. There are a ton of reasons why the iMac "Pro" is a poor value for any company.