iMac Pro May Feature Intel's Server-Grade 'Purley' Processors, ARM Coprocessor

[richinaus]

Fair enough, though based on your workload, you could have just had a Mac Mini.

so... if your Mac Pro is collecting dust, can I have it?

I have an iPad Pro 12" and can't even handle amending basic spreadsheets on it let alone complex ones, but good luck to you if you can. For me a 27" 5k screen helps a lot on tasks like this.......

 

[JesterJJZ]

I am serious.

I have the current Mac Pro and I never use it anymore. It's gathering dust while my iPad Pro devices help me get all my important work done.

The future Steve Jobs spoke of has finally arrived.

Clearly, you don't edit 8k video...

 

[danielwsmithee]

Still struggling to understand this product. Is this what "Pros" were asking for? Even less servicability/upgradability with a screen attached?

This is a pro spec'd and priced product masquerading as a device. I'm sure there are pros out there that want and need server grade Xeon (or similar) CPUs and RAM but I don't understand it in a product like this. I also think they're a minority of Pros and Prosumers overall. Server grade archicture would've been better kept for an XServe-like product intended as a processing node or, you know, a server!

Apple, give all iMacs the option of some high-end graphics without having to buy server-grade hardware! Is that too hard to understand? People have been asking for this for years. Also, a headless computer that has a high performance-to-dollar ratio and some high end graphics without going the expensive server/pro graphics route.

Apple has now fragmented its iMac lineup, forcing you to jump in at a minimum of $5,000 to get anything better than a (albeit high-end) mobile graphics card. Meanwhile the Mac Mini is basically at a netbook level of performance.

I have no faith or confidence that the new Mac Pro will be any different.

Do you not follow Apple at all? They just did exactly what you are asking for with eGPUs....

A standard iMac with a second or third eGPU would have pretty outstanding graphics performance with the consumer processor you are looking for.

 

[LiveM]

Over the past 3 years, I have developed over $50mm worth of real estate.
Gave up my 2013 rMBP last year in favor of a iPad Pro.
Currently on pace to develop $100mm worth of real estate in 2017.

But hey, what do I know about being a 'professional'.

The arrogance/attitude of people who say XYZ doesn't work because it doesn't work for *them* is arrogant and comical.
Guess what, 99.9% of all 'professional' users do not need a computer which those arrogant 'pros' claim.
Its such a small market segment it is laughable.

TBH 50mm of real estate isn't all that much. Even 100mm is quite small. My spade is wider than that.

 

[antonis]

I'm sure apple has no idea how to deal with heat generation and appreciates your suggestion.

Judging from the current iMac throttling issues and the current Mac Pro's defecting D700s, I wouldn't be surprised if the new machine had problems as well.

 

[danielwsmithee]

I was disappointed the new iMacs announced at WWDC17 didn't offer secure enclave and a new keyboard with touch bar.
I've got my finger hovering over the Buy button on a max spec iMac27"
It's price isn't much off the low end iMac Pro.
Yet, looking at all the pictures of the iMac Pro, it would appear to be non-trivial to upgrade the RAM.
Yes the RAM is socketed but due to the new cooling design, it's not behind the stand where the power cord comes in.
I see no panel on that aluminium backing for accessing it so peeling the display off the casing would be required.
Not tempting...

My guess is Apple is going to actually pretty reasonable about BTO RAM upgrades on this machine. 1) They have admitted that lots of RAM is important to Pros. 2) I think they recognized that making the RAM not user accessible wasn't desirable.

I think is pretty clear based on the base configuration starting with 32GB of RAM.

 

[thealkimist]

I am not a mechanical engineer, but I would hope that the large mass of metal that the iMac has can be used effectively as a heat sink and allow this all to work. A CAD / Gaming class iMac would be pretty cool.

Yes, the massive large metal is indeed a massive heat sink.

 

[citysnaps]

Judging from the current iMac throttling issues and the current Mac Pro's defecting D700s, I wouldn't be surprised if the new machine had problems as well.

Current iMac throttling issue? Please post a credible link supporting that.

 

[Gasu E.]

It's sad when you already can foresee a product being recalled or having significant defects on their first shipment.

I can't foresee that. So I guess it's not sad.
[doublepost=1498192727][/doublepost]

Over the past 3 years, I have developed over $50mm worth of real estate.
Gave up my 2013 rMBP last year in favor of a iPad Pro.
Currently on pace to develop $100mm worth of real estate in 2017.

But hey, what do I know about being a 'professional'.

The arrogance/attitude of people who say XYZ doesn't work because it doesn't work for *them* is arrogant and comical.
Guess what, 99.9% of all 'professional' users do not need a computer which those arrogant 'pros' claim.
Its such a small market segment it is laughable.

You may be a "professional" in some sense. But in the Mac universe, "Pro" indicates "content creator". Which, it sounds like, you are not. And you use the word "develop" to mean something entirely different as well.

 

[Tech198]

"purley" Is that like "purley serve-grade" ? Cause that would be cool

 

[MrX8503]

Cooling seems pretty good. According to Apple, the iMac Pro is able to handle up to 500w.

Cool air is pulled through the speaker grill, passes over the logic board and cooling components, and then finally exhausts out the back through the heatsink.

 

[mikethemartian]

Over the past 3 years, I have developed over $50mm worth of real estate.
Gave up my 2013 rMBP last year in favor of a iPad Pro.
Currently on pace to develop $100mm worth of real estate in 2017.

But hey, what do I know about being a 'professional'.

The arrogance/attitude of people who say XYZ doesn't work because it doesn't work for *them* is arrogant and comical.
Guess what, 99.9% of all 'professional' users do not need a computer which those arrogant 'pros' claim.
Its such a small market segment it is laughable.

Does the 0.1% include the Apple engineers that design the computers for the other 99.9%?

 

[flat five]

Yes, the massive large metal is indeed a massive heat sink.

i don't think i'd go so far as to say it's a heat sink.
the aluminum housing will dissipate a little bit of heat i imagine but i doubt it's contributing considerably to cooling.

heat sinks have fins to maximize surface area whereas iMac's shell is sleek/smooth which minimizes surface area.. also, heat sinks generally have fans or liquid in the mix to move the heat off the fins.

but i mostly say this because Apple doesn't place components on the shell like they would if it were a heat sink.. if the shell is a heat sink then they're definitely not utilizing it as such.. instead, they're heavily invested in the fans/airflow/component efficiency as a means to cool the imac.

(as far as i can gather)

 

[MH01]

I'm sure the designers and QA engineers will completely rethink their processes based on your gut feeling.

How's that rethinking process going with the current iMac which throttles under heat?

Maybe just maybe the current design is the issue here....nobody needs such a damn thin machine.... not even apple engineers can defy physics....

And packing even more high end components into a chassis that has proved to be a thermal failure....not genius analytical thinking, concluding this thing will have heat issues....again....as does the current line up

 

[Tech198]

Apple doesn't use metal just because it looks shiny.

 

[Wildkraut]

Hmmmm as i already said few months ago: A ARM coprocessor would rule, specially to simulate iOS apps in Xcode.

 

[NoNothing]

I can't foresee that. So I guess it's not sad.
[doublepost=1498192727][/doublepost]

You may be a "professional" in some sense. But in the Mac universe, "Pro" indicates "content creator". Which, it sounds like, you are not. And you use the word "develop" to mean something entirely different as well.

"Pro" only means content creator for some highly arrogant few in the Mac Universe.

 

[Derived]

It's sad when you already can foresee a product being recalled or having significant defects on their first shipment.

Sadder still is making baseless, illogical claims based on almost no information at all...
[doublepost=1498197672][/doublepost]

AND they still keep releasing compute devices with the word "Pro" on it with no ability to do native CUDA workloads. I think somebody needs to sit down with the guys putting together requirements for these products and review things like this and not removing the "esc" key. I saw the dev community embrace Apple as a nice UI experience with a Linux-y backend. This type of behavior will have people getting other hardware and going back to pure Linux.

All of a sudden no Nvidia GPU = can't possibly do pro level work? Did you even see the WWDC keynote? CUDA is not going to be the only game in town for GPU compute much longer....and not every pro workload uses GPU compute...hence why the Tube Mac Pro never took off the way they thought it would....let's use our heads here a bit...
[doublepost=1498199194][/doublepost]

Over the past 3 years, I have developed over $50mm worth of real estate.
Gave up my 2013 rMBP last year in favor of a iPad Pro.
Currently on pace to develop $100mm worth of real estate in 2017.

But hey, what do I know about being a 'professional'.

The arrogance/attitude of people who say XYZ doesn't work because it doesn't work for *them* is arrogant and comical.
Guess what, 99.9% of all 'professional' users do not need a computer which those arrogant 'pros' claim.
Its such a small market segment it is laughable.

Respectfully, the work you do on your iPad is not what Apple or many of us reference when we say "Pro" work...it's understood that it means work that requires large amounts of processing power, disk space, ram and GPU power. You use your iPad for what, office documents, emails, keep track of contacts, web browsing, maybe a few other things? None of those are considered "Pro" tasks, they've all been doable for many, many years on entry level hardware. So now that the iPad Pro is nearly as powerful as an entry level laptop, of course it takes over that role. I have an iPad Pro, I love it. I use it for many things. But there are many things that I also need my Mac Pro for, and I can promise you that more than .1% of all professional users need that sort of horsepower as well.

 

[0098386]

I am serious.

I have the current Mac Pro and I never use it anymore. It's gathering dust while my iPad Pro devices help me get all my important work done.

The future Steve Jobs spoke of has finally arrived.

Hmm. You must be smart enough to know that different people have different needs from a computer? I mean, yeah, I took a year out of coding and started working on the more artistic side of my work over the last 12mo. I haven't used my iMac much but my iPad Pro, Pencil, and BT keyboard combo have taken over work duties. However I'm going to have to get back to the iMac soon.

These are wonderful devices but the computers are also needed. I guess it's like photography - normal folk are happy with their telephones, but professionals need DSLR's and likely always will.

 

[firewood]

Yes, try using Davinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, XCode or CAD on an iPad Pro. The fact that you think an iPad Pro is a proper replacement for this iMac Pro speaks far more about you than the products.

Professionals used to do all of the above on PowerMac G5's. An iPad Pro blows a dual G5 out of the water in terms of raw performance.

 

[Sean4000]

Professionals used to do all of the above on PowerMac G5's. An iPad Pro blows a dual G5 out of the water in terms of raw performance.

Man I must be getting old. I remember doing similar tasks on SGI Octanes.

 

[8692574]

Professionals used to do all of the above on PowerMac G5's. An iPad Pro blows a dual G5 out of the water in terms of raw performance.

Are you serious? I mean it is not like back in the G5 age we had 4K or 8K video.. heck back then video was almost like watching an 8 bit videogame today .

Bluray and such were released around 2006 if I am not mistaken, that's 1080P tight there...11 years ago, that's when we had our first Mac Pro with Intel!

Yes the iPad Pro can do what a G5 did (and definetly is more powerful than that), but power alone is not important, a Ferrari sure has enought power to climb mountains, but power alone won't help you, you need a proper road.

iPad is an amazing product, but lacks lots of stuff before replacing a computer, and power is porbably the least important of them all.

 

[Sean4000]

If the iMac Pro came with nvidia quadros / or high end GTXs it would be a no-brainer. So much professional software out there not optimised for AMD. I probably will build an 18 core PC myself come winter.

That's exactly what I'll be doing this Fall. All of my new studio fx boxes will be thread ripper based with nvidia graphics.

Although if Apple wants to toss a bone to the professional market, I'd be tempted to test out this new iMac. We relegated our Macs to server render tasks back in 2012 and went with high end Windows 7 Pro workstations with adobe and avid software for AV.

 

[Ma2k5]

Please contact Apple's system and hardware design engineers and let them know about these issues you foresee, that they're not aware of, and set them straight! Apple Senior VP Dan Riccio should also be in the loop on this as well.

Despite the sarcasm, people seem to ignore just how many products, not just by Apple, come to market with various issues, which you would assume are "easy to QA".

 

[BruceEBonus]

They've been using the same design for the past 7 years. I have the iMac 27" which cost £1400 back then. Still copes more than happily with everything.
New iMac Pro. Old externals. New internals. Less ports. Less storage. Three times the price. But also three times the power. Probably.

£££s have been saved on R&D by doing it this way rather than start from scratch like they did with the current 'Can'. And these savings have been passed on to the new generation of Pro users. Possibly.

Ironically the Can has been canned and Apple have said "No Can do" and it's old iMac moulds have been dusted off and refitted with new bits and sold off as new. So far it's worked. Nobody noticed.

Have I ever had overheating problems? Nope. Solid. Reliable. But then after 7 years Id've thought any issues would've been sorted by now.

New Mac Pro overpriced? Yes. Feature-reduced? Definitely. Unreliable or flaky? Certainly not.

Like Harley Davidson s Apple products may be a tad retro and expensive but they've been going so long and refined (rather than redesigned) to the point that all the bits from the parts bin are almost interchangeable. So rest easy. Old is good, man!.

So for those berated by folks who comment "You paid what? For That?" Remind them of Tims new adage "Clunky Is Funky" And that "Classics Never Grow Old". Only the prices update. Beat That!