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Apple's lineup now ranges from being able to have 128 GB of hard-drive on the low end to being able to have 256 GB on the high end.

I thought hard drives were supposed to always be so much larger than RAM that you'd never need to actually specify which one you were talking about when you were talking about a spec measured in bytes...
It was once when your hard drive was also your primary data location (as opposed to app location) and you only backed up a selection of your stuff (if at all). Nowadays, it should really be just for storing the stuff that you're currently actively working on.

Your primary long term data storage should be a NAS drive or similar (plus another off site storage, either via a commercial provider or an (encrypted, access protected) NAS drive at a friend or relatives' house that you can access over the internet. Plus - independently of that - you should have some kind of backup plan that you can recover from when your house is broken into and all the tech stuff in it gets stolen/smashed.

So yes, you do need lots of hard disk space; but no, it doesn't need to be inside your computer.
 
imho that's an insanely high price for a product that only stays current a few years.

the main issue for me is that it's an all-in-one. i've owned a top of the line imac before, and decided against buying a new one unless absolutely necessary, because repair costs were so high after the warranty ran out. add to that the poor cooling, and i'd constantly have a noisy system or image persistence whenever the cpu was under heavy load.

having the computer case and monitor separate is the best way to go in my opinion.
 
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and btw, I am liking the fact that Apple is rolling out upgrades like this. I guess I should be amused that people who complain that apple hasn't updated now just find new things to complain about. nothing is every going to be perfect. I like knowing what my options are.

I agree
 
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It was once when your hard drive was also your primary data location (as opposed to app location) and you only backed up a selection of your stuff (if at all). Nowadays, it should really be just for storing the stuff that you're currently actively working on.

Your primary long term data storage should be a NAS drive or similar (plus another off site storage, either via a commercial provider or an (encrypted, access protected) NAS drive at a friend or relatives' house that you can access over the internet. Plus - independently of that - you should have some kind of backup plan that you can recover from when your house is broken into and all the tech stuff in it gets stolen/smashed.

So yes, you do need lots of hard disk space; but no, it doesn't need to be inside your computer.

I guess that's true. I ended up buying a 128 GB 6+ because my 64 GB 4S had 40 GB used - I figured it was inevitable that I'd use more space of the 6+ so just future-proofed by getting 128 GB.

The reality is I only 25 GB or so on the 6+ though. Spotify means I only have a few hundred songs instead of tens of thousands on my harddrive. Pictures and videos are mostly stored on a variety of websites instead of locally on my phone.
 
Any chance that Vega 64X is a radeon VII? I want support for it for an eGPU.

Given that the VII only has 60 CUs in it ....... so no ( not 64 but not as low as 56 either). Unless the marketing label is really whacky, there is substantive mismatch on core count. VII is faster than a 64 in most tasks but that is mostly because it is clocked faster and have more memory and/or bandwidth ( which doesn't doesn't show up in 16GB but it is 4 HBM stacks instead of 2 "extra tall" ones. so the bandwidth would be higher. ).

The X more likely means, "not underclocked as much" from baseline desktop levels. ( Apple may have decided they had more thermal headroom that they could leverage without too many problems. ... will wait and see on that. )

Most likely this is a spec bump with the same basic logic board as had before just with some activity sprinkled on top to show they haven't gone "Rip Van Winkle" on the product. "We are still here".

P.S. it is also unlikley to be a MI60 pushed into the Mac space. The Vega64 and Vega64X options only differ by $150. That's highly likely the "same thing, clocked different" kind of price difference. ( Like a jump from a 3.0GHz 4 core CPU to a 3.3GHz 4 core CPU in another Mac product ).
 
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Meh, who cares. To me, iMac Pro is utterly pointless. It's moronic to have a "pro" machine that isn't user upgradeable. I need my Mac Pro!
 
People ask for updated Macs and when they get them they complain about the prices? How long do you know Apple? Macs were never cheap in the first place.
An "off the shelf" Mac without all the upgrades used to be a very good games machine. Now you need all the RAM and processor upgrades just to get a machine that is acceptable (provide you'll accept a just about anything).

Back then, such a machine would make everyone jealous. These days, they just fall about laughing saying "You paid how much? And it only comes with a laptop graphics card?"
 
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Now let's have a look at what other companies charge for ECC memory upgrade

upload_2019-3-19_16-27-17.png


Turn's out Apple is not so greedy LOL
 
The memory upgrades don't cost that much, same with SSDs and CPUs. If they were each upgradeable (memory technically is but you obviously have to take apart the Pro model to do it, whereas the 27" non pro model you don't)
it would be a lot cheaper to do upgrades yourself. And to do them as time goes on instead of having to upgrade the whole computer.

You can purchase your own ECC DDR4 memory for less, though it is not inexpensive being ECC. But Apple isn't in the business of supplying and warranting memory at your cost. Rather, Apple sells memory upgrades at a decent profit. As it should.

Don't like Apple's policy? Simply purchase a computer with similar features, ports, performance, and 5K display from another company. Easy.
 
Because nothing screams "Pro" more than not being able to afford the RAM you want at purchase but being able to add it later at a cheaper price to get more life out of the system...

These are the gems that make me wanna come back to the MR forums. Sometimes it gets almost surreal :D
 
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It doesn't have soldered in memory - it's just difficult to open. But then a "pro" would know how to open a device wouldn't they...
Why would they? Does a pilot need to be able to change the engines of a plane?

By the way, I’d say the procedure is more than difficult:

 
the main issue for me is that it's an all-in-one. i've owned a top of the line imac before, and decided against buying a new one unless absolutely necessary, because repair costs were so high after the warranty ran out. add to that the poor cooling, and i'd constantly have a noisy system or image persistence whenever the cpu was under heavy load.

having the computer case and monitor separate is the best way to go in my opinion.

you said it - it's an all-in-one, that is the main issue. an all-in-one is not meant to be a top-of-the-line product and should never cost so much...
 
Kinda foolish to release it now, should've waited for the release of Navi GPUs, especially since the GPU isn't upgradable in that one.


Typical of Apple, they always had top specs except GPU in their machines.
 
There's nothing about a "pro" device that suggests it ought to be user-upgradable.

Nearly forty years of assorted professional uses says otherwise. Pro devices are tools and investments. They are meant to pay for themselves, which can require years even with depreciation. Historically, owners want the ability to modify and maintain their wares to accommodate software demands, aging drives, and evolving accessories.
 
I am not sure if somebody already wrote that, but the SSD upgrades on the Macbook Pro are cheaper now as well!
 
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The 64X has 16GB of VRAM and is, apparently, built on AMD's new 7nm process. It's slightly faster than the standard Vega 64 (about 4%) which puts it on a par with the GTX 1080.

The Vega64 option has 16GB of RAM also.

16GB versions of Vega64 has existed for as long as the iMac Pro has

The is the "cheaper" WX8200 introduction. The WX9100 had been introducted long before that.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13210/amd-announces-radeon-pro-wx-8200

A Pro Vega64 has been out about as long as the iMac Pro has been available in decent production numbers.
"... and an AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64 graphics processor with 16GB of HBM2 memory. ..."
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/12/14/imac-pro-now-available-to-order/ [ Decemeber 2017 ]


the iMac Pro shipped initially with clocked down (under clocked0 CPUs and GPUs to better fit the case. This probably just backs off a that a bit to be a performance gap that Apple will charge $150 for. Still inside the same range and the mainstream desktop Vega64 cards can do with a wider thermal envelope.




This is probably not the 7nm version. AMD probably wouldn't be selling at just $150 more than the 14nm version. They don't even sell the 64 CU version at all in the mainstream segment (as the Radeon VII. 60 CUs only). Extremely unlikely that the iMac Pro is a "much cheaper backdoor" into a Instinct MI60.
 
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For less? Show me where. I can't find prices below $10k for 256 GB of ECC RAM

You can find it for 4000 euros in Europe...but compare amazon price with vendor prices (Apple, dell, lenovo, hp etcc) it's silly...we know that retailers + discount will offer better prices.
 
An "off the shelf" Mac without all the upgrades used to be a very good games machine. Now you need all the RAM and processor upgrades just to get a machine that is acceptable (provide you'll accept a just about anything).

Back then, such a machine would make everyone jealous. These days, they just fall about laughing saying "You paid how much? And it only comes with a laptop graphics card?"
These machines are supposed to make things done they're not playing fields. Macs never have had the top graphics cards even in the old Mac Pro towers, when compared to custom built machines.
 
It doesn't have soldered in memory - it's just difficult to open. But then a "pro" would know how to open a device wouldn't they...

Yes, but then again: A pro wouldn't want to waste precious hours of their time opening up an iMac voiding warranty on a machine that has a cost of $5,000+ USD just to put more RAM in it.
Believe it or not, a lot of software/applications (including Autodesk's) are not optimized to use the latest and greatest hardware specs. Take Revit as an example. It runs better on 8-core processors than on 18+ core processors. The same for RAM and graphic cards. So, it's nice to have a computer that has a motherboard that can take a broad selection of multicore processors and hardware so you can keep up with software optimizations, and that won't need a complete dismantling of your workstation voiding warranties and the like...
 
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