Seeing that the iMac Pro is the newest and most expensive desktop computer Apple makes, obviously it will do tasks better than previous models.
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Photographer Austin Mann Reviews the iMac Pro
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I don't know what type of photography you do, but i can easily get over a 1000 images a day, with 300 or more individual keepers a day. And that's every day of the week to.
So those have to be selected and processed daily.
Now i use a base mac pro for that and it's more than enough to handle the load. Even my "old" 2012 macbook pro can handle it, so a full option iMac pro sounds like overkill. (But it does look good on your desktop of course.)
PS. I'm active in people and fashion photography.
You beat me to it.
The review was useless to me at that point. Saying that the latest machine is faster than my older one is moot. Saying it's faster than an obviously smaller, less powerful, older, and altogether different configuration is just as moot.
Linux is great for software dev. IDK about art. Linux + graphics drivers sounds like a "no thank you"
Anyway, the move for those laptops was always to delete the crappy Chrome OS and just install Ubuntu or whatever. Google seems to subsidize the hardware cost, so you get a steal.
Good post.
I asked a similar question about ROI when there was a thread comparing an BTO iMac Pro to an maxed out iMac.
Of course it was going to be faster, but my question was if it was worth the extra cost for the Pro over a maxed out iMac.
In the thread I am referencing, the actual price of the BTO iMac Pro was never listed, as it was posted before the Pros were for sale, but I looked it up after the launch, and it ended up being close to $10,000.
I am wondering if buying a new maxed out iMac, while not as fast, might be a better investment for most people, including some professionals. You could potentially buy a new iMac every couple years before coming close to the price of the iMac Pro, and how long before a new iMac would have the same power as the current iMac Pros.
Now, if the iMac Pro was upgradable, like the cheese grater Mac Pro, then all this would be different, as things could be upgraded over time.
I wish. You kinda need a fast computer for development in Xcode nowadays, and other software dev can add up to a lot depending on what you're doing, so the MacBook Pro doesn't quite cut it. Even if the Mac Pro were kept up to date and were still upgradable, it's always been overkill for anyone who isn't a creative pro, and the 2013 one took it a step further with workstation-grade GPUs.
I've got my old Mac Pro as my replacement for their missing mid-range tower, but man, what a ridiculous workaround!
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I don't buy that anyone is busy enough for 7 hours per YEAR to matter that much. But this machine must save a lot more than 7 hours per year. The estimate was way too conservative. There's almost a 10X speedup over the MBP for CPU-intensive tasks, so that's gonna be worth, and the MBP grinds to a halt if you run out of the 16GiB of RAM.
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So many of you are under the misunderstanding that the original article was a review of the iMac Pro, it was not (go ahead, click the link and read it), it was about his experiences photographing the antarctic. At no point did he try to justify his purchase of the iMac Pro, he had already done that.
"but for me, I was mostly interested in the speed difference between my field kit (maxed 2013 MacBook Pro 2.3GHz i7, 16GB RAM, SSD) and my studio kit (iMac Pro 3.0 GHz, 128GB RAM) when running through my standard digital workflow."
More of an observational nature than a review or justification. In fact, he states: "One thing I’ve come to realize is you can never get enough internal storage, so put your money there. Get the 4TB if you can. If you’ve maxed that out and still have budget, go for the RAM.", his recommended configuration is: "iMac Pro, 3.0 GHz 10-core w/ 4.5 Turbo Boost // 128GB RAM // 4TB SSD", and he goes on to state: "Upgrading workstations takes a bit of energy and time away from your craft, so when you do it, take it seriously and max it out"
In other words, he is successful enough that quibbling over how much to spend on a computer in the range $5,000-$11,000 is not important to him, he says go for the $11000, because you might need it sometime. So don't try to read into his article, more than he meant it.
Other takeaways:
"but for me, I was mostly interested in the speed difference between my field kit (maxed 2013 MacBook Pro 2.3GHz i7, 16GB RAM, SSD) and my studio kit (iMac Pro 3.0 GHz, 128GB RAM) when running through my standard digital workflow."
More of an observational nature than a review or justification. In fact, he states: "One thing I’ve come to realize is you can never get enough internal storage, so put your money there. Get the 4TB if you can. If you’ve maxed that out and still have budget, go for the RAM.", his recommended configuration is: "iMac Pro, 3.0 GHz 10-core w/ 4.5 Turbo Boost // 128GB RAM // 4TB SSD", and he goes on to state: "Upgrading workstations takes a bit of energy and time away from your craft, so when you do it, take it seriously and max it out"
In other words, he is successful enough that quibbling over how much to spend on a computer in the range $5,000-$11,000 is not important to him, he says go for the $11000, because you might need it sometime. So don't try to read into his article, more than he meant it.
Other takeaways:
- "With Adobe’s software not yet optimized for this platform, most of my software stack just isn’t leveraging what I’ve got". He probably could have gotten similar results on a machine for less money, it was not important to him.
- "Magic Mouse?". Is anyone still going with a mouse these days instead of a trackpad? Can't trust this guy at all!
That’s because the iMac Pro was a quick band-aid to shut up people who were complaining about the now 5 year old trash can and how Apple was neglecting the pro market. They had the chassis and Intel had the chips. All they had to do was make a thicker iMac and ship it in space grey to differentiate it from the pack.
All true points, but you can always upgrade either by leasing machines, or buying and selling them every 3 years or so. The residual values are pretty high, so the net cost to ownership is not that much. Also, if you need a machine like this for your work, your income is also pretty high, and the investment has tax benefits, your net out of pocket is not that great. Consider if you keep it for five years with no residual value (really unlikely), that is maybe $1500/year (or $125/month) after taxes. In other words, not a lot. Could you save money, sure, you always can.
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yah, that sounds right. Spoken by a true marketing professional!
Then you are not busy enough and you don't charge hundreds or more an hour for your work. If you haven't experienced it then I completely understand how you wouldn't be able to fathom it.
I agree with all this, except you can still do all this with the cheaper iMac.
I think there are pros that could really take advantage of the iMac Pro, especially when dealing with video. But, I question the iMac Pro's usefulness-to-price for many pros, like the ones doing photography when a max out 5K iMac could do the job almost as fast for a fraction of the price.
Except the iMac Pro is a completely re-engineered computer, but don’t let that get in the way of a good rant.
I have charged that much at times, but $700 a year isn't a big deal, and 7 hours is within the margin of error for time spent messing around with non-work stuff like MacRumors... or researching which iMac Pro to buy. The hardware costs, what, $5000 extra? It's also a silly way to gauge things because people work to deadlines that they either meet or not.
Exactly. I learned this lesson the hard way with 3D modeling software. 32GB i7 iMac with eGPU would have been a much better choice for 90% of what I do. And as rendering is now handled by GPU for all by Cinema now, it won't be long before that's 100% of what I do. iMac Pro is underclocked and overpriced.
Yes, of course the logic board and thermal management is new and uses up every mm inside the chassis, but not the design nor the concept. It still looks exactly the same as the iMac 5K except for the larger rear vents.
I wasn’t bashing it. I personally think it’s a fantastic machine and while the design is not new it looks as good as ever. In fact, if I truly needed this sort of power I would’ve ordered one already. By the time I would really need this sort of performance and amount of SSD storage, it will be mainstream except for the Xeon CPUs and ECC RAM of course. This is only necessary for workstations and servers that cannot afford much down time.
If these machines hold up well, I can see them being a great alternative to a brand new consumer/prosumer iMac once used prices fall to $2-3k. All it would need is more RAM and a brand new eGPU. There will always be people who prefer all in ones to a tower.
All you pro and semi-pro photographers on here: what photo software do you prefer to manage and backup your large photo collections?
rSync OSX (from memory) between external drives, Time Machine to NAS, Synology's DSM for inter-NAS copies.
[doublepost=1526596363][/doublepost]The thing with faster hardware yielding higher income is a great sales pitch, but not necessarily true. When I edit, especially with client representatives present, they pay for my time (hourly). If I have a utterly screaming machine, the work is done faster and they then pay for less time. This is good for the client, but not for me. And what about ROI? You can bet your last bucks they’re not gonna pay higher hourly rates for that speed. I’m not saying you should use slow hardware for better money-making, and I sure crave speed. And you absolutely don’t want the client to get cranky about too weak computation power. But it doesn’t make sense money wise to go for a maxed out machine if you run your own business, unless speed is a factor you can charge extra for. Now, I use a MPB 2013 for all my work, and when I soon swap it’ll be a significantly faster machine, but not the fastest. And the only reason I upgrade is for my own sake of not waiting annoyingly long. Lenses and certain camera gear, on the other hand, now that’s were I put the bigger money. Most importantly, run your own business healthily, not Apple’s or any other vendor.
Wow. Please tell me what your business name is so I can tell everyone I know to avoid your business.
All professionals that I know, be it contractors, photographers, designers, etc, ALL want to finish their jobs faster, so they can get more clients. Nobody ever think that if they finish their job faster, it's not good for them, NOBODY.
Please please please announce your business here, I really need to warn others to avoid you.
I’m afraid you’re not getting the poi
Ok, so you’re totally missing the point. If you think I’m talking about stalling your workflow, you’re completely lost, I’m talking about spending your dollars wisely. My clients know I’m extremely efficient, in field and in post, so that’s not an issue. When my Mac renders, I don’t charge for render time. I’ve got lots to do, so I take on another task meanwhile. You’ll want to make the most of your time. I work evenings, nights and holidays to get my work to my clients, and that’s not because the computer is slow. I just think you should see the calculus benefit not only by the seconds/days/weeks. If you have secured your living, of course, go ahead and splurge and have fun, I would if I could. But I can’t, because I have an array of other things to spend my money on, like probably everyone else. It’s a matter of choice. I see creatives at my age with the absolutely finest cameras, fastest computers and best of everything - but no kids, wife or even their own apartment. I’m not judging, they may have a terrific time, but it wouldn’t be my choice. Now, I’m not sure you get all this, but some others might. But I do wish you all the best for your business, and thinking through and balancing your investments probably can’t hurt. Even clients need to do this for themselves.
Yeah, way to backtrack by claiming others to be the one missing the point. Let's see what you said.
Clearly you have your priorities. But keep backtracking.
Also, please let me know your business so I can tell my friends and families to avoid you.
You’re right, shaving off an hour every other month on a clients bill do justify a $15.000 computer. Or two, for redundancy. If you have an issue with people trying to secure their living and ethics of running their business, you have bigger prospects taking on the giants in computer hardware and software that truly rip you off. Bottom line, run a healthy business, both ethically and economically, and be good to other people. Have a good one!