MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)

[CWallace]

You are obviously not concerned with a Mac Pro that’s for sure.

No I am not. But that does not mean I want Apple to just drop the line because I understand that it is important for some users. But I also do not believe that the Mac Pro is the most-important thing Apple can make and the future of macOS and the Mac depends on it (as some certainly have implied, if not outright stated).

Without having used or needing the Mac Pro you claim you have educated yourself as regards to its historic viability. Should have guessed when you said dual socket systems do not run macOS ‘like ever’.

The pre-2013 Mac Pros used dual sockets because that was the only way to get more than four cores of performance on the mainstream Intel platforms. Today the W-Series scales to 18 cores and Purley goes to 28.

Even the Mac Pro die-hards in this thread are in general agreement that this next Mac Pro will use the same W-series Xeons as the iMac Pro in a single socket configuration. Hell, I was one of the folks originally noting Apple might use Purley on both the iMac Pro (in a single socket) and the Mac Pro (in dual sockets), but plenty of folks shot me (and others) down on that one and then eventually the Xeon W was first announced and then iMac Pro configurations with it were leaked.
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This is something that I think is important. The Mac Pro was never meant to sit on every desk in every office-but there is a demand for such power. Even if they aren’t selling at MacBook Pro and iMac volumes there is still a need for that kind of power (and more power as so much of technology advances).

I agree and have said as much time and again.

The Mac Pro, although a sliver of the overall pie of Mac sales still has a place to be updated regularly for those who need/want a powerful competitive Mac. It certainly doesn’t need to be earth shattering in the mm’s that it shaved off or that it’s now in a glossy/polished space gray finish.

Also agreed. I am now of the opinion that the 2013 Mac Pro took the form it did to try and "inspire" people to buy it for its looks as much as its specs. Apple is often about "cool" and the 2013 Mac Pro was very "cool" even if it was not nearly as "practical".

Leaving it on the vine or neglected like the step-child sends a message-and I think you can find in every industry those who can get along with the maxed iMac or MacBook Pro, but then there are those who really want beasts to churn out projects quickly. It is also worth noting that they are reliant on third party parts (intel, AMD, etc.) but 4 years, no exit plan, thermal corner... someone forgot something along the way. Whether it’s video editing, developers, graphics, design, CAD and BIM, among all the others who desire one, a nice beast with modern tech would be greatly appreciated (and even more of it was updated at a minimum of every 3 years, but would certainly like closer to 18/24 month revision cycle).

I think a major part of this is Apple's corporate structure as a primarily functional organization as opposed to a divisional one. This means that Apple's leadership has their hands in all the pies all the time and the sheer important of iOS to the company's current and future fortunes means they do not dedicate the focus to other things. And when they do focus on other things, they likely focus on the successful parts (so iMac and MacBook Pro for Mac) while (continuing) to ignore the less-successful models (Mac Pro and Mac Mini) which only makes them less successful due to lack of attention (updates).

 

[beaker7]

Even the Mac Pro die-hards in this thread are in general agreement that this next Mac Pro will use the same W-series Xeons as the iMac Pro

No they aren't.

I buy about $500K a year worth of workstations and servers for my studio. We stopped buying Mac Pros when they failed to upgrade to Sandy Bridge and left the high end market to Dell, HP, and Boxx. We'd switch back to OSX and Mac Pros if they come out with something competitive and show some semblence of commitment to the market again. We prefer OSX but are not willing to pay a huge performance penalty in order to run it on low to mid-end hardware.

Apple can make a single socket W series Mac Pro if they want, but it needs to be the entry level model. If they want to regain any semblance of relevance for the high end user they need to do something that can be at least reasonably competitive with the industry.

 

[CWallace]

I buy about $500K a year worth of workstations and servers for my studio. We stopped buying Mac Pros when they failed to upgrade to Sandy Bridge and left the high end market to Dell, HP, and Boxx. We'd switch back to OSX and Mac Pros if they come out with something competitive and show some semblence of commitment to the market again. We prefer OSX but are not willing to pay a huge performance penalty in order to run it on low to mid-end hardware.

Out of interest, what type of applications do you run that require multiple CPUs?

 

[goMac]

TB3 is public domain since Jan1, 3rd party TB3 headers should be available today, Mac's firmware is done by Apple.

You're repeating facts that change absolutely nothing about the technical issues.

I think switching to AMD is an project as old as when Jim Keller moved back to AMD in 2012 (maybe as part of an Apple-AMD agreement)

Apple hired a lot of people to work on the A series.

Apple's capital in AMD was key to develop Zen (reason to Keller's return to AMD) and the new Polaris/Vega GPU

AFIAK, this investment was focused on Polaris and Vega.

architecture both mandatory to break Intel's market domination

Apple has no interest in this.

They're known to saber rattle with different vendors and threaten to switch to drive better deals. That's one reason the PowerPC vendors were caught off guard with the Intel transition (Apple had been threatening switching to Intel for a while to get better prices.) Again, not impossible that they could be switching to AMD. But I'd be skeptical without a firm Apple source. Anyone outside the company could be getting played.

I'm not the only one listening, but I heard things about the 2013 Mac Pro and the 2017 spec bump before they happen, and I'm still hearing nothing about the new Mac Pro. Not that I'd run here if I did, but I've heard nothing so far.

So anything's possible, I'm just not convinced they have a completely finalized plan yet.

and not so against nVidia (at least dont shame as previously).

If anything, competing with Nvidia is a far bigger concern to Apple than anything else.

Apple isn't ignoring what Nvidia is doing. But they're looking for a way to have Nvidia performance without Nvidia right now.

 

[beaker7]

Out of interest, what type of applications do you run that require multiple CPUs?

Maxwell Render
Arnold Render
V-Ray Render
GPU Renderers: V-Ray, Redshift
Simulation with Houdini, Realflow, etc
.r3d transcoding, editing, etc
more memory (currently running 384)

 

[CWallace]

Thank you.

 

[fuchsdh]

No they aren't.

I buy about $500K a year worth of workstations and servers for my studio. We stopped buying Mac Pros when they failed to upgrade to Sandy Bridge and left the high end market to Dell, HP, and Boxx. We'd switch back to OSX and Mac Pros if they come out with something competitive and show some semblence of commitment to the market again. We prefer OSX but are not willing to pay a huge performance penalty in order to run it on low to mid-end hardware.

Apple can make a single socket W series Mac Pro if they want, but it needs to be the entry level model. If they want to regain any semblance of relevance for the high end user they need to do something that can be at least reasonably competitive with the industry.

Apple never made a high-end workstation, though.

 

[beaker7]

Apple never made a high-end workstation, though.

It’s true that the cheese grater, even at its peak, was not what I’d call the world’s best workstation. But you could get something reasonably competitive with regards to CPU performance and, occasionally, GPU performance. I’m talking in the ~2004-2010 peak years.

 

[shab]

It's not unviable, even if it is possibly unprofitable. If it was unviable, Apple would have not even bothered with the iMac Pro, much less a new Mac Pro. The 5K iMac would have been the top system and if you didn't like it, then suck eggs and run Windows or Linux on a Dell Precision or HP Z-series

That's not nice!

 

[singhs.apps]

Stop feeding the wonders more words to engage in clueless talks.

 

[barmann]

No I am not. But that does not mean I want Apple to just drop the line because I understand that it is important for some users. But I also do not believe that the Mac Pro is the most-important thing Apple can make and the future of macOS and the Mac depends on it (as some certainly have implied, if not outright stated).

So would you say that Apple could keep selling computers in the long run, if there was no MacPro ?
Personally, I'd give Macs 4-5 years if that would happen, assuming they still run OSX .

I think a major part of this is Apple's corporate structure as a primarily functional organization as opposed to a divisional one. This means that Apple's leadership has their hands in all the pies all the time and the sheer important of iOS to the company's current and future fortunes means they do not dedicate the focus to other things. And when they do focus on other things, they likely focus on the successful parts (so iMac and MacBook Pro for Mac) while (continuing) to ignore the less-successful models (Mac Pro and Mac Mini) which only makes them less successful due to lack of attention (updates).

It could be argued that iOS is a vanity project at this point - apart from data mining .
Contrary to OSX vs. Windows, I think a mobile device's OS is generally not a purchase deciding factor .

Eventually other manufacturers will hire decent design teams, and Apple will be in hot water .
Especially if their iPhone/Pad offering are not backed up by a more serious, professional-grade line of computers .
Apple needs such halo models more than any other manufacturer, due to OSX .

 

[-hh]

To quote Tim, "People Love the iMac" and that is the Mac desktop they have been buying. Since 2000, the Mac Pro has been a very small percentage of Mac desktop sales and since 2010, desktops have been a very small percentage of Mac sales in total.

The Intel cheese-grater was rarely updated under Steve and that was because it was selling so poorly in comparison to the iMac. Now the cylinder has not been upgraded under Tim because it is selling so poorly in comparison to the iMac (25,000 MP sales or less per quarter compared to almost 1,000,000 iMacs sold per quarter in 2017).

Be careful with one's causality suggestions.

Case in point - did the MP not get refreshed frequently because it was selling poorly ... or was it selling poorly because it wasn't getting refreshed frequently?

In the latter case, we can see that the sales for the MP & mini have to decline over time as they became increasingly stale and, since there's been no/few price cuts, progressively worse value. In this environment, with the iMac being the sole recipient of attention & love, it becomes obvious that it is destined to become the most popular desktop.

I do not believe so. Since Apple has moved their focus away from only offering high-end PCs (PowerMac and PowerBook), they have seen their sales quintuple (the peak under the Power era was 4 million units in 1995 compared to the current peak of over 20 million).

This also looks to be potentially misattributed, as much of the causality is more likely from the perspective of the rise in customer value for mobility and thus, growth in sales of laptops. Case in point, my recollection is that over 80% of Mac sales are laptops, so the remaining 20% of 20M means sales of ~4 million desktops.

FWIW, I don't recall what Apple's 1995 desktop-laptop split was, but for sake of illustration with easy math, let's say it was 75%-25%, which would mean 3M desktops & 1M laptops - - the ramifications are that in twenty years, desktop sales improved by only 33% (3M -> 4M), but laptops went from 1M to 16M.

 

[singhs.apps]

For those who are wondering where CG technology is moving forward, and why compute performance is once again at a cusp where it is poised for gigantic leap ( and why there is a use case for a powerful Mac Pro ) watch this , esp the first half :

 

[H2SO4]

No they aren't.

I buy about $500K a year worth of workstations and servers for my studio. We stopped buying Mac Pros when they failed to upgrade to Sandy Bridge and left the high end market to Dell, HP, and Boxx. We'd switch back to OSX and Mac Pros if they come out with something competitive and show some semblence of commitment to the market again. We prefer OSX but are not willing to pay a huge performance penalty in order to run it on low to mid-end hardware.

Apple can make a single socket W series Mac Pro if they want, but it needs to be the entry level model. If they want to regain any semblance of relevance for the high end user they need to do something that can be at least reasonably competitive with the industry.

That's a LOT of workstations. A LOT.
Do Apple know why they stopped getting your significant business? I ask as if the big players gave feedback. Maybe they'd listen.
I have little need for a workstation these days, probably never did. Why do/did I have one? Well because I was fortunate enough to be able to afford one and want to be able to run Handbrake, EyeTV, Parallels, Microsoft Office, a browser and Mail, (amongst other things), at the same time with minimal slowdown, used to do a bit of gaming in Parallels too.

 

[fuchsdh]

It’s true that the cheese grater, even at its peak, was not what I’d call the world’s best workstation. But you could get something reasonably competitive with regards to CPU performance and, occasionally, GPU performance. I’m talking in the ~2004-2010 peak years.

Well, here's the problem. There is no "best" workstation. But my point is Apple was never targeting the max number of cores or having 12 DIMM slots or 8 hard drive bays or 6 PCIe slots and two PCI slots. The Mac Pro was always a midrange workstation. So the idea that they would ship a Mac Pro that uses midrange workstation parts (the W series) rather than dual Gold Xeons doesn't seem so remote to me—it's Intel who has forced a sharper differentiation in their line, not Apple.

The people who are asking for a massive honking tower like Aiden are as deluded as all the people who think Apple will make an xMac—they haven't made one ever, why would they now?

The only argument to either camp is since they now have the iMac Pro fulfilling the powerful appliance workstation role, the Mac Pro is free to be ___ instead, but even if you have a return to the cheese grater mindset in an upgradable machine with more RAM slots, PCIe slots, and more internal expansion, it's only going to be a jack of all trades outside of its role like its predecessor, and Apple isn't going to make 8 workstation SKUs to cover the gamut.*

*I guess the HP Z2xx/4xx/6xx/8xx series are dead and they've gone to the Z4/Z6/Z8 since the former don't have the newest processors, but it's kind of weird HP's site highlights the former and not the latter.

 

[filmak]

they haven't made one ever, why would they now?

Because they haven't made one ever.

Just joking...

 

[beaker7]

Well, here's the problem. There is no "best" workstation. But my point is Apple was never targeting the max number of cores or having 12 DIMM slots or 8 hard drive bays or 6 PCIe slots and two PCI slots. The Mac Pro was always a midrange workstation. So the idea that they would ship a Mac Pro that uses midrange workstation parts (the W series) rather than dual Gold Xeons doesn't seem so remote to me—it's Intel who has forced a sharper differentiation in their line, not Apple.

The people who are asking for a massive honking tower like Aiden are as deluded as all the people who think Apple will make an xMac—they haven't made one ever, why would they now?

The only argument to either camp is since they now have the iMac Pro fulfilling the powerful appliance workstation role, the Mac Pro is free to be ___ instead, but even if you have a return to the cheese grater mindset in an upgradable machine with more RAM slots, PCIe slots, and more internal expansion, it's only going to be a jack of all trades outside of its role like its predecessor, and Apple isn't going to make 8 workstation SKUs to cover the gamut.*

*I guess the HP Z2xx/4xx/6xx/8xx series are dead and they've gone to the Z4/Z6/Z8 since the former don't have the newest processors, but it's kind of weird HP's site highlights the former and not the latter.

The Xeon SP Silver and Gold line is the midrange line. W series are entry. Platinum series are the high end.

Intel has indeed muddied the waters with the SP line compared to previous.

I guess bottom line is that what the Mac Pro config looks like will tell us a lot about whether or not Apple is serious about the pro market again, or if their mea cupla over the nMP was just ********.

 

[fuchsdh]

The Xeon SP Silver and Gold line is the midrange line. W series are entry. Platinum series are the high end.

Intel has indeed muddied the waters with the SP line compared to previous.

I guess bottom line is that what the Mac Pro config looks like will tell us a lot about whether or not Apple is serious about the pro market again, or if their mea cupla over the nMP was just ********.

The problem is the silvers aren't a great option. Unless you are a very select realm of "cores above all else" user, all of them are low 2.x GHz chips that can't turbo above 3GHz. They're less useful than -W chips for I would wager many workloads. Apple could offer something like 4,6,10c single socket -W configs and then dual socket 12, 20, 24c etc. options using Silver or Gold processors, but that'd be two different sockets, and they've shown as with the Mac mini that they're loathe to add that much complexity to a low-volume product.

 

[CWallace]

So would you say that Apple could keep selling computers in the long run, if there was no MacPro?

Yes.

Personally, I'd give Macs 4-5 years if that would happen, assuming they still run OSX.

Well we are now four years on from the launch of the last Mac Pro - a machine generally considered by this forum to be a disaster - and Mac sales continue to grow, so I do not believe a competitive (with contemporary PC OEMs) Mac Pro is critical to the long-term success of the Mac. That being said, I do believe a competitive Mac Pro is important to the Mac line and I am pleased Apple looks to be re-commiting themselves to offering one (along with the iMac Pro).

It could be argued that iOS is a vanity project at this point - apart from data mining.

iOS makes Apple. It can also break Apple.

Contrary to OSX vs. Windows, I think a mobile device's OS is generally not a purchase deciding factor.

iOS is one of the most-important reasons to buy an iPhone over an Android phone. As is pointed out ad nauseam by the media, the iPhone usually adopts hardware features after they have been introduced in Android manufacturers. IMO, Apple adopts said hardware much more effectively than Android manufacturers, but if you just want to compare specs, then iPhone and top-end Android phones generally match-up pretty well, so it is the OS that determines which way one goes when it is time to purchase.

Be careful with one's causality suggestions. Case in point - did the MP not get refreshed frequently because it was selling poorly ... or was it selling poorly because it wasn't getting refreshed frequently?

And I said as much later on at the end of Reply 7526:

I think a major part of this is Apple's corporate structure as a primarily functional organization as opposed to a divisional one. This means that Apple's leadership has their hands in all the pies all the time and the sheer important of iOS to the company's current and future fortunes means they do not dedicate the focus to other things. And when they do focus on other things, they likely focus on the successful parts (so iMac and MacBook Pro for Mac) while (continuing) to ignore the less-successful models (Mac Pro and Mac Mini) which only makes them less successful due to lack of attention (updates).

This also looks to be potentially misattributed, as much of the causality is more likely from the perspective of the rise in customer value for mobility and thus, growth in sales of laptops. Case in point, my recollection is that over 80% of Mac sales are laptops, so the remaining 20% of 20M means sales of ~4 million desktops.

FWIW, I don't recall what Apple's 1995 desktop-laptop split was, but for sake of illustration with easy math, let's say it was 75%-25%, which would mean 3M desktops & 1M laptops - - the ramifications are that in twenty years, desktop sales improved by only 33% (3M -> 4M), but laptops went from 1M to 16M.

Yes, laptops now make up 80% of Apple Mac sales, but my comment was related to Mac sales in total. As Apple has offered "cheaper" models (the iBook, the original MacBook, the iMac) they were able to significantly grow their shipments because more people could afford (or justify affording) a Mac then when the primary models were powerful towers and mobile units. Of course, the switch to Intel also played a major role as it made it possible to easily run Windows and I am sure that helped drive initial sales as people could use BootCamp or VMs to run Windows-only software as they became adapted to macOS and macOS applications (it was an influencer in my moving from Windows PCs to the Mac in 2007).

Desktop sales roughly split with Mobile sales in 2005 and 1H 2006 (slightly favoring desktops), but by 2H 2006 the shift had firmly moved to laptops and has only grown from then.

 

[Biped]

The problem is the silvers aren't a great option. Unless you are a very select realm of "cores above all else" user, all of them are low 2.x GHz chips that can't turbo above 3GHz. They're less useful than -W chips for I would wager many workloads. Apple could offer something like 4,6,10c single socket -W configs and then dual socket 12, 20, 24c etc. options using Silver or Gold processors, but that'd be two different sockets, and they've shown as with the Mac mini that they're loathe to add that much complexity to a low-volume product.

I don't see the W as a great option, compared to the i9 ?! The ECC memory is nice, but at double if not triple the price ? How many iMacPro owners are going to be running something where not having ECC is an issue, and thermal core throttling isn't ? I doubt most iMacPro owners can spell 'ECC' let alone elaborate on why they need it.

To make fun of someone that suggested that xmac/cheesegraters were only appealing to gamers, I put forth that iMacs ( especially pro ) are only appealing to HD midget porn aficionados who want that action in 5k. No need for ECC there, sorry. ( Edited for spelling !!! )

But it does reinforce the re-use notion for macPro, imho.

 

[CWallace]

I don't see the W as a great option, compared to the i9 ?! The ECC memory is nice, but at double if not triple the price ? How many iMacPro owners are going to be running something where not having ECC is an issue, and thermal core throttling isn't ? I doubt most iMacPro owners can spell 'ECC' let alone elaborate on why they need it.

ECC is just the price of entry for a workstation / server. I would expect all Intel Xeon and AMD Epyc system boards use ECC (I admittedly only did a quick look and the ones I saw all had ECC).

 

[Derived]

I don't see the W as a great option, compared to the i9 ?! The ECC memory is nice, but at double if not triple the price ? How many iMacPro owners are going to be running something where not having ECC is an issue, and thermal core throttling isn't ? I doubt most iMacPro owners can spell 'ECC' let alone elaborate on why they need it.

To make fun of someone that suggested that xmac/cheesegraters were only appealing to gamers, I put forth that iMacs ( especially pro ) are only appealing to HD midget porn aficionados who want that action in 5k. No need for EEC there, sorry.

But it does reinforce the re-use notion for macPro, imho.

This is a ridiculous comment, again, it seems many in this forum have strong & extremely hurt feelings re: the iMac Pro and it makes no sense.


In a general sense, I remain confused as to why anyone thinks Apple coudln’t *possibly* make a few different SKUs for a brand new, flagship, “we’re back, baby” statement workstation. You really think they won’t do that if people are clamoring for it? As someone who uses a Mac Pro for entirely non-professional work currently, you’re right, I don’t need dual sockets, an 18 core W would give me 50% more cores than my current 5,1 and would give me a massive increase in performance. But I’m not a pro. There seems to be a lot of strongly-worded input here from people who barely need a Mac Pro, or only need perhaps a mid-level or entry-level Mac Pro, insisting that it’s physically impossible in this universe for Apple to even consider a dual-socket or non-W series Mac Pro. I think that’s nonsensical...if they really want to tap back into the markets that they’ve slowly lost over the last 5-7 years, they can’t just churn out an iMac Pro in a box w/o a screen, and I think they know that. One would hope, at least. The cost to Apple certainly isn’t an issue.

I also remain confused by those who seem to only be able to frame a new Mac Pro in the image of their own workflow. That’s a silly thing to do. There’s nothing wrong with not needing some massive 36c, 512 gb 4 GPU monster for your side business shooting wedding photos. God knows I don’t even use my 5,1 to its full potential. Everyone has different needs, and that’s the point of such a system. It’s not a one-size-fits-all box, by definition. It scales according to workflow, demand for CPU, GPU horsepower, storage, etc. And the ceiling needs to be high for it to be a success. Simple as that. They have the resources necessary to blow the HP Z series out of the water, and I hope they do that.

 

[Biped]

This is a ridiculous comment, again, it seems many in this forum have strong & extremely hurt feelings re: the iMac Pro and it makes no sense..

I ask this, because, after a cursory look ( read : quick and not in depth ) the only difference between i9 and XeonW is the inclusion of ECC memory support. Per lineup it seems there is parity other than this feature. Oh and the price is twice to three times as much.

There may be differences in instruction sets ? In terms of supporting chipsets ? I could see this if Apple had planned for a while to reuse the resources spent developing a W based iMacPro for other models, potentially macPro, or if it was purely for marketing to create more differentiation between the iMac for differentiation sake, or lack of i9 availability/release during the development cycle. ( I missed a good chunk of discussion in 302 pages, maybe it's been covered ).

I'm not attacking your vanity, so chill out man.

 

[Derived]

I ask this, because, after a cursory look ( read : quick and not in depth ) the only difference between i9 and XeonW is the inclusion of ECC memory support. Per lineup it seems there is parity other than this feature. Oh and the price is twice to three times as much.

There may be differences in instruction sets ? In terms of supporting chipsets ? I could see this if Apple had planned for a while to reuse the resources spent developing a W based iMacPro for other models, potentially macPro, or if it was purely for marketing to create more differentiation between the iMac for differentiation sake, or lack of i9 availability/release during the development cycle. ( I missed a good chunk of discussion in 302 pages, maybe it's been covered ).

I'm not attacking your vanity, so chill out man.

My point was more that you seemed to imply that iMac Pro users were basically incapable of doing “real” work because of course if they were they wouldn’t be using an iMac Pro. This is exactly the type of attitude that a company building computers can’t afford to make. Xenon W gives you ECC, more cache, and of course has the higher core count ceiling. Is it absolutely necessary for everyone? No, but given that you can’t even buy the parts used to build an iMac Pro for the same cost as ordering one from Apple, I don’t think the cost is a big deal for what you get. If you need lots of cores, lots of cooling, lots of RAM (and of course ECC is nice to have, at least) and a powerful GPU, the iMac Pro is a nice choice. Certainly a step up from a loaded standard 27” iMac.

Again, it’s not meant to replace all workstations. And that’s part of why I believe, by the way, that the next Mac Pro will absolutely be more than an iMac Pro minus the screen, they could’ve had that released already anyway if that was the case. It’s simply a mid-level machine designed for peopel who need the power and like the convenience. I’m sure it will sell as well as they expect, and as always, I’m sure many people who don’t *need* one will buy it...but that happens all the time, with everything, and always will. That’s not a negative for the product, when that happpens. Many people buy Mac Pros without an explicit need for them.

 

[Biped]

My point was more that you seemed to imply that iMac Pro users were basically incapable of doing “real” work because of course if they were they wouldn’t be using an iMac Pro. This is exactly the type of attitude that a company building computers can’t afford to make. Xenon W gives you ECC, more cache, and of course has the higher core count ceiling. Is it absolutely necessary for everyone? No, but given that you can’t even buy the parts used to build an iMac Pro for the same cost as ordering one from Apple, I don’t think the cost is a big deal for what you get. If you need lots of cores, lots of cooling, lots of RAM (and of course ECC is nice to have, at least) and a powerful GPU, the iMac Pro is a nice choice. Certainly a step up from a loaded standard 27” iMac.

Again, it’s not meant to replace all workstations. And that’s part of why I believe, by the way, that the next Mac Pro will absolutely be more than an iMac Pro minus the screen, they could’ve had that released already anyway if that was the case. It’s simply a mid-level machine designed for peopel who need the power and like the convenience. I’m sure it will sell as well as they expect, and as always, I’m sure many people who don’t *need* one will buy it...but that happens all the time, with everything, and always will. That’s not a negative for the product, when that happpens. Many people buy Mac Pros without an explicit need for them.

My tort at iMacPro was meant as a satirical rebuttal to whomever dismissed the xMac/Cheesegrater tribe as 'gamers'.

I'm totally indifferent to iMacPro. You want it ? Good, buy it. Ideologically I'm all for choices. It just seems to me that an i9 would have been a better fit.

According to my cursory look, both the i9 and the W have same max core ceiling at 18.

Ok digging into the lineups more, looking at the 14core iterations between i9 and the W :

The i9 core has more cache, higher base clock, and supports Turbo Boost 3... whereas the W supports Turbo Boost 2 ( read more thermal throttling on intensive single threaded applications ( aka one of the arguments for dual processors ? ) )

I would think at that point in the lineup, the i9 might even be preferable.

I'm not going to dig further, because there are far more nerdy people who could point out the technical advantages and disadvantages ( that is really what I want to know ), and some of the differences I can spot according the spec sheets might very well be red herrings. Not whether or not you get butthurt because I laughingly asked the question if any iMacPro user could explain why they need ECC ( to which no answer was provided still ... odd that ).