I'm wondering if Black Friday sales are better or if I should wait based on past patterns of changes in price?
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Will the price of iMac drop with the release of iMac Pro?
- Thread starter tochristina
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Also, just in general - thoughts on buying the 2017 iMac now versus waiting for the next refresh?
I sincerely hope you're wrong... 21" is IMHO way too small and the rest of the desktop lineup is either 3+ years tech at today's price or starts at $5k.
I doubt 27" iMac dies to make way for iMac Pro that most users do not need or can afford. iMac Pro is to give Apple a way to hang onto the Mac Pro customers who see current Mac Pro as dead end. Neither an iMac Pro nor a modular Mac Pro will kill off iMac 27" or 21".
Apple is not fond of decreasing prices. Instead, they introduce a new product at a premium and keep the existing ones at the same price point.
iPad Pro, 2016 MacBook Pro, and most recently iPhone X are all examples of this happening.
Look at the current iPhone lineup - three different generations and four different sizes. Simplification is clearly no longer a concern for Apple
ANSWER: NO!
They will merely shovel down the features of the iMac Pro into the iMac over time.
Apple might try really-really hard to get an iMac that is a mere $999 again, but it won't be much use to anyone aside from web surfers and text document makers. The price for their top-end iMac (sans memory upgrades and SSD drives) is very good for the power it offers, and next year's processors will make it a far better value.
It will take time to trickle down the iMac Pro, but in about 3 years you can start to expect the adjunct processor, speakers, mics, higher memory, etc. in lower-end iMacs.
Except they did reduce the price by cutting corners on the regular iPad while keeping those features on the pro lineup. I hope we won't see that with the iMac but it's possible.
Not unless Intel drastically change their processor range. There is a big gulf in price and target market between the "Core i" tech in the iMac range and the workstation-class Xeon/ECC RAM in the iMac Pro. The latter is as much about stability and reliability on long processor-intensive jobs as it is about raw speed.
Its also possible that the iMac pro might be a short-term stopgap until the promised new Mac Pro appears - I think there's a real question as to whether "pro" customers will want the sort of specs offered by the iMP in an all-in-one format (time will tell) and its possible that the iMP represents the last hurrah of Apple's "old" thinking about the pro market before what was obviously a mini-coup before last spring's Mac Pro announcement.
What might make sense, though, is for the next iMac re-design to shrink the bezels & the bulge by eliminating the option of having a 95W TDP CPU. The new 8th gen. 65W, 6-core i5 - which is reputably faster than the current 95W i7 anyway - just makes so much sense in a slim all-in-one system. That leaves a nice clear distinction between the "consumer" iMac and the "pro" iMac Pro with Xeon.
...we'll also have to wait and see where the new Mac Pro slots into the range (my guess would be that a Mac Pro + 5k display is not going to cost less than an iMac Pro).
And, of course, the new Mac Mini (codename: Godot) is almost certainly coming.
They are still a good buy. Big question will be if the refresh next year is a new design and how much of one and IF there is a performance hit to the iMac in favor of design. Remember they now have the iMac Pro for heavy users so I wouldn't put past Apple to release a very sleak iMac that has the internals of a Macbook Pro and leave the iMac Pro for users who want power which would further separate the 2 computers.
The Foxconn insider on Reddit from earlier this year claimed there was one for 2018 with "more glass and a dark black finish. It would also re-introduce the glowing Apple logo as a micro-LED panel."