I’m disappointed they chose “pretty” over a “functional” metal box like the old Mac Pros. They ran into thermal issues with the fancy design of the trash can, despite their promises of cutting edge thermal design. These iMac Pros are probably going to be soldered-CPU, soldered-RAM beasts with low repairability.
It's a bit of a small victory that they support external GPUs, but I think they are missing the boat here.
There are plenty of nice looking PC cases out there these days. I'm hoping to build a Hackintosh into an NZXT Manta case [0] (the windowless, matte black one) so that I can have practical, flexible, pretty, and quiet
I think their real target market is no longer pros. The pros are vastly outnumbered by people with a lot a money that will buy the latest shiny thing Apple puts out. As a company strategy to make the most money, its smart. If you are a pro looking for a serious work computer, Macs are just not very compelling.
You are probably right but I think that's pretty shortsighted. I think one of the main reasons for the rise of the Macbooks was the fact that suddenly a lot of developers started using them. Once developers start moving away from Mac their ecosystem will hurt a lot.
Absolutely - and OSX is still the king of HiDPI compatibility, along with some other niceties. That's why I think a Hackintosh is the way to go - though it's a lot of work to build your own machine. If I had the skill and time I'd start selling compact PCs with hardware that just happened to be compatible with OSX. Might be a small market, but I think it's there.
A "Certified for Hackintosh" product line could sell pretty well for developers. Or being able to run a Hackintosh as VM in Linux. You probably would need a good lawyer though.
It is available earlier, and perhaps, with those "power" upgrades, it does the job for a large part of the audience. The iMac is a really great computer for all, who don't need to exchange components. Now with real workstation class power.
Historically, Apple has been verrrrrry anal about making their x-ray marketing images reflect the real design that is hiding inside their units...and I definitely saw RAM sticks in slots when they were showing off the fans. So maybe they have changed course just a little?
I'm watching this iMac announcement and .. hm, I still find it underwhelming. The top-spec'd iMac will be less powerful (when it comes to CPU) in Jan/2018 than my current desktop I bought in mid-2015. We'll see the actual pricing though.
I don't think that forcing high-perf components into a small desktop chassis makes a lot of sense, but it might me only me.
I think there a VERY small subset for users that need anything that the current line of iMac can't deliver. At my previous employer I had a 2012 iMac as a developer workstation. It would still be more than sufficient today. Even my 2011 MacBook Air would still be fine, if it wasn't for me wanting a better screen and more than 128GB of storage.
People buy Macs for the operating system, not the hardware. The hardware has been sufficient for at least five years in a row, for all but a very small subset of consumers.
I would agree with you that the Mac isn't a particular cost efficient way of getting high performance hardware, it's just that I don't think that matter any more. Windows is still a bastard operating system and Linux is not nearly as polished as MacOS. Personally I'm not sure that I'll necessarily get a Mac next time, but there's also not a whole lot of other options out there. Maybe I'll built an OpenBSD box, at least that OS is consistent.
I just can't believe they chose the 18-core 2018 Intel vaporware chip [1] over this year's 16-core AMD Threadripper. Very strange decision on Apple's part. Not to mention they could've sold the iMac Pro for like $1,000 less.
Yeah, probably the biggest reason. Maybe this will change when Thunderbolt will be royalty-free next year. AMD has the advantage of being the only company on this planet which can combine a high performance x86 CPU and high performance GPU.
I'm kinda hoping for Thunderbolt PCIe cards that aren't tied to a specific brand or board. Would be nice to just throw an x4 or x8 card into an existing system to get one or two TB3 ports for stuff like external storage.
18 core Xeon chips have been available for 3+ years. There is nothing particularly odd about Apple's choice -- AMD has not been a serious competitor in the workstation market for years, and even with their newest entrant are only nipping at the very bottom of the market.
macOS does not seem like an OS that has been optimized much at all in regards to the CPU.
Also, Apple dragged macOS from PPC to x86; switching x86 implementations is no big deal for the rest of the world, it surely should not be a challenge for Apple.
It is interesting that they have gone this direction, since Pros were clearly asking for something more akin to the cheese gater. The price for the entry-level model is also pretty bad.
It's also a shame that the Mac Mini seems to be dead (at least no updates in the keynote).
At least the MacBook and iMac line got nice bumps.
> It's also a shame that the Mac Mini seems to be dead (at least no updates in the keynote).
Yeah which is really too bad. I bet there's a larger market for a "Mac Mini Pro" with similar specs to this iMac, but without the integrated display (and hefty price premium Apple exerts).
I seriously don't understand how Apple supposedly have time to design an advanced cooling system for the iMac Pro yet can't come up with a bog-standard cheese grater case like the previous Mac Pro design...
This is Apple's answer to their negligence to the Pro market, and it's hugely disappointing.
The iMac was already supposed to be a Pro machine. And then they "New Coke"'d it by making it too thin and susceptible to overheating. Performance suffered and now they're compensating with this machine.
At $5000 the iMac Pro falls just short of a ~$2000 Hackintosh. It's still locked into the thin form factor that can't be upgraded and does not vent heat well enough. I'm sure this works for big companies like Disney where machines are replaced every few years. However as a developer, a Pro user, I've never felt more validated in my choice to switch away from Apple's hardware.
Flat aluminum is not a heatsink, you need surface to shed heat, which is why heatsinks generally have fins and the like. Flat aluminum sheds heat better than plastic but it's not very good at it.
> Flat aluminum sheds heat better than plastic but it's not very good at it.
That's why it is a 27" heatsink instead of a 2" one.
Most of the heat is going to be moved out by the dual fans anyway. The Aluminum will dissipate what it picks up from the moving air before it leaves the chassis by the side vents.
If it's an 8-core Xeon, it's gotta be an E5. So the CPU alone could run $2,000 (pricing for E5 2667 v4, this probably uses an equivalent Skylake Xeon which isn't out yet).
A lot (almost all?) of the people who are currently running hackintoshes for content creation. Since that's what the original post was comparing this to.
Not a lot of Xeon Hackintoshes out there. Typically just i7s.
I didn't downvote you.. but is Intel really dropping prices? I put a i7 7700k in my pc several months ago (days after Intel released it... before AMDs announcement IIRC), and it's the same price today as it was then.
Edit: the one processor version of this processor is less than a grand. So that changes the math. Apple is likely making a good amount on each mac pro sold. As they should. I want them to keep making prosumor hardware.
The founder of Jupiter broadcasting famous for his pro-linux family of podcasts continues to rave about the Apple platform and the performance of his 2016 macbook and final cut pro. That's saying something. I imagine it'd only get better while on a desktop system like the iMac.
One of the slides says 18 core Xeon, which is the equivalent of the newly announced core i9. But they're also saying ECC memory, so they are in server chip land.
Yes, I have Xeons in my WS. The reason why many people ended up buying Xeons for the desktop is core count -- i7 had 6, then 8 cores until recently, so a 10-18 core workstation could only be built with Xeons. The other difference is ECC, which most of the people don't necessarily want (let's not talk about whether they need it or not).
If a developer/pro/etc. need 18 cores, most of the time they'll be OK with a top-end i7 -- I think. Therefore it is fair to compare Xeons with i7s, they're not the same but yes, they have overlapping target audience when it comes to desktops.
(No 128 GB RAM but you're not getting that with a desktop i7 either. Oh and the new HEDT platform that also has "i7"s… not all chips will support quad channel RAM!)
for all we know at this point the new intel lines are rebranded xeons (plus a few consumer features), the hastily put together response to AMD seems to suggest this.
No, they are not. All extreme edition CPU's from Intel are cut down Xeons with deactivated features (like ECC support), and the need to buy hardware dongles to make RAID 5 and RAID 10 work.
EDIT: read the children posts. I mistakenly read "chip" instead of "line". Of course Xeons are a different line compared to Intels extreme line. The above about the extreme series CPU's being cut down Xeons is still true but in this context wrong and irrelevant.
It's a different part and it has different features. Not having ECC memory support is a big deal for some people, so it's misleading to suggest they're basically the same.
They bin things for a reason. If you're happy using a less expensive part with fewer features, great, you can save money. If you're making a top-tier "Pro" product you'll want to avoid cutting corners like that.
I don't understand your point. People are comparing prices. The process of binning chips is essentially "some of these are broken, but can be salvaged for other less taxing uses by running them slower or disabling features". You just can't compare the prices of the different lines. I just don't understand what you are trying or argue here or why :/.
What is misleading about that? I merely stated that they are the same chip at the start, but Intel deactivates features on the extreme series to segregate the market (nothing wrong with that).
Also see my edit of my original post where I mistakenly misread "line" as "chip" as stated.
> They bin things for a reason.
Yes, of course, so that the extreme series doesn't cut into the margins of the server market. If you could run RAID 5 and 10 without hardware dongles and ECC on the extreme series some smaller companies would probably prefer the i9 18 core for 2000$ to the 3000-4000$ 18 core Xeons. Again, this is fine, but Xeons and extreme series start of as the same chip. That's all I wanted to say on top of my correction of my original post.
For the previous Mac Pro, Intel sold Apple a processor that had some but not all Xeon features enabled, presumably for significantly less than the full Xeon price.
"Prediction is difficult, especially about the future".
But this is what Apple said:
"These next-gen Mac Pros and pro displays “will not ship this year”. (I hope that means “next year”, but all Apple said was “not this year”.) In the meantime, Apple is today releasing meager speed-bump updates to the existing Mac Pros. The $2999 model goes from 4 Xeon CPU cores to 6, and from dual AMD G300 GPUs to dual G500 GPUs. The $3999 model goes from 6 CPU cores to 8, and from dual D500 GPUs to dual D800 D700 GPUs. Nothing else is changing, including the ports. No USB-C, no Thunderbolt 3 (and so no support for the LG UltraFine 5K display).
But more good news, too:
Apple has “great” new iMacs in the pipeline, slated for release “this year”, including configurations specifically targeted at large segments of the pro market."
Then why release anything now? Who is this for, if pros will wait for the "real" one and consumers already have one? Will the "stopgap" model be around/supported in two years?
It's for people like me. I need something with more power than my current "classic" Mac Pro, preferably with fewer cables and more energy efficient. 2 SSD slots are sufficient for my internal storage needs, especially considering the Nbase-T Ethernet port. Vega-based graphics should be able to properly run the 5K display for the next few years.
I've swapped out a lot of parts in my old Mac Pro, but at this point, I'd rather have something that "just works". And if my needs change, the resale value of this thing will still be good.
But I'm just an iOS developer, doing some multimedia and web stuff as well. Maybe that's not a "pro" by today's definition. :)
The thing I can't wrap my head around though is that that display is a very real amount of the cost of that device and will almost certainly still be a great display in five years or even longer, while the "pro" computer is going to be horribly out of date. The idea of purchasing a monitor attached to a computer seems like throwing money into the trash.
Because they already had this in the pipe and it __was__ the replacement for the Mac Pro. But they realized that it wasn't going to cut it. So now it's the stop gap and not the new Mac Pro replacement.
It's a strange stop gap: something extremely overpriced that you can't upgrade later on. Not everyone can fully max out their machines from the start. If they replicate this release with the upcoming Mac Pro (which is likely), it'll be time for me to begin leaving the Apple ecosystem. Windows is far from ideal but with their unix shell and virtualization, it'll be 'good enough'.
Fried GPUs in the Macbook Pro line is a running gag at this point. Many iMac models have shown overheating issues as well. And I'm sure they were all supposed to have "sufficient" heat dissipation :)
I'd give Apple the benefit of the doubt here, but not with my own money, and with an AppleCare.
All "pro" means in Apple-marketing-speak is "deluxe" these days. You can clearly see it in the MBP where they have traded off features that professional users wanted, for thinness that noone in that market cares about. Make it 5mm thicker or even 10mm for 32 or 64G RAM and everyone would have been delighted.
"In addition to the new iMac Pro, Apple is working on a completely redesigned, next-generation Mac Pro architected for pro customers who need the highest-end, high-throughput system in a modular design, as well as a new high-end pro display."
> At $5000 the iMac Pro falls just short of a ~$2000 Hackintosh
A 5k Monitor alone costs around $800-1000 and does not compare in quality to Apple displays, 8 core xeon + motherboard are another 800$, it's already around $1600-1800 - and its not taking SSD and Video card and Ram into account...
This is the standard Apple argument, "You can't get things like this at all". "Well, what about competitors, X, Y and Z?" "Well, you can get things like this, but they might cost more."
You're the one that said "5k screens cost $800-$1000 and they're inferior".
The retort to that is not to say "Well, that monitor costs $1300".
It's like you're only looking to acknowledge cheaper and inferior competitors and stick your fingers in your ears when challenged.
This is the standard rebuttal to the standard Apple argument.
"Why not just build a machine out of individual parts X Y and Z for $nnn less than Apple's price"?
It completely ignores, at a minimum:
- Apple vertical integration
- All-in-one support/replacement
- The OS
Yes, you can technically build a machine with equivalent hardware specs for some $dollars less. The target market is probably not interested in doing so, and they wouldn't get OS X anyways without hacking, which is half of the freakin' point.
Someone editing 4K+ video on Final Cut professionally wants a machine that runs Final Cut (which eliminates non-Macs), has the hardware to meet that use case, and that they don't have to screw with or have randomly break with updates (which eliminates Hackintoshes). We all agree with this yes?
Has Mac hardware carried a premium over equivalent specced individual parts since forever? You know the answer. The target market for the computer does. not. care.
Can we please not relitigate tired Mac-vs-PC arguments that are old enough to drink? They've never been relevant or interesting.
You miss the point. The OP only pointed out cheaper competitors, pointed out crappy ones. Someone said "What about this?" and that was derided for being not cheap or crappy. The intellectually honest answer would be "It might be nice, but it doesn't have an Apple badge on the front".
Yeah, there are valid points here, but don't expect "competitors are cheaper and suck" and "well, sure, but that one costs as much/more" when someone points other alternatives out.
It's like cherry picking cheaper competitors. Similar things happened with the AirPods.
Announcement article here, you can people claiming that nothing else exists and that this is a first.
Like with things like "multi device pairing" (common as dirt, and even NFC tap-to-pair exists. Shared pairing database? That's cool, very true).
Even down to people arguing how "innovative" the charging case was. Others point out that these exist and have, for years. "Oh, well, that case is bigger/looks clunky/you can be sure that it doesn't work as well".
When people point out that -similar- exist, "oh, well, they cost most".
I was responding to "A 5k Monitor alone costs around $800-1000 and does not compare in quality to Apple displays"
In which my response was appropriate. The only difference from a monitor perspective is the Apple casing. We're not arguing specs of PC, OS, etc. but that the monitors do not compare to Apple.
> Someone editing 4K+ video on Final Cut professionally
As someone who works in this industry these individuals are becoming few and far between. Think it's time to stop pretending Apple is a major player in this area, they pushed and shoved FCP users right to the edge and many just made the jump to better supported software and high end hardware.
>This is Apple's answer to their negligence to the Pro market, and it's hugely disappointing.
Of course it is. It's always damned if they do, damned if they don't.
>The iMac was already supposed to be a Pro machine. And then they "New Coke"'d it by making it too thin and susceptible to overheating. Performance suffered and now they're compensating with this machine.
Actually it was never supposed to be a Pro machine, all the way back to the very star (Bondi blue / flower power personal machines, the ones with the flexible neck, etc.).
It's just that at some point it got so powerful, and the pro line was neglected, so it was used as a pro machine too (and was good enough for most use cases, e.g. graphic designers).
>The iMac was already supposed to be a Pro machine. And then they "New Coke"'d it by making it too thin and susceptible to overheating. Performance suffered and now they're compensating with this machine.
Performance never suffered with the iMac line. It's the most consistently updated line of computers Apple has. The Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, Mini and Air were neglected for years, but not the iMac.
And this is not a response to "the iMac's use as a pro suffered because of its thinness". It's a response to "we fucked up the Mac Pro and we're throwing a bone to the Pro market, until 2018 will bring a redesigned Mac Pro".
>At $5000 the iMac Pro falls just short of a ~$2000 Hackintosh.
Well, this is not a Hackintosh. This is the real thing. Even a sole 27" inch 5K screen like it has would take you back $2K in itself.
+1TB 960 Pro SSD : $600
+8 core Xeon E5 could go anywhere from $500 to $2000+ depending on clock rate and generation.
+ Pricing on Vega hasn't been announced yet, but the Apple keynote mentioned 11 Teraflops, which is competitive with a GTX 1080Ti. Say AMD undercuts that, and it's $700.
+ A X99 motherboard will run you around $300.
+ A 10G network card is another $200 at least.
+ 32GB of DDR4 2666 ECC is about $400.
A 5k panel off newegg(only one I see) is $2000, but I know you can at a minimum buy the LG one off apples site which is $1300.
That brings you up to $4000 as a low estimate(lower end E5, 16GB of RAM, low estimate on GPU).
You'll still need to throw in a power supply($150 at least), a case(Say $100), most likely cooling for the CPU and case fans(Another $100), mouse and keyboard(Say $100 for nice but not great).
That gets you up to at least $4,450, and it's unlikely you'll have 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports, a card for that likely won't be cheap either. So $5k for this, depending on Vega pricing, and what CPU is actually in there, sounds fairly reasonable.
That all said I don't need server hardware, and you probably also don't. $2k on a i7 7700K or i5 7600K, a GTX 1070 - GTX 1080TI, a 512 850 Evo, a 1440p panel, 16GB of non-ECC ram, is what feels like the price/performance sweet spot right now, and Apple isn't in that market. That doesn't mean though this product is overpriced.
A Dell Precision 7000 will set you back US$3000 at a configuration similar to the iMac Pro. Add a good 27" 5K display, PCI-based SSD and you are close to US$ 6000 with a GPU that's a generation behind.
Wait, but Dell Precision 7000 is a laptop? you can't compare with a desktop. I just built a good gaming PC that can be overclocked including a GTX 1080 for just $2300 (monitor excluded).
I'm sure with $4700 more it's possible to get something still better than this new imac pro.. yet with a good cooling system and upgradable at any time.
Sorry, the Precision 7000 is the "Fixed workstation".
You'll probably can get something with higher performance, but it'll probably also take up more space, generate more heat and make more noise. It'll also demand more time to select the components and assemble it. If you enjoy doing it, OK. If you don't, your time is more expensive than the difference.
I selected a Dell because I want a single phone number to call when something goes wrong.
You're right about that, I installed 6 fans on the computer case alone and it can be noisy at times, but I'm happy with what I'm getting and I can upgrade later.
This is for desktop, for laptops I might still go with apple however.
No it's not, in April they both talked about a modular Mac Pro which would ship "not this year" (the iMac Pro is slated to ship in December), and they did specifically refer to this iMac Pro:
> “great” new iMacs in the pipeline, slated for release “this year”, including configurations specifically targeted at large segments of the pro market.
How is this not another Trashcan Mac Pro? It is a beautiful, expensive device at launch but has no capability of being upgraded, expanded or experimented with. It looks to have same thermal conundrum as the trashcan needing to dissipate the heat of the screen - all while trapped in a consumer-level shell designed specifically for exterior looks at the cost of performance. Is it not just philosophically incorrect for the pro market?
And compared to the enthusiasm for their iOS here, the pro customer is clearly no longer of value to Apple.
The mac pro did not feature external GPU, just external storage. The only thing you won't be able to upgrade in this machine is the CPU. The RAM is not soldered on those high end iMacs, and disk and gpu can be external over TB3.
Thunderbolt promised there would be external GPUs, but IIRC there were licensing and corporate disputes that prevented such hardware from ever materializing (after the design and debut of the Mac Pro). But it definitely was the promise of such a compact machine: "external everything!"
Non-soldered RAM is a good start, but what about multiple ethernet ports, what about any standard scientific/medical/experimental PCI card, what about the new SSD/HDs that come out in 3 years? What about upgrading the CPU? What about upgrading the screen! Much less using Apple's "most powerful computer" headless?
External ethernet over TB3 is also a thing. Honestly, all these "what about" things are doable over TB3, with the exception of a CPU upgrade and Optane (I'm assuming TB3 doesn't quite give you that level of latency). So, as far as expandability I don't think it is that bad. The only question is whether you want a carefully designed machine like the iMac surrounded by a sea of dongles and enclosures.
OP's point was that the failing of the Trashcan Mac Pro was that it was non-modular design that user's couldn't upgrade and (apparently) Apple couldn't refresh.
Maybe there is the thermal envelope in this design to support a more frequent refresh rate, but this still doesn't address the fundamental "pro" need to be able to mix and match or upgrade core components like the display, RAM, GPU, and storage.
Imagine Cupertino had (nearly) finished designing this sleek machine, thought it was a wonderful answer to refresh their Mac Pro, then they get completely railed in January for failing to provide professionals a pro machine when they expected it. They're late, they know it, but no biggie - they'll introduce this pro machine this summer and everyone will love it.
The pros then proceed to articulate exactly what their grievances are, and the machine that is sitting under the black cloth in the back room looks nothing like what their most loyal users are hurting for. And if listened to closely, the machine that's mostly finished is actually an insult to their most valuable customers. What do you do in that case? Completely scrap the beautiful machine you've already made? Or eat (silent) crow and promise a completely new product that you start working on tomorrow, and tell the engineers who were working on their pet dream computer to quickly finish up - let it be introduced mid-keynote by a non-executive, go back and painfully re-etch a diminutive 'i' in on each of the just-printed 'Mac Pro' bezels - likely to never recoup their R&D costs on this 'lost' product.
That's a good point. I bet that's exactly what happened here. Because if Cook would have given this exact keynote, but had introduced this grey iMac as their 'next new thing' that was replacing the Mac Pro, he'd have been booed off his own stage during Apple's most sacred moment. Apple had enough sense to avoid that moment. They have enough cash to produce an entire (temporary) product line that loses money. They don't have enough cash to lose their most die-hard and influential customers en masse and hear a crowd of 'boos' at the height of their hallowed keynote.
"AMD will be delivery HIP version of Caffe, Tensorflow, Torch7, MxNet, Theano, CNTK, Chainer, all supporting our new MIOpen – our new Deep Learning solver."
Gonna leave this here from the official press release as it seems quite a few people have missed this point:
"In addition to the new iMac Pro, Apple is working on a completely redesigned, next-generation Mac Pro architected for pro customers who need the highest-end, high-throughput system in a modular design, as well as a new high-end pro display."
That is just confusing. There will be a modular Mac Pro that is totally different from this iMac Pro? That leaves me to wonder who exactly this iMac Pro is targeted at.
I'm sure there are still professionals who would prefer pre-packaged solutions. Sure, many prefer being able to continually upgrade and add to their setups as well.
In that the iMac displays are some of the best in the industry in a very competitive price (competitive displays cost nearly the same for the display alone).
The biggest problem is that the effective lifespan of a good display is much longer than a high performance computer. Even ignoring the compromises made to the computer to allow for the two to be merged, you are simply wasting money upgrading the monitor every time the computer needs to be upgraded. By attaching the two together this machine is even less practical to upgrade than the old trashcan Mac Pro.
I bought my 30" ACD's in 2008, 2009 and 2011. Two have died. My last one is starting to wig out. The new 5k LG monitor is brighter and sharper, but it's only about 3/4 the physical screen space. Funny how some things go backwards and other things go forwards.
My 3 monitors have been used for 4 generations of Macs, though. Definitely agree that monitors live longer than the underlying computer.
Well, not the best argument for monitor's staying power.
Compared to 2006's ACD, new monitors have bigger brightness, better saturation, far wider color gamut, better viewing angles, AND double+ the resolution.
The iMac pro will fit in a big pelican case and be good for on-site video workloads. this is a real need, and probably accounts for a lot of the mac pro trashcan use now.
If this is $4,999, it leaves me to wonder what the Mac Pro will cost! If I was in the market for a machine like this, I'd be tempted to try and convince myself, but for my needs I can't see me moving away from a laptop again.
Next year's Mac Pro is up to 18 months away, they made this because that's a long time to leave developer communities discussing Windows and Linux alternatives.
Unless you're doing machine learning and then chances are you're either doing it in the cloud or you already have a specd out white box. Otherwise Macbook Pro has been more than sufficient.
Doesn't that depend on what kind of developer you are? If you are just doing coding then anything that can run your ide and 3-4 browsers will work, but many developers also need to run raster and/or vector software, video software (even though I'm a coder I still have to do image and video work on a fairly regular basis), database software, etc. I have so many tabs open in my browsers that they often are using 4-8 gigs of memory concurrently. My ide often takes up another few gigs of memory. Photoshop takes up quite a bit of memory. I run 2 large monitors off of my computer which takes a bit of processing power. And so forth. In my experience it isn't to hard to push a mackbook pro to its limits.
I would guess that it's for people that want something more powerful before the new Mac Pro comes out. I don't think it's supposed to be out until 2018. Maybe they will be releasing it next year at WWDC.
How so? The iMac has always been the all-in-one device with laptopish internals. A bigscreen Macbook Pro basically.
That makes the targeting simple: People who want the power of a *pro series device but don't care much about the upgradeability beyond storage and memory.
Stop gap. There are some pros who need a very powerful machine, but Apple won't have the Mac Pro ready this year (see the link someone else posted to Daring Fireball).
> That leaves me to wonder who exactly this iMac Pro is targeted at.
CG artists, graphic workers and everyone that require a fast computer with a great screen but is not interested in being an hardware hobbyist. There's life beyond HN.
> That leaves me to wonder who exactly this iMac Pro is targeted at.
People who would have bought the Mac Pro. I think it's obvious that this was supposed to replace it in the lineup.
With the announcement that a Mac Pro is back on the cards I think this becomes a confused product. Locking $5Ks worth of computing power into a disposable shell boggles my mind a bit.
No, I genuinely thought it looked nice! Although I can't use the Apple keyboards for extended periods of time these days anyway as I use an MS ergonomic keyboard - can't see Apple releasing one of those...
>Sure, cool looking stuff is great, but if you type for 8+ hours a day, you might want to consider something that won't give you RSI.
Not sure what you have in mind, but split and "ergonomic" keyboard designs have never been shown to prevent or limit RSI. They're just a marketing gimmick.
Why would it give you RSI? I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that keyboard. It looks the exact same as the other Apple keyboards I've always used, just black. And by "the other Apple keyboards I've always used" I do indeed mean the keyboards I've used at my full time jobs and as my keyboard to hack with at home on top of that...
I type for 8+ hours a day and don't have RSI. But I do know that typing on those old school mechanical keyboards with their large travel tire my fingers out. It's almost like people are different.
The travel distance to actuation is what really matters, and it's around 2mm with most mechanical switches. Also the required force to actuate scissor switches is on the higher side compared to other technologies.
I'm still using my Mac Pro from 2008! Upgraded the memory and video card. The colors on the display are completely wonky in the past year so it's being regulated to a plex server. I'm probably paying way too much in energy.
I (and the parent) want this - and don't mind doing it ourselves - on Mac-supported, stable hardware. A supported, stable, updateable Hackintosh.
Please, Apple, sell me a big Apple motherboard, a quality case, and write OS-X with boot and driver software that supports various CPUs, RAM, storage, GPUs, power supplies, and peripherals. You know, like Windows and Linux have done for years. Whitelist or blacklist as necessary to make it reliable and dependable, but no more than necessary. The model works - but Apple doesn't work with the model, which is why my current machine isn't a Mac anymore.
That is never going to happen. You're just not Apple's target audience.
And they did try this model back in the clone days where Power Computing went straight after their high margin customers and nearly killed the company. Great for consumers. Terrible for Apple.
I agree and those days are long gone. Recently built a custom desktop but had to use windows. Now that Kaby Lake is supported on Macs I could do a hackintosh.
Which is why the "Pro" iMac completely misses the point. Don't want a built in screen. Do want upgradability. $5k to add what I don't want and package it in a way that prevents what I do want. <Facepalm>
It's not clear if it'll start at $5K. The iMac Pro is a top-tier offering that goes beyond what the already expensive 27" iMac does, and it comes with a screen built-in. The Mac Pro today starts at $3K, so you'll probably see something at the same mark when it does get launched.
What makes you think that? A large part of the cost of the iMac is the screen & design. I would expect an entry level new Mac Pro to cost exactly the same or less than every other Mac Pro, so around 3K.
It's been years since Apple has made anything that was upgradable/self-serviceable at any price point. To expect that to change now is just unproductive wishful thinking. Either find an alternative or figure out which of Apple's products comes closest to meeting your needs.
I just built a powerful Hackintosh for about $1.5k with Sierra.
Was worried about how stable it would be and took good care of researching all the parts that were verified by the community[1]. It's been going good for 3-4 months now. Took some effort to get it all setup but am very happy now. I use this for Video/Photo post-processing, web development mainly.
My concern with this type of set-up is not neccessarily getting it working initially. Clearly you did you research and found parts that were supported.
My concern is upgrading. For people with hackintosh experience what has the longevity experience been like? Do things break each major upgrade? Are things slow moving to get to the latest version?
I'm worried it might be like Linux desktop back in the day. I've found modern Linux to be very stable while using cutting edge versions of Linux. Largely thanks to Archlinux. But I've been interested in having a seperate OSX install for Photoshop and Sketch to have an OS for doing design and having Linux for programming/everything else.
During my tenure with a hackintosh at home, I never upgraded the OS as it basically meant a reformat. This was around 10.6-10.8 - I don't know if it has got better. Meaning once I installed a flavor of 10.x.y, I would never upgrade to 10.x.(y+1) until a new x came out, then I'd just reformat.
I am upgrading by doing a clean install every big version. I just did my Sierra "upgrade" last week. I am using a Hackintosh for 3 or 4 years now and while it is working I would not recommend it to people who just want something "that works".
It gets annoying quite fast and the only thing that kept me using it was the fact that Apple was so bad with updating their product line, which is over now as I will buy the new 5k iMac.
I've been lucky in that my Hackintosh's working 'uptime' has been pretty great over the past 3 years. That said, I've had a couple of OS updates putting my desktop out of commission for a day or two - I would never consider it for a work machine.
With today's MacBook upgrades, I've ordered a 'real' Mac and reverted my desktop tower back to Windows gaming box duties - the 'fun' of hackintoshing quickly fades once you've done it for a few years and just want to know your computer is always going to boot when you press the power button, especially if like me you use OS X 99% of the time.
Maybe I'm just stupid, but as far as I'm concerned folks with hackintoshes who haven't had a boot breaking issue occur are either lucky, or it has yet to happen to them. I deliberately built the most 'golden' of mainstream hackintosh builds (close to identical to the Dan Benjamin one folks are linking here), no custom kexts, used Clover, still had the occasional issue.
Given Apple are moving to ever more intertwine custom hardware into Macs (touchbar, touch id, secure enclave etc), I think the future of hackintoshing is probably going to be harder than it is today.
Upgrading is usually painless. You typically need to reinstall a driver (kext) or two after upgrading... The same ones you installed when first setting up the mac. So assuming you documented your setup, it's no problem.
People shouldn't use hackintoshes. In addition to being buggy and illegal, it's also disrespectful. They put a ton of work into their os and their right to sell it how they please should be respected. If you don't want to pay, then don't use it.
But what I want is an upgradable / self-servicable machine that costs under $3k.
I would not hold my breath. If Apple are going to give you something serviceable and upgradable, expect whatever you would have spent servicing and upgrading (at the time of purchase) a "normal" machine through them to be added to the price.
The two big areas Apple missed the plot before were A) failing to do minimal upkeep on their product lines B) redesigning the Mac Pro without consideration for meeting the needs of its target user base and the heat envelope required. These were colossal and humbling failures for Apple's PC business.
The fact that they aren't building commodity-style boxes for hobbyists is very very minor in comparison. The market for these things is shrinking, and it's dominated by price-sensitive people that are not very valuable customers to begin with. If this is what you want, then there's no point in wishful thinking: start looking at Windows / Linux yesterday.
To me this machine is a sign that they had. It has the exact same problems as the Mac Pro design with even less modularity (Pro could swap out drives and ram).
Although I also think this was supposed to replace the Mac Pro line entirely and only in about jan/feb they decided that they still needed a stand alone Pro. So I guess time will tell if they finally release the "xMac" people have been asking for the past 10 years.
I'm using Surface Ergonomic keyboards at home and at work, can confirm good build quality.
I won't weigh in on quality of typing experience. Everybody I know says that I type like I'm trying to beat my keyboard to death, so while I like typing on them quite a lot, I don't know if that'd transfer to someone else.
Only hiccup I've found is that you need Bluetooth 4.0 for the new low-power state, so you'll probably have to buy a dongle even if you have a brand-new fancy laptop.
One caveat with the MS wireless keyboards (with the dongle, since Bluetooth and I don't get along): the ergo MS keyboard I have had random connection issues with the normal Apple USB -> USB-C adapter which is required to plug it into my 15" tbMBP. I finally guessed that this is due to it being a USB2 devices plugged into a USB3 port. https://support.apple.com/kb/PH19094?locale=en_US mentions this specifically, but briefly enough that it's easy to miss: """If the device is connected to a USB hub:
Make sure the device and the hub are the same speed. Connect USB 3.0 SuperSpeed devices to a USB 3.0 SuperSpeed HUB, USB 2.0 Hi-Speed devices to a USB 2.0 Hi-Speed hub, and so on."""
I bought a cheap-ish Mac-specific (not that it should matter) powered USB 2.0 hub off Amazon. Plugged the kbd, mouse, and my HiFiMeDIY DAC into it. All now work well without nearly as many issues.
I get that they want a common design language and to simplify supply chain/manufacturing, but why take those compromised butterfly switches and make a desktop keyboard out of them?
The previous scissor switch keys were OK. A big improvement over their previous garbage membrane keyboards in fact. But the new keys are really a necessary evil to make thinner laptops - why hamper the desktop experience with them?
On the desktops they have the luxury of non-portability, so why not a new mechanical keyboard design for the iMac and Mac Pro?
Why would Apple make a "mechanical" keyboard when there's already multiple vendors like Matias (http://matias.ca/tactilepro/) that make several models of that exact thing?
Personally I think the new keyboards are really good, there's a lot less travel on each key which makes typing more efficient. Going back to an old keyboard with full travel feels like hammering on a typewriter.
That Matias keyboard, quite frankly, looks like a piece of junk from the G3 iMac era.
Apple could build a mechanical keyboard with their characteristic design and build quality.
I think the new butterfly switch is useable, but I don't share your enthusiasm. I have not been able to fully adjust to them and I still make typing errors from my fingers sliding off more than I'd like.
Apple could build a lot of things, but they don't unless there's considerable demand, and mechanical keyboards have very narrow appeal.
Matias isn't the only vendor and that's not the only model of mechanical keyboard they make. If you're a mechanical keyboard enthusiast you're living in the golden age of options. You can custom-build your own keyboard, pick individual keycaps, switches, and more.
I think this is devilish clever by Apple. If you see a space gray iMac you know this guy shelled out a lot of money and means business. Apple made the iMac Pro an even greater status symbol than the iMac already is.
I'm not sure how that matters? This iMac in most cases won't be portable, so the only people who see it will be the ones using it or at least working with those who do.
You sort of make it sound equivalent to the old thing about how Macbooks had lit-up Apple logos on the shell and people would know "oh this person spent thousands on their Apple laptop..." But I don't think it's the same situation here.
You can see lots of people’s (video editors, etc.) workstations when they make an Instagram story or vlog in their apartment. Besides MacBook Pros, I see iMacs the most often.
Maybe I'm a sheep but I think it's great.
Up to 128GB ECC, up to 18 cores, large NVMe SSDs with up to 3GB/s speeds (likely reads, but probably also writes), and it's in that beautiful grey / black. Really cool. The 8-core model at 5k seems reasonable to me since the monitor is likely 2k itself.
You'll probably see a lot of them being bought for upper eschelon developers at hip startups. And the TCO of a mac vs. a beige box PC is said to be much lower by way of lower incidents of issues, failures, etc.
Edit: the one processor e5 16xx chip is less than a grand. That changes the value proposition of the iMac pro but if I had the cash I'd still get one.
Yeah, if I had that kind of money stuffed between my couch, I'd totally buy it. I don't care that it's a ridiculous machine and that single thread performance with that 18-core monster won't be anything to write home about. I still want it, because it is awesome.
I agree. I think the sweet spot for my workload (not encoding much video just compiling stuff) the 8-core model with higher clocks makes more sense for me.
so say for the imac pro which comes with 32GB ddr4 standard and a 1TB nvme ssd, an 8 core chip, and the higher end panel: 1k for the panel, 750 for the cpu, 200 for the ram, 650 for the ssd (samsung 960 pro?) comes to: 2600 before labor and other overhead. Solid margins there for sure, but I maintain still not a ripoff. As I have earned more in my career (I'm still not wealthy by any means, but I like nice things -- those things are probably related...but beside the point) I have tended to opt for nicer more upscale things and Apple usually fits the bill. Again the iMac for me is the non-pro line, but I want a pro iMac.
Given the support for major gaming engines, Steam VR, and changes within Metal 2, is it wrong to be optimistic for Mac gaming?
If the takeaway from this WWDC could be potential gaming parity with Windows, that's a really big deal for me. Me being the segment of Pro users who need to work on a Mac and want to game natively on one, too.
Optimism would be warranted if they announced Vulkan, OpenGL 4.5 and a commitment to update their product line with new internal GPUs more frequently and at reasonable prices. Thunderbolt 3 has less than half the bandwidth of PCI Express 3.0 x16 so that's a lame solution for GPU upgradability.
Not a Mac user but do they ever release a top-end product that was less powerful than last year's top-end product? If not hasn't ever top-end mac ever been the most powerful mac ever?
I am so happy I switched to Windows, ha! My 7048A supermicro is running double E5-2650 (2x 10 cores) with 1TB ram, quadro P4000 and it was around 5000$ (not counting displays, which I had).
Hrm.. Folks here keep acting like this means Apple still doesn't get the Pro market (or that there is still a pro market).. This really seems to me to be a "what can we get out sooner" product released as a stopgap to next year's preannounced new Mac Pro. I suppose it's still valid to fault them for the reality of their product line and for having gotten themselves into this position in the first place, but I think it's pretty clear that this is not Apple's actual attempt to fully pent-up demand for a good traditional workstation from Apple.
>This really seems to me to be a "what can we get out sooner"
Feels the opposite to me, feels like they've considered this the Mac Pro killer. But then at the last minute back at the start of the year realised there was still a place for a Mac Pro.
Probably because this solves none of the real issues with the last Mac Pro.
299 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 260 ms ] threadIt's a bit of a small victory that they support external GPUs, but I think they are missing the boat here.
[0] https://www.nzxt.com/products/manta-matte-black-windowless
Still not good enough tho - it's not upgradeable.
I don't think that forcing high-perf components into a small desktop chassis makes a lot of sense, but it might me only me.
Your current desktop has a more powerful CPU than an 18-core Skylake Xeon?!
People buy Macs for the operating system, not the hardware. The hardware has been sufficient for at least five years in a row, for all but a very small subset of consumers.
I would agree with you that the Mac isn't a particular cost efficient way of getting high performance hardware, it's just that I don't think that matter any more. Windows is still a bastard operating system and Linux is not nearly as polished as MacOS. Personally I'm not sure that I'll necessarily get a Mac next time, but there's also not a whole lot of other options out there. Maybe I'll built an OpenBSD box, at least that OS is consistent.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWFzWRoVNnE
Also, Apple dragged macOS from PPC to x86; switching x86 implementations is no big deal for the rest of the world, it surely should not be a challenge for Apple.
It's also a shame that the Mac Mini seems to be dead (at least no updates in the keynote).
At least the MacBook and iMac line got nice bumps.
Yeah which is really too bad. I bet there's a larger market for a "Mac Mini Pro" with similar specs to this iMac, but without the integrated display (and hefty price premium Apple exerts).
I seriously don't understand how Apple supposedly have time to design an advanced cooling system for the iMac Pro yet can't come up with a bog-standard cheese grater case like the previous Mac Pro design...
The iMac was already supposed to be a Pro machine. And then they "New Coke"'d it by making it too thin and susceptible to overheating. Performance suffered and now they're compensating with this machine.
At $5000 the iMac Pro falls just short of a ~$2000 Hackintosh. It's still locked into the thin form factor that can't be upgraded and does not vent heat well enough. I'm sure this works for big companies like Disney where machines are replaced every few years. However as a developer, a Pro user, I've never felt more validated in my choice to switch away from Apple's hardware.
* Radeon Vega graphics
* 500 Watt power supply
That's why it is a 27" heatsink instead of a 2" one.
Most of the heat is going to be moved out by the dual fans anyway. The Aluminum will dissipate what it picks up from the moving air before it leaves the chassis by the side vents.
https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Core-i9-Annou...
Sure, you'll be looking at non-ECC, but other than that, you'll be crushing the new iMac Pro in price to performance.
Not a lot of Xeon Hackintoshes out there. Typically just i7s.
https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Core-i9-Annou...
$599 for an 8 core processor, for instance. Last model, the i7-6900K, would have been over $1k.
http://ark.intel.com/products/92979/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-...
Edit: the one processor version of this processor is less than a grand. So that changes the math. Apple is likely making a good amount on each mac pro sold. As they should. I want them to keep making prosumor hardware.
If a developer/pro/etc. need 18 cores, most of the time they'll be OK with a top-end i7 -- I think. Therefore it is fair to compare Xeons with i7s, they're not the same but yes, they have overlapping target audience when it comes to desktops.
Not if they need ECC RAM - and if you've got enough professional stuff to fill 128GB of RAM, you really, really need ECC RAM.
(No 128 GB RAM but you're not getting that with a desktop i7 either. Oh and the new HEDT platform that also has "i7"s… not all chips will support quad channel RAM!)
the funnier version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xah84cJwdxE
http://i.imgur.com/EZ6LyI1.png
http://i.imgur.com/tbwNbdh.png
EDIT: by mistake I originally linked this video I had in my clipboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5scez5dqtAc
It's possible that Intel might have to claw back Xeon pricing accordingly to defend their market share.
8 core for $600. 10 core for $1k, 18 core for $2k. With 12, 14, and 16 core increments available in-between.
https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Core-i9-Annou...
EDIT: read the children posts. I mistakenly read "chip" instead of "line". Of course Xeons are a different line compared to Intels extreme line. The above about the extreme series CPU's being cut down Xeons is still true but in this context wrong and irrelevant.
They bin things for a reason. If you're happy using a less expensive part with fewer features, great, you can save money. If you're making a top-tier "Pro" product you'll want to avoid cutting corners like that.
The materials involved are only one factor.
Also see my edit of my original post where I mistakenly misread "line" as "chip" as stated.
> They bin things for a reason.
Yes, of course, so that the extreme series doesn't cut into the margins of the server market. If you could run RAID 5 and 10 without hardware dongles and ECC on the extreme series some smaller companies would probably prefer the i9 18 core for 2000$ to the 3000-4000$ 18 core Xeons. Again, this is fine, but Xeons and extreme series start of as the same chip. That's all I wanted to say on top of my correction of my original post.
Nah, this is the stopgap they talked about when they had their "Come to Jesus" meeting with bloggers.
A real big boxy Mac Pro is supposed to come after 2017. Pre-announced, which Apple never does.
See: https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives
EDIT: They didn't actually say 2018, just "not in 2017"
But this is what Apple said:
"These next-gen Mac Pros and pro displays “will not ship this year”. (I hope that means “next year”, but all Apple said was “not this year”.) In the meantime, Apple is today releasing meager speed-bump updates to the existing Mac Pros. The $2999 model goes from 4 Xeon CPU cores to 6, and from dual AMD G300 GPUs to dual G500 GPUs. The $3999 model goes from 6 CPU cores to 8, and from dual D500 GPUs to dual D800 D700 GPUs. Nothing else is changing, including the ports. No USB-C, no Thunderbolt 3 (and so no support for the LG UltraFine 5K display).
But more good news, too:
Apple has “great” new iMacs in the pipeline, slated for release “this year”, including configurations specifically targeted at large segments of the pro market."
From the article I linked.
It's for people who have a need/desire for "pro" components but also want a thin/portable form factor.
I've swapped out a lot of parts in my old Mac Pro, but at this point, I'd rather have something that "just works". And if my needs change, the resale value of this thing will still be good.
But I'm just an iOS developer, doing some multimedia and web stuff as well. Maybe that's not a "pro" by today's definition. :)
But then if you're a pro user who buys the thing to make money with, it's probably more tax-effective to keep it 3 or so years then buy something new
They made it a point that the heat dissipation capacity is sufficient, 80% more than the non-pro iMac.
edit: updated from the press-release.
The thin iMac had underpowered fans and constantly throttled.
I'd give Apple the benefit of the doubt here, but not with my own money, and with an AppleCare.
No it isn't.
>The iMac was already supposed to be a Pro machine.
Not it wasn't. The iMac was always decidedly the consumer desktop. The pro machine actually had "Pro" in its name.
All "pro" means in Apple-marketing-speak is "deluxe" these days. You can clearly see it in the MBP where they have traded off features that professional users wanted, for thinness that noone in that market cares about. Make it 5mm thicker or even 10mm for 32 or 64G RAM and everyone would have been delighted.
See: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/06/imac-pro-most-powerfu...
A 5k Monitor alone costs around $800-1000 and does not compare in quality to Apple displays, 8 core xeon + motherboard are another 800$, it's already around $1600-1800 - and its not taking SSD and Video card and Ram into account...
You're the one that said "5k screens cost $800-$1000 and they're inferior".
The retort to that is not to say "Well, that monitor costs $1300".
It's like you're only looking to acknowledge cheaper and inferior competitors and stick your fingers in your ears when challenged.
"Why not just build a machine out of individual parts X Y and Z for $nnn less than Apple's price"?
It completely ignores, at a minimum:
Yes, you can technically build a machine with equivalent hardware specs for some $dollars less. The target market is probably not interested in doing so, and they wouldn't get OS X anyways without hacking, which is half of the freakin' point.Someone editing 4K+ video on Final Cut professionally wants a machine that runs Final Cut (which eliminates non-Macs), has the hardware to meet that use case, and that they don't have to screw with or have randomly break with updates (which eliminates Hackintoshes). We all agree with this yes?
Has Mac hardware carried a premium over equivalent specced individual parts since forever? You know the answer. The target market for the computer does. not. care.
Can we please not relitigate tired Mac-vs-PC arguments that are old enough to drink? They've never been relevant or interesting.
Yeah, there are valid points here, but don't expect "competitors are cheaper and suck" and "well, sure, but that one costs as much/more" when someone points other alternatives out.
It's like cherry picking cheaper competitors. Similar things happened with the AirPods.
Announcement article here, you can people claiming that nothing else exists and that this is a first.
Like with things like "multi device pairing" (common as dirt, and even NFC tap-to-pair exists. Shared pairing database? That's cool, very true).
Even down to people arguing how "innovative" the charging case was. Others point out that these exist and have, for years. "Oh, well, that case is bigger/looks clunky/you can be sure that it doesn't work as well".
When people point out that -similar- exist, "oh, well, they cost most".
In which my response was appropriate. The only difference from a monitor perspective is the Apple casing. We're not arguing specs of PC, OS, etc. but that the monitors do not compare to Apple.
As someone who works in this industry these individuals are becoming few and far between. Think it's time to stop pretending Apple is a major player in this area, they pushed and shoved FCP users right to the edge and many just made the jump to better supported software and high end hardware.
Of course it is. It's always damned if they do, damned if they don't.
>The iMac was already supposed to be a Pro machine. And then they "New Coke"'d it by making it too thin and susceptible to overheating. Performance suffered and now they're compensating with this machine.
Actually it was never supposed to be a Pro machine, all the way back to the very star (Bondi blue / flower power personal machines, the ones with the flexible neck, etc.).
It's just that at some point it got so powerful, and the pro line was neglected, so it was used as a pro machine too (and was good enough for most use cases, e.g. graphic designers).
>The iMac was already supposed to be a Pro machine. And then they "New Coke"'d it by making it too thin and susceptible to overheating. Performance suffered and now they're compensating with this machine.
Performance never suffered with the iMac line. It's the most consistently updated line of computers Apple has. The Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, Mini and Air were neglected for years, but not the iMac.
And this is not a response to "the iMac's use as a pro suffered because of its thinness". It's a response to "we fucked up the Mac Pro and we're throwing a bone to the Pro market, until 2018 will bring a redesigned Mac Pro".
>At $5000 the iMac Pro falls just short of a ~$2000 Hackintosh.
Well, this is not a Hackintosh. This is the real thing. Even a sole 27" inch 5K screen like it has would take you back $2K in itself.
Because a good Xeon E5 can easily cost $2k by itself.
A 5k panel off newegg(only one I see) is $2000, but I know you can at a minimum buy the LG one off apples site which is $1300.
That brings you up to $4000 as a low estimate(lower end E5, 16GB of RAM, low estimate on GPU).
You'll still need to throw in a power supply($150 at least), a case(Say $100), most likely cooling for the CPU and case fans(Another $100), mouse and keyboard(Say $100 for nice but not great).
That gets you up to at least $4,450, and it's unlikely you'll have 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports, a card for that likely won't be cheap either. So $5k for this, depending on Vega pricing, and what CPU is actually in there, sounds fairly reasonable.
That all said I don't need server hardware, and you probably also don't. $2k on a i7 7700K or i5 7600K, a GTX 1070 - GTX 1080TI, a 512 850 Evo, a 1440p panel, 16GB of non-ECC ram, is what feels like the price/performance sweet spot right now, and Apple isn't in that market. That doesn't mean though this product is overpriced.
And it comes with Windows. Nobody deserves that.
I'm sure with $4700 more it's possible to get something still better than this new imac pro.. yet with a good cooling system and upgradable at any time.
edit: $2300 INCLUDING 15% taxes
You'll probably can get something with higher performance, but it'll probably also take up more space, generate more heat and make more noise. It'll also demand more time to select the components and assemble it. If you enjoy doing it, OK. If you don't, your time is more expensive than the difference.
I selected a Dell because I want a single phone number to call when something goes wrong.
This is for desktop, for laptops I might still go with apple however.
> “great” new iMacs in the pipeline, slated for release “this year”, including configurations specifically targeted at large segments of the pro market.
https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives
And compared to the enthusiasm for their iOS here, the pro customer is clearly no longer of value to Apple.
Non-soldered RAM is a good start, but what about multiple ethernet ports, what about any standard scientific/medical/experimental PCI card, what about the new SSD/HDs that come out in 3 years? What about upgrading the CPU? What about upgrading the screen! Much less using Apple's "most powerful computer" headless?
In that it's not a Mac Pro at all. They have (uniquely) pre-announced a tower-style Mac Pro for "not this year"[0] back in April: https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives
[0] and given how precise their wording was, it's not necessarily 2018 either.
Maybe there is the thermal envelope in this design to support a more frequent refresh rate, but this still doesn't address the fundamental "pro" need to be able to mix and match or upgrade core components like the display, RAM, GPU, and storage.
Obviously something changed their minds though.
Imagine Cupertino had (nearly) finished designing this sleek machine, thought it was a wonderful answer to refresh their Mac Pro, then they get completely railed in January for failing to provide professionals a pro machine when they expected it. They're late, they know it, but no biggie - they'll introduce this pro machine this summer and everyone will love it.
The pros then proceed to articulate exactly what their grievances are, and the machine that is sitting under the black cloth in the back room looks nothing like what their most loyal users are hurting for. And if listened to closely, the machine that's mostly finished is actually an insult to their most valuable customers. What do you do in that case? Completely scrap the beautiful machine you've already made? Or eat (silent) crow and promise a completely new product that you start working on tomorrow, and tell the engineers who were working on their pet dream computer to quickly finish up - let it be introduced mid-keynote by a non-executive, go back and painfully re-etch a diminutive 'i' in on each of the just-printed 'Mac Pro' bezels - likely to never recoup their R&D costs on this 'lost' product.
That's a good point. I bet that's exactly what happened here. Because if Cook would have given this exact keynote, but had introduced this grey iMac as their 'next new thing' that was replacing the Mac Pro, he'd have been booed off his own stage during Apple's most sacred moment. Apple had enough sense to avoid that moment. They have enough cash to produce an entire (temporary) product line that loses money. They don't have enough cash to lose their most die-hard and influential customers en masse and hear a crowd of 'boos' at the height of their hallowed keynote.
"AMD will be delivery HIP version of Caffe, Tensorflow, Torch7, MxNet, Theano, CNTK, Chainer, all supporting our new MIOpen – our new Deep Learning solver."
"In addition to the new iMac Pro, Apple is working on a completely redesigned, next-generation Mac Pro architected for pro customers who need the highest-end, high-throughput system in a modular design, as well as a new high-end pro display."
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/06/imac-pro-most-powerfu...
Also, I want that black keyboard!
Just a different kind of sub-market, I think.
My 3 monitors have been used for 4 generations of Macs, though. Definitely agree that monitors live longer than the underlying computer.
Compared to 2006's ACD, new monitors have bigger brightness, better saturation, far wider color gamut, better viewing angles, AND double+ the resolution.
Releasing the iMac Pro in December 2017 may as well be considered a 2018 release.
Unless you're doing machine learning and then chances are you're either doing it in the cloud or you already have a specd out white box. Otherwise Macbook Pro has been more than sufficient.
We can make use of all the computing power we can get.
That makes the targeting simple: People who want the power of a *pro series device but don't care much about the upgradeability beyond storage and memory.
CG artists, graphic workers and everyone that require a fast computer with a great screen but is not interested in being an hardware hobbyist. There's life beyond HN.
People who would have bought the Mac Pro. I think it's obvious that this was supposed to replace it in the lineup.
With the announcement that a Mac Pro is back on the cards I think this becomes a confused product. Locking $5Ks worth of computing power into a disposable shell boggles my mind a bit.
is this satire?
Meanwhile, my black MacBook Air keyboard looks nearly the exact same as it did when I bought it four years ago.
Like OP, I also thought that the black keyboard was long overdue.
I mean, there's no lack of cool looking mechanical keyboards, even ones that match Apple products: https://input.club/k-type/
(That one is even USB-C and fully programmable/hackable with an open source firmware.)
Not sure what you have in mind, but split and "ergonomic" keyboard designs have never been shown to prevent or limit RSI. They're just a marketing gimmick.
http://www.healthytyping.com/articles/why-you-should-not-use...
Am I missing something?
I'm sure those people will be happy. But what I want is an upgradable / self-servicable machine that costs under $3k.
I hope Apple isn't about to miss the plot again.
If you want upgradeability and self-serviceability, build it yourself.
Please, Apple, sell me a big Apple motherboard, a quality case, and write OS-X with boot and driver software that supports various CPUs, RAM, storage, GPUs, power supplies, and peripherals. You know, like Windows and Linux have done for years. Whitelist or blacklist as necessary to make it reliable and dependable, but no more than necessary. The model works - but Apple doesn't work with the model, which is why my current machine isn't a Mac anymore.
And they did try this model back in the clone days where Power Computing went straight after their high margin customers and nearly killed the company. Great for consumers. Terrible for Apple.
Yeah that's never going to happen. The Pro iMac starts at $5k. When the Mac Pro does come out it will at least start at that as well, if not higher.
Clarity: "The new iMac Pro will start at $4999 and be available in December."
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1545383,00.asp
Fun article from 2004! Article subheading:
> Get used to the idea of a terabyte-plus server in your home. It's closer than you think.
:)
And Machrone's law is: the machine you want will always cost $5,000.
It's been years since Apple has made anything that was upgradable/self-serviceable at any price point. To expect that to change now is just unproductive wishful thinking. Either find an alternative or figure out which of Apple's products comes closest to meeting your needs.
Was worried about how stable it would be and took good care of researching all the parts that were verified by the community[1]. It's been going good for 3-4 months now. Took some effort to get it all setup but am very happy now. I use this for Video/Photo post-processing, web development mainly.
[1] https://www.tonymacx86.com/
My concern is upgrading. For people with hackintosh experience what has the longevity experience been like? Do things break each major upgrade? Are things slow moving to get to the latest version?
I'm worried it might be like Linux desktop back in the day. I've found modern Linux to be very stable while using cutting edge versions of Linux. Largely thanks to Archlinux. But I've been interested in having a seperate OSX install for Photoshop and Sketch to have an OS for doing design and having Linux for programming/everything else.
It gets annoying quite fast and the only thing that kept me using it was the fact that Apple was so bad with updating their product line, which is over now as I will buy the new 5k iMac.
May I ask what type of hardware you are using?
With today's MacBook upgrades, I've ordered a 'real' Mac and reverted my desktop tower back to Windows gaming box duties - the 'fun' of hackintoshing quickly fades once you've done it for a few years and just want to know your computer is always going to boot when you press the power button, especially if like me you use OS X 99% of the time.
Maybe I'm just stupid, but as far as I'm concerned folks with hackintoshes who haven't had a boot breaking issue occur are either lucky, or it has yet to happen to them. I deliberately built the most 'golden' of mainstream hackintosh builds (close to identical to the Dan Benjamin one folks are linking here), no custom kexts, used Clover, still had the occasional issue.
Given Apple are moving to ever more intertwine custom hardware into Macs (touchbar, touch id, secure enclave etc), I think the future of hackintoshing is probably going to be harder than it is today.
I would not hold my breath. If Apple are going to give you something serviceable and upgradable, expect whatever you would have spent servicing and upgrading (at the time of purchase) a "normal" machine through them to be added to the price.
The fact that they aren't building commodity-style boxes for hobbyists is very very minor in comparison. The market for these things is shrinking, and it's dominated by price-sensitive people that are not very valuable customers to begin with. If this is what you want, then there's no point in wishful thinking: start looking at Windows / Linux yesterday.
To me this machine is a sign that they had. It has the exact same problems as the Mac Pro design with even less modularity (Pro could swap out drives and ram).
Although I also think this was supposed to replace the Mac Pro line entirely and only in about jan/feb they decided that they still needed a stand alone Pro. So I guess time will tell if they finally release the "xMac" people have been asking for the past 10 years.
https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/d/surface-keyboard/8r3...
I won't weigh in on quality of typing experience. Everybody I know says that I type like I'm trying to beat my keyboard to death, so while I like typing on them quite a lot, I don't know if that'd transfer to someone else.
Only hiccup I've found is that you need Bluetooth 4.0 for the new low-power state, so you'll probably have to buy a dongle even if you have a brand-new fancy laptop.
I bought a cheap-ish Mac-specific (not that it should matter) powered USB 2.0 hub off Amazon. Plugged the kbd, mouse, and my HiFiMeDIY DAC into it. All now work well without nearly as many issues.
The previous scissor switch keys were OK. A big improvement over their previous garbage membrane keyboards in fact. But the new keys are really a necessary evil to make thinner laptops - why hamper the desktop experience with them?
On the desktops they have the luxury of non-portability, so why not a new mechanical keyboard design for the iMac and Mac Pro?
Personally I think the new keyboards are really good, there's a lot less travel on each key which makes typing more efficient. Going back to an old keyboard with full travel feels like hammering on a typewriter.
Apple could build a mechanical keyboard with their characteristic design and build quality.
I think the new butterfly switch is useable, but I don't share your enthusiasm. I have not been able to fully adjust to them and I still make typing errors from my fingers sliding off more than I'd like.
Matias isn't the only vendor and that's not the only model of mechanical keyboard they make. If you're a mechanical keyboard enthusiast you're living in the golden age of options. You can custom-build your own keyboard, pick individual keycaps, switches, and more.
There's vendors like http://www.wasdkeyboards.com that are basically "Build-a-Bear" for keyboards.
But it feels great and wears like iron. Source: I've used one for the past 7 years.
https://input.club/whitefox/ + http://pimpmykeyboard.com/dsa-think-different-keycap-set/
Why even bother begging Apple for this sort of thing when you can support independent creators happy to serve these niches.
I'm not sure how that matters? This iMac in most cases won't be portable, so the only people who see it will be the ones using it or at least working with those who do.
You sort of make it sound equivalent to the old thing about how Macbooks had lit-up Apple logos on the shell and people would know "oh this person spent thousands on their Apple laptop..." But I don't think it's the same situation here.
b) Big execs want to have the best and show it off to staff as well
You'll probably see a lot of them being bought for upper eschelon developers at hip startups. And the TCO of a mac vs. a beige box PC is said to be much lower by way of lower incidents of issues, failures, etc.
Edit: the one processor e5 16xx chip is less than a grand. That changes the value proposition of the iMac pro but if I had the cash I'd still get one.
E5-2620v4 owner. 8c/16HT it isn't a $700 processor.
A $700 Xeon is the 10c/20HT
If the takeaway from this WWDC could be potential gaming parity with Windows, that's a really big deal for me. Me being the segment of Pro users who need to work on a Mac and want to game natively on one, too.
Feels the opposite to me, feels like they've considered this the Mac Pro killer. But then at the last minute back at the start of the year realised there was still a place for a Mac Pro.
Probably because this solves none of the real issues with the last Mac Pro.