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"
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
It's for people who have a need/desire for "pro" components but also want a thin/portable form factor.
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.
See: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/06/imac-pro-most-powerfu...
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.
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.
It's possible that Intel might have to claw back Xeon pricing accordingly to defend their market share.
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
8 core for $600. 10 core for $1k, 18 core for $2k. With 12, 14, and 16 core increments available in-between.
https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Core-i9-Annou...
EDIT: read the children posts. I mistakenly read "chip" instead of "line". Of course Xeons are a different line compared to Intels extreme line. The above about the extreme series CPU's being cut down Xeons is still true but in this context wrong and irrelevant.
They bin things for a reason. If you're happy using a less expensive part with fewer features, great, you can save money. If you're making a top-tier "Pro" product you'll want to avoid cutting corners like that.
Also see my edit of my original post where I mistakenly misread "line" as "chip" as stated.
> They bin things for a reason.
Yes, of course, so that the extreme series doesn't cut into the margins of the server market. If you could run RAID 5 and 10 without hardware dongles and ECC on the extreme series some smaller companies would probably prefer the i9 18 core for 2000$ 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.
The materials involved are only one factor.
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.
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.
Not a lot of Xeon Hackintoshes out there. Typically just i7s.
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:
- Apple vertical integration
- All-in-one support/replacement
- The OS
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'd give Apple the benefit of the doubt here, but not with my own money, and with an AppleCare.
The thin iMac had underpowered fans and constantly throttled.
Because a good Xeon E5 can easily cost $2k by itself.
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.
* Radeon Vega graphics
* 500 Watt power supply
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.