Apple today released iMac Pro, an entirely new product line designed for pro users who love the all-in-one design of iMac and require workstation-class performance. With Xeon processors up to 18 cores, up to 22 Teraflops of graphics performance, and a brilliant 27-inch Retina 5K display, iMac Pro is the fastest, most powerful Mac ever made. iMac Pro delivers incredible compute power for real-time 3D rendering, immersive VR, intensive developer workflows, high megapixel photography, complex simulations, massive audio projects and real-time 4K and 8K video editing.
“iMac Pro combines the incredible design of the iMac with the most powerful workstation architecture we’ve ever built,” said John Ternus, Apple’s vice president of Hardware Engineering, in a statement. “iMac is the most popular desktop for our pro users due to its amazing display and elegant design, so we completely re-engineered it to deliver performance far beyond what anyone thought possible in an all-in-one.”
Workstation-Class Performance in an iMac Design
With next-generation processors, a stunning Retina 5K display, the most powerful graphics ever in a Mac, super-fast storage and advanced I/O, iMac Pro is designed to handle the most demanding pro workflows and is the first all-in-one built from the ground up to deliver true workstation-class performance. Featuring an all-new thermal architecture, iMac Pro delivers up to 80 percent more cooling capacity in the same amazingly quiet, thin and seamless aluminum and glass enclosure customers know and love.
Still just 5mm at its edge, iMac Pro comes in a stunning new space gray finish with a matching Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse and optional Magic Trackpad, and features the best Mac display ever, with 500 nits of brightness, a P3 wide color gamut and support for 1 billion colors, delivering an even more vivid and true-to-life viewing experience. iMac Pro also comes with four microphones with beamforming technology, a new 1080p FaceTime HD camera with enhanced low-light performance, and new speakers that are up to 50 percent louder.
The Most Advanced Graphics Ever in a Mac
Featuring a next-generation compute core and up to 16GB of on-package high-bandwidth memory (HBM2), iMac Pro with the Vega GPU delivers up to an amazing 11 Teraflops of single-precision compute power for real-time 3D rendering and high frame rate VR. And for half-precision computation, ideal for machine learning, iMac Pro delivers up to an incredible 22 Teraflops of performance.
iMac Pro also supports up to 4TB of SSD and up to 128GB of ECC memory, and with four Thunderbolt 3 ports, can connect up to two high-performance RAID arrays and two 5K displays at the same time. For the first time ever on a Mac, iMac Pro features 10Gb Ethernet for up to 10 times faster networking.
Delivering Power to the Pro
• iMac Pro takes Mac performance to a whole new level, even when compared to our fastest quad-core iMac.
• 3D designers can visualize huge 3D models and render scenes up to 3.4 times faster.
• Developers can run multiple virtual machines and test environments, and compile code up to 2.4 times faster.
• Scientists and researchers can manipulate massive data sets and complex simulations, visualizing data up to 5 times faster.
• Photographers can work with enormous files and perform image processing up to 4.1 times faster.
• Music producers can bounce (export) massive multi-track projects up to 4.6 times faster and use up to 12.4 times as many real-time plug-ins.
• Video editors can edit up to eight streams of 4K video, or edit 4.5K RED RAW video and 8K ProRes 4444 at full resolution in real time without rendering. The iMac Pro can also export HEVC video 3 times faster.
A New Level of Integration and Security
iMac Pro brings a new level of integration and security to the Mac with the T2 chip, Apple’s second generation custom Mac silicon. By designing and integrating several new controllers — such as the System Management Controller, image signal processor, audio controller and SSD controller — T2 delivers new capabilities to the Mac like enhanced imaging processing for the FaceTime HD camera. T2 also enables a new level of security by including a secure enclave coprocessor that provides the foundation for new encrypted storage and secure boot capabilities. Dedicated AES hardware encrypts data on the SSD without affecting performance, while secure boot ensures that only trusted software loads at startup.
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 performance, high-throughput system in a modular, upgradeable design, as well as a new high-end pro display.
Pricing and Availability
iMac Pro is available on December 14, starting at $4,999 – $13,199 depending on configuration. More details can be found at apple.com/imac-pro.
MacDailyNews Take: The King of all Macs, for now, costs $13,199 and is spec’ed as such:
• 2.3GHz 18-core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.3GHz
• 128GB 2666MHz DDR4 ECC memory
• 4TB SSD
• Radeon Pro Vega 64 with 16GB of HBM2 memory
Click the button DavGreg… come on… click it…. click it, and love it. You know you want to.
lol
To all the cynics out there, better late than never. Soon the new Mac Pro will join the iMac Pro, and then the reasons to gripe will end unless you cling to the past.
Does it cost? Sure, it does. But the cost is commensurate with its performance and capabilities. Real pros won’t gripe about the cost – they will recognize its value and purchase accordingly. Because time is even more valuable than money.
the Mac Pro would likely be more powerful…consistent with the previous structure of power users cpus? I can only assume/hope this bodes well for the upcoming MP stats. Selfishly, hoping the same for the mini too. If upgradability was the only material differentiator btwn the iMP and MP, it’s be a little deflating.
you gotta admit, she’s a screamin’, nasty lookin’ beast.
Nice engineering exercise, but I do not want an all in one.
Had iMacs before and dropped them like a bad habit. Sure do not want a glued shut model.
Reading this on an H-P 4K 32″ Display right now and do not need an all in one.
I would like to see Apple release a Space Grey Trackpad to go with the new iMac. Don’t want the iMac, but the White Trackpad is too ugly for my desktop.
They have the Space Grey TrackPad you can order with the iMacPro. Magic Trackpad 2 – Space Grey add $63 Canadian.
Right now only with the iMac. Not a stand alone. Checked the Apple Store in person.
The highest powered desktop Mac – and it still doesn’t have the touch bar. Just sayin’
Apple could build The Gizmo bar into their overpriced wireless keyboard if they wanted to.
Typing on Logitech K811 Bluetooth Illuminated keyboard. Better than the current Apple Keyboard and this model has been on sale for years. The lighting senses your hands and turns off the lights to save battery charge.
Apple would have to add $550 to the purchase price for a touchbar. Even Apple knows that an extra $550 would limit iMac Pro marketing.
Too bad – it really is a nifty little feature. Hopefully more developers can adopt touch bar support in order to make it scale up enough to bring that price down.
Its always a little dizzying clicking on that purchase button for $8000 – but I did it! Delivery est. Dec. 26-27!
Good for you, then! I think my next computer will still be a MacBook Pro, though. Not because I don’t recognize the value for the money, just because my current circumstances cause me to prize compactness and portability, and that I’m at the point in my professional development career that I wouldn’t know what to do with all the souped up development tools that would warrant such a high powered machine to begin with – I’m still learning Unity! Will I get to the point where I would be ready for an iMac Pro (or the new Mac Pro)? Probably. It’ll just take a little more time. 😉
Plus the fact that there’s no touch bar on a desktop machine. I still like that little thing and want it to be used more. 🙂
I still think of my MacBook Pro as my “new machine”, but I see I got it in 2014. It still feels new. I have been doing lot’s of Unity on the MacBook Pro, including developing a parametric modeling plugin for Unity called Archimatix http://u3d.as/qYW
With Unity’s help, I will use the iMac Pro for developing (and playing) VR world-building tools and games. Can’t wait!
Congrats!
Congrats!
can I borrow a quarter? or how about $13,200? I promise I’ll be good……
My concern is this…
At $13,199 for the maxed out beast, Apple will sell extremely few of them — likely hundreds or maybe a few thousands. This lets Apple say, “You guys screamed for a high end pro machine. We gave you one. You didn’t buy it. We’re done.” (This is exactly what has long been rumored to have happened with the top range of the 2013 Mac Pro.)
I disagree, I think there are maybe 100,000 to 200,000 potential customers for this machine- it is the golden age of television production and speed matters. Add in the growing VR and AR markets and it could be big. Still, your point has merit- lets assume Apple sells 100,000 maxed out iMac Pros in 2018- that is 1.32 billon dollars which is just a small amount of iPhone revenue. To any other company that would be huge.
As far as the “high price”, I started in telecommunications in 1987 and Intergraph sold “graphics workstations” and I quote:
“One such low-end system was what the company called The Starter System. It consisted of a DEC PDP-11/23 minicomputer with Digital’s RSX-11M operating system, an 84MB disk, a terminal with dual 19-inch monochromatic raster displays, a 36-inch by 48-inch digitizer and Intergraph’s IGDS software along with several architectural space planning and drafting packages. All this for just $85,000.5 A Hewlett-Packard 7580 pen plotter added $20,000 while substituting color displays for the monochromatic units added an additional $22,000. A mechanical design and drafting version of The Starter System was shown at AUTOFACT III in Detroit in November 1981. The company introduced color shading software around this same time that took several minutes to produce an image.”
===
A legacy of this system that is still in use today is that some symbols (such as poles and service terminals) were displayed not using lines and circles but a special font and to put the symbol in you would type a letter- like p for a pole, the font displayed the p but it didn’t look like a p- it looked like a circle with a line over it which is the symbol for a pole. Today, that same font library is loaded into the CAD system and if you load a standard font library that pole looks like a p. 🙂
The reason for all that was very simple, the Intergraph system could store, transmit and display a single element font symbol way faster than (in this case) a two element line and circle. Intergraph was so successful, it was one of the biggest software companies. They were the biggest NT developers for a while.
For what it does, a $13,200 iMac Pro is chump change. 🙂
Bought the base version of the Pro plus AppleCare…
Hope it lasts as long as my 2009 Mac Pro did …
$9500 and not looking back.
Had to live with 2TB+64GB. The extra cost for 4TB and 128GB just couldn’t be justified. Yeah, I know, it can’t be upgraded, but I’ve been living with 16GB RAM for the past 5 years and I will add external storage for video stuff.
I wonder if my Thunderbolt display will work with the USB-C to Thunderbolt adapter?
Unfortunately, we still don’t know what the 18 core beastie will cost. Once we have that, will have a real good idea and where the Mac Pro will start.
Ordered! Very excited. 10 cores, 128GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Vega 64 16GB, couldn’t wait the 6-8 weeks for the 18 core and my workload really isn’t that multi threaded that I’d make use of it. I think the 10 is the sweet spot for me. The best part is based on that barefeats article I can take the RX580 from my old Mac Pro, put it an enclosure and use it for acceleration. Awesome.
8799, not too bad. Delivery December 26-28
iMac Pro, how to waste your money.