“Four years since Apple last shipped a desktop Mac with the word ‘pro’ in the name, the iMac Pro has arrived,” Jason Snell writes for Macworld. “Holding down the high end of the Mac product line until the day (hopefully in 2018) when a new Mac Pro arrives, the iMac Pro fuses the look of the 27-inch 5K iMac with the priorities of a professional workstation.”
“If you aren’t sure if you need the power of the iMac Pro, you almost certainly don’t,” Snell writes. “If, on the other hand, you are hungry for multi-core performance and a powerful GPU that will let you crank through intense tasks — in video editing, software development, photo and audio processing, science, graphics, and similar applications — this is the new Mac Pro you’ve been looking for, albeit in the shape of an iMac.”
“The iMac Pro is a Mac Pro in the body of a 5K iMac,” Snell writes. “If you’ve been using a 5K iMac but desperately need better performance from software that’s aggressively multithreaded, the iMac Pro will supply that performance.”
Much more, including benchmarks, in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Good Jobs, what a gorgeous beast Apple hath begotten!
Interns: ♬ Roll out the barrel! ♬
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s iMac Pro has a Thunderbolt 3 storage surprise for you – January 19, 2018
What if Apple’s iMac Pro had TWO Vega GPUs? – January 16, 2018
Benchmarks: 8-core and 10-core iMac Pros running pro apps – January 11, 2018
iMac Pro PCIe-based flash storage: How fast versus other Macs? – January 5, 2018
Benchmark shootout: iMac Pro with Pro Vega 56 GPU versus optional Pro Vega 64 – January 4, 2018
Apple’s low-end 8-core iMac Pro benchmarked running pro apps – December 29, 2017
Low End iMac Pro versus two Mac Pros and one iMac 5K – December 27, 2017
Extrapolating iMac Pro GPU performance using RX Vega 64 – December 14, 2017
Apple’s monstrously potent iMac Pro is for these professional computer users – December 14, 2017
How pros are already using Apple’s powerful iMac Pro – December 14, 2017
Apple’s iMac Pro, the most powerful Mac ever made, is now available starting at $4,999 – December 14, 2017
But I want a Mac Pro shaped like a Mac Pro.
So go by the canister
The Canister doesn’t have PCI Slots!!!
The current “trash can” Mac Pro is exactly that. It hardly meets the criteria for a Mac Pro. Try again.
Is there really a problems waiting around 5 years for an updated Mac “Pro” Pro we actually want?
Oh wait…
We wait because…well, Tim Cook just won’t make it happen. Ask him why.
Like a cheese grater Mac Pro, the last great user friendly desktop Mac that Apple made.
The iMP is an OK machine but it’s for dilettantes, not professionals. Apple threw it together to buy some time as they prepare to kick intel processors to the curb. The next Mac Pro will be massively parallel, an entirely new architecture running an array of A-series CPUs with their own GPUs. X86 will be virtualized for software compatibility.
I respect what you are saying but honestly it looks more like a wish and a dream. It is not if Apple can or can’t do it but if they see it as a long term business investment. The Pro is a very different market and business.
I doubt Apple will invest all the resources necessary to create such hardware unless they definitely see an opportunity to completely revolutionize the server and workstation market. Or how Apple will create a machine to outperform a current 12/24 or 16/32 workstation multicore CPU and all the resources it could manage. Its not about a specific Pro market but about all existing technology.
I agree with what you say, but my worry is: how many Apple employees, assuming you can get them to look up from their iOS devices, will be able to answer the question: What’s a Mac?
I own an iPhone and an iPad, so don’t go there. Although I sometimes forget where my iPad is for as long as a month.
Condescending BS, the vast majority of professionals will be fine with this machine, snobs will stew about their secret superiority that NO ONE else seems to recognize until hell freezes over.
I guess you can’t afford a real Mac Pro, too.
“Mac Pro power…”
Was that intended as a compliment?
More power than we’ve ever had and more power than most of us, even Pros, will ever need. Still, I want one.
I. Don’t care if the iMac is wonderfully powerful and amazingly cheap to buy. I want a separate monitor for a minimum of $2000 plus a separate rectangular box that has tines holes all over, plus a DVD slot and maybe some water cooling pipes. And, oh yes, lots of slots. Empty slots. That will say to everyone that I am a “pro”. Wether I am a pro or not, people will just think I am a pro. They will then bow down and worship me and pay me enormous sums of money for work that could have done with an iMac pro.
Now that is funny. Funnier than funny. So funny 😂 I forgot to laugh! The Pros that post here are as serious as cancer. I would not want to get on the wrong side of one of those guys, believe you me! I have done so in the past and I still smart where they metaphorically whipped me! Look here, you can see the bruises. No, they didn’t come over to my loft in person and beat me, but the effect is the same as if they had — it’s called manifestation. Orthodox Catholics know it well: if you sinned, your skin welts up in sympathetic rejection of evil spirits. It’s a holdover from Celtic rituals of self-ablution and self-abnegation. I had to order new makeup.
I only mention this because the Pro class of computer users has become a mystery cult, dictating the proper course of technology and consequently of human events, and is the third eye on the back of the dollar bill that overlooks the balance of commerce and politics that has been the American compromise of capitalism with freedom since 1789.
It may well be that civilisation crumbles without these experts delicately navigating such important shoals of society. No one wants that. Thus I beg every person to petition Apple CEO Tim Cook to grant our Pros the resources they require to assure peace in our time.
You obviously don’t understand the need for a Mac Pro and can’t afford a Mac Pro either. I couldn’t care less if someone buys Mac Pro for purposes of bragging. That doesn’t negate my needs and those of others.
‘Mac Pro power in the shape of an iMac’
for the price of a small used car.
Or, more seriously unless Apple doesn’t update it over time – in 3 years it will be 3 times the price of a comparable Windows PC with the same power.
Pro’s don’t want this, they want an ongoing, multi-year commitment from Apple.
It doesn’t matter what this hardware does today, it’s what it does in 3-5 years time which is the capital expenditure for hardware like this.
In 3-5 years time, because you can’t touch the internals it will be a dog in comparison to PC’s you can build yourself or buy from a Windows OEM.
All pros want is a good looking box with plenty of slots, that runs a reliable version of macOS with plenty of driver support for 3rd party hardware – that’s it – nothing more, nothing less.
So let me get this right.
You want to compare today’s iMac Pro price to a windows “thing” three years in the future? If a “windows thingy” doesn’t compete now, how will that “dream” of it being 3 times cheaper be real in three years time? Me no understand! You do realize that you would have had three years of use by then. Right! Hopefully, you being a “pro”, it would have made you lots of dosh….enough to consider buying the next iMac Pro which would also be 3 times cheaper and way better than that “windows thingy” since the “windows thingy” would just have caught up with the prior iMac Pro.
Let’s try to understand you from another angle. You want a big box, with empty (but expandable) slots. You want to run it for three years and then populate those slots and run it for three more years. Is that right? Ok, for this to “work out”, two things must be true. First, the cost of populating those slots must be way cheaper than buying the next iMac pro. Second, the computing power increase due to the expanded slots must be on par with the power of the next iMac pro. Yeah? Now just think! How likely are those two things to be true. Not very, Is my guess. Let’s even assume that it saves you $400-500 and that the computing power increase is enough but obviously not as much as a new 2021 iMac Pro. You seriously expect apple (or anyone else) to open a dedicated factory with billions in tooling costs and manpower costs just so you can save a mere $500 bucks over 5or 6 years. Let’s be generous and say…..even if you were saving $1000 bucks…..that’s still $111 per year or $14 per month. What kind of a pro are you that would scrimp and save so little.
Some people keep on wanting internal expansion in a tower format. Why? What is the benefit when the footprint of the iMac Pro is that of your average monitor. So in essence you can connect modules to it that can essentially give you the same expansion capabilities of a tower. It’s just that people are reluctant to change. This is like the argument of the iPhone not having a keypad back in 2008. All the BlackBerry users were against losing the keypad. My only issue with the iMac Pro is the exceedingly difficult task of upgrading the RAM on it. If it was like the 5K iMac, it would be just fine.
A box – metal, a BluRay burner, or at least a place to put one (because plenty of people are still sitting on old media). Legacy ports – (at least) one Firewire 800 in front, and one in back, 4 USB-C (at least, with at least 2 in front), 3 USB 3. I’d like to say ports could be added via PCI cards, but compatible after-market products tend to take 2-3 years to show up). Headphone jack (seriously, don’t consider giving that up yet), maybe optical audio. New, proprietary (if they need to) CPU connection allowing swappable CPU for future upgrades (and that old CPU can be sold to someone who has a lesser one). 3 PCI slots (if anyone truly needs more than that, they can offload it). I suppose it could be time to go SSD-only, although it would be nice if there was a standard hard drive bay or two for larger (much cheaper) hybrid drives. Capacity for plenty of swappable, upgradeable RAM. A lithium ion battery would be nice for emergency controlled shut-downs, in case of power loss, but I’m probably over-reaching on that. Minimize non-swappable attachments (even the fan module should be swappable).
And I’d REALLY like to see a midscale version that consumers who already have monitors could use. You could use the same shell (probably expensive), but with swappable everything, including processors, it would have an upgrade path built in, and might re-invigorate the desktop industry.
Not to mention a new Thunderbolt display – lots of people whose iMacs are aging out are thinking right now that it’s a shame and a waste to throw out a perfectly good display just because of dated internals. And remember when iMacs could be used as second displays? Bring that back, too.
And to be honest, I wouldn’t care a bit if they just updated the cheese-grater with new internals and ports. Mine’s going on 7 years, now, because they’ve offered me nothing substantially better to upgrade to. I still use the optical drive, all the ports are used, and I’ve got two cards in it. And every time I look at it and try to think what I could do without, or how I would downsize it, I just can’t really think of anything.
10Gb Ethernet standard (sadly only one port, so it mean you have to use Wi-Fi if you want to use that port to connect to your Professional Companies SAN.
4 Thunderbolt 3 ports on 2 separate controllers is also good, so at least you can get decent SAN speeds on those if you also by some breakout boxes to convert to 10Gb Fibre.
A proper Mac Pro you could have many of these ports without having to have a desk full of dongles.
You wrote “dongles”. Seriously, the dongle is the physical representation of design failure if it has to be used all the f@cking time.
To me if you have CPU cycles left over to be commenting on this forum. Then you are not maxing out what you have and you have enough CPU power to get by. So you don’t need any more. Now want that is another story, you probably do want more.