Apple plans new iMac configurations targeting pro users for later this year
Despite the delay in new Mac Pro models arriving on the market, Apple is still aiming to target professional users looking for new Macs, and has revealed plans to release new iMacs this year with new configuration options that could be attractive to prosumer and creative users.
Disclosed to a group of journalists at Apple's headquarters, at the same time as plans for Apple's future Mac Pro releases, Apple marketing head Phil Schiller confirmed that new iMacs are in the works, slated for this year. John Gruber of Daring Fireball noted Schiller advised this will include configurations of iMac specifically with the pro consumer in mind, revealing that the company's popular desktop with professional users is the all-in-one iMac.
Apple senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi spoke about the evolution the iMac has seen over the last decade, from the original candy-colored tube iMac, to modern svelte models that can still satisfy many pro user needs.
"And now you look at today's 5K iMac," Federighi said, "top configs, it's incredibly powerful, and a huge fraction of what would've traditionally - whether it's audio editing, video editing, graphics, arts, and so forth - that would've previously absolutely required the Mac Pros of old, are being well addressed by iMac."
Federighi suggested there's still even further that Apple can take iMac as a high-performance pro system, and said the current form factor can address even more of the professional market.
According to Apple's research, approximately 30 percent of the entire Mac user base use pro apps at least once per week, for media creation and software development tasks. Within this group, there is an 80/20 split between notebooks and desktops in terms of sales, and of these desktop sales, iMac outpaces the Mac Pro.
While it remains to be seen what kind of configurations Apple has planned for the pro iMac, there have already been some changes on the Mac Pro side. Early on Tuesday, Apple issued a minor speed bump to the 2013 Mac Pro, with a six-core Xeon CPU and dual AMD G500 GPUs in the base $2,999 model, while the $3,999 variant gains 8 cores and dual D800 GPUs.
Disclosed to a group of journalists at Apple's headquarters, at the same time as plans for Apple's future Mac Pro releases, Apple marketing head Phil Schiller confirmed that new iMacs are in the works, slated for this year. John Gruber of Daring Fireball noted Schiller advised this will include configurations of iMac specifically with the pro consumer in mind, revealing that the company's popular desktop with professional users is the all-in-one iMac.
Apple senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi spoke about the evolution the iMac has seen over the last decade, from the original candy-colored tube iMac, to modern svelte models that can still satisfy many pro user needs.
"And now you look at today's 5K iMac," Federighi said, "top configs, it's incredibly powerful, and a huge fraction of what would've traditionally - whether it's audio editing, video editing, graphics, arts, and so forth - that would've previously absolutely required the Mac Pros of old, are being well addressed by iMac."
Federighi suggested there's still even further that Apple can take iMac as a high-performance pro system, and said the current form factor can address even more of the professional market.
According to Apple's research, approximately 30 percent of the entire Mac user base use pro apps at least once per week, for media creation and software development tasks. Within this group, there is an 80/20 split between notebooks and desktops in terms of sales, and of these desktop sales, iMac outpaces the Mac Pro.
While it remains to be seen what kind of configurations Apple has planned for the pro iMac, there have already been some changes on the Mac Pro side. Early on Tuesday, Apple issued a minor speed bump to the 2013 Mac Pro, with a six-core Xeon CPU and dual AMD G500 GPUs in the base $2,999 model, while the $3,999 variant gains 8 cores and dual D800 GPUs.
Comments
The very all in one concept of the iMac or a laptop serves the constant churn that may be profitable for Apple, but not what more than a few want or need. The workstation form factor is still the most flexible design and that is precisely what Apple abandoned with the Trashcan and pushing people to the iMac.
I do not want cables running all over the place for external storage or external GPUs and I sure do not want all my stuff in the Cloud. The cloud is fine for many things, but not everything.
2) Then don't buy an iMac if an AIO isn't the right fit for you. Or, build a stupid box to go over an iMac if you're OCD is so bad that having a TB RAID connected is causes you freak out and become unproductive.
3) What does "the cloud" have to do with anything? Even if you have an iMac connected to WiFi with a wireless keyboard and trackpad, you can still have a local, networked storage with a NAS.
4) If an AIO design that allows for little to no upgrade path is such a poor design then why are Mac Pros Apple's worst selling PCs, and the iMac and all their laptops far outsell it across every individual brand? Then you have the iPhone and iPad… which are also used by professionals.
Choices are good, upgrades are good. All that remains is the pricing.
I admit I have no idea what I'd like to see, but that is not my job. Apple has always created things that I didn't know I needed until they showed it to me. Blow me away Apple!
And no, the Pro doesn't look like a trash can I've ever seen. You just wanna jump on a clever iHating bandwagon. You wanna see trash? Get yourself a windows machine.
The Surface Pro didn't leapfrog anything. I hate when a company rips off another and people claim they designed something genius. For fu**s sake.
and BTW...a 27" iMac doesn't have soldered in RAM. Only the 21" iMac does and that probably isn't what you're looking for in a Pro computer anyways.
No, they did not. If you read Gruber's article he tried to get it out of Apple and they would not say anything specific about the iMac. They never mentioned the design (old or new), specs, new features, etc.
Maybe this is a bad assumption, but I would assume that most Pro's just want to get work done, not screw around with the inside's of a computer. I would think most Pro users don't have time to tinker around with what's inside. If I were a Pro, I'd rather get a new Mac once it no longer serves my needs, or if there's an issue, get a professional to look at it instead of trying to troubleshoot something yourself.