Yeah, um...the knock on the iMac Pro was never that it was too expensive in general. It was that it was too expensive for a machine that you cannot upgrade. You mention a comparatively priced PC that you could build yourself as inferior but that is not an apples to apples comparison (no pun intended) as that PC will most likely last you for 5-7 years because it’s upgradable. I highly doubt that iMac pro will have that same utility in a similar timeframe. The entire crux of your “review” is based on the idea that all of these straw men were arguing that it wasn’t worth the price because of its performance? Based on their desire to use for Facebook, seriously???
This may have been your knock, which is fine, but it wasn't the general consensus. This general concept that you speak of is addressed twice in the piece.
Might be worth a re-read. Or a first read.
Also related? The effectively five year old 6,1 Mac Pro has the same utility now as it did the day it was released. And, it was similarly upgradeable with slotted RAM and a socketed processor -- or not upgradeable depending on the viewpoint.
“Socketed processor entombed behind a glued-on screen.” Yeah, I read that the first time, still there the second time, sounds as upgradable as the hyothetical PC mentioned that was built “with similar but not identical components” to me. How much glue and glass do I need to get through to upgrade the graphics card? I will now rush out to buy one at the bargain price of $5K.
And I’ll give you that maybe it wasn’t the only part of the general consensus on the iMac Pro (the others being “WTF” and “Where is/Is this the new Mac Pro?” among other things) but you have to admit, upgradability is a key consideration when considering the “value” of a new computer. Just because Apple optimized it through software updates (for Apples software), and its performance has improved (compared to the 5K iMac apparently) doesn’t justify the value of a computer whose upgrade path involves chucking it out the window and buying another one in a few years.
Again, upgradability is absolutely not a cornern for pros and enterprise. I’ve worked for household brands in retail, banking and energy, and we never, ever upgrade user machines. Replaced. Tons of users go with notebooks anyway so there is no possible upgrade path. I suspect you’re confusing your DIY/gamer/personal use to being in the pro or enterprise market.
And only a complete idiot would throw away Macs they are replacing, considering how well they hold their value.
And we won’t even get into the documented lower TCO of Macs.
And I suspect you’re confusing your IT/“software-dev” needs with the needs of all professionals. Video professionals have different needs including being able to upgrade their machines.
Yeah, um...the knock on the iMac Pro was never that it was too expensive in general. It was that it was too expensive for a machine that you cannot upgrade. You mention a comparatively priced PC that you could build yourself as inferior but that is not an apples to apples comparison (no pun intended) as that PC will most likely last you for 5-7 years because it’s upgradable. I highly doubt that iMac pro will have that same utility in a similar timeframe. The entire crux of your “review” is based on the idea that all of these straw men were arguing that it wasn’t worth the price because of its performance? Based on their desire to use for Facebook, seriously???
You’re confused — DIY and pro market are different things. DIY tinkerers aren’t the pro market... Here in pro land (software dev, which per Craigh is there #1 pro market) we don’t tinker, we replace. Procurement orders new machines, IT drops them off and carts out the old. Accountants write off the investments over tax periods of use.
The rest of your post is still bunk tho. My personal desktop machine at home is a 2011 iMac, loaded at the time and still very capable despite not being able to upgrade its video card.
But yes, you can upgrade the RAM if you forgot to order the proper amount.
Yeah, thanks for the insight. I’m not going to get into what’s “pro-market” and “DIY tinkerer” to you in your software-dev land...I’m come from the land of professional video editors, 3D animation and motion graphics where little things like graphic card upgrades are actually quite important. I’m sure your 2011 iMac at home is quite capable in your land, it’s completely inadequate in mine. How’s that for “bunk”?
First of all, it’s not that hard to get inside an iMac Pro. secondly, Intel isn’t a company that keep their platform for half a decade. Different chipsets and motherboard rolls with a newer architecture, and pretty much the same story goes for Xeons. There are rumors suggest they will eventually make Xeon Ws in LGA3647, therefore no way to upgrade current iMac Pro beyond that.
Yeah, we know. But Apple has said nothing for months. This is unacceptable. For the consumer market, that may be fine, but not for the Pro market, where purchases are planned months in advance. I used to buy about 10 new top line Macs every year for my company, relegating the previous top 10 to secondary status, and moving down the line. We, like most other shops, were on a three year plan. Each level was brought down one step each year, until the forth year, when these oldest machines were either given to employees, or otherwise disposed of.
apple has made it impossible to carry out any rational schedule. I know of a number of shops which are, or have finished, transitioning over to Windows, buying workstations. Will any of them come back? Maybe some, but Apple is doing irreparable damage to their credibility. At the very least, they needed to update the 2013 Mac Pro every year, but for reasons that are incomprehensible to us, decided not to.
i’m hoping that a good part of the delay is to include PCI 4, coming this year, and possibly Thunderbolt 4, which should be coming at some point. Remember that Intel stated that in a decade, Thunderbolt would be up to 100Gbs. We’re only at 40 now, and from people I speak to, we should expect the next jump to be to a minimum of 60. There are a number of other technologies I’d like to see. Since this will undoubtedly be a very expensive machine, it needs to at the bleeding edge. If it takes a bit more time for that, considering how long it’s already taking, I’m willing to wait, but they really need to say something more on what this will be.
Thanks, Great Post.
I'm guessing Apple will wait for PCI 4 and Thunderbolt 4 because they talked about implementing new/advanced technology when they make the next MP IIRC. I think they want to make it and then not touch it for 5-7 years.
The Ironic thing is that this is the year with declining iPhone sales where they could really need revenue coming in from sales of a high end Mac Pro. I don't know the real number but it seemed that Mac sales revenue and market share was growing for the 7 years from 2005 to 2012 with regular updates of products close to each year. I would guess the it tripled during the recession. Now it seems like product updates are rarer and consequently growth is growing much slower. Ironic considering the economy began to recover by 2012. I'm sure they wish the new MP was ready now considering the contraction in the iPhone market.
I really believe that Apple could support 3 Pro desktops - 1. iMacPro, 2. Small desktop similar in size to the current MP, and 3. a bigger MacPro like the old cheese grater. Of course they should all be on different design and refresh cycles so each Year brings one new update each year from the Pro group. But I'm not holding my breathe for either of the last two.
When first release there was at least one 3rd party sales that had the entry iMac Pro price of $4,000 USD. It was an in store sale so you had the added sales tax though. I think B&H had it at $4500 and for me would have been without sales tax so that was close to the same price. I configured a moderately upgraded iMac 5K that had less hardware and it came within spitting distance of that $4k price tag. That was a no brained for me, I went and picked up the iMac Pro.
My point is that a comparison with the 5K iMac can show an even better $ value depending on when and where you bought it.
Yeah, we know. But Apple has said nothing for months. This is unacceptable. For the consumer market, that may be fine, but not for the Pro market, where purchases are planned months in advance. I used to buy about 10 new top line Macs every year for my company, relegating the previous top 10 to secondary status, and moving down the line. We, like most other shops, were on a three year plan. Each level was brought down one step each year, until the forth year, when these oldest machines were either given to employees, or otherwise disposed of.
apple has made it impossible to carry out any rational schedule. I know of a number of shops which are, or have finished, transitioning over to Windows, buying workstations. Will any of them come back? Maybe some, but Apple is doing irreparable damage to their credibility. At the very least, they needed to update the 2013 Mac Pro every year, but for reasons that are incomprehensible to us, decided not to.
i’m hoping that a good part of the delay is to include PCI 4, coming this year, and possibly Thunderbolt 4, which should be coming at some point. Remember that Intel stated that in a decade, Thunderbolt would be up to 100Gbs. We’re only at 40 now, and from people I speak to, we should expect the next jump to be to a minimum of 60. There are a number of other technologies I’d like to see. Since this will undoubtedly be a very expensive machine, it needs to at the bleeding edge. If it takes a bit more time for that, considering how long it’s already taking, I’m willing to wait, but they really need to say something more on what this will be.
My studio has been waiting too. It's getting critical and I've already decided that if the Mac Pro's come out of the gate priced for Saudi oil tycoons - then our 25 years of staunch Apple loyalty are over. I'm expecting that it will be over. I'm expecting a proprietary stack system with some kind of T2 chip registration that will make it absurd to even think about and negate any benefit of 'expandability' that isn't locked to Apple... then we have the same issue... a blind roadmap leaving you reliant on when and if Apple decides to update things, if ever. And what kind of after-market will there be for components that are switched out and chip-locked?
They could have had a CheeseGrater this whole time and made everyone happy. With their pride on the line, you can be sure we will see some over-engineered nefariously-locked down, over-engineered Ives farewell nightmare that comes with Hermes leather accents... starting at the reasonable price of $34,000.
I hope I'm wrong. I seriously do.
I really don’t get what they’re doing. I don’t think anyone does. I’m sure it won’t be $34,000, at least, not for the entry version! But it will be expensive, going by the iMac Pro pricing.
even if they looked at the trash can model and fixed the thermal problems by making it a bit bigger, and having new GPU cards, and truly upgradable CPUs, we would have been happy enough, at least for several years.
i wouldn’t blame Ives for this. Really, he’s not in charge of it.
apple has made it impossible to carry out any rational schedule. I know of a number of shops which are, or have finished, transitioning over to Windows, buying workstations. Will any of them come back? Maybe some, but Apple is doing irreparable damage to their credibility. At the very least, they needed to update the 2013 Mac Pro every year, but for reasons that are incomprehensible to us, decided not to.
Did you not read the TechCrunch article, where Apple spoke very plainly about the MP issues, which was indeed comprehensible?
In any event, the MP market is “single digits” of Mac sales, and probably a low digit at that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve read everything published about it. There’s nothing useful in any of it. Apple was about as obtuse as they could get. We still know almost nothing. We expect better than that. So, great, make excuses for them, even though you obviously don’t understand the issue.
Mac Pro used to be coming in 2018. But that was in 2017. It's so hard, like, designing computer updates. Especially when you have this amazing round glass building to maintain.
I thought the T2 was meant to do some of the encoding but I’m seeing little evidence. Surely this should have been supported by now, or was it just in the Mini?
The 2013 MP hedged it’s bets on multi-GPGPU which took far longer to materialise, but has. Apple could at least have given it’s customers a nod by releasing Vega20(?) GPU cards.
Mac Pro used to be coming in 2018. But that was in 2017. It's so hard, like, designing computer updates. Especially when you have this amazing round glass building to maintain.
I suspect that the building maintenance teams don't have anything to do with the Mac Pro.
I wonder if a refresh with the Radeon VII/M150 is coming soonish. The VII is an odd product for almost everyone else, but so long as Apple is sticking with AMD it's ripe for the iMac Pro. Hopefully the M150 version, while the silicon is the same, the VII caps FP64 (double precision) performance at 1/8th.
I thought the T2 was meant to do some of the encoding but I’m seeing little evidence. Surely this should have been supported by now, or was it just in the Mini?
The 2013 MP hedged it’s bets on multi-GPGPU which took far longer to materialise, but has. Apple could at least have given it’s customers a nod by releasing Vega20(?) GPU cards.
The T2 encoding is funny. It is very limited to output parameters for a speed-up, and there's no public-facing API to take advantage of it right now. We'll see what happens in the future.
I thought the T2 was meant to do some of the encoding but I’m seeing little evidence. Surely this should have been supported by now, or was it just in the Mini?
The 2013 MP hedged it’s bets on multi-GPGPU which took far longer to materialise, but has. Apple could at least have given it’s customers a nod by releasing Vega20(?) GPU cards.
Yeah I found it interesting that they specifically mentioned that for the Mini, while the Pro had been out for a year before. Not sure about if it's used on the Macbook Pros either.
Also Snazzy Labs found it wasn't all that faster than Quicksync, so I wonder what the point was.
Mac Pro used to be coming in 2018. But that was in 2017. It's so hard, like, designing computer updates. Especially when you have this amazing round glass building to maintain.
Mac Pro used to be coming in 2018. But that was in 2017. It's so hard, like, designing computer updates. Especially when you have this amazing round glass building to maintain.
They never once said it was coming in 2018.
True. But we were expecting it then. How long does it take to do this?
I have been throwing very heavy load on my 5K iMac Pro and it never disappoints me. Yes, I am very satisfied with my purchase. I also bought 2018 Mac mini (maxed out) and LG 5K Display. So far I am very happy with my both investments.
Mac Pro used to be coming in 2018. But that was in 2017. It's so hard, like, designing computer updates. Especially when you have this amazing round glass building to maintain.
They never once said it was coming in 2018.
True. But we were expecting it then. How long does it take to do this?
It takes as long as it takes for all the components needed are available/developed/integrated and working well together. It takes as long as it takes to get it right. If you expected something from Apple on an imaginary timeline, that's on you. Are you new here?
Mac Pro used to be coming in 2018. But that was in 2017. It's so hard, like, designing computer updates. Especially when you have this amazing round glass building to maintain.
They never once said it was coming in 2018.
True. But we were expecting it then. How long does it take to do this?
It takes as long as it takes for all the components needed are available/developed/integrated and working well together. It takes as long as it takes to get it right. If you expected something from Apple on an imaginary timeline, that's on you. Are you new here?
That’s not an answer. Considering that Apple knew that people weren’t happy, in a good many instances, with what Apple had, back in the end of 2016, from what the timeline appears to be from the transcript of their discussion, they had plenty of time to consider what they could do, fairly quickly, to have a new product that could, conventionaly, give us what we wanted, which was basically, an updated cheese grater case Mac Pro. They didn’t need to do much more than to add pci 3 slots and newer I/O. That would have made a lot of people happy.
then, they could have begun a new project to build the perfect machine, which is what they’re hinting they’re trying to do.
if anyone says that Apple hasn’t enough resources to do several projects in parallel, they’re nuts. Apple can do whatever they want to. The question is whether they want to. Sometimes, just having a good product is enough, you don’t have to reinvent everything all the time.
dont give me that crap about whether I’m new here. If you were nearly as smart as you seem to think you are, you would know how long I’ve been here, but apparently, you’re not. Can the insults, and try to think before you post.
Mac Pro used to be coming in 2018. But that was in 2017. It's so hard, like, designing computer updates. Especially when you have this amazing round glass building to maintain.
They never once said it was coming in 2018.
True. But we were expecting it then. How long does it take to do this?
It takes as long as it takes for all the components needed are available/developed/integrated and working well together. It takes as long as it takes to get it right. If you expected something from Apple on an imaginary timeline, that's on you. Are you new here?
That’s not an answer. Considering that Apple knew that people weren’t happy, in a good many instances, with what Apple had, back in the end of 2016, from what the timeline appears to be from the transcript of their discussion, they had plenty of time to consider what they could do, fairly quickly, to have a new product that could, conventionaly, give us what we wanted, which was basically, an updated cheese grater case Mac Pro. They didn’t need to do much more than to add pci 3 slots and newer I/O. That would have made a lot of people happy.
then, they could have begun a new project to build the perfect machine, which is what they’re hinting they’re trying to do.
if anyone says that Apple hasn’t enough resources to do several projects in parallel, they’re nuts. Apple can do whatever they want to. The question is whether they want to. Sometimes, just having a good product is enough, you don’t have to reinvent everything all the time.
dont give me that crap about whether I’m new here. If you were nearly as smart as you seem to think you are, you would know how long I’ve been here, but apparently, you’re not. Can the insults, and try to think before you post.
I know enough to know that Apple doesn’t slap together half-assed makeshift updates to legacy machines as a stopgap measure to appease a tiny minority of their user base. You should know that too and adjusted your expectations accordingly, hence the sarcasm.
Mac Pro used to be coming in 2018. But that was in 2017. It's so hard, like, designing computer updates. Especially when you have this amazing round glass building to maintain.
They never once said it was coming in 2018.
True. But we were expecting it then. How long does it take to do this?
It takes as long as it takes for all the components needed are available/developed/integrated and working well together. It takes as long as it takes to get it right. If you expected something from Apple on an imaginary timeline, that's on you. Are you new here?
That’s not an answer. Considering that Apple knew that people weren’t happy, in a good many instances, with what Apple had, back in the end of 2016, from what the timeline appears to be from the transcript of their discussion, they had plenty of time to consider what they could do, fairly quickly, to have a new product that could, conventionaly, give us what we wanted, which was basically, an updated cheese grater case Mac Pro. They didn’t need to do much more than to add pci 3 slots and newer I/O. That would have made a lot of people happy.
then, they could have begun a new project to build the perfect machine, which is what they’re hinting they’re trying to do.
if anyone says that Apple hasn’t enough resources to do several projects in parallel, they’re nuts. Apple can do whatever they want to. The question is whether they want to. Sometimes, just having a good product is enough, you don’t have to reinvent everything all the time.
dont give me that crap about whether I’m new here. If you were nearly as smart as you seem to think you are, you would know how long I’ve been here, but apparently, you’re not. Can the insults, and try to think before you post.
I know enough to know that Apple doesn’t slap together half-assed makeshift updates to legacy machines as a stopgap measure to appease a tiny minority of their user base. You should know that too and adjusted your expectations accordingly, hence the sarcasm.
Apple has been doing just that for decades. My first Mac was bought with a system to scan and edit photos back in 1988. That was for my own company. It cost $250,000 back then. It came with a Mac IIci.
my first personal Mac was bought around the beginning of 1992. It was a Quadra 950. I’m pretty familiar with Apple, likely more so than most on this site. If you were here long enough, you would have read some of my many posts.
yes, I get criticized by a few because I’m not 100% in agreement with every fanboy fantasy. I am realistic. Apple makes mistakes. They’ve been making mistakes from the beginning. Most of their products are irregularly updated models. That’s true of all of them. It’s so obvious that it seems impossible to not know that. My 2012 Mac Pro is a half assed update to the 2010 model. No major improvements, just minor ones. The 2013 Mac Pro hasn’t even been updated in a half assed manner. I read what they said about that, and it’s nonsense.
so we’ve been stuck with either upgrading our cheese grater models as best as possible, or not being able to upgrade the 2013 model other than adding more RAM and newer SSDs. Now, I’ve been one of those saying that many pros don’t seriously upgrade their machines. If they’re really a pro, and not someone doing a little bit of work here and there, and optimistically calling themselves pro, they just buy a new machine every few years, and their accountant writes it off. But, without a “half assed” upgrade every year, that can’t be done, and that the problem.
to remain competitive, you need to maintain your pricing relative to those you’re competing with. So you upgrade. But if there’s no upgrade path, you can’t. So, as an increasing number have been doing, you move, very reluctantly, to a Windows workstation, because cost really isn’t the issue. Time is the issue. And a few thousand in hardware doesn’t matter to a full time working pro. That’s made up in a short while. But if it takes you more time to complete a project, either that means you have no time to take on more work, and you charge the same as your competitor that finishes it sooner, losing money. Or you try to charge more to count the extra time, which, unless you are in a position where your clients think the extra cost is worth it (good luck!), you can’t do.
that’s not good.
all most of us want is more speed. A faster mobo, faster CPUs, faster GPU cards, faster RAM, faster drives, faster I/O and an easy way to install them that doesn’t involve lots of wires, and more room on the desk.. We don’t particularly care about reinventing the wheel. Most pros are not fanboys, these are tools, not consumer toys. We don’t care what it looks like as long as it gets the job done.
Comments
secondly, Intel isn’t a company that keep their platform for half a decade. Different chipsets and motherboard rolls with a newer architecture, and pretty much the same story goes for Xeons.
There are rumors suggest they will eventually make Xeon Ws in LGA3647, therefore no way to upgrade current iMac Pro beyond that.
I'm guessing Apple will wait for PCI 4 and Thunderbolt 4 because they talked about implementing new/advanced technology when they make the next MP IIRC. I think they want to make it and then not touch it for 5-7 years.
The Ironic thing is that this is the year with declining iPhone sales where they could really need revenue coming in from sales of a high end Mac Pro. I don't know the real number but it seemed that Mac sales revenue and market share was growing for the 7 years from 2005 to 2012 with regular updates of products close to each year. I would guess the it tripled during the recession. Now it seems like product updates are rarer and consequently growth is growing much slower. Ironic considering the economy began to recover by 2012. I'm sure they wish the new MP was ready now considering the contraction in the iPhone market.
I really believe that Apple could support 3 Pro desktops - 1. iMacPro, 2. Small desktop similar in size to the current MP, and 3. a bigger MacPro like the old cheese grater. Of course they should all be on different design and refresh cycles so each Year brings one new update each year from the Pro group. But I'm not holding my breathe for either of the last two.
even if they looked at the trash can model and fixed the thermal problems by making it a bit bigger, and having new GPU cards, and truly upgradable CPUs, we would have been happy enough, at least for several years.
i wouldn’t blame Ives for this. Really, he’s not in charge of it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve read everything published about it. There’s nothing useful in any of it. Apple was about as obtuse as they could get. We still know almost nothing. We expect better than that. So, great, make excuses for them, even though you obviously don’t understand the issue.
The 2013 MP hedged it’s bets on multi-GPGPU which took far longer to materialise, but has. Apple could at least have given it’s customers a nod by releasing Vega20(?) GPU cards.
Yeah I found it interesting that they specifically mentioned that for the Mini, while the Pro had been out for a year before. Not sure about if it's used on the Macbook Pros either.
Also Snazzy Labs found it wasn't all that faster than Quicksync, so I wonder what the point was.
then, they could have begun a new project to build the perfect machine, which is what they’re hinting they’re trying to do.
if anyone says that Apple hasn’t enough resources to do several projects in parallel, they’re nuts. Apple can do whatever they want to. The question is whether they want to. Sometimes, just having a good product is enough, you don’t have to reinvent everything all the time.
dont give me that crap about whether I’m new here. If you were nearly as smart as you seem to think you are, you would know how long I’ve been here, but apparently, you’re not. Can the insults, and try to think before you post.
my first personal Mac was bought around the beginning of 1992. It was a Quadra 950. I’m pretty familiar with Apple, likely more so than most on this site. If you were here long enough, you would have read some of my many posts.
yes, I get criticized by a few because I’m not 100% in agreement with every fanboy fantasy. I am realistic. Apple makes mistakes. They’ve been making mistakes from the beginning. Most of their products are irregularly updated models. That’s true of all of them. It’s so obvious that it seems impossible to not know that. My 2012 Mac Pro is a half assed update to the 2010 model. No major improvements, just minor ones. The 2013 Mac Pro hasn’t even been updated in a half assed manner. I read what they said about that, and it’s nonsense.
so we’ve been stuck with either upgrading our cheese grater models as best as possible, or not being able to upgrade the 2013 model other than adding more RAM and newer SSDs. Now, I’ve been one of those saying that many pros don’t seriously upgrade their machines. If they’re really a pro, and not someone doing a little bit of work here and there, and optimistically calling themselves pro, they just buy a new machine every few years, and their accountant writes it off. But, without a “half assed” upgrade every year, that can’t be done, and that the problem.
to remain competitive, you need to maintain your pricing relative to those you’re competing with. So you upgrade. But if there’s no upgrade path, you can’t. So, as an increasing number have been doing, you move, very reluctantly, to a Windows workstation, because cost really isn’t the issue. Time is the issue. And a few thousand in hardware doesn’t matter to a full time working pro. That’s made up in a short while. But if it takes you more time to complete a project, either that means you have no time to take on more work, and you charge the same as your competitor that finishes it sooner, losing money. Or you try to charge more to count the extra time, which, unless you are in a position where your clients think the extra cost is worth it (good luck!), you can’t do.
that’s not good.
all most of us want is more speed. A faster mobo, faster CPUs, faster GPU cards, faster RAM, faster drives, faster I/O and an easy way to install them that doesn’t involve lots of wires, and more room on the desk.. We don’t particularly care about reinventing the wheel. Most pros are not fanboys, these are tools, not consumer toys. We don’t care what it looks like as long as it gets the job done.