Well, I was hoping to be able to test this myself soon, but apparently, even though I ordered a couple of minutes after the store went live, I’ll be waiting sometime into April for the monitor and until late April and possibly early May for the computer.
i’m using the 16” Macbook Pro with 32 graphics cores and 64GB RAM now, so I’m really interested to find out how close to a doubling in performances I’ll see with this. Double the rendering engines as well. That should prove interesting.
I'm a bit disappointed in the monitor though. I was hoping for a model that was somewhat more expensive, with miniLED, and possibly even 6K, as I’m hoping the new higher end monitor expected to come out will also use MiniLED, an advance over what it has now, and possibly go to 8K, though now I’m reading something about 7k, which is an odd resolution. But I bought this new one anyway. From what I’m reading, it should be somewhat better than the present iMac versions.
MORE expensive? $1,600 starting price isn't highway robbery enough for you?
No idea why you bought one of these then. Apple's got you covered, they can rape your wallet very effectively with their other stupidly high priced monitor. Might as well option it up, with the stand and the VESA mount (why not have both, since you're so filthy rich) it's only $7,197.00
For the rest of us, $500 is a very high end price for a really good 27" monitor. My eyes can be perfectly happy with $300 one.
You’re awedully opinionated on something you don’t understand. This is a graphics monitor. All graphics monitors are expensive. Nobody is telling you to buy it. If you want to buy a cheaper monitor, fine. But don’t disparage my purchase because can’t understand why I made it, or why a lot of others will make it.
This was a pretty pro-Apple and anti-Apple discussion today. A little tiring.
As a pro-Apple person, I welcome all competition from Intel or AMD and they can set their own prices freely. I wish them well. But it seems the anti-Apple crowd doesn't want Apple to have the freedom to set its own prices, or even that Apple is welcome to exist as a company.
Well, it looks good on number in the presentation. But let’s not forget the Ultra is comparing with a 2 year old Xeon. 2 years is a lot in computer technology. Not to mention, arguably AMD’s Epyc is the fastest CPU in the PC world.
Let’s hope the future Mac Pro will be even faster with 4/8 sets of CPU. But it might cost $8000 on the entry model.
Good luck on finding an Epic chipset in a gaming machine, Even alienware AMD machines have Ryzens, and there's this little issue with Ryzens and Windows....
Yes the M1 Ultra CPU is just plain fabulous. The GPU on the other hand, not so much unless you limit your tests to memory intensive operations such as video compression. It's easy to blow away the GPU with a mid range gaming laptop. Most "pro" computer tasks are now done on the GPU not the CPU. Having a fast CPU is great no doubt about it but you need a powerful GPU to go along with it. While Apple is ahead of the pack on CPU performance it is lagging NVIDIA, AMD and now Intel by a wide margin. Rather than doubling the entire processor, I would rather see dedicated CPU and GPU chips integrated into a single package. That's something we may see in the Mac Pro but at a price few can afford. There is a huge market in $2000-$4000 computers and laptops that Apple can't touch with their Studio or Pro computers.
The $2-4k market isn't huge but the Studio model will be competitive with what's in that range, there aren't many 20TFLOP laptop GPUs. The $4,999 model will perform similar to an i9-12900k + Nvidia 3090:
In some cases a 3090 will be faster but there's a lot of real world scenarios where a 3090 is 2-2.5x a 3060, which is right around where the Ultra will be:
I'm a bit disappointed in the monitor though. I was hoping for a model that was somewhat more expensive, with miniLED, and possibly even 6K, as I’m hoping the new higher end monitor expected to come out will also use MiniLED, an advance over what it has now, and possibly go to 8K, though now I’m reading something about 7k, which is an odd resolution. But I bought this new one anyway. From what I’m reading, it should be somewhat better than the present iMac versions.
I myself am holding out for the 11K version. It must go to 11
This was a pretty pro-Apple and anti-Apple discussion today. A little tiring.
As a pro-Apple person, I welcome all competition from Intel or AMD and they can set their own prices freely. I wish them well. But it seems the anti-Apple crowd doesn't want Apple to have the freedom to set its own prices, or even that Apple is welcome to exist as a company.
Apple is leading in performance, in disruption and the Geeks are up in arms across the internet (Tech sites), they are confused frustrated and hurt.
Well, I was hoping to be able to test this myself soon, but apparently, even though I ordered a couple of minutes after the store went live, I’ll be waiting sometime into April for the monitor and until late April and possibly early May for the computer.
i’m using the 16” Macbook Pro with 32 graphics cores and 64GB RAM now, so I’m really interested to find out how close to a doubling in performances I’ll see with this. Double the rendering engines as well. That should prove interesting.
I'm a bit disappointed in the monitor though. I was hoping for a model that was somewhat more expensive, with miniLED, and possibly even 6K, as I’m hoping the new higher end monitor expected to come out will also use MiniLED, an advance over what it has now, and possibly go to 8K, though now I’m reading something about 7k, which is an odd resolution. But I bought this new one anyway. From what I’m reading, it should be somewhat better than the present iMac versions.
MORE expensive? $1,600 starting price isn't highway robbery enough for you?
No idea why you bought one of these then. Apple's got you covered, they can rape your wallet very effectively with their other stupidly high priced monitor. Might as well option it up, with the stand and the VESA mount (why not have both, since you're so filthy rich) it's only $7,197.00
For the rest of us, $500 is a very high end price for a really good 27" monitor. My eyes can be perfectly happy with $300 one.
You're either legally blind or willfully ignorant or both. $300-$500 monitors are garbage compared to those in the $1K+ range. You might enjoy working with garbage equipment, but I'd hardly rush to pull "the rest of us" into that assessment.
Well, I was hoping to be able to test this myself soon, but apparently, even though I ordered a couple of minutes after the store went live, I’ll be waiting sometime into April for the monitor and until late April and possibly early May for the computer.
i’m using the 16” Macbook Pro with 32 graphics cores and 64GB RAM now, so I’m really interested to find out how close to a doubling in performances I’ll see with this. Double the rendering engines as well. That should prove interesting.
I'm a bit disappointed in the monitor though. I was hoping for a model that was somewhat more expensive, with miniLED, and possibly even 6K, as I’m hoping the new higher end monitor expected to come out will also use MiniLED, an advance over what it has now, and possibly go to 8K, though now I’m reading something about 7k, which is an odd resolution. But I bought this new one anyway. From what I’m reading, it should be somewhat better than the present iMac versions.
MORE expensive? $1,600 starting price isn't highway robbery enough for you?
No idea why you bought one of these then. Apple's got you covered, they can rape your wallet very effectively with their other stupidly high priced monitor. Might as well option it up, with the stand and the VESA mount (why not have both, since you're so filthy rich) it's only $7,197.00
For the rest of us, $500 is a very high end price for a really good 27" monitor. My eyes can be perfectly happy with $300 one.
You just answered a bunch of questions I've had about you for a long time. This explains a lot. You describe us as "filthy rich". That's a relative term, but whatever it means to you, you seem to have a problem with it.
I'm sorry.
Your $300 27" monitor is 4K at best, and about 300 nits. That's about half the pixels, and half the brightness. It has no color accuracy. It looks washed out and fuzzy compared to this one. And if it has a mic and speakers, it doesn't have the 3 mic beam forming array, or the high end speakers. If it has a camera it's HD with 1-2MP, while this has 12MP with processing tech in it that can automatically follow us around the room.
Sure, maybe you don't need any of that for what you do for a living. It would explain your "filthy rich" comment. But you might consider that maybe us "filthy rich" people can afford these "MORE expensive" products because we do well paid work that actually benefits from those features. These products makes us more productive, which in turn makes us more money, more pleasantly, and so it all pays for itself pretty quickly. After that we're making more money we can keep for providing better for our families, or to build our businesses bigger, provide more jobs, contribute to the economy, or new innovations, etc.
That's kinda what "pro" (you know... short for "professional") is all about. We're hardly being robbed. Maybe you should try it and you too could be "filthy rich".
You hate and regularly diss everything Apple, but with arguments that make no sense -- they are either deliberate misinformation or completely clueless. You seem to have this deep resentment for everything Apple and Apple users. (Perhaps you resent how "filthy rich" we apparently are?)
That explains your comments, but the thing I still don't get is: You clearly hate Apple and Apple users so much, but here you are, regularly, on an Apple forum. WHY ON EARTH ARE YOU HERE?
That explains your comments, but the thing I still don't get is: You clearly hate Apple and Apple users so much, but here you are, regularly, on an Apple forum. WHY ON EARTH ARE YOU HERE?
It's either a troll or somebody extraordinarily undeserving of the effort to ridicule / rebut.
Can we get an 'ignore' function in this joint? Kthxbai
That explains your comments, but the thing I still don't get is: You clearly hate Apple and Apple users so much, but here you are, regularly, on an Apple forum. WHY ON EARTH ARE YOU HERE?
It's either a troll or somebody extraordinarily undeserving of the effort to ridicule / rebut.
Can we get an 'ignore' function in this joint? Kthxbai
Yeah, but the trouble with 'ignore' is when other people reply we still see that but have missed the context.
As much as I probably should, I don't want to ignore him. I've noticed the pattern in darkvader's comments the last couple of years and it actually kinda fascinates me. He pops in with this obscure/obtuse comments and then disappears until he posts the next one on something completely new. He never replies to any kind of reason and he rarely replies to anyone at all. Plus I've asked him the "why are you here?" question before. Of course he's never answered that.
Until now I'd concluded he's almost certainly a troll (just poking at us for his own entertainment) or a shill (paid by some competition of Apple's to try to deter people). However, with phrases like "filthy rich" in his comment this time... this one was more personal. So maybe there's some genuine resentment or something going on. As snarky as I acknowledge my tone is, my "you should try it" is genuine.
Still, these are only theories. I admit it, I wish I knew the truth (hence the question, just in case he'll answer). But I won't lose any sleep over it.
sconosciuto said: Can we get an 'ignore' function in this joint? Kthxbai
This website should have a feature where we can tag someone to not show up when we read threads. For those people that we haven't tagged, we should be able to see how many people have tagged them to be invisible.
Well, it looks good on number in the presentation. But let’s not forget the Ultra is comparing with a 2 year old Xeon. 2 years is a lot in computer technology. Not to mention, arguably AMD’s Epyc is the fastest CPU in the PC world.
Let’s hope the future Mac Pro will be even faster with 4/8 sets of CPU. But it might cost $8000 on the entry model.
Intel's offerings until just recently have remained stagnant on the Xeon side. It's only right to compare it with Apple's current Mac Pro offerings, even though it's 2 years old. It's still incredible how Apple has pushed the performance envelope in those two years where Intel was nowhere to be seen.
While AMD's offerings is also impressive, when compared in terms of performance-per-watt, ASi outperforms them both.
Honestly, I don’t understand why Apple is so emphasis on performance/watt. Sure save energy is good and less noise from fan. But no one really care if their $100000 sports car use much less gas than the next car. People care about how fast it can go and how it handle the corner, not gas/miles.
The low power consumption also indicates how much room there still is for further performance gains. Desktop systems are usually limited by their power consumption and more important by the heat that has to be dispersed from tiny areas on the dyes. Apple proves that they have plenty of headroom with their chip design.
That explains your comments, but the thing I still don't get is: You clearly hate Apple and Apple users so much, but here you are, regularly, on an Apple forum. WHY ON EARTH ARE YOU HERE?
It's either a troll or somebody extraordinarily undeserving of the effort to ridicule / rebut.
Can we get an 'ignore' function in this joint? Kthxbai
There is an ignore function. Click a person's username, then Ignore is in the top right.
I used to have a list of people I was ignoring posted to my profile, with a reason why. A moderator removed it for some reason.
Well, it looks good on number in the presentation. But let’s not forget the Ultra is comparing with a 2 year old Xeon. 2 years is a lot in computer technology. Not to mention, arguably AMD’s Epyc is the fastest CPU in the PC world.
Let’s hope the future Mac Pro will be even faster with 4/8 sets of CPU. But it might cost $8000 on the entry model.
Intel's offerings until just recently have remained stagnant on the Xeon side. It's only right to compare it with Apple's current Mac Pro offerings, even though it's 2 years old. It's still incredible how Apple has pushed the performance envelope in those two years where Intel was nowhere to be seen.
While AMD's offerings is also impressive, when compared in terms of performance-per-watt, ASi outperforms them both.
Honestly, I don’t understand why Apple is so emphasis on performance/watt. Sure save energy is good and less noise from fan. But no one really care if their $100000 sports car use much less gas than the next car. People care about how fast it can go and how it handle the corner, not gas/miles.
I disagree. It's the difference between sitting next to a noisy heater versus a silent, cool computer. It's yet another thing to appreciate, but has a real impact if your noise floor is important. (E.g. if recording content, editing audio, or making a video call etc.) Another benefit is that these macs are used in rack designs - power use and heat emissions are both important there, but the low drain also means the power supply is physically smaller. It's not just more performance per watt, it's more performance per volume of space.
Current Intel designs cannot deliver performance without a large power drain and significant heat expulsion.
So there's a myriad of difference scenarios where this matters, and such thinking isn't isolated to computers; to use your car example: Tesla vehicles use no petrol and operate relatively quietly while delivering performance - buyers seem to care about this stuff in automobiles as well.
Well, I was hoping to be able to test this myself soon, but apparently, even though I ordered a couple of minutes after the store went live, I’ll be waiting sometime into April for the monitor and until late April and possibly early May for the computer.
i’m using the 16” Macbook Pro with 32 graphics cores and 64GB RAM now, so I’m really interested to find out how close to a doubling in performances I’ll see with this. Double the rendering engines as well. That should prove interesting.
I'm a bit disappointed in the monitor though. I was hoping for a model that was somewhat more expensive, with miniLED, and possibly even 6K, as I’m hoping the new higher end monitor expected to come out will also use MiniLED, an advance over what it has now, and possibly go to 8K, though now I’m reading something about 7k, which is an odd resolution. But I bought this new one anyway. From what I’m reading, it should be somewhat better than the present iMac versions.
MORE expensive? $1,600 starting price isn't highway robbery enough for you?
No idea why you bought one of these then. Apple's got you covered, they can rape your wallet very effectively with their other stupidly high priced monitor. Might as well option it up, with the stand and the VESA mount (why not have both, since you're so filthy rich) it's only $7,197.00
For the rest of us, $500 is a very high end price for a really good 27" monitor. My eyes can be perfectly happy with $300 one.
The display is actually very good value for what’s being offered. The cheapest 5K 27” display is around £999, the LG UltraFine is usually around the £1150 mark.
On paper, at least, the new Apple display is quite a bit superior to the LG. So it is priced quite keenly for this grade of monitor.
Where Apple loses people, and rightly so, is the £400 add on for the height adjustment. They’re just taking the piss at that price point and they know it, it’s just like the wheels on the Mac Pro.
Really the height adjustment should just be standard, even if it meant a charging $50 more to everyone. But Apple is Apple and they pull this crap a lot.
Still, as a monitor, forgetting the “optional extras” it’s a good price.
Though AI is not reporting this, other sites have shown that the M1 Ultra is ever so slightly behind Alder Lake in single core performance, but faster in multicore.
The M1 Ultra is also faster than AMD Threadripper in single core, but slightly behind in multicore, due to the aforementioned having 12 more CPU cores.
The M1 Ultra is basically the best of all worlds here.
It not only beasts the Intel chips of yesteryear used in Macs, but it also beats the latest and greatest.
And this is just benchmarks. Wait until the IRL comparisons come out. As it is, the M1 Max was beating Alder Lake in practical usage. The M1 Ultra is doing damage.
And this is just generation 1. Wow.
I’m guessing the Mac Pro replacement will use the “Ultra Max” and go full quad on us. Should be very impressive.
Well, it looks good on number in the presentation. But let’s not forget the Ultra is comparing with a 2 year old Xeon. 2 years is a lot in computer technology. Not to mention, arguably AMD’s Epyc is the fastest CPU in the PC world.
Let’s hope the future Mac Pro will be even faster with 4/8 sets of CPU. But it might cost $8000 on the entry model.
Intel's offerings until just recently have remained stagnant on the Xeon side. It's only right to compare it with Apple's current Mac Pro offerings, even though it's 2 years old. It's still incredible how Apple has pushed the performance envelope in those two years where Intel was nowhere to be seen.
While AMD's offerings is also impressive, when compared in terms of performance-per-watt, ASi outperforms them both.
Honestly, I don’t understand why Apple is so emphasis on performance/watt. Sure save energy is good and less noise from fan. But no one really care if their $100000 sports car use much less gas than the next car. People care about how fast it can go and how it handle the corner, not gas/miles.
Given the cacophony that ensues when my i7 + RTX is used for anything beyond light duty, I can very much appreciate the power efficiency of ASi
Well, I was hoping to be able to test this myself soon, but apparently, even though I ordered a couple of minutes after the store went live, I’ll be waiting sometime into April for the monitor and until late April and possibly early May for the computer.
i’m using the 16” Macbook Pro with 32 graphics cores and 64GB RAM now, so I’m really interested to find out how close to a doubling in performances I’ll see with this. Double the rendering engines as well. That should prove interesting.
I'm a bit disappointed in the monitor though. I was hoping for a model that was somewhat more expensive, with miniLED, and possibly even 6K, as I’m hoping the new higher end monitor expected to come out will also use MiniLED, an advance over what it has now, and possibly go to 8K, though now I’m reading something about 7k, which is an odd resolution. But I bought this new one anyway. From what I’m reading, it should be somewhat better than the present iMac versions.
MORE expensive? $1,600 starting price isn't highway robbery enough for you?
No idea why you bought one of these then. Apple's got you covered, they can rape your wallet very effectively with their other stupidly high priced monitor. Might as well option it up, with the stand and the VESA mount (why not have both, since you're so filthy rich) it's only $7,197.00
For the rest of us, $500 is a very high end price for a really good 27" monitor. My eyes can be perfectly happy with $300 one.
I mean if all you can afford is 300 then that’s all you can afford, but that you sound peeved that someone else might want Apple’s offering.
There is an ignore function. Click a person's username, then Ignore is in the top right.
I used to have a list of people I was ignoring posted to my profile, with a reason why. A moderator removed it for some reason.
tyvm!
Was chatting with a friend about the Studio. Here's yet another perspective on this debate sparked by darkvader's deeply silly comment: Not so long ago, many pro users were openly and loudly questioning Apple's commitment to pro users. In 2013 they stuck us with the trashcan Mac Pro, which turned out to be a dead end. They also left us wondering if they understood the need and desire of many Mac Pro users to swap out or choose components such as the GPU(s). Then in 2017 they finally followed up with a new Mac Pro, the back-to-the-future cheesegrater MP but it also came with eye-watering prices for even the lowest-cost configurations. Then ASi was debuted in June 2020 and the MP with an Intel CPU suddenly looked like a dead end as well, but with no hope in the near future for an ASi-powered Mac Pro.
Apple is finally proving to us that they really do care about catering to professionals who prefer Macs. These days pretty much anybody who dares to call themselves a professional in video/photo/3D knows that monitors matter a LOT. All of these professionals need at least one color-accurate monitor with sufficient resolution in their set-up.
So even though they're doing a good job of giving everyone high quality monitors where they provide one (e.g., the latest iteration of MBP), it's pretty smart of Apple to finally give us a range of choices for non-all-in-1 computers. Before the last several months, the only such choices for a pro user were an Intel-powered Mac Pro or a Mini. Historically, the Mini has been somewhat-to-very-much underpowered for many pro uses*. The Mac Pro, on the other hand... well, I don't think I need to recapitulate that story except to say that many of us have for several years been wondering about Apple's commitment to and vision for the future of this category.
Now we can see Apple has committed to a wide and carefully-considered range of options for every level of pro user where you choose your own monitor or use the one(s) you already have and love. There's even a laptop with a fantastic monitor perfectly suitable for doing professional work, and with the possibility of providing it with a tremendously powerful chip and integrated memory.
It is finally, once again, a really good time to be a video/photo/3D professional on the Mac platform!
*Yes, I've seen 21" and even 27" iMacs used by professionals. For some users they are good enough... but there's reasons why quite a few have clamored for an iMac Pro.
Comments
As a pro-Apple person, I welcome all competition from Intel or AMD and they can set their own prices freely. I wish them well. But it seems the anti-Apple crowd doesn't want Apple to have the freedom to set its own prices, or even that Apple is welcome to exist as a company.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/08/amd_stutter/
https://www.pcgamer.com/hp-omen-45l-gaming-pc-review/ ($4700)
https://www.amazon.com/CYBERPOWERPC-Xtreme-i9-12900KF-GeForce-GXiVR8080A29/dp/B09JQD6N1M ($4950)
In some cases a 3090 will be faster but there's a lot of real world scenarios where a 3090 is 2-2.5x a 3060, which is right around where the Ultra will be:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/GeForce-RTX-3060-Laptop-GPU-vs-NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-3090_10478_10485.247598.0.html
https://techgage.com/article/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3090-proviz-performance/
vs
Over the next few years, Apple can scale this to 3x the performance.
I'm sorry.
Your $300 27" monitor is 4K at best, and about 300 nits. That's about half the pixels, and half the brightness. It has no color accuracy. It looks washed out and fuzzy compared to this one. And if it has a mic and speakers, it doesn't have the 3 mic beam forming array, or the high end speakers. If it has a camera it's HD with 1-2MP, while this has 12MP with processing tech in it that can automatically follow us around the room.
Sure, maybe you don't need any of that for what you do for a living. It would explain your "filthy rich" comment. But you might consider that maybe us "filthy rich" people can afford these "MORE expensive" products because we do well paid work that actually benefits from those features. These products makes us more productive, which in turn makes us more money, more pleasantly, and so it all pays for itself pretty quickly. After that we're making more money we can keep for providing better for our families, or to build our businesses bigger, provide more jobs, contribute to the economy, or new innovations, etc.
That's kinda what "pro" (you know... short for "professional") is all about. We're hardly being robbed. Maybe you should try it and you too could be "filthy rich".
You hate and regularly diss everything Apple, but with arguments that make no sense -- they are either deliberate misinformation or completely clueless. You seem to have this deep resentment for everything Apple and Apple users. (Perhaps you resent how "filthy rich" we apparently are?)
That explains your comments, but the thing I still don't get is: You clearly hate Apple and Apple users so much, but here you are, regularly, on an Apple forum. WHY ON EARTH ARE YOU HERE?
Can we get an 'ignore' function in this joint? Kthxbai
As much as I probably should, I don't want to ignore him. I've noticed the pattern in darkvader's comments the last couple of years and it actually kinda fascinates me. He pops in with this obscure/obtuse comments and then disappears until he posts the next one on something completely new. He never replies to any kind of reason and he rarely replies to anyone at all. Plus I've asked him the "why are you here?" question before. Of course he's never answered that.
Until now I'd concluded he's almost certainly a troll (just poking at us for his own entertainment) or a shill (paid by some competition of Apple's to try to deter people). However, with phrases like "filthy rich" in his comment this time... this one was more personal. So maybe there's some genuine resentment or something going on. As snarky as I acknowledge my tone is, my "you should try it" is genuine.
Still, these are only theories. I admit it, I wish I knew the truth (hence the question, just in case he'll answer). But I won't lose any sleep over it.
I used to have a list of people I was ignoring posted to my profile, with a reason why. A moderator removed it for some reason.
It's the difference between sitting next to a noisy heater versus a silent, cool computer. It's yet another thing to appreciate, but has a real impact if your noise floor is important. (E.g. if recording content, editing audio, or making a video call etc.)
Another benefit is that these macs are used in rack designs - power use and heat emissions are both important there, but the low drain also means the power supply is physically smaller. It's not just more performance per watt, it's more performance per volume of space.
Current Intel designs cannot deliver performance without a large power drain and significant heat expulsion.
So there's a myriad of difference scenarios where this matters, and such thinking isn't isolated to computers; to use your car example: Tesla vehicles use no petrol and operate relatively quietly while delivering performance - buyers seem to care about this stuff in automobiles as well.
On paper, at least, the new Apple display is quite a bit superior to the LG. So it is priced quite keenly for this grade of monitor.
Where Apple loses people, and rightly so, is the £400 add on for the height adjustment. They’re just taking the piss at that price point and they know it, it’s just like the wheels on the Mac Pro.
Really the height adjustment should just be standard, even if it meant a charging $50 more to everyone. But Apple is Apple and they pull this crap a lot.
Still, as a monitor, forgetting the “optional extras” it’s a good price.
Was chatting with a friend about the Studio. Here's yet another perspective on this debate sparked by darkvader's deeply silly comment: Not so long ago, many pro users were openly and loudly questioning Apple's commitment to pro users. In 2013 they stuck us with the trashcan Mac Pro, which turned out to be a dead end. They also left us wondering if they understood the need and desire of many Mac Pro users to swap out or choose components such as the GPU(s). Then in 2017 they finally followed up with a new Mac Pro, the back-to-the-future cheesegrater MP but it also came with eye-watering prices for even the lowest-cost configurations. Then ASi was debuted in June 2020 and the MP with an Intel CPU suddenly looked like a dead end as well, but with no hope in the near future for an ASi-powered Mac Pro.
Apple is finally proving to us that they really do care about catering to professionals who prefer Macs. These days pretty much anybody who dares to call themselves a professional in video/photo/3D knows that monitors matter a LOT. All of these professionals need at least one color-accurate monitor with sufficient resolution in their set-up.
So even though they're doing a good job of giving everyone high quality monitors where they provide one (e.g., the latest iteration of MBP), it's pretty smart of Apple to finally give us a range of choices for non-all-in-1 computers. Before the last several months, the only such choices for a pro user were an Intel-powered Mac Pro or a Mini. Historically, the Mini has been somewhat-to-very-much underpowered for many pro uses*. The Mac Pro, on the other hand... well, I don't think I need to recapitulate that story except to say that many of us have for several years been wondering about Apple's commitment to and vision for the future of this category.
Now we can see Apple has committed to a wide and carefully-considered range of options for every level of pro user where you choose your own monitor or use the one(s) you already have and love. There's even a laptop with a fantastic monitor perfectly suitable for doing professional work, and with the possibility of providing it with a tremendously powerful chip and integrated memory.
It is finally, once again, a really good time to be a video/photo/3D professional on the Mac platform!
*Yes, I've seen 21" and even 27" iMacs used by professionals. For some users they are good enough... but there's reasons why quite a few have clamored for an iMac Pro.