Vermelho

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

What's missing?
No upgradeability. At all. None. Zero. Nada.
No way to upgrade the RAM, SSD or any other components.
What you get is what you get. Forever. You are welcome.
Not even a M.2 slot for when the built in SSD seems very slow and small two years from now.

Those GPU speed/power charts were missing the name of the discrete GPUs they used for comparison. The charts shown when the M1 Pro and Max when the MacBook Pro was released ended up being very misleading. How exactly does the M1 Ultra stack up to a RTX 3090 when ray tracing in Blender? Who knows? Guess we have to wait for a real review to find out. We do know that that the M1 Max hash rate is around 10.7 MH/s while a 3090 gets 121 MH/s so even if the M1 Ultra is twice as fast, it is still 1/6th the speed of the 3090.

Get a PC loser, lol.   In any case Toms Hardware thinks the ultra will give the RTX-3090 a good run overall. Blender is still working on fully leveraging Apples Metal graphics engine.  Ray tracing however is a specialized graphics function, and the RTX have RT specific cores.  These haven't been integrated into the M1, although the specialized cores there will be more useful to most creatives.  Maybe these will come with the M2 or Mac Pro.  My bet is that the hinted mac Pro will only come with the M2 next generation chips.    In any case, Silicon optimized mac apps will have massive advantages with the integrated OS making the most of the hardware.  Not the drag of graphic card drivers and game engines struggling to make the best of a fire breathing (and watt chugging furnace) big ass double space $1500 PCI card.  No thanks.

Although I understand that pro & max versions of M1 will maintain an edge over “vanilla” M2, if I were Mac marketing I would want to avoid the confusion and try to not introduce new M1 pro/max models AFTER the introduction of first M2.
 I'm also hoping that the larger iMac is not limited to a pricy “pro” version.  I don’t mind the nomenclature, but I want this form factor with a solid edge over M1 24” and under $3k. I suspect there are many with me.
Although the development time from M1 intro to the pro/max was significant, I expect this release time for the expanded versions of M base will be closer in the future, and keep generational developments and model lineups cleaner moving forward.

Yet another eager to upgrade iMac guy. My 27" 5k is late 2015, just squeaking into Monterey OS. I'll probably buy whatever they come up with (in the offered range), but here are my prefs.

• Chin / notch - I don't give a flying fork. 
• Stand - can definitely be improved.  I'd appreciate a free option for a standard vesa mount, and I'd go for a desk mounted arm in a flash.
• Has to be a next generation M series!  M2, or pro/max upgrade option at least.  I'm suspecting new models this year, especially a popular config like the big iMac will be M2.  Fine....  Should still blaze for reasonable cost. 
• Monitor size. 27" is OK, but was definitely hoping for a bump up since the smaller went up.  30/32 would be great - more important is the screen type - hopefully the new tech micro LED wide dynamics.
• Color - meh.  Not silver would be a nice change of pace.
• bezel - Nice to slim it down a bit, But I really don't mind a BLACK edge to my screen. 
• Connectors - honestly, I'm fine without so many built in, especially if they are on the back...  I use a dock anyway for anything that goes in and out frequently.  Ideally, Apple would make their own tailored front facing connections thunderbolt 4 expansion dock and keep it within reasonable price range.  
• external power brick - makes sense for me, heat, replaceable, neater thin look overall on body.
  
• Speedy internal SSD - please don't burn us with the size upgrades. 
• RAM - upgradeable, outsource options pretty please.  I want 32gb without breaking the bank. 

Bring it on when I'm feeling a bit flush. I usually go middle of the pack offerings, but it will depend on how ambitious the baseline model is, and what the upgrades look like.  Hopefully it isn't a money grab on just bigger SSD and RAM that a video pro needs...

I imagine the M series mac pro is going to be the last to arrive, and not for at least another year - more likely 2.  But, what is going to make me open my wallet is the next series of large iMac.  Hopefully not just in an inflated price "iMac Pro", but even the current "pro" chip offerings with a 30" high standard monitor.  I need a powerful stay in place system connected to bulk storage with backups, connected to server and RAID 24/7.  My laptop needs are much less demanding, and I wouldn't want to risk taking the core of my media business out with me.   Maybe the iMac Pro will be a bridge to the next generation of chip, and I'm sure it would satisfy the needs of a huge proportion of creative high end media producers and developers.   I'll have to scrape I'm sure, but my (loaded) iMac late 2015 just barely qualified for Monterey. Surprisingly, it made an immediate noticeable improvement in performance - probably cleaning up some accumulated background issues I'd picked up. 

Appleish said:

I know that there are a lot of use cases out there for some to need the new Intel Mac Pro, but knowing the M1 MBPs were coming, how many could have just waited.

All those Mac Pros out there can't be upgraded to Apple Silicon. What a waste. Flame away...

The pro and pro max chip upgrades were far beyond what was predicted.  The market for the Mac Pro is a specialized industry, and often time sensitive need.  It's not a bad thing that these aren't dropped like hotcakes, because we do want Apple to keep pushing the envelope in the highest level of media creation tools.