polymnia

ravnorodom said:

Greedy executives from Pantone company. Adobe needs to create their own color swatches and ditch these blood sucking leeches. 

It would be quite different to me if Pantone (owned by X-Rite) had developed an elegant subscription product. The promise of subscription software is that the continuous payments buys you a continuously updated product that works reliably. The Pantone Connect App does not deliver on this promise. I'd happily pay if they made it easy for me to access the full library. It would be worthwhile to me, even preferable to the incomplete Pantome libraries included by default in Creative Cloud software. If you wanted the full set, it's been necessary to create your own libraries using the legacy Pantone app which is laborious. I know IT at creative agencies that have built these libraries for the creative staff, but it's an onerous project for a solo freelancer to do on their own. 

rob53 said:

When I was a kid, we got 5% interest on savings accounts. That was when banks actually served people instead of their CEOs and the stock market. 2% is nothing except when you compare it to the 0.01% most banks give you.

And your parents paid 12% on the mortgage. interest cuts both ways. If you are a borrower, low is good. A saver? High is good. 

Crickets. Tumbleweed. 

9secondkox2 said:

polymnia said:

chasm said:

I'm not saying that an iMac Pro is not going to happen, but I *am* saying Gurman doesn't have any inside info here and is just speculating on a personal fantasy -- like several of the posters here.

The 27-inch iMac Pro cost $5,000 when it debuted five years ago. That's actually $1,400 *more* expensive than a base Mac Studio and Studio Display and vastly less powerful. Face it, folks -- the Mac Studio/Studio Display combo is your 27-inch iMac Pro, and I'm a bit dumbfounded that this isn't obvious to Gurman.

It seems more logical to me that Apple has figured out that the true "Pro" market for the iMac (i.e., people who are using the machine to make a living) have the money to buy a Mac Studio and whatever display works best for them. Those buyers can earn that expense back very quickly, and thus Apple has nearly zero incentive to build something that competes anywhere close to an existing product.

Could Apple make a non-Pro 27-inch iMac? Sure. Maybe Apple could use the cheaper panels LG makes for its Ultrafine 5K (which costs $1,300), and maybe the whole package would even come just over $2K  (for just the regular M2 -- no option for the Max or Ultra). That seems much more likely to me than a 5K 27-inch iMac Pro.

As for a 32-inch iMac Pro -- na ga ha pen.

I think comparing a potential iMac Pro revival with the Mac Studio and declaring them a useless overlap may not be accurate. 

The Mac Studio seems to be a new tier in the Mac lineup, above Pro and offering the Ultra variant M chip. If the iMac Pro makes a return it may stick with the Pro/Max variants. If so, this will offer a path to significant savings over the Xeon powered iMac Pro of the past while still offering berry capable Pro performance. Now that Apple doesn’t have to chose between Core i5/7/9 & Xeon with the associated steep price jump to offer pro performance, they have more option than they had with Intel chips powering the Mac. There are viable ways forward to make an iMac Pro that doesn’t pointlessly other offerings.  

The studio is certainly not above the pro tier. When the Mac pro is out, the top version won’t be lesser than the top studio version. Come on dude. 

The studio exists because apple has no apple silicon desktop that could throw down with Intel or amd heavy iron. For the people who needed serious horsepower, there was nothing apart from the MacBook Pro. And even then, the m1 max was meeting fierce competition from the newest Intel CPUs when paired with expensive discrete GPU options. The Ultra had to launch. 

The large iMac and the Mac Pro were nowhere near ready. Apple needed something. But it couldn’t really just bust the Mac mini out of its category, so it stretched it, drilled some holes, slapped a couple ports on the front and boom. A stopgap was born. 

If the studio is successful enough a year after the max pro and iMac launch, it may soldier on. But it’s easy to see how it’s a bit out of place once it’s job is done. A great computer for its time though. I’d buy one if I wasn’t saving for a fully specced out iMac Pro, whatever it ends up being called. 

[edit: I realize my prior comment said “Studio is a new tier in the Mac lineup” which invites a direct compare to the Mac Pro, but my intent was to think about the MacBook class which spans a majority of Apple’s M chips and consider how to apply those tiers onto the iMac class incorporating the new Ultra tier chip of the Mac Studio] The Mac Pro is in a class by itself (for now). So are Macbooks within which are a few tiers (Air, Pro and not long ago, vanilla MacBooks and perhaps in the future MacBook Studio?). I'm talking about iMac class tiers. I could see room for iMac (no descriptor, the current 24" M1 is the lead example), iMac Studio (who knows exactly what this might be but a guess is 27" with Pro/Max M chips), and iMac Pro (32" screen + Pro/MaxUltra[?] M chips).

It's quite possible I am misinterpreting where the "Studio" tag slots into the Good, Better, Best matrix, but my point is: there is lots of room for "Better" & "Best" iMacs, should Apple choose to make them.

It feels like I'm arguing semantics here. Whether Apple chooses iMac Pro or iMac Studio as the name, I see room for more performant & capable machines in the iMac line.

entropys said:

macxpress said:

Not sure why this needs to exist when there's the Mac Studio and Apple Studio Display. 

Becuase they are more expensive. The value proposition of the old iMac 27 inch was pretty good.

The old 27” iMac is how I pay the bills in my business. If a pro version were available I’d certainly consider it. The prev iMac Pro came out after I bought my current machine. But it is it is nearing replacement age…