
iMac Pro Available Now - rbanffy
https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac-pro
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Finnucane
I wouldn't buy one of these with my own money, but I might try to get one for
work. We don't upgrade anything. All of our PCs and Macs now are leased for
three years and replaced. Maybe I can get one on our next refresh cycle. It's
true, from a user's perspective, the configuration may not be the best, from a
certain accounting perspective, it works out.

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Bishonen88
1TB SSD increase costs $800. 2TB SSD increase costs $2000 (from 2TB to 4TB).

Apple tax hits hard.

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ihsw2
For reference, 1TB NVMe SSDs retail for $600+ and 2TB NVMe SSDs retail for
$1700+. Lower-priced 2TB NVMe SSDs will probably come out soon, driving the
cost down hard.

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baldfat
Apple is famous for paying less for hardware than any other manufacture so I
don't see how MSRP is pertinent.

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pdpi
Sure. But, from his numbers, if you were buying it at MSRP as a consumer, the
$800 upgrade would cost you around $1100.

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tinus_hn
Except that if there are problems with the ssd and it was built in, it’s
covered by the Apple warranty.

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pdpi
So it's both cheaper and covered by Apple warranty (which tends to be quite
good). Your point being?

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olympus
It's not cheaper. $2000 is the price difference to go from the 2TB upgrade to
the 4TB from Apple. $1100 is the price difference to go from 2TB to 4TB if you
paid retail.

Apple is getting all of the profit that a retailer would, plus an additional
$900 profit on top of that.

With the money you save you can self insure because the SSD isn't guaranteed
to fail.

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tkxxx7
What numbers are you looking at? I don't see how you follow this:

> 1TB NVMe SSDs retail for $600+ and 2TB NVMe SSDs retail for $1700+.

with this:

> It's not cheaper. $2000 is the price difference to go from the 2TB upgrade
> to the 4TB from Apple. $1100 is the price difference to go from 2TB to 4TB
> if you paid retail.

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olympus
I misread the above post as prices for 2/4TB SSDs instead of 1/2 TB SSDs. My
bad.

The real difference between Apple and DIY is $300. On their configuration
page, Apple's prices are +$800 to go to the 2TB SSD, and +$2800 to go to the
4TB SSD. That's a $2000 price jump to add 2TB. If I did it myself I could add
2TB for $1700. That means that Apple gets all the profit that a retailer
would, plus $300.

A $300 premium is still a little gougey from Apple considering it takes them
all of five seconds to slap the extra SSD in on the assembly line.

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pdpi
Is it 2x2TB or 1x4TB, though? Obviously, it'd be cheaper to do 2x2, but
there's a decent chance you're actually getting 1x4 on the iMac.

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olympus
The biggest NVME drive I can find is 2TB. Apple might be offering a 4TB
option, but isn't that less good? You lose all your data at once instead vs
losing half.

I doubt they are hurting for real estate with that screen size, it might just
be better to add another M.2 spot on the board. Then they wouldn't have to
push manufacturing limits to source a 4TB drive and can get higher yield 2TB
drives.

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jgowdy
When is Apple going to recognize that we want Nvidia GPUs? Come on Apple.
People are literally buying outdated MacBook Pros to have a CUDA compatible
GPU.

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pjmlp
It won't matter, because the NVidia driver provided by Apple would only talk
Metal Compute anyway.

I don't see them doing otherwise.

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tvon
NVidia provides drivers, I'm using one on a Hackintosh now.

[http://www.nvidia.com/object/mac-driver-
archive.html](http://www.nvidia.com/object/mac-driver-archive.html)

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pjmlp
The golden question is if they would be allowed on an actual macOS image
without hacks, Hackintoshes don't count.

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cbrewster
What? The page linked has drivers for macOS. They work on a hackintosh and on
any regular Mac. Nvidia wouldn’t release official drivers that only work on a
hackintosh.

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pjmlp
Today, the OP question was about a future Mac Pro.

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andrewvc
I just don't get it. How can you make a tool for the pro market with no
thoughts about price/performance or upgradeability?

Apple seems to think that deviating from their consumer oriented design
philosophy is anathema, even when dealing with pros.

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baldfat
Who in Professional Video Editing world should trust Apple in regards to
Hardware anymore? More and more video production is moving back to Windows and
for good reason, hardware and Apple's handling of Final Cut Pro X years ago
still scares everyone.

In graphic design I see this as a good solution for those shops, but video
really has been leaving Apple.

After their meeting to set the record straight in April 2017 about
Professional Hardware and Apple support for the industry with Phil Schiller,
Craig Federighi they give people this? This is not what a workstation should
be. It isn't upgradable GPU, and it is using ports again like the Pro of 4
years ago.

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drakenot
This was very far along when that April meeting occurred. Many people
speculated that this _was_ going to be their answer to the Pro market, but
they took the feedback, held that meeting and promised to release a new
"modular" Mac Pro.

So, this isn't what they are releasing in response to that feedback or what
they were discussing in that meeting.

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Shivetya
however with modular people are reading too much into it. Apple more likely
meant modular for them, as in being able to adjust to changes in technology
where the previous Mac Pro could not be changed.

I doubt we will go back to the old tower style similar to PC versions

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rbanffy
> the previous Mac Pro could not be changed.

Apple could have changed it rather easily.

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soccerdave
Are there really people willing to pay $5,000 for a computer built in to a
monitor? If you want to run 2 screens, then they won’t match.

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dogma1138
If you going to build the same exact spec it's not that far off from the
actual BOM for the parts, in fact going for the exact same build will cost you
more that that what Apple is charging.

So Vega Pro 64 (Vega FE equivalent) 8 core Xeon-W build from Apple is $5599

If you would build the same PC it would be:

~$1200 for the CPU (Xeon W-2145, not available to the public yet)

~$400 for 32GB ECC 2666mhz RAM from a good vendor

~$500 for a Xeon-W workstation motherboard

~$480 for 1 TB PCIE SSD like the Samsung 960 Pro

~$1000 for VEGA Frontier Edition

~$250 for a good case

~$220 for a good power supply

~$120 for CLC water cooling for the CPU

~$100 for case fans

~$1300 for a professional 4K monitor

This comes out to the total of ~$6870

Sure you can build an almost comparable PC from other parts at a fraction of
the price but if you want to replicate the build in the iMac it will cost you
much more.

Also AFAIK you can connect a second screen the TB ports do support Thunderbolt
displays and DisplayPort.

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edu
I think you're inflating prices. You can get a really good 4k 27" monitor for
about $500,

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alkonaut
Same thing there: to get the actual thing: a 5120 x 2880 IPS LED screen you
have to pay a pretty hefty premium. Quick search shows the LG is around
$1300-$1500. (?)

You can get a computer with "80-90%" the specs of this, and pay 50% the price.
But the point is if you want to match 100% of the spec you'll likely pay 100%
if not 110% of this price too.

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dogma1138
Yep 70-80% for 50-60% of the price is about right, you can replace the Intel
Xeon for a cheaper i9 or even cheaper AMD TR or even cheaper Zen if you don't
care about matching the performance.

TBH most of the savings are from the CPU/motherboard once you drop the Xeon.

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alkonaut
You quickly get into the whole "It's definitely not professional without ECC"
and the stupid intel market segmentation. Intel makes it really hard and
expensive to build quick (as in single core quick) workstations with ECC. If
you are absolutely hellbent on 5K and a 4Ghz+ with ECC then it's going to cost
a bit. So while you could get a lot of the _performance_ at a lower price
point, things like the ECC makes it hard to compare in some aspects.

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dogma1138
I don’t think ECC is needed for FinalCut Pro or similar workloads but then I
never had a render fail at the 11th hour so I wouldn’t know.

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ojbyrne
I wonder how many of these will end up in VC's offices, running Excel.

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PascLeRasc
*Outlook and Apple Calendar

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cs702
It appears that an Nvidia GPU is not an option, so this machine cannot be
realistically used for deep learning.

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pjmlp
Sure they can.

[https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coreml](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coreml)

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dmitriid
Team at Apple:

So we ran into heat sink problems with MacPro. Also, people wanted a pro
machine to be extensible and upgradeable.

We learned from our mistakes. We give you the non-upgradable non-extensible
iMac Pro that is also a heat sink problem.

(Note: I'm aware there's a MacPro coming sometime next year. And still...)

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olympus
Just for fun, I added every possible option to the configurator (including
VESA mount and software). Nearly $14k.

Since my work (statistics) is compute heavy but data transfer only happens
once, I'll be sticking with EC2 at <$5 per hour. An iMac Pro would require me
to upgrade before I worked off the difference. EC2 has the upgrading factored
into the price and has CUDA GPUs.

I get that not everyone is like me (video editing would be real slow if you
had to transfer all the files over the web), but I find it hard to justify
when I could hire a kid to build me a comparable system for much cheaper.
Sure, Apple's warranty is better, but is is worth as much as the price
difference says it is?

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ksec
Do All Professional Video / Gfx Editor uses large 27" monitor? For Video
definitely, but i heard no one is using Apple's hardware for Video any more
because they dont give a damn about the Mac. But surely we not everyone in the
Gfx side needs a 27". Not everyone has the space to afford the 27" Size. The
volume consumed by those component should fit in 21", surely this isn't a
technical problem.

And are those Keyboard are butterfly keyboard? ( I hope not )

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epmaybe
The keyboard is butterfly. I've gotten used to mine on the macbook pro, but it
is definitely louder which can annoy friends and family.

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thinkythought
Having used both side by side, the desktop butterfly keyboards are markedly
different from the mobile ones. They don't even seem to use the same switches
or tech. I have the newest version of both

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kahlonel
I've never used a Magic keyboard. Is it a lot like Macbook keyboards? Do
people prefer it over a mechanical keyboard if they want their wrists to not
hurt after a day-long use?

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samcat116
Its basically what the Macbook keyboards should be. Much more reliable with a
little more travel distance, but with the same key stability as the butterfly
ones.

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Brometheus
Its the other way aournd.

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caycep
Looking at my use cases, I rarely need something of this power, but I'm
excited that some of the advances will trickle down into the regular iMac
line...

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reustle
I've been watching eBay for space grey magic keyboards / trackpads since they
won't sell them individually. No luck.

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FussyZeus
Has that been officially stated? I've been hoping to get a set of the keyboard
and trackpad in grey.

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lumisota
Yes -- the configuration page states: "Space Gray accessories are available
only at the time of your iMac Pro purchase.".

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sbr464
Curious how it’s available now? Local pickup is Jan 2 or 3, delivery after
Christmas at earliest. Just wondering

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sbr464
Are they selling a standalone monitor? The brochure mentions connecting 2
screens, is that 2 full iMac pros?

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bnastic
LG Ultrafine 5K, same size/resolution

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sbr464
Nice, have a dead one under my desk. Can get it warrantied, but lg won't ship
a box, been too lazy to sort it out. Need to take care of that...

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mholt
Just for fun, I maxed out the configuration all the way--just to see--and the
price was $14,000. :o

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yuhong
Notice no 64GB LR-DIMMs. I even sent an email to Cook and Federighi about that
one today.

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mf2hd
Finally we can build a proper compile/render farm! Oh wait.

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PascLeRasc
Built in KVM for every node in your cluster!

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reacweb
at this price tag, I would have expected a frameless screen.

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bob_theslob646
>10Gb Ethernet

Does any consumer isp offer speeds faster than 1gb?

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matthewmcg
Maybe not, but a 10GbE connection is useful with higher-end NAS models. A
well-configured storage array can easily saturate a 1GbE connection.

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foepys
Modern NAS don't even need to be configured in a special way. I have a HP
Microserver Gen8 (from 2013 with an old Intel Pentium) with HDDs and FreeNAS.
My ZFS RAID-Z pushes 1G easily on sequential reads without any special things
like SSD caches.

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jotjotzzz
This is not a pro machine, no one can upgrade the RAM or open this up for
anything. This is suitable for rich YouTubers. Apple is now pretty much
clueless.

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pgwhalen
Why are you so sure that upgradability is a requirement for a pro machine? I’m
asking genuinely, not because I’m a “pro,” but because I’ve read annecdotes of
people who use Macs professionally but do not feel the need to upgrade their
internals over the life of the machine. Perhaps Apple has recognized that.

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jotjotzzz
Really? I upgraded by Macbook's hard drive and RAM because I can and it was
available to sped up the performance, I'm still able to use it up until now
and it's an old machine but the upgrade is making it last longer.

I also upgraded my parent's iMac after the hard drive failed and also
installed additional RAM to speed up their experience. Those aren't pro
machines but day-to-day computing needs.

For this price point I would have expected to be able to do these things, and
knowing pros use their machines heavily and rely on it, it's a pain in the ass
not to have this ability. Perhaps it's already great out of the box and
nothing else is needed, it's perfectly future proof. But honestly, if the
option is available to upgrade parts -- I'm sure people would love it more.

In addition -- the commenter above, I'm not bashing on Apple. In fact, I am an
Apple stockholder. I am only saying they have failed in many ways to satisfy
the customer's needs but instead make decisions now based on the marketing and
profit. You can only do that for so long until your supporters start jumping
ship. My comment is more of frustration not bashing.

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rcarmo
We're playing a game here where someone shouts out a 5-digit number and we
have to guess the configuration (s)he picked.

Impressive, but a bit depressing considering that it's a closed system that
you'll never be able to upgrade.

More thoughts here: [https://mjtsai.com/blog/2017/12/12/the-imac-
pro/#comment-279...](https://mjtsai.com/blog/2017/12/12/the-imac-
pro/#comment-2796595)

Edit: gender neutrality

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alex_suzuki
Wow, that sounds like a really boring game.

