
Apple Teases Upcoming Space Gray iMac Pro, "the most powerful Mac ever" - runesoerensen
https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/05/apple-teases-upcoming-space-gray-imac-pro-the-most-powerful-mac-ever/
======
tomduncalf
Gonna leave this here from the official press release as it seems quite a few
people have missed this point:

"In addition to the new iMac Pro, Apple is working on a completely redesigned,
next-generation Mac Pro architected for pro customers who need the highest-
end, high-throughput system in a modular design, as well as a new high-end pro
display."

[https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/06/imac-pro-most-
powerfu...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/06/imac-pro-most-powerful-mac-
arrives-december/)

Also, I want that black keyboard!

~~~
slg
That is just confusing. There will be a modular Mac Pro that is totally
different from this iMac Pro? That leaves me to wonder who exactly this iMac
Pro is targeted at.

~~~
spike021
I'm sure there are still professionals who would prefer pre-packaged
solutions. Sure, many prefer being able to continually upgrade and add to
their setups as well.

Just a different kind of sub-market, I think.

~~~
jordache
how is a mac pro not a pre-packaged solution? You choose from a few pre-
configured setups if you wish.

~~~
coldtea
In that the iMac displays are some of the best in the industry in a very
competitive price (competitive displays cost nearly the same for the display
alone).

~~~
slg
The biggest problem is that the effective lifespan of a good display is much
longer than a high performance computer. Even ignoring the compromises made to
the computer to allow for the two to be merged, you are simply wasting money
upgrading the monitor every time the computer needs to be upgraded. By
attaching the two together this machine is even less practical to upgrade than
the old trashcan Mac Pro.

~~~
greedo
Yup. I bought the 30" ACD in 2006. It's still running fine now, though a bit
of image retention is creeping in.

~~~
coldtea
Well, not the best argument for monitor's staying power.

Compared to 2006's ACD, new monitors have bigger brightness, better
saturation, far wider color gamut, better viewing angles, AND double+ the
resolution.

~~~
greedo
In today's world of disposable gear, I think lasting over 11 years is pretty
darn good.

------
gigatexal
Maybe I'm a sheep but I think it's great. Up to 128GB ECC, up to 18 cores,
large NVMe SSDs with up to 3GB/s speeds (likely reads, but probably also
writes), and it's in that beautiful grey / black. Really cool. The 8-core
model at 5k seems reasonable to me since the monitor is likely 2k itself.

You'll probably see a lot of them being bought for upper eschelon developers
at hip startups. And the TCO of a mac vs. a beige box PC is said to be much
lower by way of lower incidents of issues, failures, etc.

Edit: the one processor e5 16xx chip is less than a grand. That changes the
value proposition of the iMac pro but if I had the cash I'd still get one.

~~~
Joeri
Yeah, if I had that kind of money stuffed between my couch, I'd totally buy
it. I don't care that it's a ridiculous machine and that single thread
performance with that 18-core monster won't be anything to write home about. I
still want it, because it is awesome.

~~~
gigatexal
I agree. I think the sweet spot for my workload (not encoding much video just
compiling stuff) the 8-core model with higher clocks makes more sense for me.

~~~
seanp2k2
"Finally, you can `npm install` in mere minutes!"

------
colept
This is Apple's answer to their negligence to the Pro market, and it's hugely
disappointing.

The iMac was already supposed to be a Pro machine. And then they "New Coke"'d
it by making it too thin and susceptible to overheating. Performance suffered
and now they're compensating with this machine.

At $5000 the iMac Pro falls just short of a ~$2000 Hackintosh. It's still
locked into the thin form factor that can't be upgraded and does not vent heat
well enough. I'm sure this works for big companies like Disney where machines
are replaced every few years. However as a developer, a Pro user, I've never
felt more validated in my choice to switch away from Apple's hardware.

~~~
rayiner
If it's an 8-core Xeon, it's gotta be an E5. So the CPU alone could run $2,000
(pricing for E5 2667 v4, this probably uses an equivalent Skylake Xeon which
isn't out yet).

~~~
sz4kerto
Intel has just priced it's 18-core i9-7900X at 2K.

~~~
masklinn
You do realise Xeons are a completely different range with different price
points right?

~~~
sz4kerto
Yes, I have Xeons in my WS. The reason why many people ended up buying Xeons
for the desktop is core count -- i7 had 6, then 8 cores until recently, so a
10-18 core workstation could only be built with Xeons. The other difference is
ECC, which most of the people don't necessarily want (let's not talk about
whether they need it or not).

If a developer/pro/etc. need 18 cores, most of the time they'll be OK with a
top-end i7 -- I think. Therefore it is fair to compare Xeons with i7s, they're
not the same but yes, they have overlapping target audience when it comes to
desktops.

~~~
haikuginger
> If a developer/pro/etc. need 18 cores, most of the time they'll be OK with a
> top-end i7 -- I think.

Not if they need ECC RAM - and if you've got enough professional stuff to fill
128GB of RAM, you really, really need ECC RAM.

~~~
floatboth
Ryzen 7: eight cores, ECC support, unbeatable pricing.

(No 128 GB RAM but you're not getting that with a desktop i7 either. Oh and
the new HEDT platform that also has "i7"s… not all chips will support quad
channel RAM!)

~~~
haikuginger
In context, I'm not sure I understand your point.

------
Jyaif
Not very hard to release the "most powerful Mac ever" when you haven't updated
your top of the line for 4 years.

------
mmastrac
I’m disappointed they chose “pretty” over a “functional” metal box like the
old Mac Pros. They ran into thermal issues with the fancy design of the trash
can, despite their promises of cutting edge thermal design. These iMac Pros
are probably going to be soldered-CPU, soldered-RAM beasts with low
repairability.

It's a bit of a small victory that they support external GPUs, but I think
they are missing the boat here.

~~~
mpweiher
This is the stopgap. They said there'll be a real Pro in 2018.

~~~
kilroy123
Then why should anyone buy this one?

~~~
_ph_
It is available earlier, and perhaps, with those "power" upgrades, it does the
job for a large part of the audience. The iMac is a really great computer for
all, who don't need to exchange components. Now with real workstation class
power.

------
toufka
How is this not another Trashcan Mac Pro? It is a beautiful, expensive device
at launch but has no capability of being upgraded, expanded or experimented
with. It looks to have same thermal conundrum as the trashcan needing to
dissipate the heat of the screen - all while trapped in a consumer-level shell
designed specifically for exterior looks at the cost of performance. Is it not
just philosophically incorrect for the pro market?

And compared to the enthusiasm for their iOS here, the pro customer is clearly
no longer of value to Apple.

~~~
masklinn
> How is this not another Trashcan Mac Pro?

In that it's not a Mac Pro at all. They have (uniquely) pre-announced a tower-
style Mac Pro for "not this year"[0] back in April:
[https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives](https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives)

[0] and given how precise their wording was, it's not necessarily 2018 either.

~~~
intoverflow2
It's pretty obvious that decision was made when this product was almost
complete and this product was supposed to replace the entire Mac Pro line.

Obviously something changed their minds though.

~~~
toufka
Huh, that's an interesting thought.

Imagine Cupertino had (nearly) finished designing this sleek machine, thought
it was a wonderful answer to refresh their Mac Pro, then they get completely
railed in January for failing to provide professionals a pro machine when they
expected it. They're late, they know it, but no biggie - they'll introduce
this pro machine this summer and everyone will love it.

The pros then proceed to articulate exactly what their grievances are, and the
machine that is sitting under the black cloth in the back room looks _nothing_
like what their most loyal users are hurting for. And if listened to closely,
the machine that's mostly finished is actually an insult to their most
valuable customers. What do you do in that case? Completely scrap the
beautiful machine you've already made? Or eat (silent) crow and promise a
completely new product that you start working on _tomorrow_ , and tell the
engineers who were working on their pet dream computer to quickly finish up -
let it be introduced mid-keynote by a non-executive, go back and painfully re-
etch a diminutive 'i' in on each of the just-printed 'Mac Pro' bezels - likely
to never recoup their R&D costs on this 'lost' product.

That's a good point. I bet that's exactly what happened here. Because if Cook
would have given this exact keynote, but had introduced this grey iMac as
their 'next new thing' that was _replacing_ the Mac Pro, he'd have been booed
off his own stage during Apple's most sacred moment. Apple had enough sense to
avoid that moment. They have enough cash to produce an entire (temporary)
product line that loses money. They _don 't_ have enough cash to lose their
most die-hard and influential customers en masse and hear a crowd of 'boos' at
the height of their hallowed keynote.

------
old-gregg
To all of you who're disappointed by this not being a "proper Pro":

"4x larger L2 cache" and "2x wider AVX" suggest they're going to use the
upcoming i9 X-series chips [1] that are based on Skylake design with ~15%
better instructions-per-clock (IPC) performance than Broadwell-based Xeons,
plus they'll clock much higher than Xeons too: with turbo boost up to 4.5Ghz
for even the 10-core model!. Quad channel DDR4 at 2666Mhz is also an
improvement.

All this promises a much better single-thread performance vs the current Pro
line. IMO that's insane amount of power, it can even probably handle Slack
desktop client! :)

[1] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/11464/intel-announces-
skylakex...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/11464/intel-announces-skylakex-
bringing-18core-hcc-silicon-to-consumers-for-1999)

~~~
symfoniq
With ECC support, these are almost certainly Xeons, not Skylake-X.

~~~
floatboth
They literally said "Xeon" on stage.

------
rl3
@dang @sctb Dupe detection just killed my iMac Pro submission with an Apple
URL after it reached over 60 comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14491068](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14491068)

Perhaps a thread merge is in order? Official links tend to always be preferred
for Apple announcements, hence my posting it. Sorry if I caused any extra
work! :)

It's worth noting that dupe detection also killed off _salimmadjd_ 's
submission linking to the hyphenated product URL (mine is just the non-
hyphenated Apple redirect to that same URL).

------
ravitation
Keep in mind, that this sits between the iMac and the Mac Pro. A new iteration
of the actual Mac Pro is expected in 2018.

------
goodroot
Given the support for major gaming engines, Steam VR, and changes within Metal
2, is it wrong to be optimistic for Mac gaming?

If the takeaway from this WWDC could be potential gaming parity with Windows,
that's a really big deal for me. Me being the segment of Pro users who need to
work on a Mac and want to game natively on one, too.

~~~
modeless
Optimism would be warranted if they announced Vulkan, OpenGL 4.5 and a
commitment to update their product line with new internal GPUs more frequently
and at reasonable prices. Thunderbolt 3 has less than half the bandwidth of
PCI Express 3.0 x16 so that's a lame solution for GPU upgradability.

~~~
floatboth
GPUs don't really use the whole 3.0 x16 bandwidth, x8 is enough. It is sad
that they didn't drop Metal in favor of Vulkan, yeah.

~~~
squaredpants
I think some do now... And even if they do not, they will in the near future!

------
danieldk
It is interesting that they have gone this direction, since Pros were clearly
asking for something more akin to the cheese gater. The price for the entry-
level model is also pretty bad.

It's also a shame that the Mac Mini seems to be dead (at least no updates in
the keynote).

At least the MacBook and iMac line got nice bumps.

~~~
kogepathic
_> It's also a shame that the Mac Mini seems to be dead (at least no updates
in the keynote)._

Yeah which is really too bad. I bet there's a larger market for a "Mac Mini
Pro" with similar specs to this iMac, but without the integrated display (and
hefty price premium Apple exerts).

I seriously don't understand how Apple supposedly have time to design an
advanced cooling system for the iMac Pro yet can't come up with a bog-standard
cheese grater case like the previous Mac Pro design...

------
Keyframe
From what pro users wanted - this makes it worse, not better.

~~~
cupofjoakim
Atleast it's a relatively powerful all apple option. Earlier we'd have to go
for a hackintosh, which is a no go in many professional environments.

Still not good enough tho - it's not upgradeable.

~~~
Keyframe
It would be a great thing if screen was a cintiq, like Surface. This.. it
feels like a stopgap - expensive one at that.

------
heliumcraft
I don't think an equivalent PC really costs $7000 USD....

~~~
rbanffy
A Dell Precision 7000 will set you back US$3000 at a configuration similar to
the iMac Pro. Add a good 27" 5K display, PCI-based SSD and you are close to
US$ 6000 with a GPU that's a generation behind.

And it comes with Windows. Nobody deserves that.

~~~
heliumcraft
Wait, but Dell Precision 7000 is a laptop? you can't compare with a desktop. I
just built a good gaming PC that can be overclocked including a GTX 1080 for
just $2300 (monitor excluded).

I'm sure with $4700 more it's possible to get something still better than this
new imac pro.. yet with a good cooling system and upgradable at any time.

edit: $2300 INCLUDING 15% taxes

~~~
rbanffy
Sorry, the Precision 7000 is the "Fixed workstation".

You'll probably can get something with higher performance, but it'll probably
also take up more space, generate more heat and make more noise. It'll also
demand more time to select the components and assemble it. If you enjoy doing
it, OK. If you don't, your time is more expensive than the difference.

I selected a Dell because I want a single phone number to call when something
goes wrong.

~~~
heliumcraft
You're right about that, I installed 6 fans on the computer case alone and it
can be noisy at times, but I'm happy with what I'm getting and I can upgrade
later.

This is for desktop, for laptops I might still go with apple however.

------
AdamN
It will be awesome if the Space Gray keyboard/mouse are only available with
the iMac Pro and not independently. Then they'll be must-haves :-)

------
clhodapp
Hrm.. Folks here keep acting like this means Apple still doesn't get the Pro
market (or that there _is_ still a pro market).. This really seems to me to be
a "what can we get out sooner" product released as a stopgap to next year's
preannounced new Mac Pro. I suppose it's still valid to fault them for the
reality of their product line and for having gotten themselves into this
position in the first place, but I think it's pretty clear that this is _not_
Apple's actual attempt to fully pent-up demand for a good traditional
workstation from Apple.

~~~
intoverflow2
>This really seems to me to be a "what can we get out sooner"

Feels the opposite to me, feels like they've considered this the Mac Pro
killer. But then at the last minute back at the start of the year realised
there was still a place for a Mac Pro.

Probably because this solves none of the real issues with the last Mac Pro.

------
runesoerensen
Apple's own product page is online now with a lot more information
[https://www.apple.com/imac-pro/](https://www.apple.com/imac-pro/)

------
IE6
Not a Mac user but do they ever release a top-end product that was less
powerful than last year's top-end product? If not hasn't ever top-end mac ever
been the most powerful mac ever?

~~~
ex3ndr
MacMini 2013' are better than a new one.

~~~
handedness
You mean 2012 (Macmini6,x), right? The last of the quad-cores.

~~~
ex3ndr
Yes, thank you for clarification.

------
jarym
They wouldn't need this rushed excuse for a 'Pro' machine if they hadn't
totally taken their eyes off the MacPro for the last 3+ years!

It's like they woke up one day and realised 'oh crap people are pissed and
when we asked them why we were surprised that we have upset customers because
we haven't updated this MacPro thingy in a few years' and then Tim Cook must
have decreed 'let's get SOMETHING out there to stop the masses turning out
with pitchforks!'

Really should never have come to this.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
I can't tell if you're being snarky or serious, but 1) the thermal dissipation
on a 12-core (or is it 18? I forget) Xeon and a GPU like that is nuts, to fit
that into an iMac must have taken years, and 2) you know that Apple prefers
all-in-ones and has been wanting to take the industry in this direction for
years.

I'd prefer a new version of the cheesegrater too but to suggest that they
rushed this together is ludicrous. If anything, it's another reason why the
Mac Pro got neglected for so long.

~~~
jarym
Here's the rub: people who actually buy Xeon CPUs and high-end GPUs want those
parts to be replaceable and upgradeable. It's why the G5 MacPro lasted as long
as it did, and why the 2013 MacPro was comparatively a straightjacket!

If Apple are targeting the same demographic then they're in for another public
backlash. Sticking all this high-end gear into a sealed $5k device is
baffling. Make no mistake, this iMac Pro will be another 'Pro' product that's
put out into the market and forgotten about for a few years.

It also did not take Apple 'years' to come up with this - while it probably
existed as a concept for a while I am convinced they started focussing on it
after the grumbling about lack of MacPro updates. Otherwise why wait until
December to release it.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
Yes and no. I'm like you and I agree that this is not the computer for us.

This is a computer for Pixar artists. This is for some architects I know that
do very technically demanding renders but shouldn't be trusted swapping out
their own gpus. One can be a "Pro" and be qualified to or care about
internals, and money is no object.

The problem isn't that computers like this exist, it's that our needs were
misjudged. They acknowledged that a couple months ago, and the product is
coming. Meanwhile it's dumb to deny that a market exists for Pro all-in-ones.

------
Quequau
I'm still using my Mac Pro from 2008 and a still older 30" cinema display. I
really need a new set up but so far I've not found the iMac or Mac Pro
offerings really compelling.

I'm not really sure I want to sign up for an all in one design because
displays are often useful for much longer than workstations and the last
generation of Mac Pro didn't really seem like they were worth the cost.

------
shmerl
Still no OpenGL 4.5 support?

------
sz4kerto
I'm watching this iMac announcement and .. hm, I still find it underwhelming.
The top-spec'd iMac will be less powerful (when it comes to CPU) in Jan/2018
than my current desktop I bought in mid-2015. We'll see the actual pricing
though.

I don't think that forcing high-perf components into a small desktop chassis
makes a lot of sense, but it might me only me.

~~~
shams93
For starting at 5k the pricing requires a bank loan for most people when you
could pick up a refurbished desktop for $300-400

~~~
always_good
I bought a suit from Goodwill for $50 in uni. Doesn't mean there isn't a
market for more expensive suits.

------
benologist
I hope they sell the dark peripherals separately.

------
meesterdude
$5K for a machine that's still tied to their display. I have a large display I
already love, and no room on my desk for anything else.

I suppose there's a market for this - Probably Disney or related shops. But
there's no way I would blow $5K on this. That's just insane.

Maybe the Mac Pro will be more worthwhile.

------
notadoc
No Touch Bar on the keyboard.

Let's hope that is a sign they will do away with it on the MacBook "Pro" as
well.

------
ksec
If you need and cares about Display Quality, the Pricing for these iMac and
iMac Pro are surprisingly attractive. I have yet to see anyone deliver 21" 4K
Screen at a reasonable price. And all the listed spec for iMac Display aren't
simply best in the industry apart from OLED.

------
Shivetya
Okay, this is just bad. The memory cannot be upgraded by the user.
[https://twitter.com/9to5mac/status/871852155455537152](https://twitter.com/9to5mac/status/871852155455537152)

------
microcolonel
I think this is the first time Apple has advertised the specific GPU vendor
and product line in their product since... the powerbook maybe? I might have
missed out on a few examples. Vega must be really something.

~~~
floatboth
They always listed the GPU for everything, down to "Intel Iris Pro whatever".
But yeah, Vega hype train!

------
midnitewarrior
"The most powerful Mac ever" \- what kind of tech company would release a new
product that's worse than the previous one?

Apple's Unnecessary superlatives​ are tiring.

------
dasloop
Any idea about what nCU (New Compute Unit) is? Was listed as one of the new
features of the iMac Pro.

~~~
jra101
That's a feature of the graphics card, AMDs new Vega GPU architecture.

------
aspirin
I hope this isn't the "Mac Pro successor" Apple was alluding to earlier this
year...

~~~
masklinn
No it's not, in April they both talked about a modular Mac Pro which would
ship "not this year" (the iMac Pro is slated to ship in December), and they
did specifically refer to this iMac Pro:

> “great” new iMacs in the pipeline, slated for release “this year”, including
> configurations specifically targeted at large segments of the pro market.

[https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives](https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives)

------
cupofjoakim
Well, atleast it has a VESA mount?

------
dharma1
How is the Radeon Vega going to be used for machine learning without framework
support?

~~~
arcanus
[https://streamhpc.com/blog/2016-12-15/amd-gets-machine-
intel...](https://streamhpc.com/blog/2016-12-15/amd-gets-machine-intelligence-
mi-range-hardware-software/)

"AMD will be delivery HIP version of Caffe, Tensorflow, Torch7, MxNet, Theano,
CNTK, Chainer, all supporting our new MIOpen – our new Deep Learning solver."

~~~
dharma1
Theyve been saying "will" for a long while now. I'll believe it once they post
the github link but expect there to be a long wait

------
rocky1138
Is this the VR-capable one?

~~~
rocky1138
Honestly, I have no clue why I got downvoted. I was genuinely asking. People
keep talking about the VR Apple computer.

------
JohnJamesRambo
Space isn't gray?

------
tcarn
"As you’d expect from a pro machine, there are plenty of high-speed ports to
create a high-performance workstation."

haha, except for your Macbook Pro.

------
dbg31415
Wait wait wait... the last thing I want as a "Pro" is a single monitor. Feels
like Apple is just repeatedly telling me to go somewhere else.

~~~
floatboth
They showed TWO external 5K displays, so up to three 5K monitors total

~~~
dbg31415
They won't line up cleanly. I'm left with a desk that looks all cobbled
together.

This is another "pro" in name-only machine I suspect. The fact that it's an
all-in-one implies to me that I can't upgrade any part of it.

I don't want an all-in-one... I want a computer, with upgradable parts, and at
least two monitors that match -- preferably the can use the same stand.

------
kuon
I am so happy I switched to Windows, ha! My 7048A supermicro is running double
E5-2650 (2x 10 cores) with 1TB ram, quadro P4000 and it was around 5000$ (not
counting displays, which I had).

~~~
zymhan
No one runs a Mac because they just want powerful hardware.

------
mtgx
I just can't believe they chose the 18-core 2018 Intel vaporware chip [1] over
this year's 16-core AMD Threadripper. Very strange decision on Apple's part.
Not to mention they could've sold the iMac Pro for like $1,000 less.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWFzWRoVNnE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWFzWRoVNnE)

~~~
endorphone
18 core Xeon chips have been available for 3+ years. There is nothing
particularly odd about Apple's choice -- AMD has not been a serious competitor
in the workstation market for years, and even with their newest entrant are
only nipping at the very bottom of the market.

~~~
masklinn
Also, no Thunderbolt from AMD.

