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iMac Pro
- 5_minutes 9y agoWell, at least this should shut up the complainers about apple hardware. There is now really going to be an option. It's not great, it's not something to be enthusiastic about but it's better then rumbling about the next iOS version of something.
- simonh 9y ago> this should shut up the complainers about apple hardware. Welcome to HN. I take it you're new here?
- SurrealSoul 9y agoPersonally, I think this is by far apple's worst announcement page. Maybe because I viewed it on firefox, at a weird screen size, but the last two panels never loaded for me. The "thermal viewer" element is identical to the speaker panel sans the cool airflow demo. The huge "500 nits 43% brighter One billion colors Support for 10-bit spatial and temporal dithering." li's are really ugly to me. The panel header text looks nice and big, why do you have to use these super H1s? Maybe I am just bitter here, but the only thing I like is the keyboard
- qubex 9y agoOn the whole, an all-in-one design for what is purportedly a professional-grade machine isn't exactly enticing (no expandability, impossibility of having multiple identical monitors, & cetera). But on second thoughts the hardware support this will bring to macOS will enable the construction of some really powerful, up-to-date hackintosh systems at very reasonable price-points.
- jdboyd 9y agoThe Thunderbolt 3 ports are each somewhere in the neighborhood of the bandwidth of a PCIe 8x slot, arguably giving this about the approximately the expandability of an HP or Dell single socket workstation. I'm not saying this should be preferred to a traditional tower, just that it isn't fair to say it has no expandability.
- qubex 9y agoI'm of the internal-cards over external-cables school of thought. I've been plugging circuit boards into backplanes since the S-100 bus era, and I'm very much committed to the idea of a discrete computer chassis containing all the major computing components as a distinct entity compared to the screen. I still have desktop machines because of this.
- MrFlynn 9y agoThunderbolt 3 ports are closer to PCIe 3.0 x4, not x8. Regardless it won't cause a huge performance hit depending on your workload (about 5-10% slower in gaming benchmarks). But YMMV with applications that require more bandwidth.
- DuskStar 9y agoI mean, the Trashcan Mac Pro had Thunderbolt expandability too. But that doesn't seem to have been as much as people were hoping for then.
- emptythought 9y agowhich then need 2-500 chassis, or overpriced RAID arrays to do anything useful with...
- cstross 9y agoApple is a hardware company. They make their money by selling computers. (Less true these days thanks to the app store 30% top-slice, but it's in their DNA ...) To the extent that there's demand for high-performance workstation-grade Macs, this will relieve the pressure on that market to migrate away from the increasingly aging dead-end of the current Mac Pro. To the extent that, Moore's Law having ended, there's less incentive to upgrade regularly, having a less-expandable Pro Mac will give Apple more opportunities to entice power users to upgrade (by, for example, rolling a new iMac Pro every 18-24 months with an improved display panel or some other must-have feature: if you buy a pro machine you spend a lot of time staring at that screen, so a better display option is an obvious upgrade draw). A Pro machine with external monitors can't force an upgrade the same way as an all-in-one machine. If they roll out a lease-purchase arrangement similar to the iPhone Upgrade Program, this could drive sign-ups, pushing power users away from buying a maxed-out tower once every five years or so towards subscribing to the new maxed-out-closed-box-every-year club.
- fusiongyro 9y ago> Apple is a hardware company. They make their money by selling computers. Also phones, I hear, are big for them. And music. And payment processing.
- nkw 9y ago> A Pro machine with external monitors can't force an upgrade the same way as an all-in-one machine. Trashcan MacPro user here. I would have happily purchased a new one with Thunderbolt 3 and an semi-up-to-date Nvidia card (OR external GPU support), if they had actually updated the Pro when Thunderbolt 3 became a thing. Instead they just let it die.
- qubex 9y agoCynical though your thinking may be (and I intend this as the highest form of compliment), I suspect that your argument is at least partially accurate. Reducing computers to integrated all-in-one appliances certainly marshals pressures towards a heightened hardware refresh cycle. I personally prefer upgrading individual components frequently (including screens) and the whole system on a three/four year cycle.
- kartickv 9y agoExactly. Bragging about how they didn't add a mm to the iMac to make it "pro", and that it's art, is as clear an indication as we'll get that Apple has forgotten why we power users buy their machines. It's to get a job done, not to be an exhibit in the MoMA. The latter is fine only as long as it doesn't impede the former. I'm not in the target market for this, but I wouldn't buy a desktop that doesn't support a spinning hard drive. Unless Apple offers a 6TB SSD standard.
- rl3 9y agoSome interesting things to note from the specs[0]: 1. An 18-core processor option, 4TB of storage (hopefully NVMe) and 128GB of RAM. That's crazy for an iMac form factor. I'm surprised Apple is even continuing the traditional Mac Pro form factor, considering. 2. Specific details on AMD Vega's pro models: Radeon Pro Vega 56 graphics processor with 8GB of HBM2 memory | Configurable to Radeon Pro Vega 64 graphics processor with 16GB of HBM2 memory Having a GPU with 16GB of HBM2 doesn't necessitate an external graphics card in the vast majority of cases. It'll be interesting if you can then hook up additional external graphics cards to augment its GPU power for either high-end 3D work or deep learning applications. I'm guessing we may see people hooking up external Nvidia GPUs just so they can take advantage of CUDA, which is kind of a shame considering the specs of the onboard Vega hardware. Metal 2 introduces compute shaders however, so I'm not sure if Apple intends to challenge CUDA primacy. Considering their reliance on AMD GPUs, it would be in their interest to do so—or at least somehow convince Nvidia to discontinue their anti-competitive practice of locking CUDA to Nvidia GPUs. [0] https://www.apple.com/imac-pro/specs/ https://www.apple.com/imac-pro/specs/ EDIT: As other commenters pointed out, I incorrectly speculated the Mac Pro form factor was done for. On the contrary, its continuation is officially confirmed. My comment has been updated accordingly. Thanks!
- LeoPanthera 9y agoApple already announced a modular Mac Pro for next year. I doubt they would go back on that.
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- gbersac 9y agoIs it me or the specs of this Imac is monstruous ? You forgot to mention up to 128G ram and up to 4T SSD?
- tambourine_man 9y ago"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-powerful-mac-arrives-december/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/06/imac-pro-most-powerfu...
- GiorgioG 9y agoAt $4999 for the base model they can keep it.
- LeoPanthera 9y agoYou are not the target market.
- jdboyd 9y agoI thought that seemed terrible, but then when I tried configuring a Dell and HP with 8 cores, 32 gigs of ram, 1TB flash, and a good display, I kept hitting similar numbers.
- beatboxrevival 9y agoTry again with an AMD Ryzen 1700/1800 8-core processor. You could build something similar for a fraction of the price.
- Finnucane 9y agoBut not a small fraction. And you'd have to build it yourself.
- atemerev 9y agoIf you opt out of Xeon, you can build it for around $3k, complete with nVidia 1080. Mine is $2.5k, but I opted for a 4-core CPU, 32G ram, a 1080, and 1TB flash. Works perfectly.
- codq 9y agoDue to naming parity, this all but confirms an 'iPhone Pro' this fall.
- Xeoncross 9y agoiPhone Pro Plus
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- dyarosla 9y agoI imagine that Apple doesn't think all of their users are "Pro" or want to be lumped in a "Pro" category, nor want to use their phones for purely "Pro" purposes. I would bet good money that Apple will definitely not name their next iPhone Pro.
- gallerdude 9y agoI'm putting my money on iPhone X.
- codq 9y agoI'd agree with you, but the 'MacBook Pro' hasn't been marketed at actual 'pros' in generations.
- simonh 9y agoThey're aimed mainly at creative professionals. Pro is not a synonym for Dev.
- rl3 9y agoThe increased size of the 12.9" iPad Pro represented a ~33% departure from the standard 9.7" iPad size. If we extrapolate from the iPhone 7 Plus's 5.5" screen size, we can conclude that the iPhone Pro will be the first smartphone to feature a 7.3" screen.
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- hoodoof 9y agoIt's going to take five years of ~ yearly hardware refreshes of all product lines for me to believe that Apple still knows how to be a computer company. I think once they've refreshed all the product lines in the current cycle - which is a response to a screaming customer base, Apple will wipe its brow and say "phew that was hard dealing with all those customer demands", and get back to refreshes every five years. Apple just no longer has the same DNA as all those Chinese hardware manufacturers who blitz new products in constantly.
- motoboi 9y agoOMG, what happened to the superb Apple product pages? This is just ugly!
- pavlov 9y agoIt's maybe off-topic to discuss the page design, but I agree. I hate these landing pages that are effectively PowerPoints -- very little information per screenful of content, with crap transition effects between every "slide".
- Chris911 9y agoThis is not even close to the other product pages on Apple's website. Feels like it was made 5 years ago.
- titanomachy 9y agoThey claim that to build your own workstation comparable to their $5k base model would cost at least $7k. I would be interested to see a breakdown of this cost; it seems a bit implausible on the surface, but I don't really have experience with these kind of workstations.
- jrs95 9y agoThat's probably true if you're going to be getting Xeon processors, ECC RAM, etc. But if you were to go for consumer grade hardware with similar performance, you'd probably come in at well under $5000. The cost of a 5K display is definitely something that should be considered as well, though.
- solidr53 9y agoSomething I saw on engadget: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/jqPdTH https://pcpartpicker.com/list/jqPdTH
- pimlottc 9y agoThat looks pretty close. A few small things are missing if you want complete parity: * wireless keyboard and mouse * bluetooth * 802.11ac * 10GB ethernet * speakers * web cam I'm sure you could budget those comfortably within the remaining $800 or so.
- kuon 9y agoMy 7048A supermicro running double E5-2650 (2x 10 cores) with 1TB ram, quadro P4000 was around 5000$, without monitor.
- likeclockwork 9y agoWhat RAM do you have in there that you were able to get 1TB of within that price?
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- jrs95 9y agoSince the Surface Studio gets nearly this expensive, it'll be interesting to see where Microsoft takes it in the future.
- JohnTHaller 9y agoSurface Studio is a very different beast than an iMac Pro. The Surface Studio isn't trying to be a powerhouse unit... it uses a mobile GPU. It's designed to be a creation workstation with the unique screen, knob, and stylus but not really a powerhouse render-er.
- r0fl 9y agoNo matter what apple does it will not satisfy "pro" users. Computers either not fast enough, too expensive, not upgradable enough.
- droithomme 9y agoThat profile view on the apple page looks like it is really fat, the fattest iMac since the translucent plastic CRT monitor days. Where is the new expandable Mac Pro Tim has been telling us about for several months, the machine that would get us to stop needing to make Hackintoshes? No where to be seen. > four Thunderbolt 3 ports with support for up to two 5K displays, a 1080p FaceTime camera, realtime 3D rendering, and much more. Other specs start at a 5K built-in display, 8-core Xeon processors, Radeon Vega graphics, 32GB ECC memory, and 10GB Ethernet. The new iMac Pro will start at $4999. Only 4 ports and none of them USB 3. No USB for keyboard or mouse, so heavy battery laden wireless mouse only. Great, more carpal tunnel fun, plus the joy of recharging batteries when there is no real need. I don't need two 5k monitors. I need a development machine I can add hard drives and dual reasonable sized monitors to. In the non-expandible limited port iMac range of machine for grandma I need practical ports and a price about 1/5 the stated price. Fortunately I have found all I need in the Hackintosh world for Mac compatible stuff, and Linux for everything else.
- CPLX 9y agoUnless that picture is totally misleading it looks like there's also 4 older format USB ports on the back.
- 6stringmerc 9y agoWhere's the metal loop to connect the chain so I can use it as a Boat Anchor in 8 years after forced obsolescence? It's not a bug, it's a feature!
- falloutx 9y agoThe full specs are just unbelievable. I know you can create a comparable computer with 30% savings, but packing this much power into an iMac is just insane. I don't think i would be able to buy one ever.
- nkw 9y agoThis is getting to the point that honestly I would rather just pay Apple for a license to OS X and buy the hardware I want. I'm sure I am in the minority, but I would shell out $600+ to legally use OS X on a Hackintosh with worrying about updates breaking the setup. I own a trashcan MacPro and Macbook Pro and just want to be able to do development on a desktop with a decent Nvidia graphics card and a laptop with at least 32G of ram.
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- qubex 9y agoI'm with you on that. I've never built a hackintosh but the hardware support this brings, combined with the constrained all-in-one form factor I personally disdain, is pushing me towards building an iMac Pro-logical equivalent hackintosh. If I could pay to have a legal licence and support for it, I'd do so in a flash.
- atemerev 9y agoI have built a hackintosh from my hardware (even nVidia Pascal drivers work these days), but this was far from seamless, comparable to my worst Arch/Gentoo installation experience. 2/10 wouldn't recommend. It also messed up badly when I tried to install and use Docker for Mac. So, I am back to Linux.
- atemerev 9y agoSorry, I'll pass until Mac Pro is announced. I want to put my stuff _inside_ the case, I have enough wires on my desk already. Upgradable RAM would be fine, too.
- qubex 9y agoDefinitely.
- floatboth 9y agoXeon instead of Threadripper, looks like they're really tied to Intel. Vega hype though!
- shady-lady 9y ago> Billowing smoke. Torrential rain. A wheat field in the wind. With up to 18 cores and Hyper-Threading, iMac Pro lets you build and render particle systems of all kinds — static or animated, 2D or 3D — with ease. I always thought every effect listed here was catered for by GPU power, not CPU power?
- mcphage 9y agoPhysics are often rendered on the CPU.
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- JonRB 9y agoI'm personally concerned about the claimed 500W power - Surely that isn't enough?