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> ... it might hit the sweet spot for studios that need a powerful desktop they can easily carry to the set. That's an interesting idea. I loved my imac for po

> ... it might hit the sweet spot for studios that need a powerful desktop they can easily carry to the set. That's an interesting idea. I loved my imac for portability while travelling to a "fixed location". I still have my iMac from 2011 with the box and foam it came in and with the carrying handle it makes it super easy to securely pack up and move. I was about to comment that this really is too litte, too late, for too much money IMO but the idea of a large screen portable might actually have an audience. What I've seen from my friends working in media is that they would never buy something like this. They know enough about the hardware they need that they wouldn't buy an all-in-one desktop when they can snag a laptop and if they need the render horsepower mac / radeon might not be their first choice. I'm curious to see how this pans out... can't see it having much of a market appeal at the current hardware / price point unless I'm just under a rock and out of touch with what people are doing these days with $5k to burn on compute resources.

leetrout 9y ago
Actually it just dawned on me- why didn't they try to make a "pro mini" instead with pci-ex slots and upgradable ram (and I know why- because the planned obsolescence) but that would be a better "middle ground" between a laptop and a pro machine. And better than an all-in-one if they make mini-itx form factor. I can use whatever monitor I want but i get to keep Apple blessed hardware (for whatever that's worth these days) along with macos (also losing it's luster with me).
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  They did a "Pro Mini" with expandability via Thunderbolt, the problem was they priced it at $3000+ and called it "Mac Pro"
  - leetrout 9y ago
    Heh, yea, fair point. No idea why I was being downvoted for bringing it up... maybe the planned obsolescence comment?
- stan_rogers 9y ago
  The canonical use case here (and it's already a thing) is an iMac running Capture One and/or Phocus (for Hasselblad) and/or Lightroom (if the desired output is raw + xmp) for tethered commercial photography on set. There are rugged cases available for it. All you need is the iMac, a keyboard and (Wacom) tablet and cable for a rather complete DT (digital technician) setup. You don't need a lot of processing power in the grand scheme of things, you just need something that the photographer, AD and client can use to make decisions without incurring the cost of a potential reshoot. The grunt work of post-processing is done elsewhere and elsewhen - that's much to costly to do on location - but you do need a "close enough" representation of final colour and contrast, along with focus checking, page overlays and that sort of thing.
pasta 9y ago
" ... it might hit the sweet spot for studios that need a powerful desktop they can easily carry to the set." Isn't this why a lot of professionals turned to brands like Dell years ago?
andrewmcwatters 9y ago
Yeah, this is a joke for $5,000. You should be able to pay $3,000 and get a proper modern day variant of a Mac Pro, which is where their current Mac Pro price point sits. Why would anyone pay more than $3,000 for this? A top of the line 27-inch Mac with VESA mount adapter currently costs $2,339.00. That's just shy of a $3,000 price point I would expect a proper Mac Pro, not an iMac Pro, to sit at.
- rbanffy 9y ago
  Think about it for a moment: you get a decent computer with solid performance, with an incredible screen, a great software ecosystem (from both Unix and Mac) and a very nice OS to run everything. You can't build a Dell to match that, even if you rip Windows out and install Linux or a BSD.
  - andrewmcwatters 9y ago
    Think about it for a moment: 5 years ago you could have gotten more for the same price, relative to the GPU and compute power at the time. Of course you can't build a Dell to match that. The point is this is less of a computer for the longevity that the Mid 2012 Mac Pro originally priced at $2,499 provided. (Guess what, the Apple Thunderbolt Display then was also priced at only $999.) Why in the hell would I pay twice that, for a computer I can't use for twice the lifespan? There are _still_ people selling their Mid 2012 Mac Pros for a large fraction of the original price. But, no you're right, it's totally acceptable that Apple's only VR-capable machine is $5,000 to produce VR content that no one on the Mac platform can use. Genius.
    - rbanffy 9y ago
      It all depends on how much you need compute power on your desk. This is a reasonable computer. It's not the absolute fastest thing you could build or buy. It's not an 224-core octa-socket Xeon Platinum box with 16 Titan V cards and 24 TB of RAM. Provided you don't go for the lowest spec one, it's probably more than enough to cover most needs of most power users for the next 5 years or so. Even if you go for the low-spec one, it'll be fairly decent 5 years from now just like my aging MacBook Pro is.
anilshanbhag 9y ago
I don't portability is the main point. If you work on a desktop all the time and want a Mac, you get an iMac. Price is high but its a small cost for a developer who will work on it for multiple years. Re: Price - when I saw the Iphone priced at $1k, I thought it was very expensive but they still sold like hot cakes.
- shams93 9y ago
  If you're a developer you could build a smoking linux development box from a intel NUC for under $500.
  - fhood 9y ago
    I agree you can do it for cheap, but 500 is unlikely to get me the level of RAM I need.
jbob2000 9y ago
> ... it might hit the sweet spot for studios that need a powerful desktop they can easily carry to the set. I've met a couple of Data Grips before (the guys who manage all the digital files on set). First, these guys are hired on contract and they usually need to have some of their own equipment. And second, they all use macbook pros... and stacks upon stacks of hard drives. The macbook is their personal computer that they use for all their jobs and carry around in backpack. The hard drive arrays are owned by the production company and are kept in sturdy boxes on wheels so they can be moved around the set easily and locked up at night. It's a joke to think that data grips are going to buy a desktop computer and lug it around everywhere. You don't do any editing on set, just store the video and edit it in the shop. The on set computers are just throughputs to the hard drive arrays. Even in the shop, the rendering isn't done on the computers you do the editing on. The production company probably doesn't even do the final rendering, they'll just ship off the uncompressed files to a post-production company to handle all that.
- rasz 9y ago
  Being paid by the hour they dont care about poor laptop processing power.

leetrout 9y ago

Actually it just dawned on me- why didn't they try to make a "pro mini" instead with pci-ex slots and upgradable ram (and I know why- because the planned obsolescence) but that would be a better "middle ground" between a laptop and a pro machine. And better than an all-in-one if they make mini-itx form factor. I can use whatever monitor I want but i get to keep Apple blessed hardware (for whatever that's worth these days) along with macos (also losing it's luster with me).

wlesieutre 9y ago
They did a "Pro Mini" with expandability via Thunderbolt, the problem was they priced it at $3000+ and called it "Mac Pro"
- leetrout 9y ago
  Heh, yea, fair point. No idea why I was being downvoted for bringing it up... maybe the planned obsolescence comment?
stan_rogers 9y ago
The canonical use case here (and it's already a thing) is an iMac running Capture One and/or Phocus (for Hasselblad) and/or Lightroom (if the desired output is raw + xmp) for tethered commercial photography on set. There are rugged cases available for it. All you need is the iMac, a keyboard and (Wacom) tablet and cable for a rather complete DT (digital technician) setup. You don't need a lot of processing power in the grand scheme of things, you just need something that the photographer, AD and client can use to make decisions without incurring the cost of a potential reshoot. The grunt work of post-processing is done elsewhere and elsewhen - that's much to costly to do on location - but you do need a "close enough" representation of final colour and contrast, along with focus checking, page overlays and that sort of thing.

pasta 9y ago

" ... it might hit the sweet spot for studios that need a powerful desktop they can easily carry to the set." Isn't this why a lot of professionals turned to brands like Dell years ago?

andrewmcwatters 9y ago

Yeah, this is a joke for $5,000. You should be able to pay $3,000 and get a proper modern day variant of a Mac Pro, which is where their current Mac Pro price point sits. Why would anyone pay more than $3,000 for this? A top of the line 27-inch Mac with VESA mount adapter currently costs $2,339.00. That's just shy of a $3,000 price point I would expect a proper Mac Pro, not an iMac Pro, to sit at.

rbanffy 9y ago
Think about it for a moment: you get a decent computer with solid performance, with an incredible screen, a great software ecosystem (from both Unix and Mac) and a very nice OS to run everything. You can't build a Dell to match that, even if you rip Windows out and install Linux or a BSD.
- andrewmcwatters 9y ago
  Think about it for a moment: 5 years ago you could have gotten more for the same price, relative to the GPU and compute power at the time. Of course you can't build a Dell to match that. The point is this is less of a computer for the longevity that the Mid 2012 Mac Pro originally priced at $2,499 provided. (Guess what, the Apple Thunderbolt Display then was also priced at only $999.) Why in the hell would I pay twice that, for a computer I can't use for twice the lifespan? There are _still_ people selling their Mid 2012 Mac Pros for a large fraction of the original price. But, no you're right, it's totally acceptable that Apple's only VR-capable machine is $5,000 to produce VR content that no one on the Mac platform can use. Genius.
  - rbanffy 9y ago
    It all depends on how much you need compute power on your desk. This is a reasonable computer. It's not the absolute fastest thing you could build or buy. It's not an 224-core octa-socket Xeon Platinum box with 16 Titan V cards and 24 TB of RAM. Provided you don't go for the lowest spec one, it's probably more than enough to cover most needs of most power users for the next 5 years or so. Even if you go for the low-spec one, it'll be fairly decent 5 years from now just like my aging MacBook Pro is.

anilshanbhag 9y ago

I don't portability is the main point. If you work on a desktop all the time and want a Mac, you get an iMac. Price is high but its a small cost for a developer who will work on it for multiple years. Re: Price - when I saw the Iphone priced at $1k, I thought it was very expensive but they still sold like hot cakes.

shams93 9y ago
If you're a developer you could build a smoking linux development box from a intel NUC for under $500.
- fhood 9y ago
  I agree you can do it for cheap, but 500 is unlikely to get me the level of RAM I need.

jbob2000 9y ago

> ... it might hit the sweet spot for studios that need a powerful desktop they can easily carry to the set. I've met a couple of Data Grips before (the guys who manage all the digital files on set). First, these guys are hired on contract and they usually need to have some of their own equipment. And second, they all use macbook pros... and stacks upon stacks of hard drives. The macbook is their personal computer that they use for all their jobs and carry around in backpack. The hard drive arrays are owned by the production company and are kept in sturdy boxes on wheels so they can be moved around the set easily and locked up at night. It's a joke to think that data grips are going to buy a desktop computer and lug it around everywhere. You don't do any editing on set, just store the video and edit it in the shop. The on set computers are just throughputs to the hard drive arrays. Even in the shop, the rendering isn't done on the computers you do the editing on. The production company probably doesn't even do the final rendering, they'll just ship off the uncompressed files to a post-production company to handle all that.

rasz 9y ago
Being paid by the hour they dont care about poor laptop processing power.