8 ms·

Apple’s iMac Pro is a love letter to developers

27 points by LearnerHerzog 9y ago

sschueller 9y ago
I don't think so This machine is for designers and creative people. A beefy Mac mini or powerful MacBook is what I need without a ridiculously high price tag. Price wouldn't be such an issue if the thing was at all upgradable.
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  The GPU might be overkill for developers (unless they're doing game dev or machine learning), but don't scoff at big core counts and fast disk I/O - they help a lot. And while it might not be strictly necessary, that 5K screen sure is nice and obviates a lot of the need for a second monitor. I think a convincing case could be made for developers to splurge on this.
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    Since making the jump to a 4K display, I've really felt my urge to have a second monitor drop off hard. UHD solves the problem and removes the display gap.
    - azhenley 9y ago
      Since moving to a single 34 inch ultrawide monitor, my biggest complaint is the window management. Two displays make this easy: fullscreen each one (Windows has shortcuts for this builtin). But with one monitor I have to manage the windows myself (I've tried 3rd party apps, they never seem to work nicely). Did you not have this problem?
      - merb 9y ago
        on mac/windows you can buy divvy. that app is just awesome for window management.
        evanrelf 9y ago
        Divvy is good but these days I'd recommend Magnet (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12). They've had an 80% discount forever, so it's basically just the price ($0.99). It's pretty polished, and lets you assign keyboard shortcuts.
        merb 9y ago
        well I use both divy and magnet. divy is better for more fine grained window management especially on 4k, whereas magnet is great for general placement a la windows
      - jotaen 9y ago
        I use Spectacle on Mac and it works like a breeze. It’s free, but you can donate if you like it. https://www.spectacleapp.com/ https://www.spectacleapp.com/
      - acejam 9y ago
        https://www.spectacleapp.com/ https://www.spectacleapp.com/
      - mcintyre1994 9y ago
        Can't you just snap one window to the left and the other to the right of the screen? That's built in to Windows too and should give the same effect as two fullscreen monitors unless I'm missing something.
      - sevensor 9y ago
        I have to recommend i3 on a 39" 4k TV. I can fit an awful lot of code on my screen.
      - mschuster91 9y ago
        > I've tried 3rd party apps, they never seem to work nicely Switch off that Spaces crap Apple does, use Hyperswitch as a replacement for alt-tab, use SizeUp for the window management (ctrl+alt+cmd as base combo, +m fullscreen, +arrow key=left/right/top/bottom half), Karabiner to switch Ctrl/Cmd C/V and use Accessibility to map cmd+q (which, on German keyboards is the @ symbol) to "invert display colors" so a mistype doesn't quit your app. Voila, a Mac you can use for work ;) Edit: Tips on how to disable the Spotlight indexer due to excessive CPU and RAM load without disabling the Outlook search are highly welcome...
      - stordoff 9y ago
        Using a single monitor, I tend to use WinKey+Left/Right to snap the program to one side of the screen. If you have one snapped to each side, you can adjust the size of both at the same time so you aren't forced to use a 50:50 split.
      - FussyZeus 9y ago
        I don't like the Ultrawides, for that exact reason. I have a 16:9 4K that works wonderfully. For Window management, I just put windows where I want them...not really an issue for me.
      - jermaustin1 9y ago
        I have had this issue with OSX/MacOS from the start. Maybe it is because I am accustomed to the way windows handles maximize, restore, and minimize, but I have always had trouble with those three on my Macs.
  - stordoff 9y ago
    I'd didn't think I'd notice it much (having used SSDs for years), but I recently put a PCIe-based SSD in my laptop. It makes a huge difference - most installs are done more or less instantly, and the machine cold-boots in under ten seconds. Definitely not _necessary_, but certainly nice to have.
- jsheard 9y ago
  > This machine is for designers and creative people. Except the lack of Nvidia GPU options means it's not for many creatives either - none of the three dominant GPU renderers will run on the Vega GPUs that Apple is offering.
  - whywhywhywhy 9y ago
    Not to mention Apple is trying to move away from OpenCL so GPU renderers will all need to be re-written in Metal to truly take advantage of OS X. This machine only serves rich youtubers who use Final Cut Pro.
- rsynnott 9y ago
  > A beefy Mac mini or powerful MacBook is what I need without a ridiculously high price tag. You can't get that with a high core count, though. It's unfortunate that they didn't make a version of this with a cheap GPU and less storage (or alternatively a Xeon or i9 option on the normal iMac).
chaostheory 9y ago
The cheese grater style Mac Pros were the best for developers. Still hasn't changed. They were reasonably priced, good looking boxes that you can open and upgrade. We don't care about compactness unless it's a laptop. Key feature is that we can open the box and there's room to add and change stuff inside. Otherwise it's not really 'Pro'. This is even more relevant when you have horsepower hungry stuff like VR. It's only a matter of time before Win 10 Unix features mature, and it makes me migrate back to Windows.
- j2bax 9y ago
  I think you paint pro's with a pretty wide brush. Pro developers or IT people, sure... Pro animators, designers, architects, engineers? I think many pro's just want their system to be fast, run their software and complete their tasks efficiently. Nice form factor is probably even a benefit to a lot of them, more than the ability to swap parts.
  - chaostheory 9y ago
    No, I feel that you may have misread my comment. I'm specifically referring to developers and only developers. > designers, architects. Nice form factor is probably even a benefit to a lot of them, more than the ability to swap parts. You're right. These are the professions that need a lot of physical space for whom the slim form factors makes sense. I just vaguely remember Phil Schiller saying that the new machines will better cater to developers.
    - j2bax 9y ago
      Sorry about that. Upon re-reading I see that you did specify developers. I will add that most of the developers I work with don't like to mess around with their work computer much... I'm sure at home they like to customize and do their own thing but I doubt that's a specific market Apple is trying to cater directly to.
      - chaostheory 9y ago
eptcyka 9y ago
With the upper limit of 128 gigabytes, it's definitely a love letter to people who want to use slack.
- prodevmentor 9y ago
  Haha, that made me literally laugh out loud!
1_2__4 9y ago
I love Macs and I love desktop computers (I'm old). I have a maxed-out 2013-era iMac. I'll piss away money on the stupidest things, but this is just insane. I can't possibly wrap my head around spending that much money for an all-in-one computer in 2017. It's like Apple wants to pretend it's still 2012.
- FBISurveillance 9y ago
  I've recently spotted new Dell/HP with 4k displays and small bezels and those look great and have 32Gb of RAM. My top-of-the-line MacBook Pro '17 screen is noticeably worse and it has only 16Gb of RAM. I know that there's no LPDDR4 support yet -but- that's developer machine. With Docker, Terminal, cmake and all those things it barely lives for 2 hours on battery anyways, so I might as well just have a more powerful portable machine. But the best thing is definitely the 4K screen on those HP/Dells: With the default scaled resolution that Apple introduced last year things look pixelated, while on 4K they don't. For a person who spends 12+ hours a day in front of laptop screen that's huge. Maybe colors are not that saturated but I don't care if my VSCode theme displays 1 billion colors more. Neither iMac Pro nor MacBooks are developer machines anymore. Creative professionals -- yes, but not developers.
zacsme 9y ago
I would say the ThinkPad 25 is much more of a love letter to developers.
- chx 9y ago
  A slightly botched up, pennypinching one but still, you are right. (I bought one too.)
- phaus 9y ago
  Didn't they take one of their standard, woefully underpowered 14" business class laptops, change almost nothing aside from the keyboard, and then call it a special edition?
PeterisP 9y ago
The device seems impressive, but the price is even more so. I'd probably chose one only if I can get someone else (e.g. an employer) to pay for it; otherwise the same money can buy a combination of a much cheaper computer + a nice overseas vacation trip, and that'd be better.
themgt 9y ago
My mid-2010 Mac Pro tower is still my favorite machine, probably favorite I've ever owned. The form and function are basically perfect. It's built like a workman's tool and that's what it is. Update that with current year components and shut up and take my money.
- SomeHacker44 9y ago
  I would love this with M.2 (or U.2) SSDs and modern CPUs/Chipsets. Don't even need Xeons. Really would rather not have Xeons and their associated cost, if I'm being frank.
mainliningfbs 9y ago
If you mainly work in one place, the current Mac Pro is great for developers. I still travel with it but it is to another house where I have a monitor and keyboard setup.
draw_down 9y ago
Come on, it's $5000 and you can't upgrade the RAM.
chb 9y ago
"Love letter to developers"?! If Apple wants to send me a love letter, they can tell their design team to put 32gb of RAM into a MacBook Pro that has an upgradeable drive, expandable memory and a reasonable configuration of ports.
- Sheepsteak 9y ago
  I remember hearing the lack of a 32GB option was due to the chipset or something.
  - acdha 9y ago
    It was: 32GB required LPDDR4 memory but Skylake didn't support that. It sounds like that's dependent on shipping Cannon Lake which was originally slated for 2017 but has been pushed back to 2018.
  - mort96 9y ago
    Even then, who chose the chipset?
    - rsynnott 9y ago
      Intel. Currently, if you want to use low power RAM with an Intel mobile chip, you have to use LP-DDR3 in a config that maxes out at 16GB. You can also use non-LP DDR4 up to 32GB (Dell makes a laptop that does, for instance), but at that point you have a somewhat increased power draw when the system is running, and a _dramatically_ increased power draw on standby (IIRC about five times the power). Apple laptops have traditionally had excellent standby battery life; they're presumably not willing to sacrifice this. Upcoming Intel mobile chips will resolve this, allowing use of LP-DDR4.
      - mort96 9y ago
        I'm looking at this Intel CPU: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/core/i7-processors/i7-7660u.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/... That claims to support up to 32GB memory, and it claims to support, among other things, LPDDR3-1866. Are you saying that if you want to use LPDDR3-1866 with that CPU, you're limited to only 16GB? I can't find anything about that through some quick googling, but if it's true, I retract my snarky comment.
FLGMwt 9y ago
I mean. I guess not all love letters need to be reciprocated so I'll save my nits on the headline.
mcrider 9y ago
I'm just excited to see the full-width bluetooth keyboard with numpad. Unfortunately it doesn't look like you can order it on its own in spacegray color (call me vain but it looks fantastic!)
olivermarks 9y ago
I used to do a lot of 300dpi print design work and paid apple and adobe a lot of money for hardware and DVD's of software in the early part of this century. I currently use an old mac with the last disc based iteration of Adobe Creative Suite - something I suspect a lot of designers are still using - on the rare occasions I need to sit down and create. I'm wondering about the Apple pro lines and who might use a non upgradable, closed piece of expensive hardware going forward. It feels to me as though that market is shrinking unless they get serious about 'pro' meaning industrial strength and configurable
- chipotle_coyote 9y ago
  I imagine the iMac Pro will be a great machine for a lot of video/animation professionals, and at least some developers, even though I'm not sure I'd call this a "love letter" to them. It's a very powerful machine with an amazing display that takes up very little space. And, yeah, I do think Apple has in recent years been seriously underestimating the value of internal expandability, but I also think critics may overestimate that value to some degree. A lot of people really do buy whole new computers every four to six years; I'm not convinced "but this one is a really expensive computer!" is a definitive rebuttal in the iMac Pro's case. It seems like it'd be pretty easy to put together an iMac Pro that's going to last you past that six-year limit--and, let's face it, if you're in the market for a computer that could easily top $7K in a midrange configuration, you're probably at an income level where doing that again in six or seven years isn't going to kill you. And, of course: we have yet to see what the 2018 Mac Pro is going to be like; the signs are that it's going to be closer to what people who don't like the closed box of the iMac would want. (My biggest kvetch about the iMac Pro is that it seems kind of petty not to have user upgradeable RAM. Maybe there's a design reason for that, but it just feels like awfully low-hanging fruit, given that the "non-pro" 27" iMacs allow this.)
caio1982 9y ago
At 5k dollars (plus taxes!) this must be the most expensive love letter ever written.
- MrFoof 9y ago
  Actually, the starting price is $4599, not the $4999 Apple originally said. Even then, compared to buying an equivalent workstation hardware (including a 5K display) from a manufacturer such as HP, this is no more expensive.
  - thesmallestcat 9y ago
    At least you'd be able to adjust the height of that display.
- giancarlostoro 9y ago
  Dunno if engagement rings by letter are or were ever a thing maybe not...
rsynnott 9y ago
If this was so, they'd provide a config option with a cheap GPU and less storage (or alternatively provide a Xeon option for the ordinary iMac). Many/most developers don't need a $600 GPU or 1TB of super-fast storage, but do want the extra core count. IIRC they used to do this with the tower Mac Pros; the base option had a cheapish graphics card. Base model price went up dramatically with the trashcan, which made high-end GPUs mandatory.
zwetan 9y ago
Here my answer: I'm cheating on you and still have no regrets. ps: my last year hackintosh build with 64GB RAM for < 5K is not impressed by those 128GB RAM
fixi 9y ago
Love letter? Hmm, that annoying glossy display? I hope they will fix the new macbook pro, that would be a love letter!
Chaebixi 9y ago
> Apple’s iMac Pro is a love letter to developers What BS. Isn't it literally an apology letter? Apple: "Sorry we neglected and ignored you, but to make it up we didn't really listen to you, but got you a nice dinner of our favorite stuff (thinspo industrial design). Please don't leave us."
lancewiggs 9y ago
It might pay to revisit these negative comments in a few months time. The iMac Pro is beautiful, and ridiculously powerful. I am back to the days of wanting to be able to justify the absurd price (that's what power costs) simply to have that icon on my desk. I would not be surprised to see a lot of these turn up on senior executive desks, or as a status symbol from companies to their developers - showing that nothing but the best will do. Retina iMacs are amazing - I'm currently using a maxed out iMac from 2 years ago, with a 4K screen plugged in too. It was impossible to justify the cost at the time, but now I cannot imagine anything less.
shane999 9y ago
* wealthy developers. At home I have a 32GB 1800x system with a 2GB/s NVME drive and a 1080ti. I chose Nvidia after years of AMD use due to performance. Of course I use it for gaming as well. At work I have a Dell XPS 15 and we've been buying those or P-series Lenovo's for the devs there. The new iMac is $6300CAD. There's no way I'm buying it for myself or my devs. The iOS devs at work get Macbook Pros and prefer the portable nature of them. The UX team get those as well - for the same reason. Plus we'd never fork out that much money for a single machine. Maybe people who work with 4k video or VFX and need OSX would go for these.

27 points by LearnerHerzog 9y ago

I don't think so This machine is for designers and creative people. A beefy Mac mini or powerful MacBook is what I need without a ridiculously high price tag. Price wouldn't be such an issue if the thing was at all upgradable.

Analemma_ 9y ago
The GPU might be overkill for developers (unless they're doing game dev or machine learning), but don't scoff at big core counts and fast disk I/O - they help a lot. And while it might not be strictly necessary, that 5K screen sure is nice and obviates a lot of the need for a second monitor. I think a convincing case could be made for developers to splurge on this.
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  Since making the jump to a 4K display, I've really felt my urge to have a second monitor drop off hard. UHD solves the problem and removes the display gap.
  - azhenley 9y ago
    Since moving to a single 34 inch ultrawide monitor, my biggest complaint is the window management. Two displays make this easy: fullscreen each one (Windows has shortcuts for this builtin). But with one monitor I have to manage the windows myself (I've tried 3rd party apps, they never seem to work nicely). Did you not have this problem?
    - merb 9y ago
      on mac/windows you can buy divvy. that app is just awesome for window management.
      - evanrelf 9y ago
        Divvy is good but these days I'd recommend Magnet (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12). They've had an 80% discount forever, so it's basically just the price ($0.99). It's pretty polished, and lets you assign keyboard shortcuts.
        merb 9y ago
        well I use both divy and magnet. divy is better for more fine grained window management especially on 4k, whereas magnet is great for general placement a la windows
    - jotaen 9y ago
      I use Spectacle on Mac and it works like a breeze. It’s free, but you can donate if you like it. https://www.spectacleapp.com/ https://www.spectacleapp.com/
    - acejam 9y ago
      https://www.spectacleapp.com/ https://www.spectacleapp.com/
    - mcintyre1994 9y ago
      Can't you just snap one window to the left and the other to the right of the screen? That's built in to Windows too and should give the same effect as two fullscreen monitors unless I'm missing something.
    - sevensor 9y ago
      I have to recommend i3 on a 39" 4k TV. I can fit an awful lot of code on my screen.
    - mschuster91 9y ago
      > I've tried 3rd party apps, they never seem to work nicely Switch off that Spaces crap Apple does, use Hyperswitch as a replacement for alt-tab, use SizeUp for the window management (ctrl+alt+cmd as base combo, +m fullscreen, +arrow key=left/right/top/bottom half), Karabiner to switch Ctrl/Cmd C/V and use Accessibility to map cmd+q (which, on German keyboards is the @ symbol) to "invert display colors" so a mistype doesn't quit your app. Voila, a Mac you can use for work ;) Edit: Tips on how to disable the Spotlight indexer due to excessive CPU and RAM load without disabling the Outlook search are highly welcome...
    - stordoff 9y ago
      Using a single monitor, I tend to use WinKey+Left/Right to snap the program to one side of the screen. If you have one snapped to each side, you can adjust the size of both at the same time so you aren't forced to use a 50:50 split.
    - FussyZeus 9y ago
      I don't like the Ultrawides, for that exact reason. I have a 16:9 4K that works wonderfully. For Window management, I just put windows where I want them...not really an issue for me.
    - jermaustin1 9y ago
      I have had this issue with OSX/MacOS from the start. Maybe it is because I am accustomed to the way windows handles maximize, restore, and minimize, but I have always had trouble with those three on my Macs.
- stordoff 9y ago
  I'd didn't think I'd notice it much (having used SSDs for years), but I recently put a PCIe-based SSD in my laptop. It makes a huge difference - most installs are done more or less instantly, and the machine cold-boots in under ten seconds. Definitely not _necessary_, but certainly nice to have.
jsheard 9y ago
> This machine is for designers and creative people. Except the lack of Nvidia GPU options means it's not for many creatives either - none of the three dominant GPU renderers will run on the Vega GPUs that Apple is offering.
- whywhywhywhy 9y ago
  Not to mention Apple is trying to move away from OpenCL so GPU renderers will all need to be re-written in Metal to truly take advantage of OS X. This machine only serves rich youtubers who use Final Cut Pro.
rsynnott 9y ago
> A beefy Mac mini or powerful MacBook is what I need without a ridiculously high price tag. You can't get that with a high core count, though. It's unfortunate that they didn't make a version of this with a cheap GPU and less storage (or alternatively a Xeon or i9 option on the normal iMac).

chaostheory 9y ago

The cheese grater style Mac Pros were the best for developers. Still hasn't changed. They were reasonably priced, good looking boxes that you can open and upgrade. We don't care about compactness unless it's a laptop. Key feature is that we can open the box and there's room to add and change stuff inside. Otherwise it's not really 'Pro'. This is even more relevant when you have horsepower hungry stuff like VR. It's only a matter of time before Win 10 Unix features mature, and it makes me migrate back to Windows.

j2bax 9y ago
I think you paint pro's with a pretty wide brush. Pro developers or IT people, sure... Pro animators, designers, architects, engineers? I think many pro's just want their system to be fast, run their software and complete their tasks efficiently. Nice form factor is probably even a benefit to a lot of them, more than the ability to swap parts.
- chaostheory 9y ago
  No, I feel that you may have misread my comment. I'm specifically referring to developers and only developers. > designers, architects. Nice form factor is probably even a benefit to a lot of them, more than the ability to swap parts. You're right. These are the professions that need a lot of physical space for whom the slim form factors makes sense. I just vaguely remember Phil Schiller saying that the new machines will better cater to developers.
  - j2bax 9y ago
    Sorry about that. Upon re-reading I see that you did specify developers. I will add that most of the developers I work with don't like to mess around with their work computer much... I'm sure at home they like to customize and do their own thing but I doubt that's a specific market Apple is trying to cater directly to.
    - chaostheory 9y ago

eptcyka 9y ago

With the upper limit of 128 gigabytes, it's definitely a love letter to people who want to use slack.

prodevmentor 9y ago
Haha, that made me literally laugh out loud!

1_2__4 9y ago

I love Macs and I love desktop computers (I'm old). I have a maxed-out 2013-era iMac. I'll piss away money on the stupidest things, but this is just insane. I can't possibly wrap my head around spending that much money for an all-in-one computer in 2017. It's like Apple wants to pretend it's still 2012.

FBISurveillance 9y ago
I've recently spotted new Dell/HP with 4k displays and small bezels and those look great and have 32Gb of RAM. My top-of-the-line MacBook Pro '17 screen is noticeably worse and it has only 16Gb of RAM. I know that there's no LPDDR4 support yet -but- that's developer machine. With Docker, Terminal, cmake and all those things it barely lives for 2 hours on battery anyways, so I might as well just have a more powerful portable machine. But the best thing is definitely the 4K screen on those HP/Dells: With the default scaled resolution that Apple introduced last year things look pixelated, while on 4K they don't. For a person who spends 12+ hours a day in front of laptop screen that's huge. Maybe colors are not that saturated but I don't care if my VSCode theme displays 1 billion colors more. Neither iMac Pro nor MacBooks are developer machines anymore. Creative professionals -- yes, but not developers.

zacsme 9y ago

I would say the ThinkPad 25 is much more of a love letter to developers.

chx 9y ago
A slightly botched up, pennypinching one but still, you are right. (I bought one too.)
phaus 9y ago
Didn't they take one of their standard, woefully underpowered 14" business class laptops, change almost nothing aside from the keyboard, and then call it a special edition?

PeterisP 9y ago

The device seems impressive, but the price is even more so. I'd probably chose one only if I can get someone else (e.g. an employer) to pay for it; otherwise the same money can buy a combination of a much cheaper computer + a nice overseas vacation trip, and that'd be better.

themgt 9y ago

My mid-2010 Mac Pro tower is still my favorite machine, probably favorite I've ever owned. The form and function are basically perfect. It's built like a workman's tool and that's what it is. Update that with current year components and shut up and take my money.

SomeHacker44 9y ago
I would love this with M.2 (or U.2) SSDs and modern CPUs/Chipsets. Don't even need Xeons. Really would rather not have Xeons and their associated cost, if I'm being frank.

mainliningfbs 9y ago

If you mainly work in one place, the current Mac Pro is great for developers. I still travel with it but it is to another house where I have a monitor and keyboard setup.

draw_down 9y ago

Come on, it's $5000 and you can't upgrade the RAM.

chb 9y ago

"Love letter to developers"?! If Apple wants to send me a love letter, they can tell their design team to put 32gb of RAM into a MacBook Pro that has an upgradeable drive, expandable memory and a reasonable configuration of ports.

Sheepsteak 9y ago
I remember hearing the lack of a 32GB option was due to the chipset or something.
- acdha 9y ago
  It was: 32GB required LPDDR4 memory but Skylake didn't support that. It sounds like that's dependent on shipping Cannon Lake which was originally slated for 2017 but has been pushed back to 2018.
- mort96 9y ago
  Even then, who chose the chipset?
  - rsynnott 9y ago
    Intel. Currently, if you want to use low power RAM with an Intel mobile chip, you have to use LP-DDR3 in a config that maxes out at 16GB. You can also use non-LP DDR4 up to 32GB (Dell makes a laptop that does, for instance), but at that point you have a somewhat increased power draw when the system is running, and a _dramatically_ increased power draw on standby (IIRC about five times the power). Apple laptops have traditionally had excellent standby battery life; they're presumably not willing to sacrifice this. Upcoming Intel mobile chips will resolve this, allowing use of LP-DDR4.
    - mort96 9y ago
      I'm looking at this Intel CPU: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/core/i7-processors/i7-7660u.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/... That claims to support up to 32GB memory, and it claims to support, among other things, LPDDR3-1866. Are you saying that if you want to use LPDDR3-1866 with that CPU, you're limited to only 16GB? I can't find anything about that through some quick googling, but if it's true, I retract my snarky comment.

FLGMwt 9y ago

I mean. I guess not all love letters need to be reciprocated so I'll save my nits on the headline.

mcrider 9y ago

I'm just excited to see the full-width bluetooth keyboard with numpad. Unfortunately it doesn't look like you can order it on its own in spacegray color (call me vain but it looks fantastic!)

olivermarks 9y ago

I used to do a lot of 300dpi print design work and paid apple and adobe a lot of money for hardware and DVD's of software in the early part of this century. I currently use an old mac with the last disc based iteration of Adobe Creative Suite - something I suspect a lot of designers are still using - on the rare occasions I need to sit down and create. I'm wondering about the Apple pro lines and who might use a non upgradable, closed piece of expensive hardware going forward. It feels to me as though that market is shrinking unless they get serious about 'pro' meaning industrial strength and configurable

chipotle_coyote 9y ago
I imagine the iMac Pro will be a great machine for a lot of video/animation professionals, and at least some developers, even though I'm not sure I'd call this a "love letter" to them. It's a very powerful machine with an amazing display that takes up very little space. And, yeah, I do think Apple has in recent years been seriously underestimating the value of internal expandability, but I also think critics may overestimate that value to some degree. A lot of people really do buy whole new computers every four to six years; I'm not convinced "but this one is a really expensive computer!" is a definitive rebuttal in the iMac Pro's case. It seems like it'd be pretty easy to put together an iMac Pro that's going to last you past that six-year limit--and, let's face it, if you're in the market for a computer that could easily top $7K in a midrange configuration, you're probably at an income level where doing that again in six or seven years isn't going to kill you. And, of course: we have yet to see what the 2018 Mac Pro is going to be like; the signs are that it's going to be closer to what people who don't like the closed box of the iMac would want. (My biggest kvetch about the iMac Pro is that it seems kind of petty not to have user upgradeable RAM. Maybe there's a design reason for that, but it just feels like awfully low-hanging fruit, given that the "non-pro" 27" iMacs allow this.)

caio1982 9y ago

At 5k dollars (plus taxes!) this must be the most expensive love letter ever written.

MrFoof 9y ago
Actually, the starting price is $4599, not the $4999 Apple originally said. Even then, compared to buying an equivalent workstation hardware (including a 5K display) from a manufacturer such as HP, this is no more expensive.
- thesmallestcat 9y ago
  At least you'd be able to adjust the height of that display.
giancarlostoro 9y ago
Dunno if engagement rings by letter are or were ever a thing maybe not...

rsynnott 9y ago

If this was so, they'd provide a config option with a cheap GPU and less storage (or alternatively provide a Xeon option for the ordinary iMac). Many/most developers don't need a $600 GPU or 1TB of super-fast storage, but do want the extra core count. IIRC they used to do this with the tower Mac Pros; the base option had a cheapish graphics card. Base model price went up dramatically with the trashcan, which made high-end GPUs mandatory.

zwetan 9y ago

Here my answer: I'm cheating on you and still have no regrets. ps: my last year hackintosh build with 64GB RAM for < 5K is not impressed by those 128GB RAM

fixi 9y ago

Love letter? Hmm, that annoying glossy display? I hope they will fix the new macbook pro, that would be a love letter!

Chaebixi 9y ago

> Apple’s iMac Pro is a love letter to developers What BS. Isn't it literally an apology letter? Apple: "Sorry we neglected and ignored you, but to make it up we didn't really listen to you, but got you a nice dinner of our favorite stuff (thinspo industrial design). Please don't leave us."

lancewiggs 9y ago

It might pay to revisit these negative comments in a few months time. The iMac Pro is beautiful, and ridiculously powerful. I am back to the days of wanting to be able to justify the absurd price (that's what power costs) simply to have that icon on my desk. I would not be surprised to see a lot of these turn up on senior executive desks, or as a status symbol from companies to their developers - showing that nothing but the best will do. Retina iMacs are amazing - I'm currently using a maxed out iMac from 2 years ago, with a 4K screen plugged in too. It was impossible to justify the cost at the time, but now I cannot imagine anything less.

shane999 9y ago

* wealthy developers. At home I have a 32GB 1800x system with a 2GB/s NVME drive and a 1080ti. I chose Nvidia after years of AMD use due to performance. Of course I use it for gaming as well. At work I have a Dell XPS 15 and we've been buying those or P-series Lenovo's for the devs there. The new iMac is $6300CAD. There's no way I'm buying it for myself or my devs. The iOS devs at work get Macbook Pros and prefer the portable nature of them. The UX team get those as well - for the same reason. Plus we'd never fork out that much money for a single machine. Maybe people who work with 4k video or VFX and need OSX would go for these.