Apple’s all new iMac Pro staring at $4999, available in December 2017
Posted on 06/05/2017 12:38:58 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Apple today gave a sneak peek of iMac Pro, an entirely new workstation-class product line designed for pro users with the most demanding workflows. The all-new iMac Pro, with its gorgeous 27-inch Retina 5K display, up to 18-core Xeon processors and up to 22 Teraflops of graphics computation, is the most powerful Mac ever made. Featuring a stunning new space gray enclosure, iMac Pro packs incredible performance for advanced graphics editing, virtual reality content creation and real-time 3D rendering. iMac Pro is scheduled to ship in December starting at (just under $5k)
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.
“We’re thrilled to give developers and customers a sneak peek at iMac Pro. This will be our fastest and most powerful Mac ever, which brings workstation-class computing to iMac for the first time,” said John Ternus, Apple’s vice president of Hardware Engineering, in a statement. “We reengineered the whole system and designed an entirely new thermal architecture to pack extraordinary performance into the elegant, quiet iMac enclosure our customers love — iMac Pro is a huge step forward and there’s never been anything like it.”
Apple’s all new iMac Pro staring at $4999, available in December 2017
Workstation-Class Performance in an iMac Design
Featuring next-generation Intel Xeon processors up to 18 cores, iMac Pro is designed to handle the most demanding pro workflows. With an all-flash architecture and all-new thermal design, iMac Pro delivers up to 80 percent more cooling capacity in the same thin and seamless iMac design. And with a new space gray enclosure and gorgeous 27-inch Retina 5K display with support for 1 billion colors, iMac Pro is as stunning as it is powerful.
The Most Advanced Graphics Ever in a Mac
iMac Pro comes with the new Radeon Pro Vega GPU, the most advanced graphics ever in a Mac. Featuring a new, next-generation compute core and up to 16GB of on-package high-bandwidth memory (HBM2), iMac Pro with the Vega GPU delivers up to an amazing 11 Teraflops of single-precision compute power for real-time 3D rendering and immersive, high frame rate VR. And for half-precision computation, ideal for machine learning, iMac Pro delivers up to an incredible 22 Teraflops of performance.
Fast Storage & Advanced I/O
iMac Pro also supports up to 4TB of SSD and up to 128GB of ECC memory, and with four Thunderbolt 3 ports can connect to up to two high-performance RAID arrays and two 5K displays at the same time. For the first time ever on a Mac, iMac Pro features 10Gb Ethernet for up to 10 times faster networking.
Pricing & Availability
iMac Pro is scheduled to ship in December starting at just under $5K (US). More details can be found at apple.com/imac-pro.
Source: Apple Inc.
Probably obsolete long before that, I would guess, but probably not so much that you couldn’t still use it effectively for quite a while.
You too!
That is exactly my issue with Apple. Their hardware and software are expensive with planned obsolescence. So you are forced to upgrade and pay another 6 grand in a few years.
Is considering using it as his main computer, except that he wants his MBP to program in his various languages.
For those that build server farms for rendering and AI, the power and efficiency make up for the high up front cost.
Wonder what will be in the new cheese grater coming next year, if this is an iMac?
Yeah but I can buy a pc for 300 bucks.......blah, blah, blah. </s>
I doubt if that starting model will in contain half of the specs you posted. Big buck for sure but for those that don't remember the Apple The Lisa was first introduced on January 19, 1983 and cost US$9,995 ...
If you are doing the work you would do on the iMac Pro, you would not be buying any $500 computer because your time would be far more valuable than what a $500 computer would waste for you. Rendering on that $500 computer would waste so much of your valuable time that the Apple iMac Pro would pay for itself 10 times over in the first month. Twenty-two Teraflops of computing power would have cost you a minimum of $32,000,000 less than twelve years ago. Virginia Tech's X-Serve Cluster of 2200 cores in 1100 Mac Pros turned in 12.25 Teraflops at a cost of a little over $8 million, including the cooling, racks to mount them, and the building to house them.
You won't get that kind of performance on your $500 HP. . . but if you have weeks to wait, it will eventually render that 3D image, ray trace those reflections from every surface as the light sources change, or calculate the airflow over a complex surface in time to meet the deadline required by the engineers.
However, if all you do is surf the internet and do email, then that HP and a good anti-virus/malware application is all you need.
I have a 2012 Mac Mini with 4GB of Ram. I spent ~$550 on it. It works great for what I do. I have a similar priced Dell laptop to use when I travel.
I’m a build-it-myself Windows and server guy, but this sounds REALLY sweet.
Not being rich, however, I’ll wait until after I win the lottery before buying!
For the people who will truly use the full capabilities of this machine, they will be rewarded. Looks like a great system.
For the other 90% or more of the purchasers, the axiom about a fool and his money applies.
I've got a generic brand Windows box that I bought 6 years ago for $300. Gets me on the web and lets me check email just fine. At some point, likely when they stop patching my OS, I'll need to upgrade. Until then, meh.
And I'm in IT. Most users are just like me. Email, MS Office, and surfing Facebook at lunch. These people don't need a top end machine, in fact, they likely could replace their computer with a phone/IPad, docking station and monitor.
You don't buy an iMac Pro because you don't need it.
Mere mortals buy a regular iMac. Divide that price by 5 or so. . . starts at $1049 for the low end 21.5" monitor Intel I% 2.3GHz with Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz, 8GB 2133MHz memory, with a 1TB hard drive, Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports, and a1920-by-1080 sRGB display. Add $200 and boost that to 3.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz, Radeon Pro 555 with 2GB video memory, and a Retina 4K 4096-by-2304 P3 display.
The iMac line has all been upgraded with all new processors and new, more powerful graphics. These are shipping next week.
I’d have to really sit down and make comparisons to my present system before I’d do an upgrade. Right now, I have a pretty solid Win-7 machine that does the job for me. My biggest bottleneck is when lightroom starts slowing down. My RAW photo images are huge files.
But a couple of years down the road, maybe...
So, around $9500 presuming you already have a suitable power supply and case and to jam it in (call it another $500), plus mouse and keyboard. That monitor I selected isn't going to be any kind of rival to what Apple chooses, I'd better confess.
Call it $10,000 for a comparable PC workstation running MS Windows, or a fizz-bzzt-bang-pop Linux system with dubious driver support and reliability.
Finally, I'm unsure that the components I selected above will meet (much less exceed) the hardware that Apple will integrate into the new iMac Pro. My guess is that my list is full of 'second best' items. Back in 2015, the new Retina MacBook Pro hardware couldn't be replicated in the PC world at any price because the components weren't entirely for loose retail sale to consumers. Don't forget Apple gets to work with OEMs to tune onboard chips and circuitry with their own hardware code.
The AAPL stock I bought a few years ago is up 3320% as of the market close today. That's right, 34 times what I paid for it.
We just gave our son a few % of the total holding to make a down payment on his first house.
How is your portfolio doing?
I have a very old machine right now and I’m looking to get a new iMac, but spending $5,000.00 for one may be too far out there for me.
And it will be here just in time for Christmas.
Ok bud, now it’s $9999 to for you.
I corrected some of your list of maxed out specs above. I out the corrections in bold print.
The Basic $4999 package gets you the following differences:
The Mac Pro that my relative uses for music recordings/compositions and immense photo files is an earlier model but he thinks it is marvelous and has all the memory he needs. I expect that the new $5K model will soon be on his electronic piano and he will continue composing. I will not need one as I am happy with my Apple desktop.
The monitor specs on this are:
- 27-inch (diagonal) Retina 5K display
- 5120‑by‑2880 resolution with support for billions of colors
- 500 nits brightness
- Wide color (P3) gamut
- 16:9 ratio.
So, sorry, nope. However, you can plug in the following:
- Two 5120‑by‑2880 (5K) external displays at 60Hz with support for 1 billion colors, or
- Four 3840-by-2160 (4K UHD) external displays at 60Hz with support for 1 billion colors, or
- Four 4096‑by‑2304 (4K) external displays at 60Hz with support for millions of colors
A 16:10 area can be easily displayed on a 5K monitor with black banding reserved for editing icons which can come in handy. That's one of the reasons that Apple produced a 5K monitor computer.
I’d love to have it, but it’d be totally wasted on me. I am still using my 2007 iMac.
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