More Expert Feedback
Joel Sercel, Founder and Principal Engineer of TransAstra wrote me:
The fundamental issue here is the philosophical one of appliance versus tool, and I think this shows that Apple still does not get it. It is fine to have an iPad or even an “Air” class laptop welded together and not user upgradable, but pros need to be able to tailor their machine to the job. This is akin to Ford selling a pickup truck that you can’t add a front winch and rear towing rig to: that is fine for a sedan (iPad) but not for a work truck. A desktop pro machine is not an appliance for your Aunt Bertha, it is a tool for a working professional that the customer needs to be able to set up they way they want, and change over time.
Finally, the CEO of Symply, Inc., Alex Grossman summed things up nicely.
I am actually very excited about the new iMacPro. It represents Apple responding to user needs in an “Apple way”
As a product guy I look at what the customer “needs” not what they “think they want” based on a limited perspective, and I think Apple is back to doing what Apple does best—anticipating the changes in the market and meeting the challenges in a smart future-looking manner.
For many users the iMac Pro is the perfect tool (assuming it performs as stated). While I think the price tag is a bit steep, its the “easy button” workstation for most workflow operation in media creation that cannot be handled by a convienient MacBook Pro.
Over the past two years or so we have observed more and more people choosing iMacs over MacPros for many of the editing, color and audio workstations as well as on-shoot data wrangling tasks simply because they were “good enough” and Apple easy.
Creatives are not engineers, they don’t respect the idea that you can screw and glue pieces together, they want the elegance, thoughtfulness of design, and the reliability it always leads to. Macs for the most part just don’t break, Frankenstien workstations do and while IT people like that, creative justbwantbit to work, be quiet, have a fantastic display and be fast. This system will not meet that need yet—that’s for the new Mac Pro whenever it hits—but shows a directional shift that is very positive.
The preliminary look at the cooling approach which I spent many hours on design over the years is right on track.
Apple has taken its first step in getting back on track for high performance and elegant desktop workstations for the 21st century, this is a leadship stance. Welcome back Apple!
Next page: implications for the next Mac Pro.
The only thing about the iMac Pro that makes me shake my head is the obvious lack of a “door” to upgrade the RAM. But even at that, anyone that can afford a $5,000 STARTING price, probably is in a position to not care that Apple charges a high premium for the RAM upgrades and will happily pay for it.
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John,
Excellent article as always. As a professional in the web development and graphic design fields, I always opted for a Mac tower and loved the G4’s pull-down side latch for access to all of the internals. It was great for replacing a blown hard drive, adding more RAM, and other tinkering. Then I got an early 2008 iMac, fully-loaded with 3.06GHz Intel Core Dup, 4 GB RAM, and a decent-sized hard drive. I am still using it today, albeit with twin 3 TB LaCie external FireWire 800 drives to take the place of my long-since blown internal drive.
It is without a doubt the best Mac I have ever owned, and after nine years of serious service, the best value by far as well.
That brings me to the iMac Pro. I agree that many creatives — like myself — are looking for a Mac that gets out of the way, that doesn’t need tinkered with, that just works. In that respect the iMac Pro is my ultimate dream machine. I’d love to see it chew through a Cinema 4D rendering, and can’t help but wonder how many years of useful service such a machine would bring to my work.
For a smaller minority of pros, yes, only a tower with swappable graphics cards, memory, storage, etc., will do, but I believe that the pool of such users is indeed shrinking over time. That said, as pjs_boston wrote, the new Mac Pro can be a halo product for the entire Mac line. Like the Corvette in the window enticing Chevy Cruise buyers into the dealership, it should be the latest and greatest computer of them all, a niche machine to serve that special niche of users who need the best of the best, including upgradeability and configurability. For most of the rest of us creative professionals, though, the new dream machine is definitely the new iMac Pro. Just plug it in, turn it on, and get to work.
Time to start saving my pennies….
Hey John,
Great article! I agree with all of your points.
My take is that the new iMac Pro will satisfy 99% of technical and creative pros who use a Mac. The remaining 1% is split between two camps: One is a small, very vocal group of Apple enthusiasts who want a Mac that they can tinker with and turn into their own personal hot rod. The second even smaller group are those professionals who truly need to crack the case and add buss level expansion cards to for specific applications. The second group is ever shrinking as Thunderbolt 3 enables new external expansion possibilities.
As such, the new Mac Pro is like a super car. It will be a ‘halo’ product to keep the enthusiasts singing Apple’s praises. It will exist primarily for brand management.
vpndev: Fixed!
John, maybe you could fix the “front wench” typo before somebody calls you out for being sexist 🙂
Thank you John for including my comments in your excellent article. I only hope that Apple goes back to what I consider a Pro machine. User replaceable and upgrade-able parts are a must. I seriously love the iMac pro from a design perspective. I hope they come through with the new Mac Pro redesign in a big way.