Implications for the Next Mac Pro
Given the above expert observations, the picture becomes a lot clearer for the next Mac Pro. Namely, there are likely two kinds of technical and creative professionals.
One group wants a powerful CPU and GPU monster that fits their needs for CAD/BIM/VR/AR development and simulations. But they want a minimum of fuss and tinkering. A system with a multi-core Xeon, 5K display, and 64 or 128 GB RAM out of the box will do nicely. Apple developers will love this iMac Pro as well. Time is money.
A second group is more engineering oriented. They may be constantly mixing and matching equipment. New requirements and initiatives may require internal and flexible external expansion. Support for CUDA or OpenCL means that the customer needs to be able to replace the graphics card and have the flexibility to add more RAM over time. (That also implies graceful support for many different graphics systems in macOS.] Depending on the Xeon chosen, Apple may offer the opportunity to upgrade to 256, 512 or even a TB of RAM. The new Mac Pro must be mindful of this second mentality, and I’m sure it will be.
And so I surmise that Apple has come around to the notion that the iMac Pro, while fulfilling the needs of many, won’t fill the bill for many others—as Apple may have previously hoped. Now if the next Mac Pro, sans display and using a great but not outrageous GPU in the base model can keep the entry price reasonable, perhaps it’ll be in the same range as the iMac Pro. But, as Anthony Frausto-Robledo suggested above, be prepared for sticker-shock.
Great workstation power combined with Apple’s legendary attention to engineering design means higher prices than we’re accustomed to. But now it looks like Apple is no longer holding back, and soon, perhaps in 2018, technical and creative professionals will have two great choices for powerful desktop Macs. Perhaps some will even deploy a mix of the two.
And that will be very cool indeed.
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.