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iMac Pro

apple.com

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Re: iMac Pro

#21

Post by lotsofpulp »

urza wrote: post #14

I would worry that something breaks after warranty expires and the whole computer can go out of the window. With regular good old desktops you can just replace the broken part. With such special custom made hardware it is sometimes impossible. For example the macbook airs have non standard ssd that is not replaceable, so when the disk dies, whole notebook is done...

With laptops, such as the Air, based on the great sales figures, consumers are willing to forego being able to repair versus having something compact. It also probably helps apple in the warranty department if their manufacturing quality is so high that people opening it up themselves causes more problems than the product is expected to have by itself.

I used to repair my laptop and desktop, but nowadays I'd rather just go to the Apple store and have it swapped out and not waste time for parts. The share of the market that wants repair-ability is probably just not high enough to care about, at least for Apple.

Edit: if this is for business or professionals, then I don't understand why they would make something like this either though. I assume their highly paid staff has market data and whatnot, but I share your opinion that it's ridiculous if this is supposed to be for business use.

Re: iMac Pro

#22

Post by pyrophane »

Maybe for graphics professionals who don’t like Windows and can’t get the software they need on Linux. Otherwise, especially for devs, it would just make so much more sense to build a PC for the upgradability if nothing else. Being able to drop in a new card or CPU as desired is a pretty big perk, although I find it somewhat strange to be describing it that way, as it used to be a given.

Re: iMac Pro

#23

Post by captainmuon »

I neither need nor can afford one, and as other have commented, for a "professional" an all-in-one computer is rather impractical. I'd much rather have a simple box where I can replace individual components, or the monitor, if it breaks.

That being said, I'm interested in the new magic keyboard: wide, and in space grey. Would look pretty nice with my hackintosh :-P

Re: iMac Pro

#24

Post by vbezhenar »

I'm not amazed. This processor will inevitable throttle, I don't believe that they could cool it to allow for constant boosting. Graphics looks like trash: it's a consumer video card (no ECC, bad double precision speed) inferior to Nvidia. And of course everything glued together will render this PC obsolete in few years without any upgrade path.

I hope they'll build a proper Mac Pro.

Re: iMac Pro

#25

Post by coldtea »

jarym wrote: post #19

Seeing the history of updates to the Mac Mini and Mac Pro why would anyone trust Apple with a high end desktop computer? The odds are high that they'll keep pumping this thing largely unchanged for the next 5 years while letting the state of technology race ahead. I'm saying this because no matter what Apple say, their focus is undoubtedly on what makes them the most money: iPhones.

>Seeing the history of updates to the Mac Mini and Mac Pro why would anyone trust Apple with a high end desktop computer?

Because they don't buy for the next 20 years, but for their actual current needs. If anything happens and the line stops, I can always go find another solution then and there, as opposed to now.

Besides, this is like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. There were several cases for concern (e.g. when the MacPro wasn't updated properly for 3 years).

The day of the release of a new Pro machine is the exact opposite of that.

Re: iMac Pro

#26

Post by skywhopper »

jarym wrote: post #19

Seeing the history of updates to the Mac Mini and Mac Pro why would anyone trust Apple with a high end desktop computer? The odds are high that they'll keep pumping this thing largely unchanged for the next 5 years while letting the state of technology race ahead. I'm saying this because no matter what Apple say, their focus is undoubtedly on what makes them the most money: iPhones.

True enough, but what does this matter if you are looking to buy today?

Re: iMac Pro

#27

Post by taf2 »

jarym wrote: post #19

Seeing the history of updates to the Mac Mini and Mac Pro why would anyone trust Apple with a high end desktop computer? The odds are high that they'll keep pumping this thing largely unchanged for the next 5 years while letting the state of technology race ahead. I'm saying this because no matter what Apple say, their focus is undoubtedly on what makes them the most money: iPhones.

Yeah but today it’s awesome. In five years they will have something else even more awesome. I think the problem is they still sell something that was considered awesome from five years ago.

Re: iMac Pro

#28

Post by dagw »

runholm wrote: post #15
mewwts wrote: post #6

So how's this going to perform for Deep Learning?

Performance per $ isn't great, but the hardware is good. If you want to crunch data like a champion you need to spend the same $ on a desktop with a big fat GPU suited for GPGPU tasks and with proper cooling. The rest of the system doesn't really need to be insane, but you have to be able to keep up with the GPU. I doubt the iMac can keep running with a high load over time without thermal throttling.

The other crux is that it is a Radeon GPU and not a Nvidia GPU, so you cannot (effectively) use any Deep Learning library that targets CUDA/cuDNN.

Re: iMac Pro

#30

Post by jmull »

Is there something new here?

(I ask because it was announced months ago and isn’t due out for a few more months.)

Looks great though. It’s a little overpowered for the stuff I do, where the demanding things are distributed systems which don’t make sense to host on a workstation, even in simulation. But I sure wouldn’t mind one.

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