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iMac Pro

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Re: iMac Pro

#121

Post by jmull »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #87
jmull wrote: post #30

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.

I'm a programmer and so buy middle of the line macbook pros with mid range CPUs, mid range RAM, and integrated GPUS. Ironically, my wife, a designer, always chastises me for getting such slow hardware: turns out what works for a programmer doesn't work for soemone who has to use a lot of Adobe CSS :). I assume this iMac pro would be for her, not for me.

That makes sense to me... I do some side work which involves media assets and that’s where my current machine is slow. I only “slice and dice” the completed assets in order to add them to the app so it’s not really a problem.

But if I were working with that stuff all day, I’d want as much power as I could get.

But as a programmer, my biggest and by far most frequent bottleneck is when my computer is idle and I’m sitting motionless, thinking about what the best thing I ought to type next is.

Re: iMac Pro

#122

Post by dilap »

lloyd678 wrote: post #109

This landing page is really shoddy for a premium Apple product

on iOS, the weird tricks they are playing with scrolling means that between sections, you are dragging your finger with literally no response at all from the webpage.

the whole beauty of a a touch device is the physicality -- it feels like you're actually interacting with a real physical system embedded below the screen.

someone should tell web designers to stop messing that up.

Re: iMac Pro

#123

Post by brogrammernot »

bkdbkd wrote: post #103

Amateur extreme. Pro's need a machine that can evolve over time. More memory, larger storage as it becomes available, God forbid - a faster cpu. Remember the PC platform is inherently upgradeable. The LGA2066 chipset can be used with 8+ different CPU's. Pro's invest in proper tools to support their work, not in souped up toys. Without offense meant to my Honda bretheren, this in the same line as the $100,000 Civic mo…

Professional Independent contractors, sure I’ll buy that argument.

Never once, in all of the tech companies I’ve worked for, have I seen anyone upgrade a computer. Even recently, my Mac had an issue with parallels that couldn’t get resolved. New Mac given to me.

Coworker had a 1.5 year old thinkpad. Just needed to swap the RAM from 8 to 16. Nope, just was given a new Thinkpad with 16 gigs instead of spending $150 on RAM.

Companies write off a ton of these expenses, and they don’t “upgrade” the hardware. They upgrade the machine.

Re: iMac Pro

#124

Post by Toine »

graycrow wrote: post #35

Why is this considered news? It was announced at WWDC in June, no?

I don't understand either, why was is posted, why was it upvoted, why is it commented ?

Re: iMac Pro

#125

Post by ksec »

evilduck wrote: post #117
bkdbkd wrote: post #103

Amateur extreme. Pro's need a machine that can evolve over time. More memory, larger storage as it becomes available, God forbid - a faster cpu. Remember the PC platform is inherently upgradeable. The LGA2066 chipset can be used with 8+ different CPU's. Pro's invest in proper tools to support their work, not in souped up toys. Without offense meant to my Honda bretheren, this in the same line as the $100,000 Civic mo…

I hear this sentiment all the time that "pro users need the ability to upgrade" but not once in a decade of my professional programming career have I _ever_ seen a computer at a workplace upgraded. They get purchased, they get repaired, they get retired or they trickle down to "lesser users", but I've never seen anyone get additional RAM or a drop in CPU replacement on an employer-owned machine. If you needed a bette…

Yes, it may seem counter intuitive, but most Pro are the ones who dont want to fiddle around with their computers.

Re: iMac Pro

#126

Post by whiskyant »

evilduck wrote: post #117
bkdbkd wrote: post #103

Amateur extreme. Pro's need a machine that can evolve over time. More memory, larger storage as it becomes available, God forbid - a faster cpu. Remember the PC platform is inherently upgradeable. The LGA2066 chipset can be used with 8+ different CPU's. Pro's invest in proper tools to support their work, not in souped up toys. Without offense meant to my Honda bretheren, this in the same line as the $100,000 Civic mo…

I hear this sentiment all the time that "pro users need the ability to upgrade" but not once in a decade of my professional programming career have I _ever_ seen a computer at a workplace upgraded. They get purchased, they get repaired, they get retired or they trickle down to "lesser users", but I've never seen anyone get additional RAM or a drop in CPU replacement on an employer-owned machine. If you needed a bette…

By the time a top of the line PC needs an "upgrade", an entirely different CPU/RAM architecture will probably be top of the line anyways.

Re: iMac Pro

#127

Post by alkonaut »

j2bax wrote: post #114
alkonaut wrote: post #56

Impressive engineering to get that kilowatt-level power envelope into what looks literally like an envelope. Then the next question: is the target audience really there? The people who need 18 cores + a pro graphics card are the people who used to have mac pros (or still use them). These people care about expandable and replacable things, and most of all they want to use a screen with several computers because these…

>These people care about expandable and replacable things Apple likely has data that says there are enough people that don't care about these things to justify their production of this computer. I work in an office full of designers, illustrators, animators and developers and there are very few of them that have much of a passion for messing around with the hardware and would far prefer to just upgrade every few year…

I'm sure Apple have done their research, but it also feels a bit like a stopgap. Who would buy this over a MacPro tower at similar cost?

This is aimed at people with the Mac Pro, not those with iMac of MacBook (at least thats my impression)

What I was getting at is that the people that prefer the All-in-one are likely e.g. graphic Designers etc, meaning people who already have MacBooks or iMacs. Not the hard core machine learners, VR creators, color graders etc that today have old Mac Pros and $5k screens.

Re: iMac Pro

#128

Post by teilo »

bkdbkd wrote: post #103

Amateur extreme. Pro's need a machine that can evolve over time. More memory, larger storage as it becomes available, God forbid - a faster cpu. Remember the PC platform is inherently upgradeable. The LGA2066 chipset can be used with 8+ different CPU's. Pro's invest in proper tools to support their work, not in souped up toys. Without offense meant to my Honda bretheren, this in the same line as the $100,000 Civic mo…

> And no mic input? Why? That's just silly. It cost them more to leave that out.

Do you mean separate mic input? Because it has the same combo headphone jack as all existing Macs. So it has mic input.

As a pro audio user, a built-in mic input is useless anyway. We have external USB3, TB, or Firewire interfaces for that. Lower noise, better DACs, phantom power, HiZ and XLR inputs, etc.

Beyond pro, nobody uses mic input unless they are using an iPhone headset on their Mac. Everyone is using USB mikes/headsets.

Re: iMac Pro

#129

Post by captainmuon »

brogrammernot wrote: post #123
bkdbkd wrote: post #103

Amateur extreme. Pro's need a machine that can evolve over time. More memory, larger storage as it becomes available, God forbid - a faster cpu. Remember the PC platform is inherently upgradeable. The LGA2066 chipset can be used with 8+ different CPU's. Pro's invest in proper tools to support their work, not in souped up toys. Without offense meant to my Honda bretheren, this in the same line as the $100,000 Civic mo…

Professional Independent contractors, sure I’ll buy that argument. Never once, in all of the tech companies I’ve worked for, have I seen anyone upgrade a computer. Even recently, my Mac had an issue with parallels that couldn’t get resolved. New Mac given to me. Coworker had a 1.5 year old thinkpad. Just needed to swap the RAM from 8 to 16. Nope, just was given a new Thinkpad with 16 gigs instead of spending $150 on…

They'd be stupid to throw away money / working components. Often, old PCs go back to a "pool", where they are upgraded or scavenged for parts, and then given to new employees. Only when they are too old to upgrade, or it is not worth the work, they are sold to employees or dumped. From the perspective of employees, you just get a new PC.

Essentially you just need a room for parts and a few employees part time, and you can use your computing resources much more efficiently - basically free money. Granted, it only works for organisations of a certain size (large corporations, universities, gov.).

Re: iMac Pro

#130

Post by greggman »

evilduck wrote: post #117
bkdbkd wrote: post #103

Amateur extreme. Pro's need a machine that can evolve over time. More memory, larger storage as it becomes available, God forbid - a faster cpu. Remember the PC platform is inherently upgradeable. The LGA2066 chipset can be used with 8+ different CPU's. Pro's invest in proper tools to support their work, not in souped up toys. Without offense meant to my Honda bretheren, this in the same line as the $100,000 Civic mo…

I hear this sentiment all the time that "pro users need the ability to upgrade" but not once in a decade of my professional programming career have I _ever_ seen a computer at a workplace upgraded. They get purchased, they get repaired, they get retired or they trickle down to "lesser users", but I've never seen anyone get additional RAM or a drop in CPU replacement on an employer-owned machine. If you needed a bette…

well since we're sharing anecdotes I have seen machines get upgraded at work.

working on a game. PVS calc took lots of memory and lots of time. Everyone's machines got a 6x upgrade in ram so they could be used at night to compute the PVS.

another anecdote. friend in another game found rebuilding assets on SSD was several X faster. Since the entire team was often waiting hours for asset builds to finish all machines got upgraded to have SSD.

this is especially true in GPU related fields. new gpus enable new things

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