Thread: The New Mac Pro
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Robo
Formerly Roboman, still
awesome
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
 
2019-08-08, 22:18

Quote:
Originally Posted by chucker View Post
It'll be interesting to see how those two evolve. Will Intel eventually offer suitable Xeon-W parts again? Maybe with Cooper Lake-W? Or not until Ice Lake-W, probably not until 2021? Or will Apple downgrade the next iMac Pro to Cascade Lake-X, which kind of sucks from an enthusiast point of view, but might be the better path to sustained updates? (Keep in mind the iMac Pro is already almost two years old at this point, with no suitable upgrade in sight.)
I'm not married to the idea of the iMac Pro maintaining its current position with the Xeon-W. I think Apple was definitely in a different position when they made it, where they felt they needed to fill the void of the Mac Pro. I could see Apple adjusting its positioning, now that the Mac Pro's void is filled.

It's a little weird how the "Pro" suffix means such different things across Apple's line-up. On the MacBook, it's like, okay, the MacBook Pro is $200 more than the MacBook Air. Even if you want the "real" MacBook Pro with four Thunderbolt ports and a 28W processor, it's 50% more. Same with the iPad...the iPad Pro is about 50% more than the iPad Air. But then on the iMac, it's like, 3x the price of the 27-inch iMac. The 27-inch iMac is already a sort of "pro" product, and so the iMac Pro goes into high-end workstation territory, with a huge jump in price.

I'm not saying I think the iMac Pro as it currently is should be half its price or whatever. But could I see Apple "downgrading" the future iMac Pros, now that they have the Mac Pro tower to be their ultra-high-end workstation? Maybe. Ideally, the iMac Pro would be positioned in a way where it would tempt some 27-inch iMac buyers to move up, and right now it just doesn't. There's a massive chasm between their prices.

How popular is the iMac Pro? People like MKBHD and Marco Arment adore it, and it is a fantastic machine, but I'm not sure it's been an out-and-out sales success for Apple (even by high-end desktop standards). I only have circumstantial evidence for this, of course, because Apple doesn't break out sales. But reading between the lines...there have been multiple times when B&H has offered it for $3,999, literally a grand off the top, and I know margins on Apple products aren't usually that great. And they started doing this just a few months after it came out.

And of course, Apple has scarcely touched it in nearly two years.

In a lot of ways, when the iMac with Retina 5K Display came out, that was basically positioned more like how we'd typically expect a "Pro" Apple product to be positioned — it was $2499, 40% more than the 27-inch iMac. And it was the Mac, when it came out. It was hot shit. Honestly, that was probably the last new Mac design that was just an out-and-out win that everybody loved. There were no drawbacks, no compromises, no shitty keyboards. You just got a brilliant new display at a fairly reasonable price.

I'm really interested to see where Apple takes the iMac and iMac Pro next, because right now it seems like their desktop line might be in flux a bit. They've got the Mac Pro now, for the people who need workstation-class Xeons. The iMac is overdue for a redesign, to be built around flash like every other Mac. And the fat bezels and chin are looking a little dated. We've had this same design since 2012, after all, and from the front it looks identical to iMacs since 2009. Does the screen grow? Does the body shrink? If Apple can fit a power-hungry Xeon into the current iMac enclosure, that suggests that they could trim the fat a bit on the models that don't have power-hungry Xeons inside. But then where does that leave the iMac Pro? Would it continue to soldier on with its current design, chin and all? Or would the new iMac Pro get the new design first? And what would go inside it, since Xeon-W seems to be going nowhere fast? So many questions!

I'd be okay if the iMac Pro "just" becomes a really high-spec'd iMac, even if it means dropping Xeon-branded processors and ECC memory. I think a lot of people would welcome that, and I think more people would make the jump up if there wasn't such a price chasm. But I'm sure Apple really likes trying to sell them at $4999, so who knows.

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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