[Robo]

Originally Posted by chucker Yeah, but… what? As has been pointed out (but isn't directly Apple's fault), the iMac Pro is already lagging behind much cheaper non-Pro iMacs in single-thread performance.* And those now go up to 8 cores. So the iMac Pro isn't actually "better" in all respects, just for rather specialized scenarios. And surely, the regular iMac will eventually get the same cooling system and other upgrades the Pro has (or something more advanced than that). So that plus will go away, too. Where does that leave it? A workstation GPU, maybe? (Radeon Pro / née FirePro? Quadro?) *) which continues to be very important. Don't let "my machine needs 18 cores" folks fool you.

That's what I'm saying — the iMac Pro, as it is right now, isn't positioned super well. It made more sense two years ago than it does now.

Originally Posted by chucker I feel like of those, the MBP has the worst positioning. The iPad Pro at least has stuff like a much better speaker system (though "pro" is questionable on that — it's kind of mostly useful for consumption?), ProMotion, a better Pencil, etc. The iMac Pro has a workstation-class CPU. What does the MBP have, really? The Touch Bar, love it or hate it, is not really a "pro" feature. Apple should either be all-in on it and believe that it's a useful input method, or they shouldn't. To make it pro-only is bad. A P3 display, sure, that qualifies. But why, for instance, is there no ProMotion on the MacBook Pro?

I don't know, I mean the MacBook Pro is hugely popular. I think what it offers is simple: higher-TDP processors in exchange for a little bit more thickness and weight, and the option of a larger display and a discrete GPU.

Originally Posted by chucker Yup. (The 27-inch iMac starts at $1799, buuuuuuut. The iMac Pro starts at 32 GB memory and a 1 TB SSD. At that point, the iMac is already $2899. Add a configuration that has a Vega GPU so it's somewhat more comparable, and you're at $3649. Add an 8-core CPU, and you're at $4049. And yet — that's still $950 more! Which buys you a CPU that's actually worse much of the time, a better GPU, and 10 Gig Ethernet, and… that's about it.)

I think there's a good chance that, if they replace the current iMac Pro with a new cheaper line (say, starting at $2999), the base SSD will shrink. MacBook Pros and even the Mac Pro all start with far smaller SSDs and that's where Apple goes for the upsell. The 1 TB SSD feels like something Apple included to justify the $4999 price.

Originally Posted by chucker Like, remember how cool the iMac G4 was?

I adore the iMac G4, but honestly I feel like the time for that has past, because there just isn't enough guts in the regular iMac to need a base at all. I mean, what would the base even be nowadays, the size of a Mac mini? (That's not unlike the Surface Studio...) I think a "sunflower" design would look top-heavy with modern display sizes. I guess they could build the computing guts into the keyboard, and have it be like a laptop with a giant articulating display?

I hated the iMac G5 when it first came out, and regardless of how Phil Schiller tried to spin it as an improvement, it was clearly a compromise to accommodate the G5. And it was amusing, watching Apple go back on all the "mounting the drives vertically would destroy their performance!" claims that they had when they introduced the iMac G4.

But now the iMac doesn't have drives, or at least the next one won't. No optical drive, no hard drive — just some SSD chips on the board. The entire Mac is just the logic board, now. And it just makes sense to mount that logic board behind the screen, in one floating unit. And the screens are so big now, you can taper the edges so it feels even thinner than the old iMac G4 screen. So I think that, long-term, moving to the current "where did the computer go?" design was the right call, even if they did it too soon with the chunky two-inch thick iMac G5.

If they gave it Apple Pencil support, sure, make it fold downwards (like the Surface Studio), and put the guts in a weighted base so that it doesn't tip over. But without that, I think the current foot is probably the way to go.

Maybe that's a way they can differentiate the iMac and iMac Pro?

Originally Posted by chucker But they might like selling 100,000 a quarter at $2999 more than selling 20,000 a quarter at $4999.

That's what I'm thinking. I think they could get a lot more people to make the jump up if it wasn't such a leap.