Pretty simple, really: the new iMac Pro is not designed for 99% of users. It is not for me, for instance, or any of my friends. The new power-house PC is designed for a very specific subset of users. Not just millennials with too much money (or rich parents).
The iMac Pro is designed, predominantly, for those working in video, VR, 3D modelling, animation – fields that require the type of spec you will find inside the iMac Pro. This is why it costs so much and why it is outfitted with either 8- to 18-core Intel Xeon chips and 32-128GB of RAM.
Here’s a full breakdown of the iMac Pro’s specs:
- 27-inch 5K display with 500 nits brightness and P3 colour
- 8-Core Intel Xeon CPU
- 32GB of 2666MHz DDR4 ECC RAM
- 1TB PCIe SSD
- AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 GPU with 8GB of HBM2
- 10GbE Ethernet
- Four Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports
- Four USB 3.0 ports
Interestingly, the guys over at PC Gamer put together a spec-list for building a similar style Windows PC. The results were pretty interesting, as the Windows machine would cost around $4686 – just $313 cheaper than the iMac Pro.
In addition to this, Apple’s Macs get excellent software support over a number of years, meaning if you do decide to drop almost $5000 on the iMac Pro, you will likely get a good 7-8 year’s worth of use from the system.
I run an iMac 4K – and have done for the past three years. During this time, it hasn’t missed a beat. I did update the memory this year, which improved its speed, but for the most part it will likely last me another good few years.
Still, comparing my iMac 4K to Apple’s new iMac Pro is like comparing a BMW 320 to a BMW M3.
Given what’s inside the iMac Pro, however, I can’t see anybody using one and feeling like they don’t have quite enough power under the hood. Even more so when you factor in cost of building a similarly-specced Windows machine.
Guess the pricing isn’t so bad, after all?
by rgoodwin via Featured Articles
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