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A modern GPU would, IMHO, be the main thing.

I don't think they've updated the iMac GPU since 2015.

If you build a hackintosh you can at least run an Nvidia GPU and get CUDA support.

One can configure an HP Z840 workstation with 2TB of RAM and 44 cores. The vast majority of developers can and do work with much less. The question is, what are the true power users using?

The biggest thing is greater than 16GB of RAM.

The 27" iMacs are all configurable up to 32GB RAM.

The new 27" 5K iMac is upgradable to 64GB

If they are all developing with Xcode I bet they also have a server farm for distributed builds. That said, why would OSX devs need more that 16GB of RAM? It's not like they are going to be running virtual machines/docker images. Xcode isn't _that_ much of a memory hog.

What are they building Xcode server farms out of?

Apple Stores /s

Why wouldn't they be running VMs? I frequently use them for development, within OSX.

iMacs support 32GB.