Putting Apple’s iMac Pro Through the Paces
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Every pro review I've seen so far has been that's it's excellent - not because they're fawning over this or that, but just that's it's a solid option with a great screen at what's actually a reasonable price for the components inside. If you think the price is unreasonable, you're probably not the sales target for this machine - the ones who really need this, like in the case of this reviewer, are buying three at a time - just because.
It's interesting because upgradability doesn't seem like a very big concern to anyone buying this - they're happy with that they're getting at the price they're paying. It almost seems like Apple needn't have promised everyone a new modular Mac Pro. If they'd just announced / launched this machine alongside the pointless MacBook Pro update, everyone would have been happy and with no accusations of taking the name of the Pro in vain.
I believe Nvidia drivers are already in beta, this or any other eGPU enclosure should be able to remove that sticking point.
There is a slight performance penalty because fo the TB3 bus conversion bus, but it's only applicable for real time work like gaming - pro work should be able to use Nvidia cards just fine.
- A new machine is in warranty.
- You don't need to keep track of what machines you have, how many memory slots they have, what DDR version and speed they require, etc. You don't need personnel to do the replacements.
- In large organizations, hardware is only a small cost compared to salary, etc. So, it is typically not a problem to replace machines every 2-3 years, if necessary.
Upgradability is more interesting to individuals and small businesses.
> A new machine is in warranty.
Warranties are for individuals. Businesses will use them if they exist, but when a machine fails you replace it with a spare off the shelf. All a warranty does is save you the cost of buying another spare, which amortized over a fleet is nowhere near the cost of buying all new equipment.
> You don't need to keep track of what machines you have, how many memory slots they have, what DDR version and speed they require, etc. You don't need personnel to do the replacements.
There is inventory software to automate this. And upgrading a machine requires much less work than replacing it because an upgrade doesn't normally require transferring programs, settings and user data.
> In large organizations, hardware is only a small cost compared to salary, etc. So, it is typically not a problem to replace machines every 2-3 years, if necessary.
That other costs are larger is no excuse to waste money. An upgrade will often make a 2-3 year old machine equivalent to this year's machine, which is typically less expensive than replacing the entire machine. Especially since you don't have to replace any component that isn't actually a bottleneck in your applications.
But the main value of upgradability to large companies is as a hedge against unexpected requirements. Some vendor's new software requires twice the resources as the old version two months after you've bought equipment using the old spec. Either you can upgrade the machines or you have to replace them. Even if you don't always have to do it, you always want to be able to.
Quick comparison, HP: 3 year Next Business Day onsite Warranty - they come to you, they make assertions about how quickly they'll be there. Can be extended to five years (for a Z840 for less than £200 or ~5% of the machine's purchase price)
Dell Precision: same. To add another 2 years to a Precision 7920 costs a bit over £200 or ~7%.
Apple: one year. £159 (~3% of base price) to extend to three years, and no option for more. You have to take it to an Apple Store (good luck with that), or Apple can arrange to have it shipped by courier. Hope whatever courier they use don't drop it along the way, and no sign of a guarantee when they'll get it fixed.
I expect the target market for the iMac Pro overlaps strongly with Apple's other machines (i.e. the iMac Pro's replacing an existing Apple computer) so this won't be a surprise but it's disappointing that Apple won't stand more behind their machines.
For wide-spread issues at least, they do stand behind their machines.
Frequently because they're forced to, by the threat of litigation and/or a smackdown from consumer-protection organisations. There's too often a window where Apple won't acknowledge there's an issue but your warranty's expired so eh...maybe they'll make an exception for you? Or maybe not.
I'm looking for something a bit more systematic. On an iMac Pro that starts at a shade under £5000, it wouldn't hurt them to make the default warranty 3 years and offer an extension to 5 (I mean, who's throwing away these machines after 3 years, never mind one?).
> Contact Apple, an Apple Authorized Reseller, or an Authorized Carrier Partner to receive a quote for AppleCare for Enterprise.
Not so much. I guess what I'm really expecting is that for a workstation-class machine this is the rule rather than the exception.
I think the knowledge that a new 'modular' Mac Pro is coming gives a different context to this machine. I think people are framing this on the idea that: if you want a quiet, good looking machine with a great screen and the other 'benefits' of an all in one (and don't mind the trade offs), then it's good to have this option. If the trade offs don't work for you, then wait for the more traditional Mac Pro.
If it had been released without any mention of another option coming for pro users, then it would have been framed as "if you need workstation grade hardware running mac os, then your only choice is now an expensive, non-upgradeable all-in-one which has traded off performance for quietness and for other thermal constraints".
That is totally untrue. The places I was complaints were all about upgradability. That's why many people still get the previous generation of Mac Pro's and upgrade the processors, graphics cards and add SSDs. My main machine at work is one of these, and feels just as fast as my Mac Pro 6,1 (the trashcan version) at home.
Knowledge of the coming Mac Pro allows me to view this device with levity because I can view it as a herald of things to come in a more satisfying format; had I not known of the ‘imminent’ (end of 2018 or beginning of 2019) Mac Pro, I would have been utterly aghast at the idea of Apple pushing me towards the integrated solution.
I tend to cram my computers with cards (not graphics cards, but things like SDRs and FPGAs) but what really does it for me is having the monitor built-in: I'm used to multiple monitor desktops, and I like both screens to be absolutely identical make and model. That clearly isn't possible when you have an all-in-one computer with no available ‘identical’ screen.
Also, my computer belongs beneath my desk, and my monitors on top of it. It's just the preordained way. All else is heresy. ;)
8K would require new HDMI cables and ports, would it not? I'm pretty sure that many people are still stuck with legacy hardware in this regard.
I want to be an Apple fan. I really do. But they are making it impossible for me nowadays.
I'm fine with a typical 4k display (or better). The panels of the better ones seem to come from LG anyway and are widely available on the market. I wonder if Apple would be selling a good quality 5k monitor with TB3, or if they go for a high-end 8k screen. Personally I'm not in the business for the highest end. LG has announced a bunch of TB3 screens, where the 4k 32" version would be sufficient for me. But LG lately has problems bringing their better screens in enough quantities to the market. Last years 32" 4k screen is still not widely available here in Germany.
That and the amount of time they’re taking on this modular one is just nuts. All people want is a simple tower. They could just bring the damn cheese grater back.
I only have one teeny tiny nit and I'm only mentioning it because I think it's a common misconception:
if you want a **quiet,** good looking machine with a
great screen and the other 'benefits' of an all
in one (and don't mind the trade offs)
PC Gamer did a price comparison that tried to match the components as closely as possible and found that the result is barely cheaper than the iMac Pro:
http://www.pcgamer.com/apples-new-imac-pro-costs-5000-but-is...
I am not in this market segment, but if you are doing something like high-end video editing, the iMac Pro is competitively priced and (probably) has a great build quality compared to systems in the competing in this segment.
I hope that they won't forget some other market segments. It would be a great to have a new Mac Mini in the 700-1000 Euro range.
They obviously weren't trying very hard.
$5000 is a lot of money to pour into one PC. Even if you are spending $1300 of that on a monitor.
A slightly slower CPU can be had for a significantly lower price. GPUs are a lot more important to most workloads.
... But I didn't mention any of those.
The only reason for an expensive motherboard is to use multiple video cards.
>$200 is not a good price for a PSU. 1000watt is absolutely unnecessary unless you need to power 3-4 GPUs.
My point is that you can easily build a very similar system for half the price. This isn't the rattly '90s. $5000 is a lot for one PC.
If you want to shell out $3700 on PC components, you can build a much more powerful system, especially when you start putting in more GPUs.
For sure. I had this argument a few weeks before the iMac Pro came out with someone who insisted that it'd come with an 850W, more likely 1KW+ PSU...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15922978
iFixit's tear down? 500W PSU.
I'm not sure how Apple has people convinced they need ECC. It's practically worthless outside of very specific workloads. A workstation user does not fill several gigabytes of RAM with terse important data, query it millions of times/day, and do so 24/7 all year long.
The chances of memory failure ruining data are extremely slim; lower than for hardware failure. If you care about your data, back it up.
As for the source of the error, we can only speculate but the possibility of a flipped bit is higher than you think.
Try running memtest86 on a PC without ECC for a week. You will be surprised at the results. I’ve seen perhaps 3 or 4 failures of this in new hardware. DRAM is not perfect.
Also SSDs scare me more. MLC disks have so many states stored in a capacitor that is trusted not to leak over the lifetime of the device. All it takes is a few electrons to go walkies and it’s game over.
And then there’s the same problem with MLC SSDs which are just arrays of capacitors encoding that state as different charge potentials. As a former EE, capacitors leak regardless of implementation.
Software is fault tolerant. Small memory failures can be trivially tolerated.
ECC simply isn't worth the cost, especially for workstations.
Most software is not at all fault tolerant in this respect. It just crashes. Fortunately, most users are somewhat fault-tolerant.
I've also had memory issues on non-ECC machines, it's a lot harder to diagnose and much more frustrating. ECC memory should be standard in modern machines IMO.
And didn't keep a backup. Most serious software will make incremental copies to avoid that problem too.
Seriously, hardware failures are just as likely.
ECC is useful, but isn't worth it for the price unless you actually can't be fault tolerant in any way.
I'd gladly pay 1k more to have a stable system.
If so, are you sure it's the RAM?
If stability matters to you, you should really demand ECC for any system you purchase. It's the best bang for buck to that end.
$650 is steep for a motherboard, but it has dual 10 gig-e ports and supports registered ECC. A SuperMicro motherboard with the Xeon W support will run about $350 (they’re not out yet) and an X550AT2 NIC is about $200 on eBay.
But yeah, the Xeon they chose is quite a bit slower than the 8-core Xeon-W; the Broadwell equivalent was really the $1100 E5-1660 v4.
So -$200 for motherboard, +$700 for CPU, and -$100 for PSU if you're feeling generous. That's still $5k.
* Power Supply: SeaSonic - PRIME Titanium 1000W 80+ Titanium Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($242.89)whereas they could have gotten a fine psu for $99
* Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 7 Professional ($134.99) How about not and say we did.
* Monitor: LG - UltraFine 5K Display 60Hz Monitor ($1299.95) whereas one can probably get a really nice 4K monitor for 400-500. Some can spend the extra funds on another 4K monitor, others you know already have monitors.
* CPU Cooler: NZXT - Kraken X62 Liquid CPU Cooler ($158.99) Did I miss the part where the mac is liquid cooled why is this here?
* CPU: Intel - Xeon E5-2620 V4 2.1GHz 8-Core Processor ($408.99) This is an amazingly poor choice while relatively expensive its performance is decidedly mediocre being an older generation.
Motherboard: Asus - X99-E-10G WS SSI CEB LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($649.00) Expensive not primarily because its awesome but because its xeon.
The $1059 could have been better spent on this motherboard http://www.asrock.com/MB/AMD/X399%20Taichi/index.asp#Specifi... note supports dual gb lan and ecc, $340
this cpu
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1681911... $535 and about $100 for a single port 10G lan
Total $975 between motherboard and cpu
All in all a machine could be built that is nearly equivalent for about 3544. Given the extra $1500 one could buy a second 27" 4k monitor upgrade to 16 cores and buy a second gpu.
Pretending mac is comparable in price to pc remains silly.
Not really. Go to HPs site and put together something like a z640 with as similar spec as possible and you're close to $4k before even adding a screen.
The iMac Pro looks like a great machine. But it’s definitely not comparable to a Mac Pro (although the last Mac Pro also wasn’t really a Mac Pro).
I think it's pretty simple: People who want or need Macs and who have a workload that's highly parallelizable (sp?) will like this machine. Or people who need ultra-fast I/O. That group is basically video editors, (some) programmers who do a lot of local compilation for whatever reason, and a couple of others.
It's a pretty small-ish group but also probably a noisy, discerning one online.
For much of that group, the computer is a tax write-off anyway—something individuals buying for themselves often forget.
Many people forget that, in smaller businesses, the older machines are also quietly wiped and then sold for cash on Craigslist.
How else do you run/test the code you're working on?
While this is true, the people who are unaware about what tax admitted expenses are, often just assume that it is "free money". It is not. You still have to earn whatever you spend on the machine, and it is up to you to consider, what is and isn't cost effective for your specific situation.
And not only that; in many jurisdictions, there are limits in what can be considered OPEX. If you go above that, your spending has to be accounted for as CAPEX and you have to depreciate the item. Depreciating a computer for several years, instead of expensing it in the current year, can quickly decrease its appeal.
Almost every Touch Bar MBP review has also been excellent. Sales of the Touch Bar MBPs surpassed the sales of almost all other competitors combined, in less than 1 week [0] (annnnd here comes the expected downplaying of why it sold so much, offering every convoluted reason but the possibility that it is actually, in fact, a good product.)
"Pro" users and Apple did not have a "big showdown." It's just an obnoxiously loud minority, with their puerile 4chan'ish dismissals like "Emoji keyboard!!1", who had never even really used a Touch Bar MBP, that were clogging up a few forums. People who barely exhaust even 16 GB in their daily work fake-whining about the inability to upgrade to 32 GB, even though almost no viable competing laptop supported that either at the time.
It would be fair to mention, that if you wanted the not-the-weakest-CPU or more than 2 USB ports, you had to get the touch bar version.
And just to Mention, the report does not spilt between Touch Bar and Non Touch Bar. And we already know most premium prices notebook goes to Apple. That means Apple would have sold just as much if they didn't had the TouchBar.
There is Data, and how you interpret that data.
I think the people that complained about it are people that either 1) didn't actually use one at all, 2) are 100% resistant to anything changing in their workflow, even if it might improve it in other ways (I'm looking at you ESC key nihilists in VIM), or 3) would never buy a Mac anyways because they like to tinker and/or upgrade their PCs regularly.
Frankly, I don't understand when these types of people get butthurt about a product that they will never buy and don't intend to buy just because others might get them. Just don't buy the damn thing and get on with your life. For those that do buy it because it fits their workflow and lifestyle, I think the damn thing is amazing.
https://www.boastr.net/bettertouchtool-touch-bar-customizati...
https://medium.com/productivity-freak/what-if-you-could-real...
But, so what? You shop at Apple if you want better than the competition.
I work with multi-Tera datasets, and my use cases are common enough these days. Anyone doing CAD, bio, finance, video, etc etc etc would easily find uses for 32G or even more.
I'm personally holding out for the new Mac Pro specs to become public. A modular system is ideal in a large post-production facility. I have enough external peripherals and connections for 10GbE, fiber and SDI that attaching them all to an iMac is as much of a headache as anything. Especially when you're doing live productions and you have to swap out parts frequently.
Price is the least of my concerns though. If I can shave a lot off my budgets by upgrading RAM and GPU over time vs replacing entire machines, that's a big bonus. But I have more concerns with overheating in the iMac Pro than anything.
And the touch bar is useless to most of my editors and graphics team. If we could opt for a model without it, we would, every time...
From my discussions with an iMac hardware engineer, he explained that the component set that these machines are made with are at least 7-10 years away from being replaced because the software catches up. Whereas, traditionally, we're used to machines that last 3-5 years, but you can easily upgrade in the future.
If true, it appears to be a major paradigm shift, which rightfully the market is having a hard time trying to swallow.
The Magic Mouse 2 is one of the worst mice I've ever used, but the charging thing is a non-issue. The battery lasts like a month on one charge. Mine has never gone below 50%.
When mine dies it’s a good excuse to find a cup of coffee. By the time I get back there’s more than enough charge for the rest of the day.
[1] http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_charge_whe...
With the prior version, I started out just changing out the normal AA batteries when they died every several months. That felt wasteful, though, so I got rechargeable AA batteries, but swapping them out every month or so was tedious.
Now I just plug it in every few weeks when I leave the office for the weekend. I definitely prefer it.
This would be terrible for me, my battery always dies in the middle of the day, because I do not want to keep track of charging. Luckily, the Magic Trackpad 2 does not have this shortcoming and can be used with a lightning cable attached.
(I absolutely love the Magic Trackpad 2. Not just because it is large, but some applications use haptic feedback. E.g. OmniGraffle uses a subtle vibration so that you feel when two objects are aligned.)
Also a magic mouse has much lower power drain, so the same amount of charge lasts much longer on the mouse.
Don't keep track of charging, just plug it in once every 15-20 days over the night. If that's difficult, you're making things hard for no reason.
FWIW, the reason it's on the bottom (according to one of the engineers) is because they didn't want people to leave it plugged in all the time while using it as that severely degrades the lifespan of the internal battery. Forcing people to plug it in while not in use apparently extended the lifespan by something crazy like 20x.
Worst mice? It's one of the better mouse I've used, if not the best, the touch interaction is fantastic and the accuracy spot on.
I'd only change the stupid location of the charger port.
The charging is a total non-issue, however.
But, since macOS is quite good about warning you when the battery is low with plenty of time to spare, I don't see the Sturm und Drang, except as usual "Gotta complain about Apple's unorthodox decisions" wankery.
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Diagnostic_Port....
"Apple's other co-founder, Steve Jobs, didn't agree with Jef about many things, but they both felt the same way about hardware expandability: it was a bug instead of a feature. Steve was reportedly against having slots in the Apple II back in the days of yore, and felt even stronger about slots for the Mac. He decreed that the Macintosh would remain perpetually bereft of slots, enclosed in a tightly sealed case, with only the limited expandability of the two serial ports."
For example, the Lenovo X270 opens with eight Philips screws. Once you're inside, you'll find an array of standard parts in standard sockets. Lenovo provide a detailed service manual and will sell you anything from a replacement fan to a new LCD from stock. The logic board isn't caked in BGA underfill and has a sensible level of density, so component-level repairs are vastly easier and less time-consuming.
They also have spill resistant keyboards as standard (drainage channels to prevent catastrophe, rather than making colour-changing stickers so Apple can bill you for water damage should an accident happen).
The standard US warranty on ThinkPads is one year RTB, but you can upgrade to three years RTB for $99 or three years onsite for $159. International warranty coverage is an extra $10. The standard warranty in Europe is three years onsite. For minor faults, you can usually ask for replacement parts to be shipped for self-installation.
I suspect maintenance costs in a high end company with a handful of high end macs vs high end workstations is quite different note that the production company seems to be using the macs in a peer to peer set up.
And thus doesn't have all the overhead of domain controllers, exchange servers etc a traditional pc deployment.
The Mac Pro trash can is notorious for overheating, so I'm not sad to see it go and I look forward to a new Mac Pro in 2018. The market for that unit will pay a premium for serviceability as well. I'm expecting a heavy price tag.
It's nice to see a real world example of the iMac Pro in use. I do a lot of sustained renders for TV and feature length content. Our PCs run laps around our trash cans, but a mixed environment is far from ideal. We spend more time troubleshooting with editors than anything.
I have more concerns about macOS High Sierra than anything at this point though. I've upgraded a few machines and we're seeing more crashes than ever. Sierra might have to be my staple for a long while.
Eh?
https://designcompaniesranked.com/resources/is-this-retina/
The people in the images are likely past the Retina distance
https://shop.avid.com/resource/1515153493000/cc_avid_gh_wur/...
http://www.hillsvideo.com/assets/uploads/2015/08/video-editi...
I can tell the difference between retina and non retina 27” on a desk (but I have 20/10 vision, which makes my subjective experience irrelevant for most people too)
I was surprised by that point but perhaps they have multi monitor setup at significant distance away.
Example: when I bought a new iMac last year, Apple was charging $1400 for 64GB of ram. That’s insane, so I went with the base and purchased my own. Took five minutes to install and saved around $800 if I recall
If true, doesn't this strike you all as truly unnecessarily egregious? Why should an iMac Pro stuffed full of chemicals to show beautiful 5K images, never be capable of being used as just a display? Is there a good reason Apple customers have to buy brand new displays?
This is worth asking because, unlike the components in the new machine, the display will probably be state of the art for a while.
They just didn't bother adding the circuitry for "video in", due to cost; there is no active opposition here.
For many years now, you can buy "LVDS converter" boards[1] which will let you use any display panel as a monitor. I'm sure demand will mean such boards appear for the iMac Pro displays soon, if the existing ones aren't already compatible. I haven't looked too closely at this but the display might even be eDP or similar, which means only a physical converter is necessary if you want to connect a DP output to it. That's been done with iPad displays before[2]
[1] http://www.ebay.com/bhp/lvds-hdmi
[2] https://hackaday.com/2013/04/22/connect-a-retina-display-to-...
This is the key thing that's keeping me on my 2012 (!) iMac. I was really looking forward to the Pro until I heard this.
So this is why those media pros need that computing power and resolution..
I actually believe we're going to see MacOS for arm and a mac mini running an arm chip, it makes too much sense for Apple not to do it.
My understanding is that when you start really cranking up CPU speed -- let's say, with an imaginary 3.5ghz version of whatever their latest iPad Pro CPU is -- now you're just spending all your time waiting for RAM. So you need fancier and fancier speculative execution hardware in order for the CPU to have something, anything to do. You get into that game, and you wind up with as many transistors on a chip as Intel and AMD, hitting the same performance walls as Intel and AMD have been hitting for a long time.
What Apple could do is just go super wide, of course. Instead of bumping up the clock speed, they could cram 16 of those iPad Pro cores into a Macbook or whatever. Which would be fun, but for most workloads, those cores will just be idle most of the time.
Interesting... so they're noticeable.
Anyone around who has (access to) an iMac Pro and can comment on the fan noise?
They also have a direct incentive not to make user memory upgrades an option. It's a bit too charitable to think they're not supporting it because they somehow know nobody would want to do it anyway.
There's no indication that Apple thinks it's a one-off: there's a lot of custom engineering in there.
I feel sorry for the author, because your eyes have to be shit to come to come to this conclusion. If I remove my contact lenses, then yes, there is no difference.
I'm sure the difference in color gamut is no big deal to someone with colorblindness either.