Thoughts on Apple's iMac Pro

A decade ago, Apple had a brilliant Mac line-up, while the Windows and Linux world stagnated struggling to cope with the Vista debacle. By and large, Mac OS X, MacBooks and Mac Pro were great products and considered the standard (but not always the best) the industry was measured by.

Since then, things have changed dramatically. Today, Apple's Mac line-up looks antiquated and boring. Sure, it gets the work done for many people, but there are far superior alternatives on the Windows and Linux side. For common usage scenarios, Windows 2-in-1s are a fabulous, delightful experience, and in my lifetime the single greatest leap forward in computing. Yes, moreso than smartphones.

It's not bad at all, the products are still very solid, just offensively uninnovative for a company of Apple's reputation. When they attempted to innovate, it ended up being an unmitigated catastrophe. When you introduce a product shouting "Can't innovate, my ass", you know things aren't quite right. That was the 2012 Mac Pro, a trash can that only tried to focus on a small footprint while abandoning everything that made the line "professional".

Filmmakers, artists, photographers and engineering designers alike - few of Apple's strongholds - abandoned the platform en masse, moving to Windows. At this stage, it seems like only developers are left standing - understandable, because none of the innovations in the PC space matter to them.

When a company as hubristic as Apple utters the word "sorry", you know this was a disaster. After 5 years of utter negligence, they announced a new Mac Pro is coming in 2018, and I really hope they go back to offering what professionals really want.

Till then, there's a brilliant new product - Apple's first truly innovative Mac since the MacBook Air back in 2007.

Finally, a product good enough for the professionals to use! There's a 8 core, 10 core or 18 core Intel Xeon for CPU. I'm willing to bet this will be the latest Skylake generation. They are taking graphics seriously too - with Radeon Pro Vega inside. These are downclocked variants of Vega, judging by the Teraflop specs. Makes sense, as efficiency would be a greater focus for the iMac Pro than outright performance. So, this is what is causing those Vega delays!

Every other spec is right on the ball - upto 128 GB ECC DDR4, 4TB NVMe SSDs upto 3 GB/s, Four USBC/TB ports as well as 4 USBA ports. An OLED display would have put it over the top, but the 5K LG-made DCI-P3 display is solid as well. Also refreshing was the presentation, which focused on things that matter instead of useless faff.

That is, of course, a lot of power cramped into a pretty compact form factor. I'm concerned about the thermal and acoustic characteristics, but I'm optimistic they'll get it right. Fairly certain the thermals will be compromised, but that's alright as you aren't constantly touching the back.

Finally, this is a Mac computer you can do high-performance work on! It's expensive, of course, with the entry level 8-core / 32 GB / Vega 56 / 1 TB variant coming in at an eye-popping $5,000. That's definitely reasonable for something professionals can use, though. As for that 8-core / 128 GB / Vega 64 / 4 TB variant? Yeah, that's going to be something ludicrous. It's also a long way away - December - and we may see a fair few alternatives by then.

To be clear, this is not the most innovative or professional AIO. The most flexible and professional would be HP's amazing upgradable Z1 AIO, which has a G3 incoming to battle the iMac Pro. The most innovative would be the Surface Studio or Dell Canvas. HP's ENVY ultrawide AIO is pretty spectacular too. But it sure is the Mac's finest moment in a decade!

This makes me cautiously optimistic that Apple hasn't given up on the Mac platform just yet. I have lost hope for the MacBook line though - it seems clear they see iPad Pro as the future of general computing.