Now That Apple’s Announced the iMac Pro, What Does This Mean for Mac Pro Design?

At the WWDC 2017 keynote, Apple gave us a sneak peak of the new iMac Pro, but now what does this all mean for the design of the next Mac Pro?

iMac Pro. Image credit: Apple.

It’s likely that the drop-dead gorgeous new iMac Pro that Apple revealed in the WWDC keynote was originally intended to replace the 2013 Mac Pro. That fits with Apple’s recent decision to get out of the display business and focus on the iMac Pro as its flagship for professionals.

But the professional community of Apple customers begged to differ. They wanted a clearer commitment in terms of expandability, more RAM, more horsepower than an Intel Core i7, higher end graphics, and the ability to add their own displays. That’s been a heated subject from October 2016, when a new Mac Pro wasn’t announced until this year’s WWDC.

Now that we’ve had a sneak peek at the glorious new iMac Pro, what are the implications for the future Mac Pro that Apple has committed to? What will it cost? Will it go beyond the limits of the iMac Pro? Or will it be an equivalent system, but simply headless? How does Apple see the new Mac Pro fitting into the lineup and into the professionals thinking?

To get a handle on this, I asked several noted corporate professionals to tell me what they thought of the iMac Pro. Implicit in that is the notion of how that iMac Pro will inform the design of the future Mac Pro. Most of the feedback below also addresses that. At the end, I sum it all up.

The Professional Responses

Neal Pann, an architect with Dahlin Group Architects Planners wrote me:

It’s about time that Apple focuses again on the pro market and that includes the market for BIM (Building Information Modeling) modeling and VR. The new iMac Pro begins to address the needs of that user and keeps macOS in the conversation as at least an option. It’s going to force the application developers of CAD/BIM  programs to push their own software to take advantage of the new hardware in ways that they haven’t been able to do before on the Mac platform.

[One] concern I have is the lack of support for Nvidia graphics with the new iMac Pro. There are a number of high end graphics applications for rendering and modeling that require Nvidia’s CUDA architecture and not having the option to support that in the upcoming iMac Pro is a deal killer for some.

Rick Allen with Globeflex Capital, L.P. said:

I am very intrigued and want to try first hand. My first thought was “This was the new Mac Pro.” The mea culpa meeting with the five journalists was a damage control move.

I have a couple of issues with the machine. First is no user replaceable parts. Even though the RAM is in sockets, ATP podcast confirmed there is no door to get at it and so makes it very hard to get 3rd party ram upgrades…. Another question is the issue of Heat dissipation. 8 to 18 core Xeon processors are big and have greater TDP than [Core] i7 processors. I hope the cooling solution in that very slim case is up to the task. I hope that it’s not another “thermal corner” as was mentioned with the current Mac Pro.

On the GPU front, Radeon Vega architecture is looking very promising. Yet a lot of professionals want CUDA support from nVidia. The now allowed external Thunderbolt 3 enclosures would help with this. nVidia recently released CUDA drivers for Pascal series cards so you could put a GTX 1080TI or Titan Xp in an external enclosure, yet I am puzzled why Apple and nVidia are seeming at odds these days. They used to work together.

Anthony Frausto-Robledo, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Architosh wrote:

I am very impressed with what I see thus far. This shows real commitment to Apple’s pro Mac customers and this machine is a beast for an all-in-one. I’m almost scared of what Apple has plans for in the new modular Mac Pro they said they are committed to bringing to the market sometime in 2018 or later. Clearly, the VR news is also extremely exciting and will make Mac based architects elated!

Next page: More expert feedback. The different kinds of pro users.

More Expert Feedback

Joel Sercel, Founder and Principal Engineer of TransAstra wrote me:

The fundamental issue here is the philosophical one of appliance versus tool, and I think this shows that Apple still does not get it. It is fine to have an iPad or even an “Air” class laptop welded together and not user upgradable, but pros need to be able to tailor their machine to the job. This is akin to Ford selling a pickup truck that you can’t add a front winch and rear towing rig to: that is fine for a sedan (iPad) but not for a work truck. A desktop pro machine is not an appliance for your Aunt Bertha, it is a tool for a working professional that the customer needs to be able to set up they way they want, and change over time.

iMac Pro with additional displays. Gotta get a bigger desk. Image credit: Apple.

Finally, the CEO of Symply, Inc., Alex Grossman summed things up nicely.

I am actually very excited about the new iMacPro. It represents Apple responding to user needs in an “Apple way”

As a product guy I look at what the customer “needs” not what they “think they want” based on a limited perspective, and I think Apple is back to doing what Apple does best—anticipating the changes in the market and meeting the challenges in a smart future-looking manner.

For many users the iMac Pro is the perfect tool (assuming it performs as stated). While I think the price tag is a bit steep, its the “easy button” workstation for most workflow operation in media creation that cannot be handled by a convienient MacBook Pro.

Over the past two years or so we have observed more and more people choosing iMacs over MacPros for many of the editing, color and audio workstations as well as on-shoot data wrangling tasks simply because they were “good enough” and Apple easy.

Creatives are not engineers, they don’t respect the idea that you can screw and glue pieces together, they want the elegance, thoughtfulness of design, and the reliability it always leads to. Macs for the most part just don’t break, Frankenstien workstations do and while IT people like that, creative justbwantbit to work, be quiet, have a fantastic display and be fast. This system will not meet that need yet—that’s for the new Mac Pro whenever it hits—but shows a directional shift that is very positive.

The preliminary look at the cooling approach which I spent many hours on design over the years is right on track.

Apple has taken its first step in getting back on track for high performance and elegant desktop workstations for the 21st century, this is a leadship stance. Welcome back Apple!

Next page: implications for the next Mac Pro.

Implications for the Next Mac Pro

Given the above expert observations, the picture becomes a lot clearer for the next Mac Pro. Namely, there are likely two kinds of technical and creative professionals.

iMac Pro cooling scheme. Image credit: Apple

One group wants a powerful CPU and GPU monster that fits their needs for CAD/BIM/VR/AR development and simulations. But they want a minimum of fuss and tinkering. A system with a multi-core Xeon, 5K display, and 64 or 128 GB RAM out of the box will do nicely. Apple developers will love this iMac Pro as well. Time is money.

A second group is more engineering oriented. They may be constantly mixing and matching equipment. New requirements and initiatives may require internal and flexible external expansion. Support for CUDA or OpenCL means that the customer needs to be able to replace the graphics card and have the flexibility to add more RAM over time. (That also implies graceful support for many different graphics systems in macOS.] Depending on the Xeon chosen, Apple may offer the opportunity to upgrade to 256, 512 or even a TB of RAM. The new Mac Pro must be mindful of this second mentality, and I’m sure it will be.

And so I surmise that Apple has come around to the notion that the iMac Pro, while fulfilling the needs of many, won’t fill the bill for many others—as Apple may have previously hoped. Now if the next Mac Pro, sans display and using a great but not outrageous GPU in the base model can keep the entry price reasonable, perhaps it’ll be in the same range as the iMac Pro. But, as Anthony Frausto-Robledo suggested above, be prepared for sticker-shock.

Great workstation power combined with Apple’s legendary attention to engineering design means higher prices than we’re accustomed to. But now it looks like Apple is no longer holding back, and soon, perhaps in 2018, technical and creative professionals will have two great choices for powerful desktop Macs. Perhaps some will even deploy a mix of the two.

And that will be very cool indeed.

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