Apple’s eagerly anticipated iMac Pro finally has a release date — and it’s this week.
Landing this Thursday, the new all-in-one desktop Mac will come in 8-, 10- and 18-core variants. It’s by far the most powerful Macintosh ever sold by Apple.
iMac Pro: It’s finally (well, nearly) here!
Apple first showed off the iMac Pro at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, although the company did not reveal much beyond its starting price: a rather hefty $5,000 for the baseline model. As we noted at time, however, that’s actually not too expensive, even by PC standards. According to rough calculations, a comparable PC would cost around $4,686.71.
In a press release, Apple says:
“Pros love iMac. So when they asked us to build them a killer iMac, we went all in. And then we went way, way beyond, creating an iMac packed with the most staggeringly powerful collection of workstation-class graphics, processors, storage, memory, and I/O of any Mac ever. And we did it without adding a millimeter to its iconic all-in-one design. So everyone from video editors to 3D animators to musicians to software developers to scientists can do what they do like they’ve never done before. Introducing iMac Pro. A lean, mean dream machine.”
In terms of spec, the new iMac Pro offers 32GB of 2666MHz DDR4 ECC memory, which you can upgrade to either 64GB or 128GB of storage. On top of that, there’s 1 terabyte of solid state storage, a Radeon Vega Pro graphics chipset with 8GB of RAM, a gorgeous 27-inch Retina 5K display, and all the usual things you’d expect from a top-of-the-line Mac.
The actual machine looks a whole lot like a regular iMac, but comes in space gray instead of silver (including both the keyboard and trackpad). Plus, it packs a snazzy black Lightning cable that’s not available to buy separately.
Oh, and you get four Thunderbolt 3 ports for powering two 5K displays or four 4K displays at once, a 10-gigabit Ethernet port, four USB-A 3.0 ports, an SD card slot, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. That makes it Apple’s most port-friendly Mac in years.
A new thermal design means the iMac Pro runs 80 percent cooler than a regular Mac. And a special T2 chip, which stores encrypted passwords and acts as a hardware encryption engine, brings a welcome security boost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a38_qR-S8Yo
iMac Pro: YouTubers’ previews
In keeping with its unorthodox approach to marketing the iPhone X, Apple again courted high-profile YouTubers to hype the iMac Pro.
Cupertino gave several YouTubers early access to the powerful computer and apparently authorized them to reveal their thoughts on the machine. Their first impressions? The iMac Pro looks gorgeous and runs insanely fast.
Check out popular tech vlogger Marques Brownlee’s initial impressions below. The TL;DR version? The iMac Pro is an impressive machine — although it is impossible to upgrade, which is less than ideal for a pro computer.
Are you excited about the iMac Pro? Has Apple made a mistake by not allowing users to upgrade a $5,000-plus machine? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Editor’s note: This post has been updated to add more details on iMac Pro specs. In addition, it looks like only the 8- and 10-core models will be available Thursday. If you want an 18-core model (or a rumored 14-core version supposedly in the works), you’ll be waiting until 2018 to get your hands on it.
