I agree 100% with you about Ars, they've lost their way and I gave up on them a while ago.
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If you're a professional and rely on your computer to feed your family at the end of the day it's all about having capable hardware. The OS is a very thin layer of eye candy riding on top of the hardware.
Or you're not even a professional but value your time and money and don't want to spend all of it on the computer.
That's rather sad - I mean, not caring about facts. (Not unusual lately, but sad.)
And I showed only two of five Z-series laptops with Xeons/Quadro, and the "mini" with Xeon/Quadro that's half the size of the system that you said "It is also a one of a kind computer". The trash-can is only "one of a kind" in that other manufacturers put adequate power supplies and cooling and true workstation components (Quadros and real FirePros (rather than mislabeled Radeons)) in their small form factor systems.
And, of course, HP and the others have systems that aren't small form factor that have performance that the trash can can't even begin to approach. (...and performance that the modular MP won't approach)
No, running Apple OSX is *not* what it's all about - unless you're a blind fanboi.
It's about getting the best tools to meet your needs and your customer's expectations. If you're bidding a job and running Windows, and you say "I'll have a proof ready tomorrow" - vs. bidding the same job while running Apple OSX, and you say "I'll have a proof by Tuesday or Wednesday" -- who do you think will get the bid? (Hint - often the Windows shop will have the contract before you've produced the proof.)
Dr. Stealth said a few posts back "I don't want to be SERVED by Apple. After being a 40 year customer I want to be CATERED TO, not served. I jumped ship 3 months ago and I am SO glad to be off that ship". That's what it's about - getting the best tools for the job - not buying what Apple sells that is mostly adequate.
I post links to HP Z-series systems (although I've never purchased one) because they show out-of-touch Sir Jony and Phil's Ass are. (Adding links to every capable Dell and Lenovo and SuperMicro and... systems would make it a wall of words without really added value.)
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Very succinct and precise - well said.
No, it's not sad because when I said I wasn't worried about being wrong, I didn't mean that I didn't care about facts. It doesn't matter how many of the Z series laptops you show because that wasn't the point.
The point was... this....
The 2013 Mac Pro is a one of a kind computer.
It can run MacOS and Windows.
I don't think the examples you show can do those. And, they don't look as cool and engineered as if it is a work of art in and of itself.
Skin deep? No, it's not skin-deep. Rather the whole Mac thing is software/hardware synergy!
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The simplest reason why it failed was that they didn't update it. Stuff like lack of conventional upgrades or expansion haven't doomed any of Apple's other products, and their best-selling pro machine is the MacBook Pro and then the iMac, so it's clearly not the overarching reason. I would have happily bought a tube Mac Pro and dealt with its limitations... but it just became a worse and worse deal. That aftermarket upgrades couldn't remedy those limitations were just icing on the cake.
I don't know if the thermal corner was ultimately insurmountable (Nvidia GPUs of the era started to tend cooler, for example, so even with the same 450W envelope they could have worked around it, or just scaled up the design to allow more leeway) but either way Apple didn't do anything about it.
A smaller secondary concern is Apple didn't eat its own medicine. If you think dual GPUs are the future or at least a solid design choice, why give up on OpenCL? So they sold the same machine for two Intel generations with no new chips or price cuts and radio silence. They'd have been better off from a public relations standpoint if they'd kept meaningful support going even if behind the scenes they admitted their mistakes and started working on the next thing.* Because that's always happened at Apple, and Jobs or whoever would go out on stage and talk about the next great thing and never mention the old stuff.
*In some ways I do think the Mac Pro suffered from hitting at a time where Apple under Cook was suffering from perception issues. The whole "can't innovate any more my ass" line makes a lot of sense in the context of Apple trying to create some awesome new engineering product. They just missed the boat (or rather, they should have produced the tube as another pro product if they wanted to diversify.) The modern Apple seems much less concerned with that kind of opinion and has IMO been far better for it.
I don't know if the thermal corner was ultimately insurmountable (Nvidia GPUs of the era started to tend cooler, for example, so even with the same 450W envelope they could have worked around it, or just scaled up the design to allow more leeway) but either way Apple didn't do anything about it.
A smaller secondary concern is Apple didn't eat its own medicine. If you think dual GPUs are the future or at least a solid design choice, why give up on OpenCL? So they sold the same machine for two Intel generations with no new chips or price cuts and radio silence. They'd have been better off from a public relations standpoint if they'd kept meaningful support going even if behind the scenes they admitted their mistakes and started working on the next thing.* Because that's always happened at Apple, and Jobs or whoever would go out on stage and talk about the next great thing and never mention the old stuff.
*In some ways I do think the Mac Pro suffered from hitting at a time where Apple under Cook was suffering from perception issues. The whole "can't innovate any more my ass" line makes a lot of sense in the context of Apple trying to create some awesome new engineering product. They just missed the boat (or rather, they should have produced the tube as another pro product if they wanted to diversify.) The modern Apple seems much less concerned with that kind of opinion and has IMO been far better for it.
You, sir, admitted that you were "technically wrong" and, in spite of that admission, relied on your "feelings" to conclude your argument. That's awfully close to not caring about facts. But I am relieved you have now reaffirmed your belief in them.
As to the uniqueness of the 2013 being able to run Windows, well that is "technically" true but largely irrelevant because you are running it on a gimped machine which presumably you wouldn't want to do if you want to get something done timely. But I admit that it does have certain advantages if that is the only machine you have.
OMG... okay... here we go... ummm... let me explain myself....
Yes, I was technically wrong to think that the 2013 is the only small-form-factor Xeon Workstation class computer that exist in the world. And, I admitted to that. And, then I said something like I didn't feel wrong though because of what is obviously plain and simple to observe without mansplaining it. But, to mansplain just one thing... the thing is a cylinder...
The end.
I still question whether a product as expensive as a Mac Pro would have been successful using the "turf and buy a new one to upgrade" model of iOS / macbooks. Even IF apple had done a feature update every year, that priceband is synonymous with user-replacability of core stuff, like drives, display gpus etc.
I just don't think there is a sustainable market for a sealed appliance that expensive, no matter how often it's refreshed. The sheer expense of engineering, and tooling up a production process etc, when a more flexible, wider marketability solution can be offered with a more standardised format, like the cMP was - it just doesn't make sense, except as a vanity project.
Plenty of pros treat their machines as fire-and-forget. I'm not saying that a less flexible Mac Pro didn't limit the natural audience, but Apple's neglect of the tube pro limited *any* audience, even the people who would have bought it.
true, i just don't think the fire & forget crowd is large enough to support the continued development of a machine that excludes the upgrade crowd. Had the 2013 continued with feature bumps, I suspect it would have been a "death spiral" device, especially if it had coexisted (as a current machine) with the iMac Pro - I don't think there's going to be more than a handful of people who would want a sealed appliance, but not a sealed appliance with a 5k screen.
But that goes back to what many of us suspect, the iMac Pro was designed to be the only replacement for the Mac Pro, which would have been discontinued completely, with a strategy of thinking that including the 5k display would broaden the base for sealed appliance workstations.
Right up until the mea culpa, I'd bet that Apple were ahead of the growing chorus of "reduce the SKU's", and figured on eliminating the mac mini and the mac pro (and macbook air) to transition back to a 2 segment consumer & pro line - iMac, & iMac Pro, and Macbook, & Macbook Pro.
I have to wonder how much is tied up in a worry of what will happen to the stock price (Apple has lost some pretty obscene amounts of money on paper doing stock buybacks given how far the price has dropped since) if they reverse course too radically and actually make the sort of machine everyone else in the workstation world makes. Also reflected in that, how much the stock seems to be dropping in relation to a growing awareness that phone growth is reaching saturation, the market may be showing that they don't really think Apple has anything notable outside of phones in its future.
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for me i still see the nmp as a apple cube v2, if it just lived as a product line next to the cmp instead of being sold as a replacement then time will have been kinder to it.
but as the only replacement to the cmp apple killed!! it's pro market in the cmp segment
same as how they killed all the ground FC7 broke in to production spaces, if only FCX lived next to the FC7 segment instead of replacing it (or at least apple got FC8 out the door and let it live next to FCX untill FCX was patched)
but apple killed them and i simply think they decided it was not worth there time to sell to that market segment
i think they moved to what 99% of people wanted, phones/ipads and services (i gess thats iTunes shop?)
from https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/02/earnings-4q-2017/
this video has a nice brake down of how FC7 did so well (cost & worked) and how FCX killed it
starts 4:36 in
two screen shots showing how the cost changed over time in 2002 FC was super cheep and by 2017 price was not a problem, so maybe apple saw the way the wind was going or maybe iphones just was all they cared about?
ps it's late so im being lazy on my references
edit-
in the past i lived apple, around 2000 as a kid i edited video on a imac with imove and a DV came with firewire 2006-2008 i made my first website with iweb and around then started to use FC but now i see discontentment in where apple has gone away from media creation to consumption of media.
imove 6 killed
iweb killed
FC killed
cmp killed
OSX development seemed to slow down with IOS prioritized
and so on & at the same time windows is no longer a mess (like it was) & now most applications work on both systems. apple computers are just a box to do work and im getting more tempted to just make a PC box hack or win10
but as the only replacement to the cmp apple killed!! it's pro market in the cmp segment
same as how they killed all the ground FC7 broke in to production spaces, if only FCX lived next to the FC7 segment instead of replacing it (or at least apple got FC8 out the door and let it live next to FCX untill FCX was patched)
but apple killed them and i simply think they decided it was not worth there time to sell to that market segment
i think they moved to what 99% of people wanted, phones/ipads and services (i gess thats iTunes shop?)
from https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/02/earnings-4q-2017/
this video has a nice brake down of how FC7 did so well (cost & worked) and how FCX killed it
starts 4:36 in
ps it's late so im being lazy on my references
edit-
in the past i lived apple, around 2000 as a kid i edited video on a imac with imove and a DV came with firewire 2006-2008 i made my first website with iweb and around then started to use FC but now i see discontentment in where apple has gone away from media creation to consumption of media.
imove 6 killed
iweb killed
FC killed
cmp killed
OSX development seemed to slow down with IOS prioritized
and so on & at the same time windows is no longer a mess (like it was) & now most applications work on both systems. apple computers are just a box to do work and im getting more tempted to just make a PC box hack or win10
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The 2013 Mac Pro is not that sealed. From watching videos of it online, the outer shell looks like it easily slides out revealing the no longer sealed innards. The user can then upgrade everything except for the GPU's because of its proprietary form-factor.
Now, had the 2013 Mac Pro been updated, it would have been updated at the same time as the iMac Pro was because that is when Vega became available. I would also assume that it would get similar CPU's as the iMac Pro.
As for the public apology thing, I think, it was Apple basically admitting something to cover up another thing. By admitting something, they are covering up or assuaging the fact that 2013 Mac Pro will continue to be neglected.
Why? I don't know. But, I hinted at a theory on my prior post on this thread... (hint: Something M D)
But, say, the 2013 Mac Pro did get updated, then it would essentially be a headless iMac Pro. I think it would have been possible because they would put only one Vega GPU in there instead of two GPU's as before, thereby creating the necessary headroom for proper thermal dissipation and/or cooling.
Not to mention that the 2013 Mac Pro was designed with higher TDP components in mind than the more sealed (pun intended) iMac and that its jet-engine; chimney-effect thermal design is simpler and is probably perfectly fine to cool a Vega GPU that is in the iMac Pro and an Intel W Processor. Now, this 2017 Mac Pro does lose one GPU, but, with TB3, it is possible to put a second, third or fourth GPU to it via eGPU enclosures.
I think we can all agree that this is easy to envision and imagine and is very feasible. But, why didn't it come to fruition? Pun intended.
Again, I can only speculate that it has something to do with A Something D....
My theory is that Apple scrapped the whole idea of a headless iMac Pro by not making a 2017 Mac Pro.
I think because they wanna make a totally new Mac Pro.
Maybe one without A M Something GPU. But, I am just speculating.
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o and a big point is no one can trust apple in the pro market, there "random" drooping of lines then little upgrades if any are a problem.
with the tower line apple had regular updates G3,G4,G5,intel then nothing leaving company's waiting with no new's then bam nmp.
the nmp for use in company's is not a plug in replacement lots of extras where needed to make it a complete system that takes money/time to install (+ the cables have no cable locks on them so not secure like internal parts).
then nmp left every one waiting, the upgrade cycle in the commercial space can not take an unstable computer line like that and use it! they forced every company to use imacs or windows that simple
ps the public apology thing was just a PR thing, they did not care about the pro market just about the PR they had to have an idea of what was going to happen
with the tower line apple had regular updates G3,G4,G5,intel then nothing leaving company's waiting with no new's then bam nmp.
the nmp for use in company's is not a plug in replacement lots of extras where needed to make it a complete system that takes money/time to install (+ the cables have no cable locks on them so not secure like internal parts).
then nmp left every one waiting, the upgrade cycle in the commercial space can not take an unstable computer line like that and use it! they forced every company to use imacs or windows that simple
ps the public apology thing was just a PR thing, they did not care about the pro market just about the PR they had to have an idea of what was going to happen
Tim and his crew don't strike me as strong proponents of the desktop computer. Less so for one targeted at a niche audience. And at the time wasn't it all about phones, pads and watches? That's probably half the story.
What I'd be more interested in is the one behind the iMac Pro. Looks like a band aid to me - something whipped up quickly and stuffed into form factor they already had. I wonder if that one will ever see an update or if it will be buried as soon as the 'proper' new machine shows up.
Them then blaming the design of the nMP as too restrictive was probably just for marketing the new shiny toy.
At any rate I'd like to hear what made them decide they even needed a new workstation when everybody seemed just fine scrolling through emojis via the touchbar on their laptops. Sudden change in the thinking at the top or result of a drawn out internal struggle between product development and upper management?
What I'd be more interested in is the one behind the iMac Pro. Looks like a band aid to me - something whipped up quickly and stuffed into form factor they already had. I wonder if that one will ever see an update or if it will be buried as soon as the 'proper' new machine shows up.
Them then blaming the design of the nMP as too restrictive was probably just for marketing the new shiny toy.
At any rate I'd like to hear what made them decide they even needed a new workstation when everybody seemed just fine scrolling through emojis via the touchbar on their laptops. Sudden change in the thinking at the top or result of a drawn out internal struggle between product development and upper management?
The only "user serviceable" part is the ram. In the cMP, graphics, anything in the pci slots, ram, and storage are all "tool free" user serviceable, i'm pretty sure even the optical drives were supposed to be user-serviced.
Which would pretty much just split the customer base for both.
27" retina screens are a very expensive component, the more devices Apple can get people to buy with them, the cheaper they are, and the better Tim's supply-side soul feels. Apple would rather sell you an iMac Pro, than a Mac Pro, potentially with a non-Apple display.
Trust issue is definitely a thing - I suspect new machine won't get any serious traction for a while.
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I think it's really the opposite of that - the iMac Pro was a very carefully considered and designed product, from a strategy that had become obsolete before it reached market. They *could* just make a slotbox, but the strategy supertanker of security, biometrics and T(x), is fundamentally incompatible with the off-the-shelf user-upgradable slotbox that pro customers will abandon Apple to get.
I'd put money on the entire delay more or less coming down to "how do we fit off-the-shelf parts into a biometrically secured workstation strategy" and there being some insane rube-goldberg software solution (for thunderbolt), rather than an elegant internal patch cable.
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the imac "pro" is not bad per say just not good.
it's more like a mobile phone, you kind of have to upgrade it every "x" years so $$$$ for apple.
shame the display is lost when you replace the imac, thats always been my main problem & relay the old dinginess where more innovative (at least to me both the G3 & G4 where good)
saw the review of the new macmin http://barefeats.com/mac-mini-2018-versus-other-macs.html
>.> sad you cant upgrade the CPU any more but it looks like we know what replaced the NMP now <.<
now they just need a EGPU in the mac min form factor for it to sit on top and apples got it's modular MP
the 12c thread riper was down to £320 this week i priced it up and the cost was close to the macmin i7 6c
it's more like a mobile phone, you kind of have to upgrade it every "x" years so $$$$ for apple.
shame the display is lost when you replace the imac, thats always been my main problem & relay the old dinginess where more innovative (at least to me both the G3 & G4 where good)
saw the review of the new macmin http://barefeats.com/mac-mini-2018-versus-other-macs.html
>.> sad you cant upgrade the CPU any more but it looks like we know what replaced the NMP now <.<
now they just need a EGPU in the mac min form factor for it to sit on top and apples got it's modular MP
the 12c thread riper was down to £320 this week i priced it up and the cost was close to the macmin i7 6c
That's not correct. The RAM, CPU, and SSD's are all user-serviceable in the 2013 Mac Pro.
If, (a big if), a 2017 Mac Pro had been released along side the iMac Pro, I don't think it would have split anything. The only thing it would have split would not be the consumer base. But, availability of the components to go into this hypothetical 2017 Mac Pro and iMac Pro (The Something M D Vega GPU). I know, I keep harping the A Something D thing. But, bare with me... we will see if I am on to something once the next Mac Pro is released and if it will have or not a A M Something GPU.
And, the reason why I think it will not split the consumer base, is that it just won't. And, why the eff would you care if anything splits anything? Know what I mean?
So, you're saying that Apple is more worried about offloading 27" iMac screens than selling a $3000-$4000 2017 Mac Pro (If and if it had been updated with iMac Pro parts)?
The person you replied to whined about Apple no longer supporting iWeb.
I don't think you know what trust means.
The fact that the iMac Pro came out and not a 2017 Mac Pro is why they call it an interim product. Whether or not they will kill the iMac Pro in 2019 or in 2020 or whether it will be there indefinitely doesn't matter, except for people with "trust" issues, I guess.
The delay, IMO, is more about waiting for appropriate GPU that is not Something M D. But, I am just speculating.
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I stand corrected on the SSD, but the CPU is definitely not a "user serviceable" part, unless you can point to the KB article that shows how to disassemble the machine to remove and reinstall it.
Because component, inventory and selling costs are based on volume, and usually not linearly scaling, but with thresholds that mark significant efficiencies of scale.
An iMac Pro, plus a Mac Pro with a Pro Display is significantly more expensive to make and sell, than two iMac Pros, or two Mac Pros with displays.
No, what I'm saying is that the screen is probably the most, or second most expensive component in the system, and they'd rather sell those screens in as many machines as possible, because it also means they can use that savings from volumes to make the mass consumer iMacs more profitable, or cheaper.
And right now, Apple is the only thing keeping any production line for 5K 27" screens running. If they don't buy enough of them, LG could decide to shunt all production over to 4k / 8k.
Volume is how apple got to the state where they could sell a whole 27" iMac for the same price as Dell's 27" 5k screen.
If Apple can sell you a $3000-4000 Mac Pro, that happens to be in the body of an iMac, helping to reduce the per-screen cost of all Apple products that feature said screen, they'd rather do that, than give you the option of a screenless Mac Pro. Which is what I believe their long term strategy was when the iMac Pro was designed.
iMovie 6 and Final Cut Pro were significantly different apps (with significant userbases), from those that replaced them. When the replacements came out, those earlier apps had no migration path, so existing investments were written off.
The iMac Pro is not an interim product - it's the most pure expression of what Apple believes a desktop mac can, or should be. I can guarantee you, they started early prototyping work on it before the 2013 hit retail, and were probably developing it in tandem with the original 5k iMac.
iMac Pro is a strategy product, not a gap-filler. Unfortunately for Apple, by the time they'd become deeply committed to production, it became clear that it wasn't going to be a successful strategy product.
Do you even peruse this forum at all? If so, you would know this already. If, not--a quick google search of "How to Upgrade CPU on 2013 Mac Pro" will give you some results.
Like, here's one:
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac+Pro+Late+2013+CPU+Replacement/21947
I meant as a consumer. Are you saying that if there was this hypothetical 2017 Mac Pro, and therefore, by co-existing with another Pro model, the iMac Pro, that it would split the consumer base? If, so, how? And, why would I care?
What? It's late here 3AM and maybe it's late where you are too. But, can you make this more clear?
So, you're saying that they want to sell the iMac Pro's more than this hypthetical 2017 Mac Pro, if it existed, because the iMac Pro has screens that share with other Mac lineups. So, economically and logistically, Apple would prefer to move the iMac Pro's with those screens?
Because... because by moving those products, they can pass the savings from the extra orders they would make for moving them so well to the regular iMacs?
As long as Apple keeps the 27" 5K iMacs then I don't think LG would refuse $$$! Apple also seems to have invested in the 5120-by-2880 resolution. So, monitors like the 27" LG UltraFine monitor for headless Macs are available. The existence of another Pro mac, like this hypothetical 2017 Mac Pro that we have been discussing would not threaten 27" 5K LCD screen production by any means.
And, even if Apple makes an 8K iMac in 2019 or whathaveyou, you would have to figure that it would have to be some kind of BTO since the tech is so new and cost prohibitive.
Sure, yeah, you're right. Volume does lower price. I'll give you that.
I don't agree. They've already eaten the cost of the screens. And, future Apple products, including this hypothetical 2017 Mac Pro can be hooked up to monitors like the LG 27" UltraFine 5K monitor, which I think is the same screen they use on the iMac and iMac Pro's.
I think you are referring to FCP 7 to FCPX. And, I think that has been debated endlessly already so anything I say here has been said before.
I said interim only because people felt that it should have been a Mac Pro that was released. And, it wasn't. So, they saw it as a filler. And, in a way, it is a filler because the real Pro Mac machine is not coming out until 2019, according to Apple sources. So, in a way, yeah, the iMac Pro does fill in that time between now and then.
I don't really know how long the iMac Pro was in the brewing or drawing stages. It doesn't seem like it was in incubation for that long though since the only thing that has change between the regular iMac and iMac Pro is the color and the extra cooling solution for the beefier CPU and GPU components.
Well, the strategy was to fill the appetite of Pro Mac users with a Pro level Mac without having to release a 2017 Mac Pro because Apple felt they wanted to redo the Mac Pro and really make a big deal out of it. Instead of just an update. So, the update was done on the iMac instead. And, Apple called it Pro and made it space gray, IMO.
Anywhere else but here that may be true. With the exception of the supposed "fanboi" slight, which marks you as a troll.
No surprise that a thread like this would attract the flies.
Go in to an Apple store, and ask the genius if the CPU is a "user serviceable part", same as the RAM is a "user serviceable part".
Guess what, it's not. The fact that you can get to it and disassemble it and DIY, doesn't mean it's what Apple classifies as "user serviceable". A technician can pull and replace the 2013's GPUs as well, going to claim they're "user serviceable"?
Just like the cMP's bluetooth and wifi aren't "user serviceable", while the drive sleds, ram and PCI cards, are. User Serviceable, are the parts Apple designs specifically to be replaced by the end user, not an Apple Certified Technician.
You wouldn't care, Apple would care. Splitting the userbase only makes sense when the separate products produce a market enlargement sufficient to cover the increased expenses of two different machines. A sealed appliance Mac Pro is not going to appeal to any significant market outside of markets already addressed by the iMac Pro, while stealing sales, and therefore component volume discounts from the iMac Pro.
The more screens Apple sells, the cheaper the screens are, and the better either their margins, or their ability to lower prices - that means they can make the iMac Pro cheaper than it would otherwise have to be, or the iMac, depending on where they want to push around their pricing.
So long as Apple buys enough of them that LG wouldn't be better off using the production capacity to build something else that sells in greater volume, and is therefore more profitable.
Lots of reports are the ultrafine is pretty much no longer stocked - it's an order-ony product. Given how badly it was received, quality issues etc, and being TB3 (so basically Mac)-only, I'll go out on a limb and say the entire product was probably a rush job, created to soak up overproduction on panels, not as a serious attempt to set up an independent LG 5k display line.
It's not enough for 5K panels to be profitable for LG to make them, it has to be more profitable to make them, than it would be to make something else, and 5k is basically an orphan resolution that only Apple are invested in, and even then, the only reason they've invested in it, literally the only reason, is because they couldn't get a proper resolution independent vector-based UI to work out. 5K / retina is a kludge, pure and simple.
8k is a mainstream video format, and 8k displays are going to be mainstream displays in a few years, similar to the transition from 1080p to 4K. 5K is its own little wilderness, existing only by the chance of fate that it's double the 1440p resolution of a non-retina 27" display.
IIRC the iMac Pro has more in common with the 2013 Mac Pro, than the normal iMac in terms of its hardware system design. I guarantee you, the way it was announced was not the way it was intended to be. If there had not been the fever pitch in the mac community about Apple abandoning the pro space, if you hadn't had Gruber, Ritchie etc openly saying "something has gone wrong in Apple" about the 2013, there would have been no mea culpa meeting, the iMac Pro would have just launched as "The new (i)Mac Pro", and that would have been Apple's sole pro desktop.
It's possible. But we're comparing hypothetical death spiral with much more real death spiral, so anything seems like an improvement.
Even taking the nMP chassis, there isn't necessarily anything that demands certain choices that they couldn't have adjusted to make it more appealing to the upgrade crowd—making the two GPU sides have an MXM GPU and m.2 mount point instead of proprietary GPU and flash module, for example. In its present form I don't think there would ever be an easy way to make the CPU simple to get to, but those changes certainly would have made it more appealing and more flexible. As is, the 2013 model is still more flexible than the iMac Pro by virtue of having no display stuck to it and a much smaller footprint, plus user-accessible RAM and more external expansion options—but again the problem is that they never upgraded it, so you've got CPUs that are outdated in everything save multicore and old GPUs, only TB2 instead of TB3, etc.
Ultimately while I think a lot of the "Steve would never ___" stuff is utter bunk, even when pointing to the nMP (Steve did it first with the Cube!) I do think it's fair to say that Apple appeared to have more direction. Jobs was ruthless about cutting what wasn't working and even what was, and in general* was better about making it clear the direction Apple was headed and what was getting left behind, and that's useful. Even now with Apple apparently pivoting back towards more pro use cases, it's a bit scary deciding to jump in just because you don't know what the upgrade cycle is going to be like after years of machines going 3–4 years without updates and radio silence. I'm looking at the iMac Pro even as someone who would much rather get a Mac Pro (or maybe just a mini + eGPU as a more cost effective option) because how soon they update it to the next-gen Intel chips I think portends their seriousness about readdressing the market.
Or, put more simply, what Apple needed to do with the Mac Pro to make it a success more than anything was commit to it. Rapidly release new versions to smooth out the issues just like any GEN1 product. And instead, they sat and apparently went years without really addressing its issues in a meaningful way, and even longer before they spoke publicly about it.
I think more than anything Apple either needs to commit to regularity, or more transparency—they can't be irregular *and* secretive at this point because it hurts them more than it helps.
*There was of course still the "Mac Pro is doomed" talk when Jobs was alive, and the Mac mini had its previous "it must be dead" spell between 2007–2009, so I don't think it's fair to characterize it as excessively rosy.