It's too niche. I have to wait and see what Apple'd charge for bto options, but I suspect that it will be spectacular.
Those people who argue that prosumer should opt for imac pro is missing the point. We don't know if Apple would keep updating iMac Pro line anymore. Is it going to meet the same fate as Macbook Pro without touchbar? or is it going to be a continuous? nobody knows. And heck, nobody knows for this generation of Mac Pro either. Apple is obviously not updating iMac Pro internals.
Right now there aren't really any iMac Pro internals to upgrade to if just increment on the major components.
Intel is not moving the Xeon W 2xxx series forward at the moment. The Mac Pro jumps in at the W-32xx which is a different socket and chipset. If Apple isn't moving to AMD then there is nothing to move to at the moment.
That is probably why they did a minor spec bump in March ( larger max on RAM capacity and a spec bump on the GPU). If the iMac Pro was completely 'dead in the water' then it would have gotten nothing. Mac Pro 2013 got nothing even when there were incremental updates like those.
Similarly on the GPU side if Apple is staying with AMD then the Pro Vega II are likely far more expesnive and not viable at iMac Pro price points. The Navi/RDNA replacements for Vega haven't really appears. While the RX
5700/5700XT took up price points close to what Vega 64/56 rolled out at they are somewhat Polaris replacements at higher price points. The logic board in the iMac Pro (unless they change the size of the enslosure) is more geared to a HBM2 solution which will probably come substantially later. (i.e. 2020 ).
If all the major components to move the iMac Pro were available and Apple was doing lots of 'nothing' then would be a bad sign. However, some of these have taking a big 'left turn' in terms of available of the next generation. The imac Pro being stalled on that clearing up shouldn't be very surprising.
Additionally, Apple carving out a Mac Pro price point above a large chunk of the iMac Pro price range is also indicative that it isn't going anywhere any time soon. And that Apple clearly sees them as separate. ( product manager said as much
https://www.relay.fm/mpu/485 )
The same product manager is over the Mac Pro and iMac Pro. so mac Pro , rack Mac Pro , then iMac Pro is probably the sequence.
And all the serious studios or those that this Mac Pro is supposed to target already migrated to Windows or other OS platform for either beter support, cheaper price, or reliable upgrade path. If I were them, I would never trust Apple to keep offering their proprietary internals like VGA for long time while PC options accept a generic graphic card. The studios must have invested a lot in software suit along the way also. Why do they have to suddenly adapt Mac pro throwing away all the softwares and training they went through?
First they migrated away and then by the end of the paragraph they know nothing about using Macs. Lots of folks will use right tool for the right job. And they don't buy systems and use the mforever. Some folks who iterated off 4-6 years ago are up to new round of hardware buys.
And some folks never left.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/vote-current-mac-pro-owners.2185514/
At the snapshot on this link the number of folks sitting and squating on current Mac Pro is biggest group ( 34% ) One of the second biggest groups is "Yes I'll buy 7,1 later second hard " at (15% ). Those two add up to 49% of the folks in the poll. Basically half aren't going anywhere soon. Massive stampede off to Windows ... not really there.
[ this forum is a highly skewed sampling but the notion that 'everybody left" isn't really true. Or that "everybody" had to upgrade in the first several months after the new Mac Pro is available. Not individual upgrade period cycles vary. Everyone isn't synced up on a single cycle. ]
Honestly, MPX doesn't look all that proprietary. there are multiple edges and some are basically standard PCI-e and the ones that aren't don't get in the way of a standard card. Drivers support is a bigger issue than this bay design.
I think Apple's going a very weird business model way on this. It almost look like Apple's no longer aiming for maximizing profit by going too niche on Mac Pro, but then, I'd guess the target audience may be to reluctant to switch to Mac.
They are not maximize profit by a higher weighting on volume, but they are certainly maximize profit with a higher weighting on average selling price. The base price the new Mac Pro is chock full of a hefty margin on each box sold. The BTO options layered on top will only likely boost that even higher. They are probably not going to loose money on this.
The Mac Pro is not the whole Mac product line up. The Mac Pro money is really kind of "gravy on top" money for the Mac Pro line. Apple doesn't desperately need it. It is a nice to have.
The fact there is another arm of Apple handing out $1B on content production means folks are going to buy at least some of this stuff if only because content folks will be looking for apple to "make it rain" on them. "Hey I buy lots of your stuff you should green light my movie".
It's actually too late to show off best of best after that many years of void in professional device development. If they are going to discontinue iMac Pro, then this Mac Pro could have been a great machine if the baseline or cheaper version with consumer grade mobo was available. They could easily charge less featured Mac pro with 1/3 of pcie lines at 3000 and still sell a lot more unit, but decided not to. I suspect that this MP will sell less than trash can MP.
Apple doesn't report unit numbers in their quarterly finance conference calls anymore. They have switched to metrics like average selling price and margin. That they are selling less won't even show up there. That the margins are higher will.
Apple could move the iMac Pro down a bit in price and also sell more while leave the Mac Pro about exactly where it is.
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The new MacPro also accept a generic graphic card. So you´re wrong. And the studios who migrated can come back in the same way.
Physically can take many cards. How that is supported in firmware/drivers/software isn't necessarily as easy a path. It never was. This Mac Pro is probably incrementally better ( e.g., anything on eGPU card support this probably works inside too. )
The form over function argument that if Apple just put standard sockets in would be some soft of panacea misses a very substantial function issue. (does the associated software function?).