Never going to happen. There will be no iMac pro refresh ever, it will be another product apple lets disapere as the advancements in CPU tech in the next 3 years will again be minimal meaning upgrading it in apples eyes will be pointless. The iMac pro is already 181 days in... the last normal iMac update 15-17 took 601 days...
If you want one of these machines be an early adopter otherwise you will be waiting a loooonnng time!
Xeons are unnecessary for 90% of people and the price point is too high. They add unnecessary cost with ECC memory etc For me ECC has been nothing but problems, ive had about £1000 worth of ECC ram fail in the last 8 years probably because it works harder and higher temps. Never had a normal stick fail... makes me concerned especially in a machine that is sealed.
There is no chance they will offer a 21 and 24. Too many machines as it is and one is going to end up being dropped. Makes more sence for them to drop the 21 as the 27 is currently gimped so they can share the same internal design. The 21 chassis is full yet the 27 has about 40% spare space inside. A 24 design would allow for a better thermal envelope design for both products.
I dont know why xeons are sold for high end creatives, lets be fair that is the majority market... content creators. Because the i series clock higher, are cheaper perform similarly and work better for most applications and they benefit from technology that intel deems unnecessary so removes from the xeons. The problem here is apple wont cool the i chips properly, otherwise they would perform very well.
Although the iMac pro has sold well for a high end desktop im sure its numbers pail in comparison to the rest of the line. You have to remember, one of the main reasons it has sold well is because its the only machine that makes any sense currently! The mac pro is 5 years old... the mac mini hasnt been touched and the standard iMac is great but throttles like mad and sounds like an airplane. Short term sales but in the long term sales will fall off. It will only age badly as it is a high end machine that is 5k start and there is no way of upgrading it, at 2k you dont worry as much but at 5k... it will age quickly and make less sense to people.
TBH I cant see apple ever making another iMac pro. In 5 years time I think the mac will unfortunately be in serious decline, it already is. The line up is so disjointed, full of quality control issues and full of compromise add to that old hardware and high prices.
TBH All I can see is a spec bump if we are lucky no change what so ever, same chassis but with newer CPUs. It may well be that apple deem the 8000 series CPUs as too fast because the iMac pro will struggle to compete price wise.
The 8770k is a speedy chip, in PCs it has been overclocked to 5ghz no problem and outperforms the 8 core iMac pro. As standard it will be withing 10% of the 8 core xeon multi and be more powerful single. Probably £1000 cheaper overall which is a win win for everyone and will make the iMac pro make even less sense for most people.
I mean come on Apple introduced touch ID to the mac when they discontinued it on the iphone... What makes you think the mac will get face ID... especially when non of the consumer portables have it either. No way they will make a splash on the desktops first.
I think you overestimate apple have you not been following them over the last 3-4 years.
At the end of the day the iMac pro cant be used in the same way as the old cheese grater mac pro, that was truly a fantastic machine. You could use it to render for days on end because of its thermal capacity and use it as a 9-5 machine because of its price point. The iMac pro has server grade components but nobody that buys ones of these will use it to sit and render because its an AIO and its too expensive for that useage. It will be a 9-5 machine and if people have projects that need to render over 24-48 hours will have another solution.
Its just the best of a bad situation imo, the iMac pro is a parts bin special to fill a hole they have left open for years to stop pros leaving. Its a show of force not a product to have confidence in it will disappear as fast as it arrived. The fragile way its been constructed and the lack of support screams this. Shows how little Apple cares about the mac and the issues people have had with the iMac pro is quite frankly appalling. If they arent interested in supporting it properly 6 months after launch what makes you think they are interested in making it a mainstream product and bringing out a 24.... LOL
The magic number in consumer desktops is 2k. 3-5k for even intermediate users is a lot and you are in that 10% of people realm. Its just not worth it.
It will be even more irrelevant when the mac pro is released, which I would say will be the last hurrah for professional apple desktops. I actually think the mac pro may come in slightly cheaper as a headless mac and give people what they want. If they dont it will be DOA and I think it will be the last nail in the coffin for prosumers, game over for apples high end desktops including the iMac.
Its all too little too late IMO.
