Yes,
4 TB SSDs are dirt cheap.
The current iMacs top out at 3TB so 4 would be a step up in capacity at some time driving up the $/GB ... so not likely a path they'd be on.
APFS could be extended incrementally to do multiple physical disk/volume 'storage pools'. So two 1TB PCIe SSDs would work for a modest drop in capacity, but leverage the much cheaper TLC NAND Flash. Apple doesn't necessarily have to chase the bleeding edge NAND storage density limits to lower prices.
If Apple drops SATA from the iMac I wouldn't expect them to make the same move to restrict to only one PCIe SSD at this point. The current Mac Pro was way ahead of curve on moving to PCI-e flash. It is far more mainstream now. The PCH chipsets and CPUs available relatively easily support more than just one PCIe SSD. ( not max bandwidth on both at the same time, but easy to hook up on a custom logic board (and only use a fraction of the space the 2.5 or 3.5 drive was using internally. )
Bulk storage doesn't have to be out in the distant cloud. More than a few people "sneaker net" around external bulk storage in transportable drives.
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This is largely false and would be a mistake for Apple.
If the only thing they've learned from the nMP debacle is that instead of 1 CPU + 2 underpowered GPU's, they should go to 1 CPU and 1 GPU, then they truly don't get it.
The high end of the market is comfortably using 2P workstations (dual E5-2687w v4 or better) with 2-4 high end GPU's with 80+ lanes of PCIe, and even Thunderbolt if you want it.
That is the price of entry at the high end.
Apple does get it. They aren't going to try to be everything to everybody. They weren't before the MP 2013 design and aren't going to be in the future. It isn't like the 3+ GPU solutions don't exist, but there is nothing to indicate at all they they are going to try to chase that. I don't think they are going to completely abandon 2 GPU workflows, but more than two... I highly doubt they have changed their minds in that direction.
As for CPUs the fact that both Intel and AMD are both slitting those off from server says everything about the market that Apple is probably going to take under consideration. Yes, there will be fringe chasing workstations with far more server targeted CPUs. No, Apple is going to chase those folks.
Note that the Mac Pro is in the single digit percentage class now. If split off the "> 12 x86 and more than dual GPU" crowd into a separate standing product it will most likely be sub single digit in size. Apple dropped dual CPU packages and made money with this Mac Pro. It isn't like the bulk of the Mac Pro market got lost. There are also lots of grumbling audio folks that had a hate fest with 2 GPUs. Getting more of them and losing the 4 GPU folks never firmly had a grip on even with other system... is extremely likely fine with them.
Apple isn't solely aiming at the extreme high end. Even back with the 2006-2012 models ( and before) there were always a very small segment moaning that 4 PCI-e slots were not enough. The power supply is too small for my 1.4Kw custom monster they constructed. That you can just put a larger amount of stuff into a HP Z800 or Dell 7000. Hot-Swap modular and/or dual power supplies..... .... There was always a bigger, more giant box with slots Apple could have built.
Apple looks to be walking back a bit but there nothing in what they said in that they were doing a complete 180 and now were out to build the biggest Mac Pro they have ever built either.
A couple quotes from the TechCrunch transcript.
" ..
Says Ternus:
I think one of the foundations of that system was the dual GPU architecture… and for certain workflows, certain classes of pro customers, that’s a great solution. But… to Phil’s point, “Pro” is so broad that it doesn’t necessarily fit all the needs of all the pros.
... "
"
....
“There’s certain scientific loads that are very GPU intensive and they want to throw the largest GPU at it that they can,” says Federighi. “There are heavy 3D graphics [applications] or graphics and compute mixed loads. Those can be in VR, those can be in certain kinds of high end cinema production tasks where most of the software out there that’s been written to target those doesn’t know how to balance itself well across multiple GPUs but can scale across a single large GPU.” ..."
https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/04/apple-pushes-the-reset-button-on-the-mac-pro/
"
What is being overly being talked about here is 1 or 2 GPUs being a good coverage of pro workload. Sometimes one "extra heavy" GPU and other times 2 "reasonable". There is nothing here pointing to 2-4 "as large as possible" GPUs a being the bulk of the market segment they are looking at all.
What this looks like is being able to put in different targeted cooling for 1 or 2 GPU configs. Nothing about crank up the CPU count to highest possible limits. It is open ended enough that could be 1 or 2 embedded designs of Apple's construction. Upgrades isn't necessarily random vendor 22 open market GPUs. If had better thermal constraints they could have made their own cards. Or is the real problem that don't have enough will to resource making their own cards over a broad enough range. Which one of those two is the case doesn't really get touched on in the transcripts I've read.
