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Will there ever be a new large iMac (Pro)?
- Thread starter krazzix
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iMac Pro ship times are next day to around two weeks for BTO in the UK/US, Apple doesn't have shipping or parts supply issues with them and most likely the same with the new iMac. Just a case of waiting just a tad longer and we'll be able to pre-order a new 27 for delivery in mid/late Aug. So many tech companies are just really messed up with release schedules at the mo. Has been a frustrating few months for everyone.
Here are my questions. Do we really think this last gen of Intel iMacs is going to hold up so poorly against AS over the next five years? Will the difference be that dramatic, or are we just fanaticizing?
It's obviously conjecture at this point, but I'd love to hear people's thoughts. I fall into the category of needing a new computer ASAP.
My mid-2011 iMac is suffering through my 4K workflows and RAW editing in Photoshop. I'm half tempted to jump on the current top-tier 21.5", max it out with the 6-core i7 and Vega GPU, and call it a day. But I just can't justify it if we're about to get a spec bump, standard SSDs, and possibly even a bigger screen size within weeks.
If I go Intel, how badly am I shooting myself in the foot for the next five years or so? FCPX is my primary workhorse. Can I expect to get five decent years out of this last Intel iMac, if FCPX is going to be tailored to AS moving forward?
It's obviously conjecture at this point, but I'd love to hear people's thoughts. I fall into the category of needing a new computer ASAP.
My mid-2011 iMac is suffering through my 4K workflows and RAW editing in Photoshop. I'm half tempted to jump on the current top-tier 21.5", max it out with the 6-core i7 and Vega GPU, and call it a day. But I just can't justify it if we're about to get a spec bump, standard SSDs, and possibly even a bigger screen size within weeks.
If I go Intel, how badly am I shooting myself in the foot for the next five years or so? FCPX is my primary workhorse. Can I expect to get five decent years out of this last Intel iMac, if FCPX is going to be tailored to AS moving forward?
I think it will be dramatic. I think Apple will aim for 50%-100 faster. Meaning that emulation will be faster than Intel cpus.
Azrael.
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You'll kick yourself if you buy now. Saving hundreds and for much better spec that will throw FCPX around.
There will be no shame in this last round of Intel iMacs for your workload.
But Apple will be all out to put Intel to the sword. No mistake.
With an Intel iMac (pending release) will do you good for 2-5 years to get into this AS transition and evaluate.
The next 'half' a year will reveal all. That requires patience. I know. My Mac is dead.
If your Mac is at all working? Wait.
Azrael.
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21 inch model. 4k.
Bumping up the ram to 16 gigs. 256 SSD. 6 core.
Ouch.
*shakes head.
Apple have it all figured out.
££££ 1949.00 £££££.
Seriously, Apple...
Azrael.
Azrael.
[automerge]1594142522[/automerge]
You'll kick yourself if you buy now. Saving hundreds and for much better spec that will throw FCPX around.
There will be no shame in this last round of Intel iMacs for your workload.
But Apple will be all out to put Intel to the sword. No mistake.
With an Intel iMac (pending release) will do you good for 2-5 years to get into this AS transition and evaluate.
The next 'half' a year will reveal all. That requires patience. I know. My Mac is dead.
If your Mac is at all working? Wait.
Azrael.
[automerge]1594142658[/automerge]
Buy iMac
Get an iMac all-in-one desktop computer with M4 chip when you trade in an eligible Mac for credit. Built for Apple Intelligence. Buy now.
www.apple.com
21 inch model. 4k.
Bumping up the ram to 16 gigs. 256 SSD. 6 core.
Ouch.
*shakes head.
Apple have it all figured out.
££££ 1949.00 £££££.
Seriously, Apple...
Azrael.
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If the **** hits the fan on iMac I'll buy a used iMac or MacBook Pro from 2015, pay less now, sell for less later and then pony up for an AS Mac when they are ready. Until then I will keep this baby until she dies. Fortunately my work loads are light and all I really need to do is photo editing with Luminar and Adobe CC.
Miraculously, my Mac is still working. I bought it when I was just a hobbyist. Now I'm full-time freelance, and I'm working on a nine-year-old Core i5 with 512MB VRAM. 😂
I will try to wait, but the ants are all up in my pants.
Oh god, I only ever buy RAM aftermarket. I hope that we don't lose that capability when AS drops. I get queasy every time I see what they charge for memory upgrades.
Don’t worry. It will be better than Intel on every aspect of it.
When a company truly controls its product, it makes incredible things.
i just hope they get the AS transition right. Even the trasition from Mojave to Catalina to Big Sur (so far) doesn't give me much confidence. I do audio production, so compatibility with various versioning is always an issue. All the speed in the world doesn't help if your project just crashes out. Usually all this stuff gets worked out in the wash sooner or later.
These ducking wankers are starting to piss me off. Literally attention whores! Either say something or shut up and don't bother us. (not you, the twitter guy)
Hahahahahaha, the wait and heat is getting me
Hahahahahaha, the wait and heat is getting me
I think the performance will be the same in a 1-2 years perspective but the power draw will be much lower leading to silent iMacs (!). Largest gain in performance will be for laptops in the beginning as they are more heat/power constrained.
In 3-5 years perspective, any computer is old news even though they are still doing the work.
That being said, I am also on the fence. Secure Intel iMac or interesting new AS iMac. For a few apps I probably need the Intel iMac but for the rest, AS iMac will do. My MBP 2014 still work and can be used for these few apps.
I completely agree - if lovetodream said July 9th, we would all know what he meant but not give anything away lol
AS will likely have more cores, which mean directly highest performance for your softwares. Software developers will need to adapt thought, so it might take 1-2 years before reaching a good stable and efficient state. Best is to use Apple’s softwares, but it’s not always possible.
I wouldn’t base myself on Catalina. This OS was a disaster at first. Now it‘s correct. But Big Sur will likely be a lot more stable without any doubt.
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Yes I think.
If yes, then 9 will be a very big day, given the announcement of Canon R5 and R6
July 9th is a Thursday. It would be very uncommon to release something on a Thursday for apple.
September is the 9th month of the year. Could mean that.
I am on Freidas ship here, if he knows something and wants to share it, he should share it.
A post like this is just engagement bait. This might just mean he lost a toe and only has nine left.
September is the 9th month of the year. Could mean that.
I am on Freidas ship here, if he knows something and wants to share it, he should share it.
A post like this is just engagement bait. This might just mean he lost a toe and only has nine left.
In terms of CPU performance, I believe Apple Silicon will be able to hold it's own with most of Intel's line-up within five years. By then Rosetta 2 emulation should be as good or better than Intel native and hopefully by then all the macOS applications will have been ported to native AS code and performance would be even better.
I'm not sure where Apple Silicon will be in terms of GPU performance, but as OpenCL / OpenGL is fully deprecated and everything has to run under Metal, that should strongly benefit AS. And Apple should be able to just scale more GPU cores either on the main SoC or as a separate GPU.
I expect you will be able to get a good five years out of it. I honestly do not see Apple moving their core apps (FCPX and LPX) to Apple Silicon-only anytime soon because they have people who just invested into the iMac Pro and Mac Pro and those platforms are going to need to be supported to ensure Apple get's their RoI back on them, much less the customers who shelled out for them.
I'd buy the AS 1st edition with confidence.
The last transition was pretty smooth. The OS ran. Photoshop ran. A bit slower.
The emulation on this transition translates at install time. 25-35% translation hit. If AS is only 40% faster than Intel you have product that will run Intel apps faster. I expect the A14 to be about 40% faster per core. Then all the co-processor speed ups for 4k workloads...and then you'll have higher clocks with faster cores, cooler, more cores, 8 vs the current 6. Plus the 4 lower power ones. Better iGPU. By a mile.
I think the Mac Mini and 21 inch iMac are mediocore products. WIth the move to ARM? That will change. On cpu. On gpu. Their relative value will put the 6 core Intel and crappy iG in the dumpster where they belong.
The move from iterative 'Mac OS 10' to 11 along with the AS hardware inspires me with great confidence.
More cores. More gpu. Better performance for entry models. Better value. The Mac has millions more apps and games from day 1 and that will drag more developers of better apps and better games.
Win. Win. Win. Win.
It allows us and Apple to dream of more exotic Mac products rather than...if 'only Mac had this...'
Apple will control their destiny. There will be pros and cons. Mainly pro' I think.
Azrael.
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Rather than buying a 'fully loaded' Intel...one could buy the entry 27 inch iMac Intel and the entry 24 inch iMac ARM for about or less than the current fully loaded 27 inch iMac.
Eg. £1750 + £1250. That saves 600£ off a fully current loaded Intel 27 inch iMac. And that can be put into tweaking each config' to something a bit more beefier.
Cake and eat it.
Azrael.
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'She said...'
Azrael.
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In terms of CPU performance, I believe Apple Silicon will be able to hold it's own with most of Intel's line-up within five years. By then Rosetta 2 emulation should be as good or better than Intel native and hopefully by then all the macOS applications will have been ported to native AS code and performance would be even better.
I'm not sure where Apple Silicon will be in terms of GPU performance, but as OpenCL / OpenGL is fully deprecated and everything has to run under Metal, that should strongly benefit AS. And Apple should be able to just scale more GPU cores either on the main SoC or as a separate GPU.
I expect you will be able to get a good five years out of it. I honestly do not see Apple moving their core apps (FCPX and LPX) to Apple Silicon-only anytime soon because they have people who just invested into the iMac Pro and Mac Pro and those platforms are going to need to be supported to ensure Apple get's their RoI back on them, much less the customers who shelled out for them.
Software is where Apple and AS is going to cremate Intel.
Raw speed will be there. But the software stack and those 'co-processors' in the AS?
Will extrapolate the 'smooth' lightning fast feel of the iPad relative to its competition to the desktop Mac which, to be honest, has stuttered and deprecated its way through the last ten years of desktop.
ie. Mac Mini, iMac consumer, Macbook 13, gawd, can they get any worse? Any AS improvement will bury them. Dreadful value. Soft cpu performance. Dreadful iG/GPU. And let's not get started on hard drives and Fusioning Fusion drives. Simply awful.
Take the iPad. As a product. And think about what an 'iPad' desktop could be? Just extrapolate that in your minds eye. The current consumer faced Intels on cpu and iG will be toast. Beat down. Software and hardware will make them archaic in user experience. Not 'just' raw speed and Geek marks.
The time of Apple being a 2nd class Mac gpu citizen?
'Over.'
Azrael.
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The only thing I'm truly "concerned" about is the GPU performance.
Will Apple be able to match GPUs performance like 5700XT and better OR will we have to wait for them to catch up?
When one thinks about it, the 12.9" iPad has 2732 x 2048 resolution (5 595 136 pixels) and everything you throw at it is super smooth. 27" iMac has 5120 x 2880 (14 745 600 pixels) . So that translates to iMac 2.63x more pixels to drive.
The question now is can the iPad drive 2.63x more pixels and still be fine? Well, A12Z showed us that it can but how about the computing etc.?
Can the current games and GPU instensive tasks be computed with the same speed as 5700XT lets say? (and thats not even amazing top card but good mid range).
I have no doubt that first AS will blow Intel out the water but can it blow AMD/Nvidia too? That is something I'm not sure about. Sure, it will be good for optimised things but what about the rest?
I think there is a reason why 24" iMac will be first and it might be because of GPU performance. Why else would they not introduce them together? As one would imagine that the AS chip inside will probably be identical to both machines.
Unless Apple wants to offer variants and in that case we might have a new "mess" on our hands.
It will be interesting to see what they do. Ideally, I would want new entry level Mac Pro that is half the price so I can get an expandable machine and if they do it then I might buy the screen even if its crazy expensive.
If A12Z can drive it now then I guess A14M will have even easier time. There really is no reason for entry Mac Pro to be this expensive and if Apple does their own chips now they will save tons of money on Intel and AMD which would allow them to create a new "category" of a product within a product.
Prosumers were priced out on the Mac Pro machine but this would bring a lot of them back. Everyone wins
Or, they could do Mac Pro mini version. That would work too
Will Apple be able to match GPUs performance like 5700XT and better OR will we have to wait for them to catch up?
When one thinks about it, the 12.9" iPad has 2732 x 2048 resolution (5 595 136 pixels) and everything you throw at it is super smooth. 27" iMac has 5120 x 2880 (14 745 600 pixels) . So that translates to iMac 2.63x more pixels to drive.
The question now is can the iPad drive 2.63x more pixels and still be fine? Well, A12Z showed us that it can but how about the computing etc.?
Can the current games and GPU instensive tasks be computed with the same speed as 5700XT lets say? (and thats not even amazing top card but good mid range).
I have no doubt that first AS will blow Intel out the water but can it blow AMD/Nvidia too? That is something I'm not sure about. Sure, it will be good for optimised things but what about the rest?
I think there is a reason why 24" iMac will be first and it might be because of GPU performance. Why else would they not introduce them together? As one would imagine that the AS chip inside will probably be identical to both machines.
Unless Apple wants to offer variants and in that case we might have a new "mess" on our hands.
It will be interesting to see what they do. Ideally, I would want new entry level Mac Pro that is half the price so I can get an expandable machine and if they do it then I might buy the screen even if its crazy expensive.
If A12Z can drive it now then I guess A14M will have even easier time. There really is no reason for entry Mac Pro to be this expensive and if Apple does their own chips now they will save tons of money on Intel and AMD which would allow them to create a new "category" of a product within a product.
Prosumers were priced out on the Mac Pro machine but this would bring a lot of them back. Everyone wins
Or, they could do Mac Pro mini version. That would work too