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Will there ever be a new large iMac (Pro)?
- Thread starter krazzix
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Back on track. Just make the iMac thicker with cooling. Actual iMac Pro cooling. So we can enjoy mid level cardslike the Vega 56 or 5700XT. If the HP AiO can fit a 2080 Nvidia in their AiO...then I'm expecting 'great' things from Apple's substantial iMac update.
Azrael.
I think there is a much better chance this now that Jonathan I’ve is no longer Apple’s design guru. The 2019 Mac Pro went back to the classic tower design, albeit there are still those Apple proprietary gizmos. Hopefully something beyond a pretty display with the computer stuck on it’s back.
I was thinking, what are the chances that apple would do a major redesign for the iMac when they kinda made a redesign 3 years ago with the iMac Pro. Woudn't it make sense that they would bring the grey color and the innovative cooling of the iMP to the iMac? And if they would indeed totally redesign the iMac, wouldn't that make the iMP look pointless since it was released only 3 years ago? Just thinking...
It would make sense, no?
If that's the official chip release date then if the iMac is 'ready' then that is what it's waiting for.
If it's truly a design revolution as opposed to refresh (ie a slight bezel trim) then it's WWDC.
Feel like it's going to be the former. 'Substantial' meaning decent specs and a mild trim of bezels with perhaps better cooling a coat of space grey paint. ie. They drop in the iMac Pro, bezel trim at a more mainstream price. Ultimately, that's the most obvious thing to do if they don't want to truly 'move beyond' the current design...?
Azrael.
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Yep. I think you're spot on.
Drop the price. Drop the Xeons for the i10s. Regular memory. Swap out the hotter Vegas for the Radeon XTs. Keep the chassis. Trim the bezels.
Just rebadge the iMac Pro chassis as a mainstream computer with mainstream equivalents specs.
It seems so obvious, really. 3 years old. It's the path of least resistance.
It would give the regular iMac the illusion of progress. But I'd take it. With slender bezels to go.
...and a 32 inch screen...
Azrael.
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Without Ive, I think there is latitude to take a sensible step back to form following function. Pausing on the drive to thinness for now.
Azrael.
The iMac Pro had an internal redesign, but all iMacs need a complete external overhaul as well, to bring them into 2020 (from 1954). Tiny bezels are essential in 2020. I don't care if it has to be made thicker as a result. All other mid to high-end AIOs look good, and the iMac has been left behind (to rot). Time for change!
It DOES(!) need some external design love.
The question is whether it has the iMac Pro mainstream look with modest bezel trim...
or...
Apple has a full iMac design gasm blown XDR look? *(Prays to the god of Jobs...)
I know which I'd prefer(!!!)...but Apple's current track record doesn't inspire me with confidence.
However, fair play to the design on on the Mac Pro and XDR.
Stunning design. (There, see folks? I said something truly positive.)
Azrael.
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Damn straight. 'Had me at hello.'
We both know which one out of the two scenarios we both want, right?
The question is desire. Will. How much do they want it? They have the design chops: see Pro and XDR. Truly 21st Apple design language which is unequalled. But can, CAN they bring it to the mainstream?
Can they truly blow us out the water? Shock? Delight? Suprise?!!!
Come on, Apple. SHOW. ME. THE. MONEEEEEEEY!
Hope springs eternal.
Azrael.
It has to be the latter, or it's dead on arrival to me (and quite a few others it seems). Will Apple want the non-pro iMac having a better looking design (at least externally if they don't go all out on cooling) than the pro version, assuming that isn't updated until Q4 this year? As it would only be for half a year, perhaps they wouldn't care? I doubt they sell many iMac Pros now anyway.It DOES(!) need some external design love.
The question is whether it has the iMac Pro mainstream look with modest bezel trim...
or...
Apple has a full iMac design gasm blown XDR look? *(Prays to the god of Jobs...)
I know which I'd prefer(!!!)...but Apple's current track record doesn't inspire me with confidence.
However, fair play to the design on on the Mac Pro and XDR.
Stunning design. (There, see folks? I said something truly positive.)
Azrael.
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'Had me at hello.'
We both know which one out of the two scenarios we both want, right?
The question is desire. Will. How much do they want it? They have the design chops: see Pro and XDR. Truly 21st Apple design language which is unequalled. But can, CAN they bring it to the mainstream?
Can they truly blow us out the water? Shock? Delight? Suprise?!!!
Come on, Apple. SHOW. ME. THE. MONEEEEEEEY!
Hope springs eternal.
Azrael.
A toned down 32in 6K XDR display (I'd take 4K or 5K, but they wouldn't take that approach), with slim bezels would be the DREAM! I'd pay up to £3k for that, despite it being completely overkill for my needs.
It won't happen though will it.... *cries*
I expected the iMP cooling system in the iMac two years ago...I do not see that as a significant redesign, just a no-brainer update. Significant redesign challenges the existing mainstream like that curved glass iMac concept with the computer slide in behind the screen.
30 of April, 20 May and now 27th of May - I am confused to say the least.
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32 inch 6k, they will not drop "retina display". Costly though even not being an XDR Pro.
30 of April, 20 May and now 27th of May - I am confused to say the least.
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32 inch 6k, they will not drop "retina display". Costly though even not being an XDR Pro.
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But if apple would adopt the iMP chassis for the iMac, why would they do it now in 2020 instead of last year's refresh...?
Exactly this...Why wouldn't they do it in last year's refresh. It seemed like no brainer. Especially after the introduction of the Mac Pro. I don't really see the purpose of a pro iMac when you already have Mac Pro at the same time.
The ironic thing is that because he is a "bean counter", if an X-Mac and/or a "proper" iMac would sell even a million units a quarter, Tim would absolutely make one because that is more than what the current desktop line is doing.
People like to believe it's just spite that the Mac platform is the way it is today, but this is what sells well.
Nope, that is all on Intel for not releasing an updated CPU and AMD on an updated GPU until very late last year.
I think Apple is doing okay starting with 9th and 10th generation i5 CPUs thanks to Intel raising their game (well, being forced to by AMD). A handful of years ago, the i5 was four cores and four threads so you had to buy a "hot" 95W Core i7 to get any performance. Now that level of performance is available in a "cool" 65W i5.
I do agree Apple is being stingy on RAM. Just because macOS on 8GB works well (much like Windows can on 16GB), 16GB offers more headroom (just as 24-32GB does on Windows) and at the OEM level, is likely not that expensive to add.
And yes, spinning Hard Disks alone are just plain unacceptable at any price point. That is true disrespect for the customer, which I find surprising considering how much Tim focuses on "Customer Satisfaction" scores.
However, I do not believe Fusion Drives are the scourge that many make them out to be. That being said, I do believe that Apple never should have reduced the SSD from 128GB to 24GB on the 1TB configuration - even Apple realized the screwed-up and increased it to 32GB. Honestly, Apple should not even offer a 1TB Fusion Drive - it should be 2TB standard and 4TB optional. The whole point of a Fusion Drive is to offer lots of inexpensive storage for people who need it (for things like pictures, music, movies that do not benefit from SSD speeds) while still offering strong performance for the OS and applications which do benefit from SSD speeds. Hell, considering how hard Apple is moving off of 256GB as the default SSD configuration, why not make that the SSD portion of a 2TB/4TB Fusion Drive?
If Apple intended to stay with x86 for the next decade or longer, I think they would be looking hard at AMD. But I think they're worried that AMD will eventually (and probably sooner rather than later) start hitting the same walls Intel has and AMD does not begin to have the financial and technical resources that Intel has so when they do hit that wall, it will likely stop them cold whereas Intel is still crawling up their hill of broken glass/promises.
So Apple is charting their future with their own ARM chips and I believe the plan to be pretty much fully there in less than a decade.
Because you can't have Fusion Drives (which I know this forum would cheer) and we'd lose easily-upgradeable RAM - which would cause this forum to explode like Neo-Tokyo.
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Oh dear. What happened to Intel?
How hard is it for a company like Apple to put AMD motherboards/CPUs in the desktop Macs? It won't happen. But it should?
More cores, more performance, more efficiency and better price?
I thought, Mr. Cook is all about the best product for the best price for the consumer?
Azrael.
Mac is heavily optimized for Intel. Changing CPUs isn't easy. Also, Apple is aiming for their own processor.
Changing from Intel to AMD is much easier than Intel to Arm. But if Apple have already made the decision to move to Arm for Macs for other reasons, then it would probably not be worth the effort to change to AMD before moving to Arm not long after.
Intel 10th Gen releases in 3 day, so hopefully we will be able to stop speculating, and start debating the best iMac config to order by the end of the week.
I’d be extremely cautious about drawing too many conclusions about the computer market in 2020 based on data from 2010.
The market’s changed just a little bit in a decade.
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Calling the iMac Pro a redesign is silly. Externally it’s the same, just darker, and the rear RAM access is gone with some tweaks for cooling. That’s all. No matter what went on inside, that’s not a redesign.
The most likely outcome for a redesigned iMac would be somewhere between the concepts we’ve all seen that can be summarized as “what if an iPad Pro but 27 inches and on a stand” and the current design. I’d bet money that they don’t ship a Mac with rounded display corners, for starters (at least in the near future).
My dream is “what if a Pro Display XDR enclosure but there’s a computer in it,” but my expectations are far lower than that.
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All these talks about using the iMac Pro cooling concerns me. If they used the iMac Pro cooling doesn’t that mean the iMac 27” would lose the ram upgrade door? I really don’t want the 27” to lose that with how much Apple charges for memory.
All I want is an iMac with a 5600/5700 and 1tb of ssd for around $2k!
All I want is an iMac with a 5600/5700 and 1tb of ssd for around $2k!
10th gen is just another 14nm. I dont expect any huge improvements. Even they do, they have to sacrifice the power consumption and temperature so much. And iMac is not capable of cooling desktop-grade CPU. Instead, they have to lower their performance. iMac itself is really bad as a desktop computer and it would be better to make a normal desktop.
I think the loss of the door on the Pro is more due to the use of full size ECC DIMMs instead of SO-DIMMs, rather than the cooling system. I really hope they keep the door!
I will be shocked if the new iMac is anything more than the iMac Pro cooling system + Intel 10th Gen desktop CPU's
Stretch goals: VESA mount without ordering it as such, User accessible RAM
Stretch goals: VESA mount without ordering it as such, User accessible RAM
I am typing this from my 5k iMac, and even as I love it very much, I am realistic about its pace of progress moving forward.
The counterpoint is that software and computing needs would go on to require more than 256k of ram.
Past a certain point, more specs is useless, in that it's not going to let you run Office or browse the web any more quickly. So consumers pay more, but they may not see an appreciable improvement in the user experience.
This term may sound foreign or even heretical to more enthusiast or pro users, but I believe there is such a thing as "over-serving the market". The general idea is that despite technology continuing to get better and more powerful, a growing number of consumers are content with less. They don’t need the latest and greatest specs to get their work done. This development would manifest itself in less frequent upgrading as people hold on to their current hardware for longer, and even having the latest bells and whistles may not suffice in getting the masses to upgrade anymore.
For example, Office may come with way more functionality than iWork's, but I legitimately prefer iWork's for creating documents, and would continue to use it if not for the fact that everyone else around me is on Office. The reason is that I simply don't need the majority of the features that Office comes with, and past a certain point, it's not giving me more of what I want, but instead just saddling me with more bloat and more problems to deal with.
It may sound easy to just rattle off a laundry list of the latest specs / PC hardware on the market, say you want to see them all in an iMac, and call it a day, but then you just end up raising the final price of the product and potentially alienating a large chunk of your user base who don't need a 6k display.
I think we are at the point of diminishing returns where most consumers simply do not need the benefits of an XDR display, because they are not editing videos or photos, and even if they didn't, don't need it to be 100% colour accurate. The move from 2k to 5k is nice when you work with a lot of text (ie: most PC users), but I doubt they will see an appreciate improvement by going from 5k to 6k.
It's why the iMac still comes with a fusion drive, because it's what gives users the most amount of storage for the least amount of cost.
And I believe this is Apple's biggest challenge moving forward. Apple needs to continue coming up with improved, more powerful Macs that do a better job of handling legacy workflows. And their conundrum here is that Apple finds itself having to keep funnelling an increasing amount of resources and attention into a product category that (from their perspective) does not represent the future of personal computing. The risk is that Apple will be stuck with a $30B legacy business and corresponding user base that will threaten the company's increasingly ambitious product strategy (ie: wearables).
And yet developers still need Macs to code apps for iOS, so here we are.
And Apple sold 200 million iPhones last year and there are close to a billion active iPhone users. This is the scale at which Apple operates today. And based on Apple's own numbers, the bulk of consumers (~80%) are going for laptops. Leaving the iMac as a (still fairly popular) niche, the iMac Pro as the niche of a niche, and the Mac Pro for the rare Mac user who needs more horsepower than even the iMac Pro can deliver.
Of course, this doesn't mean that 5 million sales is a low number, but it does mean that there is a fairly huge opportunity cost when it comes to diverting manpower and resources to work on the Mac when they could be working on something else.
That's probably why we still get annual updates for MacBooks (that and the butterfly keyboard saga) and the iMac is what it is, the iMac Pro hasn't been updated in over 2 years, and this is likely the last Mac Pro we will see for a while. The market has spoken, and they are simply responding to demand.
Which brings me back to my original point - how many people actually need to do all that?
The counterpoint is that software and computing needs would go on to require more than 256k of ram.
Past a certain point, more specs is useless, in that it's not going to let you run Office or browse the web any more quickly. So consumers pay more, but they may not see an appreciable improvement in the user experience.
This term may sound foreign or even heretical to more enthusiast or pro users, but I believe there is such a thing as "over-serving the market". The general idea is that despite technology continuing to get better and more powerful, a growing number of consumers are content with less. They don’t need the latest and greatest specs to get their work done. This development would manifest itself in less frequent upgrading as people hold on to their current hardware for longer, and even having the latest bells and whistles may not suffice in getting the masses to upgrade anymore.
For example, Office may come with way more functionality than iWork's, but I legitimately prefer iWork's for creating documents, and would continue to use it if not for the fact that everyone else around me is on Office. The reason is that I simply don't need the majority of the features that Office comes with, and past a certain point, it's not giving me more of what I want, but instead just saddling me with more bloat and more problems to deal with.
It may sound easy to just rattle off a laundry list of the latest specs / PC hardware on the market, say you want to see them all in an iMac, and call it a day, but then you just end up raising the final price of the product and potentially alienating a large chunk of your user base who don't need a 6k display.
I think we are at the point of diminishing returns where most consumers simply do not need the benefits of an XDR display, because they are not editing videos or photos, and even if they didn't, don't need it to be 100% colour accurate. The move from 2k to 5k is nice when you work with a lot of text (ie: most PC users), but I doubt they will see an appreciate improvement by going from 5k to 6k.
It's why the iMac still comes with a fusion drive, because it's what gives users the most amount of storage for the least amount of cost.
And I believe this is Apple's biggest challenge moving forward. Apple needs to continue coming up with improved, more powerful Macs that do a better job of handling legacy workflows. And their conundrum here is that Apple finds itself having to keep funnelling an increasing amount of resources and attention into a product category that (from their perspective) does not represent the future of personal computing. The risk is that Apple will be stuck with a $30B legacy business and corresponding user base that will threaten the company's increasingly ambitious product strategy (ie: wearables).
And yet developers still need Macs to code apps for iOS, so here we are.
And Apple sold 200 million iPhones last year and there are close to a billion active iPhone users. This is the scale at which Apple operates today. And based on Apple's own numbers, the bulk of consumers (~80%) are going for laptops. Leaving the iMac as a (still fairly popular) niche, the iMac Pro as the niche of a niche, and the Mac Pro for the rare Mac user who needs more horsepower than even the iMac Pro can deliver.
Of course, this doesn't mean that 5 million sales is a low number, but it does mean that there is a fairly huge opportunity cost when it comes to diverting manpower and resources to work on the Mac when they could be working on something else.
That's probably why we still get annual updates for MacBooks (that and the butterfly keyboard saga) and the iMac is what it is, the iMac Pro hasn't been updated in over 2 years, and this is likely the last Mac Pro we will see for a while. The market has spoken, and they are simply responding to demand.
Which brings me back to my original point - how many people actually need to do all that?
I think we are back to who this iMac will be aim at. The broad and probably largest mass that needs a large screen but otherwise has all the CPU/GPU power they need in laptop or the those who really need an affordable tower/iMP?
It is difficult to predict which road they have taken. A few leaks would be appreciated at this point . The design and capabilities will be 100% dependent on the road taken.
The desktop is a market that shrinks so sharing development between product lines is necessary. A frame consisting of a screen plus a dock and a redesigned "Mac mini" (larger than today) docked to such a frame/screen or used alone could collapse the Mac mini line and the iMac into one product family. Make it cool 600W to cater for most people needs. Who cares if it is only 100W components in it for some configs - silence is key to a pleasant computer experience.
Curiously, the all glass concept/patent that has been floating around is compatible with this line of thinking.
www.macrumors.com
It is difficult to predict which road they have taken. A few leaks would be appreciated at this point
. The design and capabilities will be 100% dependent on the road taken.The desktop is a market that shrinks so sharing development between product lines is necessary. A frame consisting of a screen plus a dock and a redesigned "Mac mini" (larger than today) docked to such a frame/screen or used alone could collapse the Mac mini line and the iMac into one product family. Make it cool 600W to cater for most people needs. Who cares if it is only 100W components in it for some configs - silence is key to a pleasant computer experience.
Curiously, the all glass concept/patent that has been floating around is compatible with this line of thinking.
Apple Patent Imagines iMac Made From a Single Sheet of Glass
Apple has all kinds of fanciful patents for imaginative devices that will likely never come to fruition, such as an iMac-like desktop computer made...
www.macrumors.com
Wether or not these forums or the tech journalisms explodes or not is completely insignificant. Loud but small crowd that contribute very little to Apples bottom line. Apple could also mitigate this by decreasing the BTO prices on RAM.
I’m fed up of waiting, so I’ve ordered the HP Envy 32 with NVIDIA 2080 graphics. Should be ok for some light gaming and it has a hdmi in so I can hook up my 2019 i9 MacBook Pro for my MacOS fix, but I’ve heard windows is a lot better these days, not used it in years so it’ll me something for me play about with. £2500 with student discount and 3 year warranty which I thought was good.
I'm just coming back from Windows because the OS is just horrible. Sometimes it just freezes while copying or making new folders. Or the folder just crashes. I can't love a computer that acts like a 200 euros machine even when it costs 2000 euros.
I think the problem you have is in the configuration privately. I’ve been using Windows 10 in bootcamp for years and I haven’t seen any specific glitches yet. And if the little things, then there are fewer than in the latest versions of MacOS