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Three Challenging Questions About The New iMac Pro

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As promised at June’s WWDC, Apple has released the iMac Pro before the end of 2017.  A number of early review units were seeded into the community ahead of the full retail launch. It’s clear that Apple has released a ridiculously powerful machine. But that raises some important questions. Looking at both those controlled early access articles and the more general reaction, three things stand out for me as regards the iMac Pro.

Get Your Choices Right The First Time

Following the recent trend in laptops to mimic tablets and smartphones, you won’t have the option to break open the iMac Pro to upgrade any of the components at a later date. So if you start out with the base mode’s 8-core CPU, 32GB of RAM and 1TB SSD (which is listed at $4999), that’s what you are going to have for the lifetime of the device. You’re not going to crack this beauty open to add a 2TB SSD.

To be fair the iMac Pro is not going to be an impulse purchase, so anyone buying this machine will have a lot of time to consider what the exact make-up of their machine needs to be.

How Future Proof Is The Design?

Although the iPhone has seen the lions’ share of development over the last few years, the increased potency of VR and AR, coupled with the software tools for creating these experiences, means that Apple’s desk bound tools are going to need a serious amount of grunt to be able to deliver what is required. As the experiences increase in complexity, so will the demands on hardware. What looks stunning this December as an entry-level model could be struggling in twelve months time.

That means Apple needs to keep the iMac Pro portfolio up to date. unlike the 2013 Mac Pro which was released and then pretty much frozen, if Apple is in this game seriously, then the iMac Pro will need to stay on top of the hardware game. And because of the unfulfilled promise of the Mac Pro, it’s not a given that ‘Apple will  have an updated iMac Pro on sale late in 2018’.

Apple needs more than words to illustrate its long-term commitment to the platform.

Where Does The Mac Pro Fit?

The iMac Pro is a beast of machine. Apple has leapfrogged all of the other macOS devices in its portfolio. This is the bleeding edge. So where does the ‘completely rethought’ Mac Pro fit in that was promised earlier in the year. When you deliver an iMac that has the ‘Pro’ tag at the end of it and means it… what happens next?

I doubt the iMac Pro is the ultimate MacOS machine, but it’s certainly the ultimate machine for 99.9 percent of the macOS population. For many creators it may be overkill, and it is certainly overkill for the majority of consumers. So what is the Mac Pro going to do? Is there even going to be a Mac Pro?

Can you predict the specifications you need right now? Will Apple keep the iMac Pro line up to date over the next few annual hardware cycles? And is this really the top-end flagship machine?

Like many beautiful objects, the iMac Pro asks more questions than it answers.

Now read how the iPhone X is the boring and safe answer to Apple’s continued growth…

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