No doubt, but an iMac was never going to give you that.
edit - the at-this-point imaginary Mac Pro that is said to be in development is probably what you want. But really, if you’re looking for a modular PC, Apple is probably not your bag.
Except running MacOS is the whole point for most of the people in the market for a mac.
2 Likes
FYI, a random Dell Xeon workstation is $3k (on sale down from $4k).
10 Core Xeon
32GB RAM
256GB SSD
4GB Nvidia Quatro video card - no idea how this stacks up
Throw in a good monitor, bump up the SSD, and you’re getting close to the iMac.
1 Like
screaming
2 Likes
Yeah, I was thinking that might be the case. They actually built their own graphics station a few years after the mac debuted. I would bet that all other info is processed on a mac, though.
It is kind of interesting and difficult when a person tries to compare PCs to Macs - there are only so many Mac configurations of what you could call a Mac. A PC could be almost anything and the sky is the limit for the price. On the Dell link above, you can make a 17K workstation. Boxx, which is a dedicated brand for high-end content workstations is the same. Want to spend 50K on a monster computer? Sure why not.
1 Like
pro stuff. Stuff that you amateurs in amateurville can’t appreciate because you’re not pros.
(probably video editing).
1 Like
ah, so that’s why it costs 5k. For people who want MOAR.
I want basic modular ability like my old G5. ram, easy swappable hdd, and graphic card. I am not asking too much, I am not a crackpot!!
should have bought one of these when you had the chance?
2 Likes
I wouldn’t give money to Apple either… and never have. But that’s okay. Given all the US tax they save by having subsidiaries in foreign countries and territory…
3 Likes
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
I appreciate the 27" monster getting the “Pro” title, as it is the one iMac you would not really want in your home. It’s a monster designed for serious work. The other two iMacs are more general in their design, computers that could just as easily be used in an office as well as in a living room.
I’m still curious as to what happens when they revamp the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro lineups. I still am wavering on whether to replace my iMac and Apple TV, as nowadays I could see using the television as the iMac replacement if the Mac Mini over got a revamp, as a lot of casual stuff is now being handled by the iPad.
Ugh. Been agonizing about replacing my ancient 2008 8-core mac pro, but $5000 if fucking insane… I get the reasons– 4k and xeon and all…
Dreading moving to windows but I just might have to… Hackintosh is too much work.
Dell just announced a 4k all-in-one with an 8-core ryzen. If you could upgrade the graphics card down the road I might be into it:
One of these days I will have to jump the gun on something and I’m afraid it will be in the middle of some crazy client work 
In this case, it looks like how much headroom you want will end up making a fairly serious difference. The Dell AIO isn’t necessarily particularly flattered by the comparison.
On the other hand(somewhat to my surprise, actually, I’m pretty sure it used to be rather more); the dual-socket hardware starts at only $1500(The $1500 configuration is a pitiful waste, with hardware that is little more than a placeholder; but it goes up to 2 CPUs, including 22 cores if you really like giving Intel money; 2 GPUs, and 256GB of RAM. The rack version will go up to 1.5TB of RAM and 4 GPUs; and quad 10GbE, plus hot-swappable fans and PSUs, if you really have a budget to match your ambition;).
If you want exactly what Apple is selling, their prices are pretty good.(Indeed, workstations are one area where Apple is particularly well matched; if they sell what you want and you don’t need to swap anything out.)
If you don’t want to be using the same GPU four years from now; look up on the mac pro and despair.
Then there’s those of us who want a desktop form factor, yet don’t want or have space for a 27" monitor on our desk (or who otherwise don’t want an AIO) but still want a Mac. We’re basically SOL.
There’s the Mini which is nice but incredibly underspecced, or the Mac Pro which is incredibly overpriced with mediocre graphics.
Basically a big FU from Apple today.
4 Likes
Given wide user acceptance of 40+ inch TVs, is a 27in iMac really so incompatible with home use? Being flat really makes big monitors less obtrusive.
Not all of us have room in our workplaces for a 27" AIO. In my case I have little vertical space. I could do two 21" monitors side by side with a tower on the floor but a 27" is it out of the question.
Fucking Apple, man. I really want to ditch my PC and Mac Mini for a single machine without having to compromise but that’s just not in the cards I guess.
I replaced my 2001 G5 tower in 2010 with a 27in iMac. I could go get an older MacPro tower still, but I prefer the form factor of the iMac.
There is no real reason the iMac could not be upgradeable. Its a poor decision on Apple’s part.
1 Like
I hadn’t thought about all the heightened requirements for putting together 4k and VR video - that does make sense, especially as it’s an Apple strong suit. I’m still mentally in the era of standard-def video, so I tend to mistakenly think of current processing power as more than enough.
3D doesn’t make as much sense - it seems like it’s heavily Windows and Linux-based programs, and although companies like Pixar do use Macs, my understanding is that they use them for tasks that don’t require a lot of horsepower (admin, storyboarding, audio, etc.).
Games make even less sense - it’s very heavily Windows based (in terms of audience and tools), and working with real-time graphics, it doesn’t make that much sense to have a development machine whose specs are that much higher than your target machines. (Even when working with higher-resolution models that are getting down-rezed for game assets - the finished version of any given object, environment, etc. will only take up only a small fraction of the memory of a standard PC.) I could see a small number of tasks that might benefit from the horsepower (especially with increasing popularity of things like photogrammetry), but not enough to be significant. I also have a hard time imagining game studios splashing out for a lot of $5K+ machines.
The ram jumps out at me as a significant cost - these things seem to ramp up to infinity pretty fast, when you get beyond the baseline. I’m sure there’s lots of less-obvious things that marginally add to performance at great cost, though.
