Call Me, iMac Pro

Along with the new iPad Air 2 last week, Apple announced the new iMac with Retina Display. From now on, I’m going to call it the iMac Pro.

For quite some time, the Apple brigade have been crying out for ‘Pro’ versions of all of Apple’s hardware. I think it started with the MacBook Pro, which had been the PowerBook and if you had one, you were obviously a professional and that some how made you more of a person. That suffix then came to Mac Pro when it replaced the PowerMac.

After that though, Apple have refrained from calling any other hardware ‘Pro’. Historically, that ‘Pro’ signified a highly capable machine that was designed for professionals to use high end software quickly and smoothly to produce anything from 3D renders to fully mapped Genomes. All the while though, there’s been a subset shouting for Apple to ‘Pro all the things!’ and as of yet they, Apple refrained. The rumoured large screen iPad falls into to this subset wanting it to be an iPad Pro, the same goes for the iPhone 6 Plus, which the same people want to be the iPhone Pro.

For the last few years though, there’s been some hugely impressive gains in power when it comes to consumer grade hardware. We already know that the 2012 MacBook Pro Retina out performed Mac Pros from only a year before and the iMac has done the same.

Now Apple have unleashed an iMac with a 5k display and this years processors that embarrass the Xeons from last year. Added to that, the newer graphic cards and the fact it comes with a Fusion Drive as standard make the new iMac a machine that beats the current Mac Pros in benchmark tests, comes with a 5k display and is also cheaper!

They should have just made the Aluminium on it Space Grey or black and called the damn thing the iMac Pro.

All of this starts to ring even truer when you realise that you can not use the new iMac Retina as an external display (a party trick they have been able to do since 2012). The Display Port 1.2 standard that’s built-in to Thunderbolt 2 can only take a 4k output.

This further makes the Mac Pro a pain to purchase for anyone looking to keep it more than 3/4 years. It makes sense that when Apple can increase the yields on the 5k displays, they will release a standalone display. They can only do this when Display Port 1.3 is baked in to their machines on a new version of Thunderbolt. Add that to the fact Intel are behind schedule with the new Xeon chips, it becomes harder to suggest anyone buys the current Mac Pro.

Yes, if you’re getting a custom one with the optional 12 cores, then yes, that’s the kind of machine you need and it will be a lot more powerful than the 4 core i7 in the iMac, but, if you were considering a four or six core model with the idea that it would see you through the next 4/6 years you may as well save your money and buy the iMac Pro.

Here’s the first benchmarks if you’re interested.