Apple iMac Pro Responds to Customer Demands for a Powerful New Desktop

Apple has been criticized in recent months for appearing to ignore power users who want a high-end Mac. But the company responded to their demands June 5 with the announcement of a new computer it has named the iMac Pro. The machine is an all-in-one desktop that comes with a 27-inch screen and will support Intel processors with up to 18 cores. It’s equipped with high-end graphics cards, plenty of memory and includes enough accessory ports to allow users to expand its functionality beyond what is in the slim box. Apple is calling the iMac Pro the most powerful Mac it’s ever offered. But all that power comes at a price that could turn some budget-conscious corporate customers away.

The most powerful PCs often are standalone, tower desktops that are too bulky to accommodate power and space requirements. But the iMac Pro is an all-in-one that maintains a thin design without sacrificing power. It shows just how far desktop design has come.

The iMac Pro comes with a 27-inch 5K display that Apple says delivers the best picture of any screen it’s ever bundled with a Mac. The display has 500 nits of brightness and 14.7 million pixels, which translates to a bright and exceedingly high-resolution display. According to Apple, the screen can display more than a billion colors.

Apple is pulling out all the stops with its processors. The base model features an 8-core Intel Xeon processor, and the highest-end model offers 18-core performance. The chip can be turbo-boosted to a 4.5GHz clock speed.

Apple also went for high power with graphics, running AMD’s Radeon Pro Vega graphics processor in the iMac Pro. The base model includes the Radeon Pro Vega 56 with 8GB of memory, and can be upgraded to the Radeon Pro Vega 64 with 16GB of memory. Video games and design apps should perform extremely well.

Apple’s iMac Pro will ship with 32GB of memory standard, but can be configured to 64GB for higher-end needs. Apple also is offering a 128GB memory option for those who want the ultimate in performance.

The iMac Pro is all about solid-state drives. The all-in-one comes standard with a 1TB solid-state drive, or customers can opt for a 2TB or 4TB option. There’s only one storage slot, so customers might want to choose more storage to be safe.

Gigabit Ethernet support is standard in most computers today, but Apple is promising much more. The company says the iMac Pro can support up to 10Gb Ethernet for blazing-fast speeds. However, the truth is that few people have access to Internet service that comes even close to achieving those speeds in the real world.

There’s no shortage of ports in the iMac Pro. The device has four Thunderbolt 3 ports and four USB 3.0 ports, as well as an RJ-45 connector and an SD card slot. Unlike its iPhone relative, the iMac Pro also includes a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Apple noted during its WWDC 2017 unveiling that the iMac Pro supports accessories to expand its functionality. Specifically, the device can support two RAID systems and two 5K displays for professionally focused monitor and storage capacity. The iMac Pro also will run other Thunderbolt 3-ready devices.

The iMac Pro comes with a significant price tag. The iMac Pro will cost $5,000 out of the box, and those looking for upgrades will pay a much heftier price. Apple hasn’t announced the price on other configurations, but likely will offer more details as it inches closer to the computer’s December release.