[jdietrich]

The pro posers can absolutely afford a $6k bauble. Actual creative pros (outside the SF/LA bubble)? Not so much. The $2k price difference between the base-spec Mac Pro and a fully-loaded PC workstation is a new (used) DSLR body to replace your beaten-up old 5dMkII, it's a couple of nice microphones, it's a set of LED softboxes, it's three months rent, it's a new engine for your van.

Some of those struggling creatives in the early stages of their career will go on to be the next Rankin, the next Steven Soderbergh, the next Rick Rubin. Apple are already losing those people due to the dismal price-performance ratio of their hardware. The opportunity cost of buying a new mac is just far too great when you're a creative on a budget. They're keeping the wannabe DJs, but they're losing the kid running a record label out of his mom's garage. They're keeping the Instagram influencers, but they're losing the kid who's scraping together the cash to make her first short film.

The lack of expandability on the iMac and Mac Mini is a really big deal for this demographic, who tend to buy used and tend to eke out the last few viable years from a product. In the short-term, closing off the used market makes perfect economic sense; in the long-term, you're also closing off a key route into your platform for users who would potentially be extremely loyal and go on to buy many generations of high-end machines.

In the long run, that could become an existential threat to Apple's computer brand. If they lose the next generation of creatives at a pivotal moment in their career, the whole house of cards could come tumbling down. If you've grown up seeing all the genuine creatives using PCs and all the clueless posers using Macs, is that $3000 MBP a status symbol you really want to be seen with?

[w0utert]

I would argue that for the vast majority of use cases you are describing, even the non-pro iMac would perfectly fit the bill. Any iMac from the last few years that has TB3 for eGPU and fast external storage even.

Name one professional use case that would put a reasonably specced (i7+) iMac with eGPU to its knees, to the extent it really disqualifies it. In other words, a use case that doesn't involve editing raw 8K footage or rendering 3D feature films? A professional use case for someone who could afford $4K for a PC workstation that would fit the bill, but not $5K for an iMac Pro or $8K for a Mac Pro.

[coldtea]

>Name one professional use case that would put a reasonably specced (i7+) iMac with eGPU to its knees, to the extent it really disqualifies it.

First, try to edit a large project with 4K video and you'll soon find out. Unless you transcode for hours, the machine will be on its knees, especially with multicam stuff.

Second, computing power is not a binary "down to its knees" / "manages to do it".

I always could use a faster machine (I can afford and upgrade eventually) as a pro, even when my current machine is not "to its knees"

If it does its rendering in, say, 4 hours, it's always welcome to be able to do it in 3 hours or 2 hours. Those are hours off of my time.

If PC-using pros can do it with their GPUs/memory/etc, why shouldn't Mac using pros be able to keep up? We do compete for the same jobs, you know.

Now add video FX rendering (e.g. after effects) with many nodes and layers, 3D rendering (which already can take days for a large project), and so on.

And lastly, the iMac with eGPU is still a hassle (no upgrade internal GPU, extra costs for the eGPU cage and cables, occasional eGPU-related glitches, etc). And it's still non memory upgradable, non CPU upgradable, non SSDs upgradable, and with a screen that can't be used as a standalone screen when you get past that machine.

So, no an "$5K for an iMac Pro" is not a replacement for an upgradable rig, that can take non-Apple-marked-up upgrades, and doesn't have to come with its own monitor.

[likeclockwork]

What's the point in recommending that people buy an All-In-One-PC like the iMac when they'll have to litter their desk with a pile of cabled hardware that is known to live quite well inside of PC cases?

eGPU seems silly to me for a desktop. The graphics card works very well inside of the case, the monitor works better outside of it.

[w0utert]

The assertion was that Apple does not have any computers for professionals that need a powerful machine, but not as powerful as a Mac Pro. This is obviously assuming they need or prefer macOS over Windows or Linux for whatever reason, otherwise they might as well just buy a regular PC.

The 'pile of cabled hardware' argument seems a little far-fetched by the way, since when do 'pro users' make a big deal out of having one or two external devices on their desk somewhere? Never heard anyone complain about that in real life.

I have this setup with a Mac Mini, the eGPU just sits behind the screen where I don't see it, and it's attached with a single TB cable + power that goes straight down into a socket. A nice benefit of this solution is that I can also use the GPU with my laptop if I would need to, by just plugging it in.

For external storage, if it doesn't get moved around you can e.g. attach it to the back of the screen, the screen I use has 4 USB-C ports at the back so I don't see why this would be worse than having the drive in a box under your desk. Or you could use a NAS with 10Gb ethernet. Plenty of options. There will always be someone who can't live with the fact that there isn't a box that has all the hardware under the desk, but that's hardly saying you cannot buy a decently powerful Mac at a small fraction of the cost of a Mac Pro.

[jdietrich]

>The assertion was that Apple does not have any computers for professionals that need a powerful machine, but not as powerful as a Mac Pro.

No, my assertion is that Apple does not offer a competitively priced mid-to-high end machine suitable for professional use.

The iMac will be acceptable for some users, but not for others, because it's one-size-fits-all. In most pro audio applications, the fan noise under load is simply intolerable - you can't trick it out with Noctua fans, you can't hide the hot bits behind an acoustic partition, you're just stuck with a couple of noisy blower fans in the middle of your working environment. Lots of other pro users have similar niche needs.

The lack of maintainability is a serious issue for pro users. If something goes wrong in your iMac, you can't just order a replacement part and get back in business by tomorrow morning. A repair that would take ten minutes on a commodity box is often a lengthy process requiring specialist tools on an iMac. That's tolerable if you can afford to have a spare machine on standby, it's tolerable if you can afford to just run down to the Apple store and buy a new one, but it's a dealbreaker if (like most creative professionals) you're struggling to keep the lights on. By contrast, the last mixing console I bought was supplied with a full set of schematics; it can be completely torn down with nothing more than a PH2 screwdriver and all the PCBs and internal connectors are clearly labelled.

Apple are presenting their users with the choice between an extremely expensive and blatantly over-engineered "pro" machine, or an all-in-one that wasn't really designed for professional use in any meaningful way. There's a gaping hole in the middle of their product lineup that ignores a very large proportion of actual creative professionals.

[wkearney99]

Spot on. They've really dropped the ball on providing useful options to the production market.

[Arcanum-XIII]

To be honest, a comparably loaded workstation from HP is 5000$ with a massive discount for preorder. The difference is that you can get a lowered specced one if so you want.

By the way : high end photo light cost a lot - like the new XDR monitor, they too need to give the user confidence is the final result (color correctness is a bug one).