Hey what is up guys, I’m back with the first impressions on the iMac pro. We were waiting for this for quite some time now. Well, okay maybe not for this one specifically, but we were waiting for a new Apple Pro desktop (we being creative professionals that use, you know Final Cut Pro and motion or just generally Mac OS 10 stuff like that), but we finally got it. So this is the iMac pro in the flesh! it’s probably looking pretty familiar to anyone who’s seen any iMac before, because on the outside it’s almost identical to any other 27-inch 5k iMac. If you paint everything dark grey or space grey that used to be silver plus a couple extra microphones, improved front facing camera and slightly improved speakers. So except minor stuff like that, but generally the main stuff like the design, the stand, the display, the bezels it’s all the same but what makes this iMac pro an iMac pro is all on the inside. I’ve had this thing here for about a week now which has been really exciting obviously. It’s been hard to not talk about it and not show it at all in the background of Instagram and stuff like that but since it’s been here, i have been editing videos on it working with the new Final Cut Pro! It’s replaced the Mac Pro that’s been sitting on my desk since 2013 and we needed that upgrade. I did say that before Apple’s new modular full desktop Mac Pro comes out sometime in 2018 that I would give iMac pro a chance.So, shout out to apple for actually getting one here to the studio and so this has been my experience so far! so this is a ten core iMac pro with 128 gigabytes of ram the sixteen gig Vega GPU and there’s a bunch of new specs. As you probably know this being somewhere in the sweet spot I guess between number of cores versus clock speed, but here are all the available specs the eight core and ten core are available early. If you’re going to go for the 14 or 18 core you’ll be waiting till early next year for it to ship. And it’s all these Intel Xeon chips and AMD Vega GPUs, so all this new workstation grade hardware like we were expecting so with all that new workstation grade hardware replacing the typical consumer parts. You kind of have to redesign the entire inside of the iMac Pro, which they did. You’ll never see it because they don’t let you get inside.There is a bigger ventilation slots on the back of the iMac Pro but the door to get inside an upgrade, any Ram even, is gone it’s a completely sealed! on upgradable machine from the spec you buy on day one so really the main way you’d know it’s an iMac Pro other than the new Space Gray is the performance.In theory that’s why people are gonna be buying iMac Pro over a regular iMac because it offers that workstation grade hardware that finally upgraded inside.
- If you’re someone like me who’s pushing a lot of big raw frames
- If you’re in Final Cut Pro
- If you do motion graphics
- If you’re pushing a lot of data around
- If you’re doing a lot of rendering this will all be faster on
A machine like this that can actually handle it and my i Mac Pro is indeed faster than a regular iMac! it shows up in synthetic benchmarks which you’d expect given the newer hardware and it also shows up in real-world Performance differences in render times like this over the long term add up to a lot of save time which is great! Where it matters and workstation parts in case you didn’t know to make a big difference seriously besides just obviously the Intel Xeon chips a hundred and twenty-eight gigs of DDR for RAM that’s absolutely ridiculous for a normal person. You already know Premiere and After Effects and Final Cut Pro will eat that. Right up it has a PCIe SSD that’s getting the 3,000 megabytes per second read and write speeds. which is nuts! Obviously, the massive CPU core is there are hyper-threading 16 gigs of video RAM on the graphics card it’s clearly a super capable machine. With the ports on the back you’re getting 4 full-size USB 3 ports and then four Thunderbolt 3 USB C ports which are good to see, along with of course your SD card slot your Gigabit Ethernet port headphone jack stuff like that. The funny thing is I think it’s really easy to just hate on the new iMac Pro because it’s very expensive and then also not upgradable at all. What kind of Pro machine isn’t upgradeable? And that’s definitely its biggest weakness for sure. But for the hardware inside and the actual specs you are getting it’s actually a fairly priced machine. I priced out a roughly equivalent PC, obviously, a lot of these parts are brand new so you can’t do it one for one but it came out to around 5100 bucks. That’s not accounting for the fact that this is all-in-one it’s a beautiful 5k display, stealth black. Obviously, it’s not a Mac and you would build a PC for different reasons and you would buy an iMac Pro. But I actually don’t think the price is that insane, so this guy has a lot of things going for it that professionals value. It just sits on your desk perfectly, quietly doesn’t make any noise through the days I’ve had it.
I like that about it. It stays pretty cool too stuffing all these workstation parts into such a small space has to be a thermal nightmare. And of course the Final Cut Pro workflow that I have, isn’t as taxing to the limits as someone using say After Effects or motion. But even still I’m pushing around these big 8k raw frames and I’m able to playback high resolution previews on the timeline smoothly in Final Cut Pro without dropping that many frames. if any at all with plugins and color correction applied so this stuff that would normally choke my Mac Pro is seeing an improvement right off the bag.I like the all-black accessories, the black keyboard, the great trackpad, even the black lightning cable that comes with it. I don’t think I’ve seen that anywhere else before so that’s pretty cool, but long story short I really like it so far, it feels like the ideal Final Cut Pro machine.The main question will be is it worth the extra money? because it’s clearly much more expensive than a normal iMac and there are other things to consider like, Will the thermal situation hold up over time? Will it stay cool? will the 18 core version be that much better than the 8 or 10 core version for certain applications?You know these are all big questions, it’s gonna take a couple more projects and some time of really putting it through its paces for a full review. But honestly, so far I’m not mad at all.
Darren Trumbler is a versatile content writer specializing in B2B technology, marketing strategies, and wellness. With a knack for breaking down complex topics into engaging, easy-to-understand narratives, Darren helps businesses communicate effectively with their audiences.
Over the years, Darren has crafted high-impact content for diverse industries, from tech startups to established enterprises, focusing on thought leadership articles, blog posts, and marketing collateral that drive results. Beyond his professional expertise, he is passionate about wellness and enjoys writing about strategies for achieving balance in work and life.
When he’s not creating compelling content, Darren can be found exploring the latest tech innovations, reading up on marketing trends, or advocating for a healthier lifestyle.
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