The iMac Pro surprise

iMac Pro. © Apple.

It came out of the blue, with no sneak leaks… so we were completely surprised when the iMac Pro was unveiled at the WWDC developers conference. This 27-inch model with a 5K display in a “space grey” shell is propelled by 8, 10 or 18-core Xeon processors (depending on the model). It also sports the Radeon Vega GPU (up to 16GB of memory), 128GB of ECC RAM, up to 4TB of SSD, 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports, and a 10 Gbit/s Ethernet. The machines will be available at the end of the year at a starting price of US$5,000 (you’ll have to be both patient and affluent). Apple says this will be the most powerful Macintosh ever built, but the company is already working on a future Mac Pro with a “modular design”, as opposed to the “closed all-in-one design” typical of iMacs.

⇨ Apple, “iMac Pro, the most powerful Mac ever, arrives this December.”

⇨ Ars Technica, “Here’s hoping the iMac Pro learns from the Mac Pro’s mistakes.”