Intel iMac Pro in the wild

Hardware
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The past couple of days I’ve been at the Grand Canyon History Symposium. The guy they hired to run all the AV stuff had a very nice setup, and at the center of it was a Space Gray 27” iMac Pro. So, folks are still obviously getting good use out of them. While a lot of us are satisfied with the Mac Studio + Studio Display combo, this is probably a use case where there is a market for a powerful all-in-one with a big screen.

Also, I have to say, in contrast to almost every other conference I’ve been to, this event had almost no AV problems. He did a kick-ass job.

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They’ve obviously made a choice, but you’d think that a 27” to 30” all in one would go gangbusters.

They must have data we don’t.

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A few years ago I read that 80% of Macs sold are laptops. Maybe they feel the 24”, Mini, and Studio are enough?

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The iMac Pro was so so good.

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I loved my iMac Pro, but I mostly bought it because the Studio Display (a retina standalone monitor) didn’t exist. Now that it exists, I’m not sure I’d buy an iMac Pro replacement. I like the computer being separate from the screen.

I think the role could be occupied by an M* Pro iMac, though.

One thing I will add that feels related is that I’m firmly in the desktop-laptop combo again — the laptop in clamshell for desktop use. I’d prefer two separate machines — a tiny portable laptop and a very powerful desktop — but Apple needs a better story for sharing data between Macs. iCloud Drive ain’t it. I want a shared environment where I don’t have to think and it’s all just there, including databases, docker containers, all my apps and their credentials, all the font files, etc. That’s the dream.

I think, without this setup, there are not that many compelling reasons to have a separate desktop at the moment for many pros, especially since the laptops with the Max chips are so powerful.

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Any research into syncing desktop and shell environments idempotently would also pay off in making Xcode developer tools easier to rebuild and share. git + docker + ansible with a shiny UI and auto sync/provision, essentially.

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Yeah. I mean, I’m aware the average user could do it themselves, but the mere thought of spending that much time putting such a system together makes me shrivel up. All that time is better spent on doing the work, and if that means just one machine, so be it.

Edit: not necessarily the average user, but the average determined developer.

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