iMac Pro is Apple’s most powerful Mac ever

Professionals have been yearning for an update to Apple’s workstation Mac Pro for years now and finally Cupertino is giving them exactly what they wanted…well, almost.

What Apple has done is marry the workstation-like performance of the Mac Pro with the compact and slim form-factor of the iMac. Meet, the iMac Pro, Apple’s most powerful Mac ever.

Let’s start with the headline specs. The iMac Pro will feature a 27-inch 5K (5120×2880 pixel) Retina display with a brightness of 500 nits and support for the P3 colour gamut. Inside, you can spec this beast up to an Intel Xeon 18-core processor that can boost up to 4.5GHz and has up to 42MB of cache.

What’s more, you can also configure this workstation to have up to 128GB of ECC 2,666 MHz RAM and a whopping 4TB of 3GBps SSD storage. For graphics processing, the iMac Pro will feature AMD’s Vega GPUs with up to a Radeon Pro Vega 64 graphics card with 16GB of HBM2 memory.

In terms of I/O, Apple hasn’t really skimped on it either. The iMac Pro will sport four USB 3 ports, four Thunderbolt 3 ports, an SDXC card slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack and a 10Gb Ethernet port (RJ-45).

The reason Apple has managed to fit all of this horsepower into the slim iMac is thanks to their brand new thermal architecture that gives the iMac Pro 80% more cooling capacity in the same design.

Oh, and did we mention that the iMac Pro will also come in Space Gray too? Well, it does, and it also has a Space Gray Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse to go along with it.

However, it will only begin shipping in December. For all of that performance, the iMac Pro will have its prices start at USD4,999 for an 8-core Xeon CPU, Radeon Vega graphics, 32GB of ECC memory, and a 1TB SSD.

[nextpage title=”Apple also updated the iMac”]

Besides the “sneak peak” at the iMac Pro, Apple also updated the standard iMac lineup. Apple upgraded the processors for the iMacs across the board to brand new Intel Kaby Lake 7th-Generation processors.

Apple also updated the iMac’s display so it has a peak brightness of 500 nits, making it 43% brighter than the previous generation and can produce 1 billion colours. It also has support for 10-bit HEVC decoders.

On the 21.5-inch variants you can get up to a 4K Retina display, an Intel Core i7 quad-core processor with a base clock of 3.6GHz and a boost clock of 4.2GHz, a Radeon Pro 560 GPU with 4GB of video memory, 32GB of 2,400MHz DDR4 memory, and a 1TB SSD.

On the other hand, the 27-inch model can be configured up to a 5K Retina display, a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with a base clock of 4.2GHz and a boost clock of 4.5GHz, a Radeon  Pro 580 graphics card with 8GB of video memory,  64GB of 2,400MHz DDR4 memory and a 2TB SSD.

The iMac is also doing pretty well on ports. You get two Thunderbolt 3 ports, three USB C ports, an SD card reader, a 3.5mm headphone jack and an Ethernet port.

Apple positions the new iMacs as big tools for the creation of VR content. Paired with the newly announced macOS High Sierra, these new devices are supposed to be big contributors to those in the VR space.

Prices for the 21.5-inch iMac start at RM5,099 and can go up to RM14,398 with perpherals while the 27-inch variant sees a base price of RM7,999 and a price of RM24,498 for all the bells and whistles. For more information on pricing and spec details, head on over to Apple Malaysia’s website.

[nextpage title=”And the MacBooks”]

Finally, on the list of updated Mac devices comes the refreshed MacBooks. We saw a big redesign last year, so this time at WWDC 2017, Apple’s bringing the MacBooks’ processors up to speed with new 7th-generation Intel Kaby Lake chips.

The new MacBook also get 50% faster SSDs while the 15-inch MacBook Pro comes with faster standard graphics.

As far as pricing is concerned, you can pick up a base model 13-inch MacBook with a 1.2GHz Intel Core m3 processor, 8GB of 1,866MHz LPDDR3 memory, 256GB SSD and an Intel HD Graphics 615 for RM5,999. For more oomph, you can upgrade it up to an Intel Core i7 dual-core processor with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for RM8,809. Learn more about the pricing and specs here.

For the 13-inch MacBook Pro with physical keys, the base model starts at RM5,999. For that money, you get a 2.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, an Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 and 8GB of 2,133MHz LPDDR3 memory.

Want Touch Bar and Touch ID? You’ll have to add RM2,000 for the base model but for that you also get a faster Intel Core i5 processor, an Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 processor, 256GB of SSD storage and twice the number of Thunderbolt 3 ports (4).

Need a bigger screen? The base model 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and Touch ID is priced at RM10,799. For that, you get a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of 2,133MHz LPDDR3 memory, a 256GB SSD and Radeon Pro 555 graphics with 2GB of video memory.

For more information on the MacBook Pro’s pricing, head here.