At Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on Monday, the company introduced a new category of the iMac lineup: the iMac Pro. The upcoming desktop features AMD Radeon Pro Vega GPUs costs $4,999 and ships in December.
The crowd at the San Jose Convention Center in California was the first to meet “the fastest and most powerful Mac ever,” aimed at content creators and hardcore developers.
The traditional iMac and MacBook families also got a significant upgrade, and they both feature Radeon Pro cards.
Apple iMac Pro: Specs and features
The newest desktop by Apple has been developed under the legacy form factor of the iMac, but its internal architecture is tailored to meet the most demanding standards of performance. It features an all-new thermal design that can cool the desktop more efficiently without compromising thickness.
Speaking of which, the iMac Pro is just 8 inches thin when you consider the stand, and it weighs only 21.5 lbs. The 27-inch 5K Retina Display is 500 nits bright, and it supports billions of colors at 5120 x 2880 resolutions.
Inside, it gets even more impressive with Intel’s Xeon processors handling computing workloads and AMD’s Radeon Pro Vega GPU taking care of graphics. Both of these components were created with workstation-like standards in mind, and they can handle everything from machine learning to VR development.
Base iMac Pro models ship with an 8-core Intel Xeon chip and a Radeon Pro Vega 56 graphics processor with 8 GB of HBM2 memory. However, they can be configured with up to 18-core CPUs and Vega 64 GPUs with twice as much HBM2 memory capacity.
Memory configurations start at 32 GB of 2,666 MHz DDR4 ECC RAM and 1 TB of SSD storage. RAM can scale up to 64 and 128 GB, while storage support is configurable at 2 and 4 TB SSD as well.
The iMac Pro features four microphones, stereo speakers, and a 1080p FaceTime HD camera. The desktop supports additional screens at full native resolution, 4K UHD, and 4K through several different outputs.
Among these outputs is Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C), of which the iMac Pro has four ports. It also has four USB 3.0 ports, a headphone jack, an SDXC card slot, and a 10 GB Ethernet connector. VGA, HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort, and Thunderbolt 2 outputs are also supported with adapters sold separately.
iMac Pro 2017 Price and release date
Apple’s new iMac will launch just in time for the holiday season starting at $4,999. Of course, the highest specs will come at a price that has yet to be announced. Availability is expected in the United States, Canada, and Europe first.
The iMac Pro ships only in Space Gray and the peripherals in the box include a Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad, a Magic Mouse 2, and an optional Magic Trackpad 2. The desktop will run macOS High Sierra, launching this fall.
Source: Apple