In the mid-10s, criticism of Apple for having lost sight of Pro users – or more precisely, those users who have very high performance requirements – became increasingly louder. The Mac Pro, introduced in 2013, turned out to be a dead end because it couldn’t be expanded, even for Apple. This means the lack of a second generation because the design prevented the use of more recent CPU and GPU hardware – the cooling would no longer have been sufficient. When the company announced a fundamentally redeveloped version of the Mac Pro in spring 2017, there was still a long wait to be endured. This only appeared at the end of 2019. Apple presented another device with high computing power in December 2017. A (dark) iMac on the outside, high-end on the inside
The iMac Pro might look almost like a normal 27″ iMac from the outside, but there was space for completely different hardware inside. Apple used 8, 10, 12, 14 or even 18-core Xeon processors from Intel as well as AMD Vega graphics cards. The basic price was 5,499 euros, but could rise to over 15,000 euros in the maximum configuration. The device was clearly intended as a gap filler, there was never going to be a new edition. Apple saw the combination of Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR as more of a combination for the high-end sector.
March 2021: The end of the iMac Pro
Five years ago it was announced that the iMac Pro was about to end. They wanted to sell off remaining stock, but no longer wanted to produce new devices. A look at the range at the time shows why the role of the iMac Pro had become so difficult. M1-based Macs, which have now been around for a few months, overtook even the version with eight Xeon cores in CPU benchmarks. Things looked different when it came to graphics performance, but the device began to noticeably weaken on the CPU front.
Lots of performance in a dark aluminum housing
No new edition, Mac Studio instead – but possible comeback?
Apple had to wait again until a new, this time ARM-based Mac Pro could be released, but this time it wasn’t a new iMac Pro, but the Mac Studio. Incidentally, the era of 27″ iMacs did not end with the iMac Pro, but with the regular model. This was left in the range for a year longer and the series was only removed in March 2022. One demand has never stopped since then: Apple should please offer an iMac with a larger display again! This could possibly even become a reality in the coming months, because traces could be found in the code that indicate a comeback.
