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Apple iMac Pro Goes on Sale December 14th (engadget.com)
Apple vowed to ship the iMac Pro in December, and it's making good on that promise. From a report: The company has confirmed that its workstation-grade all-in-one will be available on December 14th. It has yet to reveal the exact configuration options, but the $4,999 'starter' model ships with an 8-core Xeon processor, 32GB of RAM, 1TB of solid-state storage and a Radeon Vega graphics chipset with 8GB of RAM. You can option it with up to an 18-core Xeon, 128GB of RAM, a 4TB SSD and a 16GB Vega chipset, although video creator Marques Brownlee notes that you'll have to wait until the new year for that 18-core beast.
Legally run OS X.
For some folks, that's justification.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
It has 8 USB ports so I kind of look at it as $625 per port. My Mac Pro was $4800 and only has 4 USB ports, so I'd say this is a significantly better value than what I have. I'll be waiting outside the Apple Store on Thursday to pick one up.
Is it?
Xeon W-2145 - $1113
Cheapest LGA-2066 board available with 10Gb ethernet - $650
32GB DDR4 - $400
1TB 3.2GB/s PCIe SSD - $500
Radeon Vega 56 - $600
5k 27" monitor - $1300
PSU, WiFi + Bluetooth card, wireless keyboard, wireless mouse, thunderbolt card, CPU cooler, case - ~$400
Total - $4963
Seems like it's pretty much in line with how much it would cost to build the same system yourself.
No, the CPU (Xeon W-2145) alone is more expensive than your 1/5th estimate for building it yourself.
Here's a rough sketch of what you'd need to buy to match this system:
Xeon W-2145 - $1113
Cheapest LGA-2066 board available with 10Gb ethernet - $650
32GB DDR4 - $400
1TB 3.2GB/s PCIe SSD - $500
Radeon Vega 56 - $600
5k 27" monitor - $1300
PSU, WiFi + Bluetooth card, wireless keyboard, wireless mouse, thunderbolt card, CPU cooler, case - ~$400
Total - $4963
Very few people have any use for a system like this though, particularly if it's not running Windows.
I fail to see what "running Windows" has to do with the argument. It's obviously aimed at a market point that you have no knowledge of. Multiple 5K displays are most likely of use to people in moving image processing, this relatively big data needs this spec as an absolute minimum nowadays.
I doubt very many will be bought for gaming.
A Dell Precision 5720 All-in-one workstation costs $3900, has a Xeon E3-1245, a 4K 27" display, and Radeon Pro WX 7100 graphics. The video upgrade alone on the iMac is $500. Factor in the better processor and display, and they're very comparable price wise. The iMac Pro also has an A10 coprocessor. I don't think the iMac is overpriced at all, considering what you're getting. Obviously your "mission-critical" servers aren't shipping with a 5K display or a $1000 video card, and probably don't have a 1TB SSD drive either. BTW, I call BS on your 1/20th cost, unless you're buying old off-lease servers.