Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Most Powerful iMac Pro Now Costs $15,927 (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on from the here-comes-the-money dept.

Apple recently updated the upgrade options for the iMac Pro, and getting the very best will cost you. A baseline model will cost you just under $5,000, and maxing out the hardware to absurd heights runs a whopping $15,927. An anonymous reader writes: The most expensive possible upgrade is a $5,200 charge for upgrading the RAM from 32GB to a startling 256GB. Other addons include an additional $700 for a 16GB Radeon video card and $2,400 for a 2.3 Ghz Intel processor with 18 cores. Almost $16,000 is a lot of money for a computer, especially one so overpowered that there are very few reasonable applications of its hardware. Most people will never need more than 16GB of RAM to play video games, and 32-64GB will take care of most video editing and 3D modeling tasks. With 256GB of RAM, you could run advanced AI processes or lease computing power to other people.

106 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. What is this, MacDot? by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

    News for Appleheads, stuff that costs a shit ton of money.

    --
    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    1. Re: What is this, MacDot? by cayenne8 · · Score: 1

      ...reminds me, I need to go buy my PowerBall tickets for the drawing tomorrow evening.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  2. Poor article... by enriquevagu · · Score: 2

    Most people will never need more than 16GB of RAM to play video games Sounds familiar to me. No comments, other than the famous "640K ought to be enough for anybody." is often attributed erroneously to Bill Gates.

    With 256GB of RAM, you could run advanced AI processes or lease computing power to other people.. Of course, because both tasks are memory-bound, and not compute-bound /sarcasm.

    1. Re:Poor article... by Immerman · · Score: 2

      640k *was* enough for anyone, at the time the arbitrary limit was created. The problem was that that it was a difficult-to-circumvent limitation in an an operating system that migrated across various platforms for almost two decades, and couldn't be removed without breaking backwards compatibility. And Moore's law had already been in full force for more than a decade when the first version of DOS was released, so there was little excuse for such an assumption. And while there's very little evidence that Gates ever made such a statement, the fact that Windows XP was similarly handicapped at the ~3.5GB boundary suggests a recurring theme of disregard for the rate of hardware advancement.

      Meanwhile, 256GB in an iMac is just that. It's something you're paying for *today*, to what end? There are projects that need that sort of memory, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that very few (if any) such projects are going to be running on a grossly overpriced all-in-one iMac. Which leaves, what? Artists that want to be able to hold 10minutes of uncompressed 4k UHD content in RAM all at once?

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    2. Re:Poor article... by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      And while there's very little evidence that Gates ever made such a statement, the fact that Windows XP was similarly handicapped at the ~3.5GB boundary suggests a recurring theme of disregard for the rate of hardware advancement.

      The ~3.5GB boundary was because of a technical limitation. 32-bit machines can address memory up to 4GB. XP couldn't handle virtual memory space (initially at least, maybe after one of the service packs). And some of that 4GB space was reserved for drivers.

      They could have handled the issue through several ways, but those all imposed costs on people with under 4GB of space. There are reasons why that business decision was made.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    3. Re:Poor article... by nojayuk · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I saw a comment on a hardware hacking blog a few years ago about a musician who used a repurposed server as his composing workstation. He wrote music for films, TV shows, entertainment and promotional work for a well-paid living.

      His workstation/server had four 8-core Xeons so he could composite multiple channels of music in real-time and 512GB of RAM so he could keep several hundred GB of music samples in RAM as he worked. He reckoned the server paid for itself in time saved and delivery-to-customer scheduling with the first two projects. He had used high-end Apple kit before he moved to this solution but nothing out of Cupertino could match what he had built himself.

    4. Re:Poor article... by dryeo · · Score: 1

      That's true for the original IBM PC as well. The processor could only address 1MB and drivers, video memory etc needed some of that address space.
      These limits all seemed fine at the time as maxing out memory was expensive.
      Perhaps in a decade we'll be bitching about the 16PB limit or whatever it is.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    5. Re:Poor article... by rickb928 · · Score: 2

      I used to do desktop field service, and had a client that actually paid us to handle warranty work on their Dell workstations. One such machine had 64MB RAM (oh yeah!), back in the Windows 98 days, and the client being a research outfit, they wanted to do serious statistical analysis, so the RAM was critical. The software vendor made it mandatory - 64mb. No less.

      They had all kinds of problems with that workstation form the beginning, and called us in to figure out why only 48MB of RAM was shown as available, despite both the configuration showing 64MB and even Windows claimed it to be so.

      Well, My memtest CD disagreed, not because it couldn't count it, per se, but because while it recognized the config, it would not count past 48MB, and testing with a forced config got errors above 48MB. We called Dell. Clearly a big problem, new motherboard or whatever, and yes we had shuffled RAM mocules all around.

      The truth resulted in a series of uncomfortable calls with Dell engineers. Despite being advertised as able to access 64MB of RAM the motherboard actually did not implement the address lines necessary to go above 48MB. What? A bit of math confirmed that was possible. Why? Turns out the chipset wasn't passing tests, so they actually built and shipped these, figuring no users would actually order 64MB, and someone somewhere calculated that none would figure it out. Dear Lord, it's Miniscribe hard drives all the way down.

      They did fix the chipset (that lie extended to the manufacturer, 'I&^%$', of course) and replaced the board, and presto, 64MB RAM. And there were rumors of Windows patches, which I doubted. Clearly iMacs will address as much RAM as they are advertised to do.

      But back then, that motherboard was sold hand over fist, and no recall was ever noted. Dell just sent us an updated one, having offered both a refund and complete replacement when the problem was solved. A month later we find out that there were boards out there with bad capacitors, and that was a few years fixing...

      Trust no one. I wonder it memtest can be run on an iMac...

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    6. Re:Poor article... by cayenne8 · · Score: 1

      ...but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that very few (if any) such projects are going to be running on a grossly overpriced all-in-one iMac.

      Well, depends on what you're working on.

      If you are working say, on 4K RAW video, in Davinci Resolve, and have some serious color grades on there, doing some sound work, AND...using Fusion in there too doing basically VFX....well, that can bog a machine down pretty badly if you don't have something pretty beefy.

      Hell, even with just HD video, RAW or not, adding color grades and effects can bog down most mortal computer systems...

      And I'll admit, on this new spec iMac Pro, I've not done the hardware comparison, but I think on the first round of iMac pro, if you spec'ed out the type of RAM used, the GPU and other actual components and tried to build a regular PC with same or almost the same (not cheap-o) components, the price difference really wasn't that much, in a few cases I'd see the mac was actually a couple dollars less that a workstation built to the same hardware standards?

      Hmm...I wondering what the new Mac Pro will come with standard and with options...think it'll hit the $20K mark maxed out?

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    7. Re:Poor article... by gravewax · · Score: 1

      ~3.5GB limitation had nothing to do with disregard to hardware advancement, it was purely a limitation of what could be addressed in 32 bits.

    8. Re:Poor article... by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Also I want to point out on How stupid it is to point out on the max cost of the product, when you go and select the top of everything in the customize bucket.
      Most people won't need the max spec, but the system is designed to handle the max spec, for that small handful of people who need it.
      For most Professional that 15k investment is probably better served with getting a 3k system every 5 years for 25 years.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    9. Re:Poor article... by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      1995 called, they want their PAE back

    10. Re:Poor article... by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      I know it's 20 years ago, but there are some problems with this: I'm guessing you're talking about Windows 95, because 64Mb was a fairly normal amount of memory when Windows 98 was released. I have personal experience of walking through a major corporation's offices in 1999 where virtually every computer had 64Mb, and we thought that was rather odd and would make it harder for us to provide the application we wanted to provide for them because it was considered on the low end, even then.

      Also a missing address line wouldn't result in 48Mb being available, but 32Mb.

      Windows 95... well, back then I recall 8Mb was considered the bare minimum, with 16Mb being the real minimum amount of memory needed to run it. Microsoft recommended half these amounts, but I know it was a dog in 8Mb. Windows 98 had an official minimum requirement of 16Mb of RAM, you can probably guess where this is going.

      Anyway, sorry, I'm being pedantic. You're probably right about the overall arch of the story, that a motherboard didn't support the amount of memory it claimed on the box, but in practice that's not unusual. That's why there are usually "Rev. 2" motherboards, motherboards with bug fixes. Dell et al usually built a large number and find out it's too late to fix them when the bug is revealed, and their choice are "Send them out and offer free upgrades to anyone encountering the bug" or "Spend money destroying motherboards that most people will find usable."

      I've heard worse. The worst was the Commodore 64's. Late in the development process they discovered a bug relating to the interaction of the serial chip used to communicate with disk drives, the video chip, and the processor, which meant that the chip wouldn't talk to disk drives at the normal speed without losing data.

      Rather than going the "Get it out now and we'll ship a dongle for those who need it and fix it in the next motherboard" (which would have been relatively easy), they just reduced the speed of the serial port to a few tens of bytes a second, and built that into the spec for successive motherboards, so meaning every Commodore 64 had the same problem. That's why disk drives were chronically slow on the C64: the VIC 20, which didn't have as much memory (and so didn't need a fast disk drive) didn't have the problem. And the C64 loaded data from disk slower than the Sinclair computers loaded data from tape.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    11. Re: Poor article... by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      Well, it may have been W4W...a long time ago...

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    12. Re:Poor article... by edtice1559 · · Score: 1

      With 32-bits you can address up to 4GB of RAM. However, operating systems like to provide features such as shared memory and memory-mapped I/O. For these to work seamlessly and provide the intended convenience for application developers, the OS has to make them *look* like regular memory access. Microsoft did something relatively easy with Windows and made the top half of the address space reserved for these purposes. When machines with more than 2GB started appearing, Windows added features to take advantage of the RAM. By the time more than 2GB was common, 64-bit processors were also common.

    13. Re: Poor article... by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      I recall vividly when WordPerfect was updated and perceived as terribly slow. The official responses referred to the dev team having 64MB of RAM, 'ran fine'... Most secretaries had machines with 16MB, not at all uncommon for 486 machines. 64MB was never common for my small business customers.

      The Dell bug started with missing address lines, though by itself that's not the problem, clearly. This would have been seeing 1992, so yes, W4WG... Which I loved.

      I never saw anything back then with GB RAM, modules typically were 16MB Max. These were 72 pin SIMMs, and I doubt we got 32MB modules, though at 128MB the math changes. I hope it really wasn't a 128/64 mismatch...

      But the software problem was real. I was on the carpet for installing it wrong until screenshot after screenshot confirmed it was ok. A nasty couple of weeks.

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    14. Re:Poor article... by EvilSS · · Score: 1

      Most people will never need more than 16GB of RAM to play video games

      Not to mention no one* is buying these for playing games in the first place. Plus the upgrades are available for people who think they have workloads that require it. They are OPTIONAL. I can spec out a $90,000 server blade as well. Doesn't mean I spend $90K every time I order a new blade.

      *Yes, I know some idiot will, but overall, no one is buying them for games!

      --
      I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
    15. Re:Poor article... by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      Came here to say the same...mod parent up.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    16. Re:Poor article... by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      That small handful of people who need it would get way more value from a Threadripper box, which absolutely demolishes Intel's 18 core part for less money, and has a stupidly large number of PCI lanes.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    17. Re:Poor article... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      The address line thing may have been that it didn't support 128MB total address space, so stuff like the chipset and PCI devices got mapped into the 64MB address space.

      Same thing happened when machines started hitting 4GB of RAM, but only showed up 3.5GB due to 32bit address limits.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    18. Re:Poor article... by mjwx · · Score: 1

      Most people will never need more than 16GB of RAM to play video games Sounds familiar to me. No comments, other than the famous "640K ought to be enough for anybody." is often attributed erroneously to Bill Gates.

      With 256GB of RAM, you could run advanced AI processes or lease computing power to other people.. Of course, because both tasks are memory-bound, and not compute-bound /sarcasm.

      The average user will not need 16 GB in the near future. Even gamers aren't RAM limited, my 12 GB is enough to make my graphics card the bottleneck.

      I suspect they won't require 16 GB as a recommended amount for some time yet. We've been on 4GB for a while and the average user still isn't utilising all of that.

      The only people who need a lot of RAM are people who are running very RAM intensive programs like databases, image processing, virtualisation, et al. where you need to keep huge volumes of data in memory. AI processes not so much as they are usually processes, not huge datasets.

      However if you need to do any of that, you're absolutely daft to be buying a Mac when you can get a Dell (or insert other brand) x64 server of similar spec for half the cost, let alone build your own custom PC for less. Even the HP Z workstations top out at $8,000 and if anything goes wrong with that, HP comes to you.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    19. Re:Poor article... by mjwx · · Score: 1

      I saw a comment on a hardware hacking blog a few years ago about a musician who used a repurposed server as his composing workstation. He wrote music for films, TV shows, entertainment and promotional work for a well-paid living.

      His workstation/server had four 8-core Xeons so he could composite multiple channels of music in real-time and 512GB of RAM so he could keep several hundred GB of music samples in RAM as he worked. He reckoned the server paid for itself in time saved and delivery-to-customer scheduling with the first two projects. He had used high-end Apple kit before he moved to this solution but nothing out of Cupertino could match what he had built himself.

      This.

      I used to work for Geoscience and Geospatial companies. This is where you're trying to manipulate images in the 10's of gigabyte ranges (back in 2009). Only the HP and Sun workstations could even hope to match what you could custom build for the GIS and Remote Sensing analysts and the Sun ones only ran Solaris or Linux IIRC and both options were hideously expensive and I think they top out at $8000 odd. It was worth it to custom build as if a part broke, you'd just go buy a new one off the shelf (the time cost of waiting for an onsite repair was worth way more than $500). You could even buy tower case servers from Dell et al. and shove a graphics card in them. When you're charging out at $300+ an hour, this is entirely worth it, you can get a lot of server for $10,000... let alone $16,000.

      This Apple workstation isn't for people who work, it's for people who have more money than sense. Then again, that pretty much sums up the entire Apple range so I'll give Cupertino points for consistency.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    20. Re:Poor article... by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      Everyone come back here in 3 years on this date, and then we'll evaluate if 16GB of RAM is enough!

      Heck, go back 2.5 years and read that 16 GB isn't enough: https://apple.slashdot.org/story/16/10/28/2010202/new-macbook-pros-max-out-at-16gb-ram-due-to-battery-life-concerns

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  3. Still cheaper than an Apple Lisa by xack · · Score: 1

    When adjusted for inflation the Lisa costs more. 256 GB ram will be in celeron laptops a few decades from now.

    1. Re:Still cheaper than an Apple Lisa by chrism238 · · Score: 1

      ....256 GB ram will be in celeron laptops a few decades from now.

      A few decades? If Celerons can ever access all of 256GB, I'd predict just 5 years.

    2. Re:Still cheaper than an Apple Lisa by Strider- · · Score: 1

      Never mind the IIfx... When introduced in 1990, it cost $9000 to $12,000. That's $17,500 to $23,000 or so in today's dollars.

      --
      ...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
    3. Re:Still cheaper than an Apple Lisa by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      When My coworker bought a Lisa back in '84, it was $10000...$24,328.78 today according to http://www.in2013dollars.com/u...

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
  4. 16GB should be enough for anybody! by slipped_bit · · Score: 1

    Just putting this here for posterity.

    1. Re:16GB should be enough for anybody! by lowen · · Score: 1

      Hmm, and a couple of years ago I priced out a Dell Precision workstation with 1TB of RAM. The 1TB RAM alone listed at around $38,000.

    2. Re:16GB should be enough for anybody! by jellomizer · · Score: 2

      I already use 32gigs on my laptop, for my servers I am happy with 128gigs.

      Now why so much where we could had nearly the same type of work 20 years ago with 1/1000 of the resource?

      While there is some bloat, there is the annoying factor of security being a big concern, Back 20 years ago, shared memory was common, no sandboxes, if you keep on moving your pointer values you will finally run into some other line of ram for an other system. Today we have sandboxes and virtualization, for added levels of protection, to make sure App 1 will not overwrite App 2.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    3. Re:16GB should be enough for anybody! by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Back 20 years ago, shared memory was common, no sandboxes, if you keep on moving your pointer values you will finally run into some other line of ram for an other system. Today we have sandboxes and virtualization, for added levels of protection, to make sure App 1 will not overwrite App 2.
      On windows or Mac OS ... not on unix or anything else with an MMU.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  5. Expensive is relative by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Informative

    If your time is worth hundreds of dollars per hour, then this purchase becomes justifiable if it can save you a sufficient number of hours. I don't think that there are that many people who will see significant improvements from maxing this thing out. About half of the cost is maxing out the RAM and using the largest internal SSD possible. You can save considerably by avoiding the Apple tax and installing your own RAM upgrade and you've probably already got an external RAID setup for storage if you're in the market for this kind of machine. The $2,400 for the extra 10 cores is probably the only thing that most people would want/need to touch and I expect that over a few years of use, it's likely to justify its cost.

    1. Re: Expensive is relative by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I use MacOS everyday and it is steaming pile of shit. I have been a Mac user for 25 years and a MacOS developer for 10 years. Sure, I like the UI, but the OS is dying on the vine thanks to Apple. At this point, the Mac is just a platform for developing iOS applications. That is its only purpose to Apple.

      This is the company that removed sub-pixel rendering because it was too hard for them, yet Microsoft has no problem with it. Are the people in Cupertino not that smart? Now every non-Retina monitor has blurry text. The logging changes are a mess, the differences between os_log and NSLog.

      Apple, one step forward, two steps back.

    2. Re:Expensive is relative by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      Even if the speed merely lets you continue your workflow without distracting delay, keeping the creative process going unabated...

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    3. Re:Expensive is relative by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      Server iMac.

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    4. Re:Expensive is relative by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      For most people maxing everything is going to be a waste of money.
      You may need to Max out on RAM, or get a Top video card, But maxing everything is just Luxary and bragging rights, and nearly every professional will not be fully utilizing everything, as every professional has their specialty and uses the computer differently.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  6. Sometimes, too much is a good thing by Miles_O'Toole · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sixteen grand for a machine like this is still dirt cheap for a high end animation studio like Pixar or Ghibli.

    --
    Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
    1. Re:Sometimes, too much is a good thing by Crash+Dummy+Redux · · Score: 2

      Ten years ago it would cost $20K for a fully stocked Mac Pro and two 30" Apple Cinema monitors.

    2. Re:Sometimes, too much is a good thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      A high end animation studio involves rooms and rooms full of racks and racks of high performance CPUs ( not GPUs , mind you ).

      I took a tour of one of Pixar's render farms and it was almost 15000 square feet of AMD servers.

      You're not getting that for 16 grand, even if it is AMD stuff.

    3. Re:Sometimes, too much is a good thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Ten years ago it would cost $20K for a fully stocked Mac Pro and two 30" Apple Cinema monitors.

      Or $599.99 for an equivalent windows system.

    4. Re:Sometimes, too much is a good thing by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Pixar never used Macs for animation or rendering

      There actually used to be MacRenderMan. I'd be surprised if they never used it for anything.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    5. Re:Sometimes, too much is a good thing by Megane · · Score: 2

      But you could upgrade them two years later without throwing away your whole computer and a large LCD monitor.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
    6. Re:Sometimes, too much is a good thing by ikhider · · Score: 1

      But I know for a fact that high-end studios like Lucasfilm and the ones who did Aquaman, among others, use Linux as the operating system. Big production studios use Linux. All that money is used for computing power instead of DRM. Now for more modest production studios, it used to be Mac and Windows. However, now the likes of DaVinci Resolve and Lightworks runs just fine on Linux whether you have an AMD Graphics card or Nvidea. If you are into 'Free as in Freedom' and wish to Stallmanize, you can always run Blender or Cinlerra for audio/video editing. Other options are Flowblade, Shotcut, and Openshot. Now what is video without pro audio production? Well you got Ardour, Mixbus and Reaper (Linux native or WINE powered) running smooth. If you need plugins for your audio, buddy, Carla and Wine make most of those Windows/Mac plugins give Windows and Mac a run for their money. Not to mention that Linux -based plugins like x42 and Linus Studio Plugins are excellent. Excellent. EXCELLENT. By the way, Reaper and Ardour/Mixbus can import/export video at resolutions desired, with your audio tweaked and soundtrack scored picture perfect. The gap is closing.

      --
      "SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
  7. 32GB useful for dev by guruevi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wouldn't say 32-64GB is too much for some of those tasks, CAD and the like could easily spike 128GB with modern systems. The RAM is just an option because the Intel processor is designed for servers/workstations and simply allows you to. It's also useful if you have a rig of GPU's, which this iMac is capable of powering a number of eGPU systems so for very remote circumstances I can see it being useful.

    In comparison, a Dell workstation can run you a lot higher, the CPU and RAM being the primary cost drivers, one of those Xeons by itself can cost upwards of $10k on the street.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    1. Re:32GB useful for dev by DigiShaman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Most RAM these days is used by the web browser; specifically if you've got multiple windows and tabs open at the same time. Games by contrast, can get away easily with 8GB. Ditto for most CAD files.

      I have a wife that does a lot of research online. Trust me, 16GB isn't enough regardless of being Firefox or Chrome.

      Fucking browser bloat!!!!

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    2. Re: 32GB useful for dev by DigiShaman · · Score: 2

      I get the humorous innuendo jokes. But seriously; she's performing eCommerce work, researching for home-schooling, development, and other stuff. A stay-at-home mom that's also internet savvy is the stuff of PC nightmares.

      I originally built that machine for myself about 5 years go purely for high-end gaming. Life priorities change, and my wife effectively owns that computer for her own. It's ok, I don't have time for gaming anymore, and what computing I do is at work or on a laptop.

      I'm being dead serious when I say that the amount of web browsing activity has pushed that computers CPU and RAM harder than gaming. The only component that got a major workout from gaming in fact was really the Video Card (GPU).

      If I'm going to replace the PC, it's going to get 32....maybe 64GB of RAM.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    3. Re:32GB useful for dev by Sarten-X · · Score: 2

      This is precisely the point.

      If your professional workload needs a lot of RAM, Apple will sell you a system for it. They're not going to question why or say "Gee, that's a lot." They'll just put in the higher-end components and send it with a bill. What it's used for is up to the customer.

      You want to edit 4K video with a huge RAM-backed cache? This will do it.

      You want to run 50 VMs to test your shiny new software? This will do it.

      You want to take advantage of your newly-minted CTO's "upgrade everything!" drive before he gets beaten down by the penny-pinching board and you don't see any more upgrade funding until the Lions win the Super Bowl? This will do it.

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    4. Re:32GB useful for dev by aaarrrgggh · · Score: 1

      With BIM we easily max out 64GB when working with point clouds.

    5. Re:32GB useful for dev by Penguinisto · · Score: 1

      I don't see RAM being as big of a factor as CPU and/or GPU capacity. A full-on CG render (still-frame or animation sequence) is among the most taxing (depending on settings and resolution, natch), and can swallow your CPU (or GPU) whole for hours on end if you let it. Maxing cores and going 4-way(or higher) SLI/Crossfire on the CPU and GPU fronts (respectively) will give you more love for your buck in the CG world, so long as your software and OS (and modules/drivers) can keep up with the extra horsepower.

      Now if this bad boy had two 18-core Intel CPUs and 4 of those 16GB Radeons rigged for Crossfire? You could still get by just fine with 64GB of RAM, and not even notice (I doubt that I'd turn down the rig in TFA or the extra RAM, though.)

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    6. Re:32GB useful for dev by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

      You call it browser bloat, but really it's javascript librairies bloat and images bloat. Nothing else on the web can waste CPU and RAM as fast as those two things.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    7. Re: 32GB useful for dev by Pascoea · · Score: 1

      I'm being dead serious when I say that the amount of web browsing activity has pushed that computers CPU and RAM harder than gaming.

      You're spot on. Even past the porno jokes, Chrome is an absolute hog, and I'm terrible about closing browser windows and/or rebooting my computer. It's pretty ridiculous that a 16GB with an i5 is overtaxed from browsing the Internet.

    8. Re:32GB useful for dev by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      It's browser bloat. It's not as if the web pages you're downloading are gigabytes in size, otherwise you'd use all your cellphone's data allowance in five pages.

      Browsers like to cache enormous amounts of data, and that's where it starts getting really ugly. There's a good chance the entire page you're reading right now is stored in part as a giant bitmap so that your browser can scroll it without having to redraw it in real time. And if you think that's odd, it gets worse, because even if it isn't, the chances are it's storing large numbers of bitmaps containing rendered versions of parts of the page.

      Bitmaps aren't the only ways browsers use monstrous amounts of memory, but they're an easy to explain part of it.

      That said, there's some stupid shit Javascript provides that encourages pages to leak memory. Closures are notorious for being difficult to garbage collect - if jQuery's waiting for an AJAX call that never comes, it'll have a link somewhere to the function that's supposed to accept the response, plus the entire context of the thing that called it, indefinitely.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    9. Re:32GB useful for dev by Pascoea · · Score: 1

      and you don't see any more upgrade funding until the Lions win the Super Bowl

      Wait, all my Lions fan buddies are CONVINCED that is going to happen any year now. Any. Year. Now.

      Go Pack!

    10. Re: 32GB useful for dev by IWantMoreSpamPlease · · Score: 1

      I find this interesting. I run Cent Browser at home (A fork of Chrome) and with 25 tabs open (just counted them) Cent, and all its sub processes, eats up 1.5 Gigs of RAM.
      Now, I have 32GB (ECC DDR3) of memory in my system, so I don't notice, but you are not the only one complaining of high RAM usage from a browser.

      Now, I am totaling the memory usage from Resource manager...are you calculating it is a different way perhaps?

      --
      So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
    11. Re: 32GB useful for dev by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Shamefully, it's Windows 10. And Windows is the worst OS to be using for security. But, it does have AV (BitDefender), and surprisingly works well. The majority of RAM is consumed by the browser processes. It's not uncommon for me to use the computer only to find it slow with the HDD very active from paging out to disk; and that's with an SSD. Sure enough, about 98% of the memory is used per Task Manager. The good news about Windows 10 is that it will use RAM compression before it pages out. So for there to be any HDD activity means tasks ought to be closed ASAP to free up resources.

      Between the processes and tabs, I'd say on average about 200 web pages open. Insanity, I know! But that's how it goes.

      I really need to get her moved over to Brave like I use. It blocks ads really well which should in theory reduce RAM and CPU usage in addition to being more secure (because it's the Ad servers that get hacked and serve drive-by-malware).

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    12. Re: 32GB useful for dev by yes-but-no · · Score: 1

      Best is to limit the number of open tabs/windows by closing them. If you didn't use it in the last say 1 hour or say 4 hours, just close it. The content is anyway available in the remote server (likely in its memory). The browser code hits lot of algorithmic complexity issues when too many tabs are open; things like shared locks waiting etc - grinding CPU to halt, hitting too much disk rotations; Also remote webserver's adware/malware can be hitting the cpu/disk/ram - so just close the tab. And these unnecessary activities can also trash the cpu cache reducing performance.

  8. Almost enough RAM by dmatos · · Score: 1

    . . . that Chrome won't eat it all.

    --

    It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
    --Scott Adams
    1. Re:Almost enough RAM by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      Now that's just crazy talk.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
  9. You can upgrade the RAM yourself, but expensive by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    You don't have to pay Apple's prices to upgrade RAM, you can buy the chips yourself. The process to get to the ram slots is somewhat involved, but you can also just have Apple install the ram you bring them.

    The thing is the RAM the iMac Pro uses is not cheap (2666MHz DDR4 ECC / PC4-21300), so you'll be paying a lot regardless of the path you take. For instance an iFixit RAM upgrade kit to 128GB is $2,000.00. To reach 265GB you'll need four 64GB memory chips... and probably best not to use the cheapest ones. Crucial does not even list chips that will work with the iMac Pro...

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:You can upgrade the RAM yourself, but expensive by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      AIO designs are a crime against humanity. You can't clean dust from them easily or at all. Upgrades a giant PITA even for the most experienced DIYer. And you're paying for the proprietary design layout.

      If you're going to be spending that much money, build a PC and run Linux if you must. But holy shit, I'd rather see you donate your money to a non-profit cause than to Apple's pocket book.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    2. Re:You can upgrade the RAM yourself, but expensive by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

      But holy shit, I'd rather see you donate your money to a non-profit cause than to Apple's Pocket Book.

      Oh, did Apple release a new laptop?

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    3. Re:You can upgrade the RAM yourself, but expensive by madisoncomputers · · Score: 1

      yea upgrade your mac yourself and see what happens ..most imacs these days ram and ssd are soldiered on and even cracking case to clean it ..voids apple service plans .. tons of youtube videos on it

    4. Re:You can upgrade the RAM yourself, but expensive by Trashman · · Score: 1

      yea upgrade your mac yourself and see what happens ..most imacs these days ram and ssd are soldiered on and even cracking case to clean it ..voids apple service plans .. tons of youtube videos on it

      The Mac Pro, iMac Pro, and Mac Mini are user serviceable. The other models, not so much.

      --
      Do not read this .sig
  10. My two Mac Pros 5,1s are still chugging along by sandbagger · · Score: 1

    48 Gigs of RAM and room for eight hard drives plus SSD raid card internally et cetera makes these a great option still and sadly the only option. The future will be what it is. Likely Ubuntu servers for the drives if Apple can't get their heads out of the sand and with no value added for the rest of the system, well, the main workstations / laptops can be anything.

    Hey, Apple, the point of a walled garden is to make the garden nice. You're at the point where you've stopped even maintaining the walls. I'm not your largest customer but I recommend a lot. When I go, the recommendations go with me.

    --
    ---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
  11. There's a good reason to max out internal storage by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    I work with a lot go photo and video stuff, it's really nice to have internal storage be as large as possible to hold large projects, then when I'm done I can save them off to traditional larger external spinning discs.

    Every now and then I look into faster external RAID arrays but that itself is a very expensive option and can be kind of fragile.

    Having a lot of internal storage also saves you time in that you don't have to be as picky in cleaning out your system from time to time. I fought for way too long with a laptop that was always too close to the edge of available hard drive space, which was really annoying.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  12. One letter: R by stuff-n-things · · Score: 2

    As in the statistics system. I deal with data scientist that do spend $16k+ per week on data modeling and forecasting at AWS. With that expense, it's should be easy to justify that desktop. But they'd complain about only 18 cores.

  13. Workstations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Well, Pixar would be using these as workstations, not rendering nodes, right?

    When my friend worked at a pre-press facility for a few years, their standard practice was to buy everyone doing graphics work machines with the RAM maxxed out, or nearly so. It was just too much hassle to go around and upgrade them later, and nobody complained about having too little but nearly everyone complained about not having enough.

  14. Incorrect by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    Apple's been shitting the bed on cooling solutions and just jamming more powerful hardware into their passively cooled units.

    The iMac pro has an excellent cooling system with two huge fans (hint: fans are not passive), it's extremely quiet and does a great job keeping the system cool.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  15. I double people would spend $16K for video games by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

    If you are maxing out a iMac Pro at $16K, I doubt you'd be spending it on playing video games. Sadly this is really the only Apple that professional video editors or animators can use right now.

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  16. Tech support is expensive by goombah99 · · Score: 1

    When I have a project large enough to support a tech support then I buy linux machines cause they can be cheaper than macs.

        But when I have to do my own or I'm using the interface I buy macs. Trying to keep a linux boxed patched and all the ports closed takes expertise to be confident it was done right. Getting hacked one time on a linux box for me was so expensive it killed a multi-year project.
    The premium to get a powerful mac is pretty cheap compared to an employee recruitment, retention, and total compensation

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
  17. Dust is not much of an issue by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    You can't clean dust from them easily or at all

    Do you need to though? With a wholly vertical design there's really not much of a way for dust to build up. It gets flushed out the system by the fans and doesn't really have anywhere to collect the way it would with a flat motherboard and/or case design that has a lot of area at the bottom to collect dust.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  18. Re:Slow withouth propper cooling by damnbunni · · Score: 1

    The last Power Mac came out 14 years ago.

    And the problem with it wasn't lack of cooling, it's that when it gets old the cooling system leaks.

  19. Let's do some basic math my friends!!! by v1s10nary · · Score: 1

    Why do I hate Apple so much? Because they are literally raping their fanboy customers. Let's do a comparative breakdown of this so-called "$16k Build" based on NewEgg's prices: -256GB DDR4 RAM: Around $1,000 -16GB GPU (Radeon VII): $700 -18-core Intel CPU (Intel i9 9980XE): $2,000 -1TB SSD and 8TB HDD: Around $300 -Other components (case, motherboard, fans, etc.): Around $1,000 -28" 4k monitor (good brand): Around $500 .... At most, that's $5,500 in hardware (and that's WITHOUT the enormous discount Apple is getting). Even if you DOUBLE the hardware cost to account for a decent profit margin/assembly cost/distribution cost/proprietary OS, that's still not even close to the $16,000 price tag. You would be better off buying 32 Supreme bricks for $500 each (https://www.ebay.com/itm/DS-New-Supreme-Brick-New-York-F-W-2016-FW16-Box-Logo-100-AUTHENTIC-/263035238535).

    --
    "The cause of fear is ignorance."
    1. Re:Let's do some basic math my friends!!! by gabebear · · Score: 1

      A physically larger comparable PC that is comparable in speed to the iMac will start around $10K, not $5K.

      256GB 2666 DDR4 (64x4) is over $2,000 (not $1,000), and for ECC sodimms this goes up to over $6,000.

      The Intel i9 9980XE doesn’t support 256MB or RAM. A 18-Core 2.3 GHz Intel Xeon W is $3,000.

      28" 5k monitor (good brand): Around $1200 (not $500)

    2. Re:Let's do some basic math my friends!!! by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Why do I hate Apple so much?

      Did you ever have a Mac?
      Or an iPad?
      Or an iPhone?

      See ... so why do you hate them? If you have mental problems please seek counseling instead of going postal.

      At Your Service

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    3. Re:Let's do some basic math my friends!!! by v1s10nary · · Score: 1

      Why do I hate Apple so much?

      Did you ever have a Mac?
      Or an iPad?
      Or an iPhone?

      See ... so why do you hate them? If you have mental problems please seek counseling instead of going postal.

      At Your Service

      Yes, I've had several iPhones and even a MacBook at one point. The issue with Apple is that they now push the illusion of selling a "luxury" product and use that as an excuse to drastically overcharge consumers. A computer is a productivity device- it's value is purely defined by it's ability to compute. 10-20 years ago the high cost could be rationalized by Apple's proprietary OS, but Windows now dominates the workstation OS market and is a far better option.

      If Gucci started selling laptops with last-gen i3's and 4GB RAM, would you buy them for $2,000 just because they have the Gucci logo on them??

      --
      "The cause of fear is ignorance."
  20. FFS by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

    > Most people will never need more than 16GB of RAM to play video games, and 32-64GB will take care of most video editing and 3D modeling tasks. With 256GB of RAM, you could run advanced AI processes

    AI, Games and 3D modelling may be popular things, but they don't come close to the space and computationally bounded computational problems that you come across in engineering and physics.

    In my case, an arbitrary amount of compute power and memory can be thrown at randomness distinguishability testing and entropy estimation. I'll take all the cores and all the memory available thank you. If you do finite element simulation, you probably have similar concerns.

    --
    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    1. Re:FFS by jythie · · Score: 1

      I had a similar thought. I've specced out number crunchers for our sims that go well into that price range. There are some tasks that can pretty much take any resource you can afford to throw at them. And since our sims can actually run in OSX, we could actually make use of a monster like this.

    2. Re:FFS by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      I would use a multi socket server motherboard with a couple of high core count Xeons and gobbets of memory. That would happily run Linux and could come in at less than $15K.

      My life got easier since I put multiprocessing and multithreading support into my analysis code. Most of my compute bound problems scale linearly with core count.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    3. Re:FFS by jythie · · Score: 1

      Oh yeah. If I was given a budget to spec out a new rig for our sims, I would not go with something like this. On the other hand if such a machine fell in my lap I could make very good use of it.

      Though sadly, our sims will probably never support multithreading and scales.. ahm.. odly.... we tend to want a smaller number of higher clocked cores and as much memory/disk write bandwidth as we can get.

  21. Similar for Atari 800/400 by hawk · · Score: 1

    The Atari 800/400 had similar problems.

    It was designed for an SS-50 bus, and actually had the connectors for the edge connector on the motherboard.

    However, by the time it was near market, the newer FCC regs meant that it just wouldn't be possible for it to pass.

    The result is that the board was wrapped in a think (1/4"? It's been a while . . ) RF case, with limited connections.

    And *that* in turn mandated those idiotic serial diskette drives.

    At least they eventually figured out (Rev B ROM on them, iirc) that they could skip alternate sectors, so as to be ready to read again---rather than waiting an entire revolution . . . :groan:

    I had Serial # 49 as my demo unit, and it also had a different graphics chip--the one they originally designed, instead of the less capable one that shipped.

    I *think* that that's the one we sawed through the casing on with plans to connect to the bus, but I'm no longer sure.

    hawk

  22. $16,000? Why not get a server by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

    HP and Dell offer servers with multiple 16 core processors, 256+ GB of RAM, and TB of SSD for under $10,000...

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  23. RAM drive baby! by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    Put your OS and programs on there*, and your computer will run almost as fast as it should...

    *The old Macs didn't clear the RAM on reboot, so you could install your system folder there.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    1. Re:RAM drive baby! by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      No, the RAM cleared on shutdown. On reboot the RAM always had power, so it didn't reset.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    2. Re:RAM drive baby! by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      Are you sure you're not thinking of RAD drives on the Amiga? MacOS didn't get RAM drives until close to the release of OSX, and not all Mac models supported it.

    3. Re:RAM drive baby! by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      I had a Mac, not an Amiga. Connectix made Maxima to create a RAMDisk on System 7, which also conveniently used used all available RAM as a buffer for file copy operations.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  24. Lease processing power? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "With 256GB of RAM, you could run advanced AI processes or lease computing power to other people."

    Really? You're going to lease computing power? HAHAHAHA. Yes, you're going to buy a computer which is basically a tablet with a stand, and everything including the cpu is probably soldered to the mainboard and non-user serviceable, to ensure it costs the maximum amount once Applecare expires. This is probably the least cost effective way of doing that.

    And if you actually had "advanced AI", you'd probably use something that used multiple GPU's. Nobody who had serious kinds of AI applications would use an iMac (OpenCL is NOT advanced AI).

    This is a better computer than the iMac, but it still has the same shortcomings as an iMac. The only people who would buy it with this much RAM, are often people who "want the best" and have more money than brains, or companies who are given a budget, and have some left over which they want to use up.

    Apple overcharges for their RAM anyway, so you wouldn't get that much RAM from Apple, unless you really are an idiot.

  25. Re:There's a good reason to max out internal stora by Voyager529 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I work with a lot go photo and video stuff, it's really nice to have internal storage be as large as possible to hold large projects, then when I'm done I can save them off to traditional larger external spinning discs.

    Every now and then I look into faster external RAID arrays but that itself is a very expensive option and can be kind of fragile.

    Having a lot of internal storage also saves you time in that you don't have to be as picky in cleaning out your system from time to time. I fought for way too long with a laptop that was always too close to the edge of available hard drive space, which was really annoying.

    You're looking for a NAS. If an article regarding a $15,000 workstation is at all appealing whatsoever, then having a dedicated storage array is entirely practical for 1/4 of the price.

    "But Voyager, they're expensive!"
    Let's assume you're a DIY tinkerer. A quick Newegg build on a Ryzen3 with 32GB of ECC RAM, a case, and 5x4TB drives is about $1,350 soup to nuts; in RAIDz2 (RAID6), that's still 12TB of storage with two drives fault tolerance, and I only limited it to 5 because that's the maximum number of drives I could buy at a clip (the build supports three more on the case and the mobo). Do two drive orders and you can hit 24TB before you hit physical limits.

    Let's assume you're not a tinkerer and basically want a thing in a box. $1,500 will get you the aforementioned 5 drives and an 8-bay QNAP.

    "But network connectivity is slow!"
    Add about $400 to the QNAP and $600 to the DIY build and you've got 10-gigabit connectivity, possibly a bit more if you're on a Mac and need a thunderbolt-to-10GbE adapter.

    "But then I can't access my data when I'm not home!"
    The $15,000 Mac won't let you do that. However, all of these systems have some form of remote access, bit it the more arcane SFTP on the DIY build, or the shiny WebUIs and dropbox-like mobile apps of QNAP and Synology.

    "But Thunderbolt has lower latency!"
    Possibly, but 10GbE over Fiber is pretty damn quick, especially if you do a direct connect to your machine. An 8-bay TB enclosure will cost you $2,000 before you put drives in it, and you get zero options for multi-user or remote access.

    "But it's ugly!"
    Both Cat6 and fiber cables support long enough runs to put the storage appliance wherever you'd like to hide it. Thunderbolt doesn't. If you're willing to go a bit higher on the DIY front, Lian Li makes some beautiful cases with a price tag to reflect them.

    There are countless combinations out there; if storage is your only concern and you've got somewhere to put an 8U rack, QNAP has a rack mounted NAS with a companion storage expander that you could fill with 4TB drives, landing you with 80TB of storage (assuming 4 disk fault tolerance) and *still* spend less than this $15,000 Mac.

  26. Re:Seems high by ledow · · Score: 1

    Honestly... if you wanted to do that, you'd take your machine, pay for VMWare Workstation, install MacOS in a VM and allocate the other 90% of the resources to the host OS.

    May not be "legit" but will show up this machine in a second... basically I can run OS X in a window on an 8-year-old laptop (with 3D games and browsers running on the main OS) faster than it runs on native Mac machines that were sold with that OS. I tried it once - initially to investigate how easy a Mac port of a game I was writing was, only to discover that unless you're using XCode, you may as well forget it - and kept it around to show people because everyone was amazed you "can run MacOS on Windows?! But I thought it was unique?!".

    Why people don't know this, I never understood. Install bootcamp, which is a NATIVE OS for the hardware, and watch as it's all standard drivers, for bog-standard hardware, and gets its arse kicked by cheap laptops.

    Whatever Mac you get for that money, you'd get more of a PC for the same cost, and one that would kick its arse *while* virtualising MacOS alongside whatever you needed to do if you really, desperately, absolutely had to do so.

    There's a reason Apple don't sell the OS separately. It's their only selling point, and it's not even a very good one. People think it's "slick" because of multi-size-bitmap-rendered-mipmap-style sliding menu that swishes fast (yep, you might think that's all "scalable"... it just caches bitmaps of various sizes on boot-up to make it look like it's zooming the icons... it's not). The OS is just dog-slow below that.

    Like everything Apple... all smoke and mirrors, no substance. The only thing they have is a nice display, and I'm sorry but if I wanted that I'd just buy a decent monitor.

  27. Re:High end 2009 iMac by ledow · · Score: 1

    10 years ago I was using an MSI gaming laptop that had two drive bays, 12Gb, and cost way less than $5k. Like, half that.

    Apple has always been underspecced and overpriced. Just look at the Mac Mini's and laugh yourself silly on any comparison site.

  28. Re:Probably a tab hoarder. by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

    She's a women, the type that in fact has a small but noticeable hoarder complex. She's also a task-master that can multitask like no other human.

    I'm convinced that I married an alien, and that she uses my puny computer just to mock how our technology is inferior.

    --
    Life is not for the lazy.
  29. I thought people hated lack of choice? by King_TJ · · Score: 3, Informative

    I mean, in all the years I've used Apple products, that's always a complaint about them from detractors; They don't give you enough flexibility or choice!

    Well, here's a system from Apple that you can configure in all sorts of insane, over the top ways, IF you actually want to -- and people are complaining because it's too much?

    I actually own one of these iMac Pros, but I purchased it in the standard "base" configuration. I was also able to buy it for $1,000 off the regular price on a sale that Micro Center stores ran on it, shortly after it was released. They ran various sales on it for months after that, varying between about $500 off and that $1000 discount -- but there were definitely some opportunities to get one for less than Apple's advertised pricing.

    It's been a great computer and I have no regrets purchasing it.... The 5K display in it is excellent and partially justifies the base cost of the computer when you see how much equivalent monitors sell for separately. I certainly don't see the need to buy the upgraded configurations for many thousands more? But I'm glad those were available, in case people needed them. I can see someone running a lot of virtual machines in test environments, as a developer, possibly needing a lot more RAM. Maybe not 256GB but 128GB? Yeah .... could happen.

  30. Future proofing. by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 2

    What will make my shiny new imac pro obsolete? (bearing in mind that nothing on the imac pro can be upgraded without surgery)

    Will it be new graphics hardware?
    Will it be the widespread availability of cpus with more than 18 cores?
    Will it be higher resolution displays?

    No. It will be the emergence of bloatware the likes of which even god has never seen.

  31. Re:Seems high by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    only to discover that unless you're using XCode, you may as well forget it
    That is nonsense. XCode is an IDE ... that is all. You can use Emacs or Vim as long as you want.
    A makefile calling gcc etc. works on a Mac just like anywhere else!

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  32. New Sales motto by devlynh · · Score: 1

    "You can buy better, but you can't pay more"

    --
    We're not happy 'til you're not happy.
  33. Boss Mode. by Zorro · · Score: 1

    He doesn't know much about computers. But he wants a better one than everyone else to read email on.

  34. Disposable Screens by Chissblue · · Score: 2

    Still waiting for the Mac Pro Tower. Having gone through half a dozen iMac all in ones they each had their lives shortened drastically by the screen going bad. A Xeon will make those fans run loud not G5 risc chip fast but still over 150 degrees F.

  35. Dr. Frink, a man ahead of his time by istartedi · · Score: 1

    Frink's prediction might come true after all. "I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, ten thousand times larger, and so expensive that only the 5 richest kings of Europe will own them "

    --
    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
  36. Incorrect and old thinking by Leslie43 · · Score: 1

    You can browse just fine using 8 or even 4gb of ram.
    Granted it will begin to slow down at some point, much sooner than with more, but it will work just fine.

    What you are seeing is the system doing what it's supposed to do, using what is available. What's the point of having all that ram if it's just sitting there idle? It will release it if needed, but it will take what it can because that's what makes it most efficient. This is especially important on a laptop where you can trade ram for cpu and drive cycles, both of which consume far more battery than the ram.

    Also, run a good adblocker, on many webpages more than half the data is just ads and tracking data (mostly the latter!). It's insane how much tracking happens, particularly on news sites.

  37. Let's check your assumptions! by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 1

    Why do I hate Apple so much? Because they are literally raping their fanboy customers. Let's do a comparative breakdown of this so-called "$16k Build" based on NewEgg's prices:
    -256GB DDR4 RAM: Around $1,000
    -16GB GPU (Radeon VII): $700
    -18-core Intel CPU (Intel i9 9980XE): $2,000

    Intel's ark says

    Memory Specifications
    Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type) 128 GB
    Memory Types DDR4-2666
    Max # of Memory Channels 4
    ECC Memory Supported No

    Half the memory and no ECC support.

    Frankly, I find it difficult to imagine why someone would need a graphics workstation with more than 128 GB RAM (as opposed to offloading the work to a server, or a HPC cluster) So I can't say that ECC is an absolute must...

  38. Re:Not Enough RAM by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 1

    Safari eventually stops grabbing memory-- I have 24 GB, and have never run out-- even after opening my extensive bookmark folder structure into tabs.

  39. Re:Probably a tab hoarder. by yes-but-no · · Score: 1

    Even those 6-9 tabs, allow only reputed websites to stay (may be wikipedia/google); so not some poor/maliciously written webpage can do background hogging of cpu/disk/ram.

  40. People don't know what computers are for anymore by loufoque · · Score: 1

    Underutilizing computers has apparently become so commonplace the general people doesn't even know what computers are used for anymore.

    No, computers are not devices just to browse Facebook or play video games.
    Some people actually use them to run real programs on them.

    256GB is also pretty mundane, pretty much any half-decent machine has that. RAM is cheap.
    As a developer, I can easily use up more than 16GB just by starting an IDE or a compilation. And I'm not even doing hardware synthesis.

  41. Re:There's a good reason to max out internal stora by mjwx · · Score: 1

    The problem with using NAS/SAN drives is pure economics. A lot of people who require high end workstations will be doing work on consumer OS's. With GIS, it's Windows (ArcGIS). So this tends to throw a spanner in the works. The setup for an iSCSI over Ethernet connection requires a separate network (well it should if you're doing it properly) and If for any reason the drives are disconnected which is a problem on Windows desktop operating systems it costs a lot of money. So it becomes trivial to just say "throw a bunch of SSD's in there and RAID/JBOD them, then tell the GIS analyst to move the finished work SAN/NAS after they're done" which will be much smaller than the multitudes of datasets they're working with. Any roadblocks cost huge sums of money. So in the economic sense, you'll have both because the amount of money you'll lose by being cheap isn't worth the potential savings. The simplicity of local storage is simply worth the additional cost. Given the low cost of SSD's these days, it can even be cheaper than remote storage.

    --
    Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  42. Extra, Extra by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    Slashdot confirms that Macs are too damn upgradeable.

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  43. Re:There's a good reason to max out internal stora by Voyager529 · · Score: 1

    The problem with using NAS/SAN drives is pure economics.
    A lot of people who require high end workstations will be doing work on consumer OS's. With GIS, it's Windows (ArcGIS).

    The GP was talking about photos and videos, not GIS datasets, so the goalposts just got shifted. To address it though, at $16,000 for the Mac in TFA, A Poweredge with plenty of storage and an Optiplex or two to access it are entirely practical alternatives.

    The setup for an iSCSI over Ethernet connection requires a separate network (well it should if you're doing it properly) and If for any reason the drives are disconnected which is a problem on Windows desktop operating systems it costs a lot of money.

    We're already quite far away from 'storing lots of photos and videos', and iSCSI seems like a weird protocol to implement in this context, and I really don't understand what you're getting at with respect to Windows losing access to network storage vs. another OS.

    So it becomes trivial to just say "throw a bunch of SSD's in there and RAID/JBOD them, then tell the GIS analyst to move the finished work SAN/NAS after they're done" which will be much smaller than the multitudes of datasets they're working with. Any roadblocks cost huge sums of money.

    Pretty much everything referenced here has very little to do with either the GP or TFA. If you're dealing with that sort of data, you're not in the market for the $16,000 iMac, you're not in the market for a Thunderbolt enclosure like the GP referenced, and apparently downtime is so expensive that you're probably better off having a server in a server room somewhere and RDPing into it, either using local storage or a SAN...which is clearly affordable giving how expensive downtime apparently is in your situation.

    So in the economic sense, you'll have both because the amount of money you'll lose by being cheap isn't worth the potential savings. The simplicity of local storage is simply worth the additional cost. Given the low cost of SSD's these days, it can even be cheaper than remote storage.

    In your case, no...but you weren't tacitly eyeballing a $2,000 diskless Thunderbolt enclosure, either. The use case you describe is only similar to the GP in that it involves computers and data which needs to store somewhere. ArcGIS and Lightroom clearly have vastly different requirements as to how data is stored and accessed. That's fine, but I wouldn't recommend a DIY FreeNAS or a QNAP to someone whose primary concern is downtime *and* can apparently back it up with a check big enough to make that problem go away.