Dreaming of an iMac Pro
March 25th, 2011Some years back, a few of us made the pitch for a “Mythical Midrange Mac Minitower,” to use the term coined by Macworld Senior Editor Dan Frakes. I preferred to call it a “headless iMac,” since I envisioned something with the guts of the iMac, but without the display. I was thinking of a 21st century equivalent of the fabled Mac IIcx/IIci. These were powerful (for their time) relatively lightweight Macs with a room for expansion cards and other goodies.
Well, Apple has their own concept of what a mid-priced Macintosh should be, at least so far as Steve Jobs is concerned. Don’t forget that, under his tutelage, a Mac is primarily an all-in-one computer with minimal expansion possibilities. That tradition was first restored with the original iMac, and let’s not forget the various portable Macs over the years. Today’s MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air families sell far more units that any of the traditional desktop models.
Where the original iMac was a relatively inexpensive entry-level computer, today’s iMac, when it comes to performance benchmarks, plays a very close second to the humongous Mac Pro; that is, unless your app diet consists of software that has been specially tuned to sing when extra processor cores are available. For most of you, the difference won’t be perceptible, though you will perceive the serious lack of internal expansion.
Yes, Apple does sell some iMacs with a second drive, solid state, in its build-to-order section. This is not something offered by Apple aftermarket, although MacSales, a Mac accessory and memory supplier, will take your 2010 iMac and do the upgrade for you in their own facility, if you care to live without your computer for a few days. And, of course, spend lots of extra money for the convenience of that extra drive.
Now since Apple is offering an iMac with two drives, would it take very much engineering to provide easy rear access to a second drive slot? That way you could buy your own internal expansion drive, mechanical or solid state, whenever you want, and simply pop it in. Understand I realize that retrofitting the current model is a chore, but surely Apple’s brilliant designers can devise a user-friendly alternative.
Consider the possibilities.
Now remember that most people who buy a Mac Pro do it because of the ability to add up to four internal drives, plus expansion cards. But let’s not go there, because a second expansion card isn’t really practical in an iMac, unless Apple somehow achieves much greater feats of miniaturization. The solution is Thunderbolt, with essentially gives you a two-way external PCI Express port for up to six devices. You can add a second display, hard drives, and whatever accessory makers design in the months to come.
Suddenly, the iMac becomes a worthy replacement for the Mac Pro for many power users and content creators. Yes, I realize that, as consumer-grade processors become faster and gain extra cores, the workstation parts, such as the Intel Xeon, will also gain in CPU horsepower. Depending on Intel’s design goals, there probably won’t be a convergence, where a single product line serves both consumers and professional users.
Regardless, it’s clear to me that the iMac, though a descendant of the original compact Mac, can serve a variety of customers with different needs, at a pretty affordable price. Yes, I grant there are loads of PC boxes that sell for hundreds less. But when it comes to all-in-ones, the iMac is extremely competitive.
As I said before, I realize there are many Mac users, although the number continues to diminish, for whom an iMac is a poor substitute for a digital audio or video workstation. Although the form factor is wrong, Apple also expects Mac Pros to also serve as high-end replacements for the now-departed Xserve. The low-end is occupied by a special Mac mini, and that actually may be enough server in certain environments. Indeed, a Mac mini with Thunderbolt port (and I expect one to arrive in the near future) will mean that you can hook up high-performance RAID drives. Maybe it won’t offer the redundancy of a real server, meaning the second power supply. But the mini is cheap enough that, if it fails, the techs at the data center can quickly unplug the external drives and move them to another box.
As far as the iMac Pro is concerned, actually you don’t have to call it a “Pro,” or offer any special model designation. Since Apple already gives you a two-drive option, the only real change involves making the expansion process easy for customers. Again, it probably won’t cost a lot for Apple’s engineering team to devise a solution.
Unfortunately, Apple continues to make far too many products that are hostile to internal changes, except in a very limited way. I realize it’ll probably never happen on an iPhone or an iPad, though I suppose an SD card and/or Thunderbolt port might be practical some day for the latter.
As with the “Mythical Midrange Mac Minitower,” this is probably all a pipe dream. Apple no doubt has other priorities.
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i imagine a small door like that in overalls to use the potty. snap- it opens, pull the drive out of its sata/2 connectors, plop a new drive in, reinstall or migrate. simple. not too hard. used to be a Lead Macgenius- so I know it wouldnt be too much trouble- theres lots of room in most imacs for a few clips/hinges.
What is the fixation on internal expansion? What if Thunderbolt was ten times faster and wireless? Would you still want a computer with empty bays in it to hold things? Most people would rather have a smaller computer. Besides, I’d rather have my expansion stuff outside, so I could swap out any attached component or the main computer itself.
Would it be less of an issue if everything stacked like Legos? What if someone sold an expansion chassis?
I’ve often wanted Apple to put their spin on a modular and easily upgraded system. Unfortunately the closest they have ever come to that is the awesome internals of the Mac Pro.
I’d like something even more idiot proof that could be configured from parts supplied by Apple where motherboards and other previously internal components could be hot swapped and automatically accepted by the system.
Perhaps the Thunderbolt bus could drive something like this forward?
Apple has been stepping on the Mac Pro’s oxygen tube for a while — not killing it outright, but letting it slowly slip away.
The message is clear from Cupertino — the future for them is all about products that users don’t customize themselves.
Thunderbolt may provide some external options, but the innards, from software to hardware, are all going on lockdown.
Complete lockdown of the guts is a Steve Jobs trademark. He wants to sell appliances, not customizable electronics. Thunderbolt will go a long way toward eliminating the need for additional internal expansion capabilities. Once the iMac ships standard with an SSD boot drive, large HD for data and Thunderbolt it will suffice for most customers.
There remain two concerns:
– the iMac GPU is rarely anything but merely adequate and will never offer good performance for those working on multiple displays with 3D or high res 2D. Apple’s obsession with thin cases and low power draw means that a high performance GPU is completely out of the question.
– I have never been satisfied with the quality of external drive enclosures.
I’ll spare you the horror stories from me, the retail customers I served for 4 years and the company I now work for. I’ve witnessed over 100 enclosure failures, a couple dozen causing data loss.
As Apple aren’t a company that are big on ‘options’ I guess the ability to hang whatever antiglare display/s I choose off of whatever videocards I can get my hands on is an obvious benefit over an iMac to me.
“would it take much engineering?”
If Apple could not crank out an iMac with a few extra access doors in nothing flat, then they should hire some new engineers. The problem is, instead, that Apple really does not care to do so. Apple is many things, but they are not a company which cares to listen to customers or wants the customer to be able to change, upgrade, or expand the capability of their equipment. Indeed, I believe Apple would just as soon permanently seal the unit at the factory to prevent it being opened by anyone, which is both sad and unfortunate as it drives people who need that capability to other providers of solutions. In doing so Apple, Apple marginalizes itself in ways no competitor could hope to do and makes the decline of the Mac platform a self-fulfilling prophesy.