One of the more interesting narratives to surround Apple in recent years holds that the company has either forgotten or simply doesn’t care about pro users anymore. This narrative can arguably be traced back to the company’s 2013 Mac Pro design and only picked up steam following the release of Apple’s 2016 MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar. As a quick refresher, Apple’s flagship MacBook Pro was derided for being overpriced and under-powered, with many users lamenting the fact that Apple’s pro-oriented machine could only support 16GB of RAM.
In fact, the backlash against Apple was so strong that Tim Cook and other executives were forced to confront the criticism head on, with Cook stating the following during a company shareholder meeting earlier this year: “You will see us do more in the pro area. The pro area is very important to us. The creative area is very important to us in particular.”
Just two months later, Apple executives held a special meeting with select tech outlets where they assured developers and creative professionals that new and advanced pro-oriented hardware was in the product pipeline. Not only did Apple relay that a completely redesigned Mac Pro was on the way, but Phil Schiller made a point of noting that the company was working on iMac configurations developed “specifically with the pro customer in mind.”
True to form, Apple at WWDC 2017 demonstrated that its pro users have a lot to look forward to. Aside from supercharging its iPad lineup, Apple updated the entirety of its MacBook line with speedier Kaby Lake processors and faster SSDs. Further, some of Apple’s notebooks will now feature more powerful graphics. Apple on Monday also took some time to refresh its iMac lineup, gracing its iconic all-in-one machine with more memory and faster processors.
Of course, the star of show — at least as it pertains to the Mac — was Apple’s iMac Pro. Priced at $4,999 with an option to max the machine out with 18 core Xeon processors, Apple’s brand new iMac is a clear indication that Apple has decidedly not forgotten about its pro user base. In a nutshell, Apple’s upcoming iMac Pro is an absolute monster of a machine.
And though the iMac Pro won’t ship until December, the fact that Apple announced it so far in advance was a subtle nod to users who have grown impatient with slower product upgrades over the years. In other words, the current MacBook and iMac upgrades and the forthcoming iMac Pro update sends a clear message that Apple not only has exciting new hardware today, but even more exciting and powerful hardware coming down the pipeline. And that’s not even to speak of a revamped Mac Pro which, if we’re lucky, will be unveiled sometime next year.
WWDC 2017 may not have been the most exciting keynote we’ve ever seen, but for any consumers who has been patiently waiting for a solid improvement to the Mac, Monday’s keynote was nothing short of encouraging.
