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Apple held a small briefing yesterday in New York City to officially unveil the new iMac Pros, which went on sale today.

It is decidedly more expensive than its non-pro iMac siblings — the iMac Pro starts at $4999, but most configurations will cost significantly more. But make no mistake — if you buy one of these, you’re getting true professional performance for your money. You’re not just getting (admittedly gorgeous) space gray anodized aluminum.

The entire lineup of iMac Pros is based on Intel’s new Xeon W CPUs, and they are exclusively SSD-based. There are no configurations with spinning hard drives or Fusion drives — according to Apple, the system architecture is designed only to work with SSDs for internal storage. These components are all high-end: the RAM is 2666 MHz DDR 4 ECC; the SSD storage has write speeds of 3.3 GB/sec and read speeds of 2.8 GB/sec. They have more Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports than the regular iMacs (including support for attaching up to two 5K external displays), 10-gigabit Ethernet (regular iMacs have plain old gigabit Ethernet), and the iMac Pro even has better-sounding speakers.

Here’s how quickly the price can escalate though: the base model $4999 iMac Pro has an 8-core CPU, 32 GB of RAM, a 1 TB SSD, a Radeon Pro Vega 56 graphics card, and the exclusive space gray Magic Mouse. If you upgrade to 64 GB of RAM, 2 TB SSD, the Vega 64 graphics card, and the space gray Magic Trackpad (instead of, not in addition to, the Magic Mouse), the price goes to $7,249. A 10-core iMac Pro with maxed out RAM (128 GB) and SSD storage (4 TB) and the Vega 64 graphics card is $11,599.

Apple is not fucking around with these machines, and neither are the people who will be buying them.

Apple invited a nice array of third-party developers to demo their software on the iMac Pro. My notes:

• Adobe Dimension CC: Dimension is a relatively new app from Adobe. It lets designers create photo-realistic 3D renderings from 2D designs — for example, consumer packaging labels. Dimension’s rendering performance scales linearly with the number of CPU cores, which means it renders 2-5 times faster on iMac Pro compared to a regular iMac or MacBook Pro.

• Gravity Sketch: VR-based 3D sketching. Very cool. I got to try it out, and in a nut, it’s almost more like sculpting than drawing. The iMac Pro is the only Mac capable of supporting Gravity Sketch.

• Twinmotion: A real-time 3D visualization app. Architects can use Twinmotion to create 3D models from CAD drawings, and turn them into something akin to a 3D video game where you can, effectively, walk around and see what it would look like to be there. It includes features like setting the time of day, and even simulating various weather conditions and seasons of the year, all of which affect the lighting. And it’s all rendered in real time.

• Electronauts: A VR music production app from a company called Survios, heretofore known for creating VR games. Electronauts was only officially announced today. It’s primarily a DJ app — creating, recording, and performing live electronic music, but it’s mixed with a game-like atmosphere akin to something like Guitar Hero. The interface is entirely VR-based — there is no non-VR UI, and the iMac Pro (a) runs Electronauts wonderfully — perfectly smooth at a high frame rate, and (b) is the only Mac capable of running it at all.

• Logic Pro X and Final Cut Pro X: Logic now allows massively multi-tracked projects to play in real-time. On any other Mac, sufficently complex projects would require either pre-rendering or real-time playback with compressed fidelity. Today’s new release of Final Cut Pro X adds editing features for VR experiences. Again, only on iMac Pro.

The bottom line is that for some tasks, the iMac Pros now handle full-fidelity playback in real-time that on any other Mac — MacBook Pro or Mac Pro — would require rendering or lower-fidelity playback. For other tasks, notably VR, the iMac Pro supports software that simply cannot run on any other Mac today.¹

Apple has been effectively out of the professional desktop hardware game for a few years. The “trash can” Mac Pro design of 2013 languished, unchanged technically, in Apple’s product line for reasons unexplained until last April, when Apple took the unprecedented step of holding a small media summit to announce (a) that they were working on a “completely rethought” Mac Pro, and (b) had a pro-targeted iMac in the works that would ship by the end of 2017.

The new iMac Pros that started shipping today deliver on half of that promise. These are serious, undeniably professional machines. The Mac has gone from being a non-player in the burgeoning world of VR to a credible contender in one fell swoop. Two questions remain in my mind:

First, when is the “completely rethought” Mac Pro going to ship, and what is it going to offer above and beyond the iMac Pro besides separating the computer hardware from the display? Apple had nothing to say regarding the new Mac Pro other than that it is still forthcoming. If I needed the performance of modern professional desktop hardware, I would order an iMac Pro today. I wouldn’t wait.

Second, and to me far more importantly: how committed is Apple to keeping the iMac Pro up to date? It’s an impressive piece of engineering — do not let the appearance fool you into thinking that the iMac Pro is just an iMac with a dark finish and speed-bumped processors. Internally, it’s a completely different architecture. But the 2013 Mac Pro was an impressive piece of engineering and design that Apple put a lot of effort into, too.

My hope is that the iMac Pro has been designed with the future in mind. VR is moving fast. Even on today’s leading hardware, the best VR experience is still insufficient — resolution is low (individual pixels are visible, clearly) and latency is still a huge problem. The end game for VR is an experience equivalent to our real-world vision. Every year’s worth of CPU and GPU improvements will be needed to get from here to there, so the iMac Pro will need to be updated on a roughly annual basis to remain relevant.

Some excellent reports from other writers who attended yesterday’s briefing:

• Rene Ritchie at iMore: “Beauty of a Beast”.

• Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch: “Apple’s iMac Pro Is a Love Letter to Developers”.

• Lance Ulanoff: “Apple’s iMac Pro Is a Processing Monster”.

• Dieter Bohn at The Verge: “The iMac Pro Is a Beast, but It’s Not for Everybody”.

Merriam-Webster:

Just as we see Jedi being used in a generic way today, padawan is beginning to be found in contexts far removed from galaxies far, far away. (Indeed, Padawan is the name of a municipality in Malaysia, though it’s not known how Lucas chose the name.) It usually refers to a younger follower or student of some kind, and usually in fields that require special ability or skill. In sports, for example, we find examples from both professional baseball and football.

Doug Engelbart will be remembered for a lifetime of achievement in the technology arts. He will not be remembered for the fortune he amassed (pretty sure didn't make one). His list of his creations is long, but that misses the whole of it. He needed pointing devices and windows and outlining to achieve his vision of augmenting human intellect. That is the potential that got me excited about creating in this medium. Engelbart serves as a powerful role model of what one person can accomplish.

There aren't many prizes or awards in tech, certainly not compared to other arts, such as film, theater, dining, architecture, painting. To the extent there are awards, they honor the huge enterprises. The ones that make the most money for investors. It's as if the only reviews that were written were for Applebee's or McDonald's.

Doug Engelbart will be remembered for a lifetime of achievement in the art of technology. He will not be remembered for the fortune he amassed (pretty sure didn't make one). The list of his creations is long, but that misses the whole of it. He needed pointing devices and windowing user interface and outlining to achieve his vision of augmenting human intellect. That is the potential that got me excited about creating in this medium, and Engelbart served as a powerful role model of what one person can accomplish.

I suggested the idea of an award in Engelbart's name in a tweet, and it got forwarded more than most. There were some objections. One was that there aren't enough new ideas that are generously shared to make an annual award possible. To that I have two responses:

• 1. No one said the ideas have to be huge. Sometimes small ideas turn out to be important. Personally, I'm not interested in huge single steps, rather new ideas that take us in a good direction deserve recognition.
• 2. If there were incentives to create beyond wealth and some incentive to create other than the personal satisfaction, maybe more people would create new original ideas that advance technology for its own sake. do it.

Anyway, I just wanted to put the idea out there. Doug Engelbart was a model for one kind of technologist that we should hope to see more of, for the tradition to continue. Perhaps there's some way for that to coalesce into something tangible and long-lived.

Application Deadline: August 20, 2012

The Driftless Folk School is seeking an enthusiastic, versatile intern to help us grow and develop during 2012 and 2013. The core responsibilities would include assuming the duties of the Folk School Registrar and working on the creation of the next two DFS catalogues of classes. In addition, the prospective intern would work with the Board of Trustees to develop and deepen the offerings and infrastructure of the organization. While working in collaboration with and under the supervision of the DFS Board, the prospective intern would have considerable scope for personal initiative and self-management in this position. This would be a paid internship of $300 per month and free access to all DFS classes, with the possibility of an increase at mid-year. Housing with a local DFS affiliated family in exchange for farm help may also be a possibility.

Application deadline: August 20, 2012

Position Starts: As early as possible in September 2012

Duration: 1 year.

To Apply: Download full position description and application instructions here.