Kazik Loc: England

I have a cheese grater Mac Pro from about 2010, which I use with a calibrated Eizo monitor. This computer is showing signs of old age and I need to replace it. The upgrade path seems to be an iMacPro, I have discarded the current trashcan MacPro as this too is getting very old. However I am concerned about the iMacPro monitor (colour space, calibration, etc). Is the iMacPro monitor adequate for photo editing? I know I can use an external monitor but it seems nonsensical to buy a Mac with an Apple monitor and not to use it. Any other suggestions?

davidrb Loc: Half way there on the 45th Parallel

Do you realize there is a difference between an iMac Pro and a Mac Pro? The iMacPro IS a new monitor-based computer while the Mac Pro requires a monitor. At it's $5000.00 price tag the iMacPro will definitely have a top-line retina screen. Either will be a photographer's dream-machine. Good luck with your choice and welcome to The Hog.

BobU Loc: Sarasota Florida

We have similar equipment. I am using the same generation of Mac Pro, along with an Eizo. The glare of the new apple screens is an issue for me. I love the Eizo.. I do have a retina laptop, and have to deal with glare on that screen.

You can significantly speed up your MacPro with a solid state drive. I suggest the card based ones as they are faster than a regular ssd mounted in one of the drive bays. Either will be much much faster than the conventional type hard drive supplied with these machines.

These Mac towers are easy to add memory to, and use error correcting memory to eliminate corruption of the data. (Usually found in server grade equipment.)

You can also swap out the processors and go up to 3.4ghz 6 cores, giving 12 cores on a dual processor model.

The screen glare , and difficulty in servicing the newest macs has made me hesitant to upgrade, and I am waiting to see what the promised "new generation" of Mac Pro will look like. For the time being I am sticking with mine as I have done most all the speed modifications.

Just trying to present an alternative, as these older MacPros (2010) are built very well, and will run the latest OS. If they bring out an updated MacPro soon, as promised, I am afraid to see what it will cost..

spraguead Loc: Boston, MA

I have a MacPro from 2011. It's the go to video and image processing machine. It's got 64gb of RAM, and when it started to get a little troublesome We traded out the hard drives for SSD versions. Have one for the OS, programs and such, and another for video and image files. This thing is still a work horse. Which is good, because they're expensive, and even though it gets bough through the business, it still hurts just a bit to spend so much.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

There is still hope that Apple will provide us with a new modular MacPro later this year. My 2008,1 MacPro is still going great. Stuffed with memory and the boot HD and my stretch HDs have been upgraded to SDDs.

Cdouthitt Loc: Traverse City, MI

Our company is holding off until June to find out if the rumors of Apple releasing a new Mac Pro or a MacBook Pro (with more than 16gb ram) will be true. When we last updated our machines (MacBook pros) we also added ultra wide LG displays which are wonderful. We’d like to make the switch back to more robust desktops, but similar to you, we don’t want an all in one machine.

If neither of those rumors come true, we’ll probably end up with the iMac Pro 3.0 10 core 64/64 graphic/memory with 1 TB drives (most of our files are kept on a server).

redlegfrog

Have you looked at the Mac Mini? since so much of photo work is done in ram, try a Mini loaded to the max with ram.

Cdouthitt Loc: Traverse City, MI

They max out at 16 GB and only have dual core processors...a far cry from what's in a iMac Pro...and probably not much better if at all than the current trash-can MacPros (which haven't been updated since 2013).

bpulv Loc: Buena Park, CA

An iMac would be much less expensive and more appropriate for your purposes. The iMac Pro starts at $5,000 for the basic 8-core version and goes up to well over $15,000 for the loaded 10 and 18-core models. You would be wasting your money on even a basic 8-core model because your software would need to be capable of using the eight cores in order to give you the speed advantage you would be paying for.

I would suggest you look at a 27" iMac with an I-7 processor, 1 Tb SSD and memory upgrades instead of the iMac Pro. The cost will be around $3,500 and you would notice no difference in speed compared to the iMac Pro.

xt2 Loc: British Columbia, Canada

GOOD advice!

Hbuk66 Loc: Oswego, NY

I bought an iMac when I retired in 2013, and the 27" is really BIG. You won't be disappointed...

NorCal Bohemian

Hi! I'm in a similar position, in that I'm looking at purchasing a new Eizo monitor (or BenQ?), and am looking at what Mac I need to get the full use of the monitor's specs. For me - the iMac's are so close - but no sale! You hit the nail on the head on color space and calibration. While Apple is promoting it's "Wide" color space across platforms, the iMac Pro only lists "Wide color (P3)" for the monitor Tech Specs. It does not say what percentage of the P3 (DCI-P3) color space that it covers. I called Apple to get an answer on Adobe RGB coverage, but they had no record of that spec at the service center, and they never got back to me. P3 color is the standard for 4K video, but it is a smaller color space than Adobe RGB - perhaps halfway between sRGB and Adobe RGB.
The second calibration no-go for me is the iMac monitor's lack of built in hardware calibration. It has no LUT (Look Up Table), let alone 3D LUT!

I am looking forward to the new, redesigned Mac Pro. An open architecture will allow me to choose the right graphics board for the Eizo monitor - which has a 10 bit display and 16 bit 3D LUT. I don't do video. Finding information about compatibility is proving to be very difficult. Even going to the Nvidia (or Radeon) website and looking at the specs for a given graphics board - they don't list those specs or capabilities. Everything seems geared to gaming or video!

Let us know what you decide!

Dennis833 Loc: Australia

I would upgrade your 2010 Mac Pro. First install an OWC Mercury Accelsior _ E2 to drive your operating system and applications. Install a SSD drive to to handle image processing and two large normal drives to back up images. None of this is hard to do yourself. Have a look on You Tube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhG0l5jIW9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvGlYIjbB9c

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Seems nobody has answered your question about color space. I recall the iMacPro has a wider gamut monitor than the standard iMac. Something called P3. My guess is the Eizo will be the superior monitor in terms of Color space but I’m only guessing. I’m sure that there are articles on line that make comparisons and quantify the differences.

You might want to Read this article.

http://www.colourspace.xyz/the-new-apple-imac-and-the-dci-p3-colour-gamut/

Then you could just go to a Mac store with some pics of your own and look at them on the iMacPro and see how they look.

FreddB Loc: PA - Delaware County

What's the difference between a cheese grater mac pro and a trashcan mac pro?