Last Updated on 12/17/2017 by Chris Gampat
Apple’s iMac Pro has hit the reviews circuit, and so far all looks positive. But photographers should be looking elsewhere.
Apple’s iMac line of desktops has long been a popular choice for creatives, and photographers in particular. So when Apple announced their iMac Pro many of you were happy to see a new pro-level iMac coming to the marketplace. Well, the reviews on Apple’s new all-in-one desktop solution are coming in, and while the reviews are positive to say the least, one thing is abundantly clear to us…
This thing is about 300% overkill for most photographers.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-h5Mhlt6O0
The iMac Pro is a beastly workstation-grade machine with tons of cores and powerful graphics, and one would be excused for thinking this should be their next business purchase. But there is more to the story.
Simply put, photo editing these days is not as demanding on systems as it used to be. Most photo editors can barely make use of a graphics card (those who do, like Lightroom, generally do so poorly, and only make use of it in specific situations or for certain tasks). Very few cards are designed to take advantage of the large number of processor cores a system like the iMac Pro has.
If you are strictly a photographer, the iMac Pro is simply way more computer than you will ever need. However, if you happen to be a creator of multiple mediums – maybe you do wedding videos or have a youtube channel too, the iMac Pro begins to make more sense. Video editing programs are much more optimized to take advantage of the hardware the iMac Pro has to offer. As well, the system has enough horsepower to handle multiple tasks at once. So, for example, you could still process images while a video is rendering, or browse the web while your Lightroom previews are rendering.
So, please photographers, do your research and understand your personal needs and workload. Invest your money in technology that will actually improve your quality of life and capabilities, like new cameras or lenses, not on computers with powerful hardware you likely will hardly make use of.