Yup, a little over $20k fully loaded, by my reckoning.
I had to see that for myself…
Yep. $20k… Crazy shit.
Who needs a car or food, when you can have an iMac Pro?
If I were going to buy a $7K entry level product, I’d expect 5+ years out of it, as would most ppl. That would mean you should be able to get ACL coverage to that length if you try hard enough.
Nice that they found space for a headphone socket.
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Shame that it appears to once again have no user upgradeable internals, not even memory from the early information that has been posted it’s another case of a “buy once” machine just like the MacBook Pro and to me that immediately makes it a no go. if I was to spend that amount of money on a machine I’d at least want to be able to upgrade the memory later on.
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I remember speccing out a cheese grater Mac Pro and being able to get it over $10k. That was a while ago though and the $AU was in much better shape then. I think the base model was $3k-ish at the time.
I guess they must have data that tells them there’s a market for this. I couldn’t imagine spending this much on a machine I couldn’t at least upgrade the RAM on though and I’m just not a fan of all-in-one machines generally. I’m a bit old fashioned I suppose and clearly not in their target market for this. Wouldn’t turn one down if it was offered though of course.
What does this price point say about the new Mac Pro…?
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Topping out at $18,814.00, it appears the education discount still means something.
I’m not buying an iMac Pro, nor am I part of the target market.
That doesn’t mean I can’t contribute to this topic in other meaningful ways, like “I’ve talked to a few video editing friends and they seem really excited about the fastest Mac ever”, or “I’m curious about why Apple decided an all-in-one design was the best choice for the most powerful Mac ever made”, or even “this makes me really interested to see what Apple are going to do with the real Mac Pro”.
There are plenty of ways to contribute positively to topics without resorting to crapping on Apple at every turn.
Back in the early 2000s it was easily possible to get a cheese grater Mac Pro to over $30 by maxing every upgrade option, adding dual 30-inch Apple Cinema Displays, etc. I’m almost surprised Apple aren’t offering the option of displays with the iMac Pro, but I guess perhaps they don’t want to be seen advertising the LG 5K. Maybe they will when they have their own first-party displays.
I think it’s fairly indicative! 
Before iMac Pro was announced, I was thinking I may buy the new Mac Pro next year. But with this kind of pricing, I think it’ll be $7k+ for just the tower when it comes, which is WAY outside my price range.
So I bit the bullet yesterday and managed to buy a 12-core upgrade CPU daughter card with two 6-core 3.33Ghz Xeon X5680s for my Mac Pro 4,1 for $380 (+ trading my single CPU board to the seller).
iMac Pro base model ($5200) Geekbench on web reported as:
My Mac Pro 4,1 (~$1800 cost as I’ve built it over last year with all upgrades) Geekbench:
I think I’ll be happy with my investment for a few years more.
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There is also the concept that not every apple person is going to agree with their every move, so some might just need to accept that not everyone is going to sing high praises for this thing.
Anyways, it would have been interesting if they hadn’t exactly kept the normal iMac design and had instead gone a bit thicker for example.
I don’t know if they have any clue what they’re doing with the Pro market, I think their admission with the Mac Pro shows that. I do find it weird that this is less upgradable rhan the normal iMac, i’d Think that the insane descision to keep the same design meant a new cooling system that made the removable ram plate impossible.
I for one think it’s a solid example of Apple’s ability to iterate on a design and refine.
They’ve managed to cram up to 18 cores of workstation CPU hotness (literally) into the same space as a consumer CPU and somehow keep it cool enough.
I’m not the target audience for this machine, but I definitely appreciate the work that’s gone into producing it for those who are.
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My thought was - with all that CPU hotness - how can they keep it cool in such a slim design?! And, if they can fit it all in… Why isn’t the normal iMac more powerful?
I don’t know why they didnt throw it all at a Mac Pro with a better case design, and reintroduce Apple displays of some kind. I’ve never owned one, too exy for me, but they really were lovely things.
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Cost & specs I would wager
The inability to open it up isnt about future upgrades. The issues to me are the horrendous price of the additional RAM and storage BTOs at purchase, and the difficulty in servicing if something breaks down.
These things are probably of minimal or even zero concern to the target market which is I assume factories like Pixar.
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Even at my work, whilst they flog the computers (Macs and PCs) to death, I can’t say I’ve heard of any upgrades being performed. These are being used for art (the Macs) and other general business affairs. On Friday my manager came to me holding a recently orphaned monitor and asked if I’d (finally!) like to have 2 screens… Except when we looked, the old PC tower I am using only has 1 output port on its video card, so I’m not holding my breath… 
As @Entropy says though, it’s not all about “upgrades” - repairs are a huge concern, though clearly Apple are showing less and less interest in offering repair options for their devices. And I’d not thought about the fact that Apple charge so much for extra RAM/etc when you BTO… That’s just massive price gouging, without alternative for the iMac Pro.