Enter your Wi-Fi password if you are using Wi-Fi.If you are connecting to the internet using Ethernet, select Other Network Options and select Ethernet.This is how your keys will type out onto your computer, no matter what the physical keyboard looks like.This is the language that your computer will be written in across the system.Press the Power button on your Mac to turn it on.If you absolutely refuse to buy a Mac with a built-in display-and I’d recommend that you reconsider, because the iMac and iMac Pro are really great-there’s the new Mac mini, which offers enough performance in its high-end configurations to please all but the most demanding users. And when you buy them, they come with gorgeous 5K displays that Apple doesn’t sell separately.
The regular 5K iMac offers remarkable power. I use the base-model iMac Pro every day and only really stretch it when I’m rendering video or using high-end audio plug-ins. It pushes all the buttons that older computer users have about expandability and flexibility.īut is it a computer you should buy? Almost certainly not. It nostalgically calls back to the era when desktop towers were the norm. (More likely it’ll be bought by the company that employs you to do that high-end work.) Roman Loyola/IDGĪ lot of other people will want the Mac Pro, too, and I understand why. I hope your Apple Card credit limit is high enough to take the damage. Yes, you, over there, the high-end pro user who needs unmatched dynamic range and a perfect color space and all the features of the Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR-you are the exception to the rule. But there remain the users at the very highest end of the spectrum who demand power, and performance, and expansion capabilities, and they were unsatisfied.ĭoes Apple need these users? Could it simply wash its hands of that high-end market, especially for video production, and survive? The new Mac mini and the iMac Pro can get almost everyone there-and the 16-inch MacBook Pro offers similar performance in a portable. Yes, over the years many of Apple’s pro users have realized that other Macs exist that can more than adequately address their needs.
Then there’s the high-end professional market, one that’s been starving for a reimagined Mac Pro for years.
I don’t think the Mac Pro has lost its status as a symbol of everything the Mac can be, and a representative of Apple’s commitment to pushing the platform forward. That means the Mac Pro fills a slot that used to be meaningful for a whole lot of Mac users, even though it’s not a computer they’d ever consider buying today. But over time, the iMac was transformed from a low-end, low-cost consumer Mac to a powerful desktop system that offered more than enough power for almost any use.
There was a time when Apple’s high-end tower computer was a mainstream Mac, the choice of professionals, yes, but also enthusiasts who wanted more power than a consumer Mac could deliver.