Bought a 2019 Mac Pro 4 months ago… should I sell and get an i9 iMac?

[Jonathan Ramsey]

Wow, I’m surprised it’s so notably weaker than your 16 core. Right, it should be… I know. But early reports suggested you wouldn’t notice it except on a few very specialized tasks. Where do you feel it?

As for mine, I just got it set up today. The memory you pointed me to looks great online, but installed, the iMac won’t boot. I’m sending in for a replacement and hoping it was just a lemon. Except that there are four of them. All lemons?! I don’t know. Otherwise, I’ll up the ante and get some Crucial cards. It’s definitely not a fun way to start on a machine. That said, I LOVE the nano coating.

[Bryan Roberts]

In overall snappiness in the timeline, when creating proxies from 4k ProRes 4444 files, dealing with heavy GPU effects like MB, it feels noticeably slower but still works well. Funny you mention that about not booting. I had the same issue. I opened up the packaging to the iMac, loaded in the new memory before ever turning it on, then couldn’t seem to get it to boot. I finally did a double tap on the power button after trying to unplug and re-plug it back in and low and behold it booted (this is my first imac). Since then I’ve restarted maybe a dozen times and never had any issue but I thought something similar: great I got a DOA imac, this is the last thing I want to deal with right now. I’m exactly 1 week in now and overall been stable EXCEPT Premiere crashing a couple times while jumping back and forth in the media browser with lots of ProRes 4444 4k footage off a slow usb3 drive a production provided me. I love the Nano coating as well. I will say though, my imac is sitting next to one of my old dell 2415 twenty four inch monitors that I’m using as a second display for the imac and it basically works just like the cheap nonreflective surface on the 5 year old $250 dell monitor (but I can’t imagine dealing with the reflections from an imac non nano glass front). I calibrated both monitors using an Xrite colorimeter and there’s not a night and day difference to my eyes between the two other than the resolution and size bump but I’m still glad I got the nano.

[Jonathan Ramsey]

Well, I’m sure glad you mentioned having the same problem with the memory. I put it back in and did the double tap and it seems to be working. Whew! SO ODD. As to the Nano coating — doesn’t surprise me that Apple has put a premium price on an every day technology. Well, off we go! Here’s hoping we don’t regret it and that the silicon situation with future Mac machines gets fully baked before we need to trade these up.