iMac Pro (2017)

Space gray, and the fastest Mac Apple had ever sold. Xeon W processors from 8 to 18 cores, AMD Radeon Vega Pro graphics and up to 128GB of ECC memory, inside the 27-inch Retina 5K chassis with an entirely new thermal architecture built to keep workstation silicon cool in an all-in-one. The T2 security chip debuted in an iMac here, handling encrypted storage, the always-on Siri listening and camera image processing. Timing explains a lot of it. The cylindrical Mac Pro had been sitting without an update for four years, and professionals treated the iMac Pro as the stopgap, then discovered it was often the better machine. Reviewers were impressed by benchmarks matching tower workstations that cost considerably more, and clear-eyed that a sealed all-in-one cannot take a new graphics card in three years when the work gets heavier. The space gray finish, with matching keyboard, mouse and trackpad, became an object people wanted regardless of whether they needed 18 cores. Apple discontinued it in 2021 with no successor, because Apple Silicon and the Mac Studio had made a Xeon all-in-one unnecessary.