Apple’s iMac Pro will be available starting Thursday

Apple announced back in June that its first ever iMac Pro would launch this month — and now, with just a few weeks to go, we’re finally getting some details. Apple updated its website today to say that the iMac Pro will go on sale this Thursday, December 14th. It didn’t offer any updates on pricing or configurations, but last we heard, the machine will start at $4,999.

While the iMac Pro isn’t exactly a gadget that needs to be rushed out before the holidays, it’s one of two products that Apple promised to release before the end of the year. The other is the HomePod, and Apple announced last month that it was delaying that into “early 2018.” Schiller’s comments indicate that the iMac Pro isn’t also getting delayed.

Pricing starts at $4,999

The iMac Pro is one of Apple’s responses to a backlash from its developer community late last year. After developers indicated their frustrating with the lack of powerful options Apple was selling (particularly as it related to the MacBook Pro), Apple said it would release a new Mac Pro and introduce an iMac Pro as well.

Of the two, the iMac Pro is the only one we’ve seen any details on so far. It’ll use Xeon processors, have a 5K display, and include a Radeon Vega GPU, among other extremely high-end specs.

As Apple did with the iPhone X, it’s given some YouTubers early access to the iMac Pro. Marques Brownlee has one of the first videos out. He says that Final Cut alone isn’t enough to spin up the fans, which is an okay first sign (although Final Cut isn’t as demanding as Premiere, which is much more widely used). The iMac Pro also comes with a black Lightning cable for charging the black keyboard — another small thing that’s exclusive to this computer.

Jonathan Morrison has a video up too and takes a look at Geekbench scores. We can probably expect to see a handful of other videos go up throughout the day.

Vincent Laforet posted more detailed impressions of the iMac Pro’s performance in various video editing apps, including Premiere and DaVinci Resolve. And Craig Hunter has a number of additional performance tests on his blog.

The general consensus is that this thing is fast — but of course, that was always going to be the case with its high-end specs. The real question is whether it’s capable enough to keep pros from not going over to Windows, where they’ve traditionally been able to get power per dollar. Given that the iMac Pro isn’t upgradable, it’ll likely remain a tough sell for all but Mac enthusiasts.

Update December 12th, 9:25AM ET: This story has been updated with the iMac Pro’s release date. It previously focused on a Phil Schiller quote saying a release was coming in “a matter of days.”