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iMac Pro upgrade: How to spend over $15k in 15 seconds

Alongside the iMac upgrade, Apple also silently updated the iMac Pro, making it even easier to spend more than $15,000 on a Mac.

Written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Contributing Writer March 19, 2019 at 9:42 a.m. PT

It's been a busy week ahead of Apple's upcoming event, scheduled for March 25, which is expected to focus on services. Not only has Apple gotten around to updating the iPad Air and iPad mini, as well as giving the 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMacs a refresh, but it also gave the high-end iMac Pro a small, silent spec bump.

It's not a big refresh. Apple has bumped the high-end graphics to a Radeon Pro Vega 64X GPU with 16GB of HBM2 memory, and the maximum RAM has been increased to a wholly impressive 256GB of 2666MHz DDR4 ECC.

Must read: 10 Apple products you shouldn't buy (March 2019 edition)

So, what's a fully kitted-out iMac Pro look like? The specs are certainly impressive:

2.3GHz 18-core Intel Xeon W processor
256GB 2666MHz DDR4 ECC RAM
Radeon Pro Vega 64X GPU with 16GB of HBM2 memory
4TB SSD storage

So, *click* *click* *click* *click* and some 15 seconds later you're up from $4,999 to a stout $15,699. Oh, and if you want AppleCare, that's another $169.

That's quite a price tag. But remember that this is a Mac for the 0.5 percent. That said, it may not be a great time to put down $15k on a new iMac Pro, because all indications point to Apple unveiling a new Mac Pro at WWDC in June (a Mac for the top 0.1 percent of owners).

So, if your finger is hovering over that "BUY" button, maybe that's something to bear in mind.