Only very partially. First of all, you have to buy it with the screen included. Which is a great screen (using a normal 5k iMac myself) but also limited at 27". As mentioned by others, you cannot connect your laptop to the screen, so I had to get (and store) another screen just for the laptop.
My iMac has a good processor but the graphics card is severely lacking. Not sure how far the one of the iMac Pro goes in comparison to a good mid-range desktop card. In general, I consider the Xeons of not a great value for many usages, especially now with all the new AMD processors.
But the biggest catch is, that most parts of the machine are not updateable. To add to the insult, the machines are glued together, so that you cannot easily reach the parts which are. With the iMac Pro you are limited to Apple-provided SSD storage for example. So certainly the iMac Pro is a nice machine, but not really a replacement for a plain desktop.
You certainly cannot add an external GPU to my TB2 iMac, and also adding external disks has been a very mixed experience for me. At minimum it is ironic, that Apple designs an ultra-sleek machine only to have you connect a lot of hardware externally to. My iMac still has a full 3.5" HD bay inside, unfortunately, not accessible. It would be an entirely different machine, if you could access the interior and find there like 2 2.5" bays or even some NVMe slots.
We weren’t talking about a new iMac and there hasn’t been any widespread performance issues with using external drives on them.
Also, aren’t you “valuing form over function” by complaining about it ruining the “ultra sleek” aesthetic of the computer? Isn’t that a complaint lobbed at Apple?
My iMac has a good processor but the graphics card is severely lacking. Not sure how far the one of the iMac Pro goes in comparison to a good mid-range desktop card. In general, I consider the Xeons of not a great value for many usages, especially now with all the new AMD processors.
But the biggest catch is, that most parts of the machine are not updateable. To add to the insult, the machines are glued together, so that you cannot easily reach the parts which are. With the iMac Pro you are limited to Apple-provided SSD storage for example. So certainly the iMac Pro is a nice machine, but not really a replacement for a plain desktop.