Apple Announces New Mac Pro


Apple made an announcement today about a new Mac Pro. The current iteration of the Mac Pro was introduced in 2013. It’s received a speed boost since then, but not too much else. John Gruber of Daring Fireball had the scoop on the news earlier today:

Let’s not beat around the bush. I have great news to share:

Apple is currently hard at work on a ‘completely rethought’ Mac Pro, with a modular design that can accommodate high-end CPUs and big honking hot-running GPUs, and which should make it easier for Apple to update with new components on a regular basis. They’re also working on Apple-branded pro displays to go with them.

I also have not-so-great news:

These next-gen Mac Pros and pro displays ‘will not ship this year’. (I hope that means ‘next year’, but all Apple said was ‘not this year’.) In the meantime, Apple is today releasing meager speed-bump updates to the existing Mac Pros. The $2999 model goes from 4 Xeon CPU cores to 6, and from dual AMD G300 GPUs to dual G500 GPUs. The $3999 model goes from 6 CPU cores to 8, and from dual D500 GPUs to dual D800 D700 GPUs. Nothing else is changing, including the ports. No USB-C, no Thunderbolt 3 (and so no support for the LG UltraFine 5K display).

But more good news, too:

Apple has ‘great’ new iMacs in the pipeline, slated for release ‘this year’, including configurations specifically targeted at large segments of the pro market.

If you haven’t been following John Gruber, and you’re a fan of Apple’s products, you should definitely do so and read the rest of his post. He offers valuable insight into not just Apple, but the tech industry in general.

[Image by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]

Last year, Apple launched a team-up with LG for a new monitor instead of creating their own. It largely wasn’t well-received. In addition to the new Mac Pro, new iMacs and monitors are being worked on.

Apple never announces products before they’re getting ready to launch or ship them, but today they made an exception. The new Mac Pros will not be arriving this year and users will have to wait until some time next year to buy one. No exact dates have been set for the product releases.

It feels like Apple made this announcement to let everyone know that they are in fact not ignoring the Mac Pro and iMac lines. They see the fewest updates, it seems, and they want to reimagine both lines of products. The Mac Pro was first released back in August 2006. It took from then until 2013 for Apple to create a new design for the Mac Pro. The first one, often considered the cheese grater Mac Pro, wasn’t much of a sleek design, especially as it stayed largely the same for so long. In 2013, that’s when Apple introduced the current generation of the Mac Pro. In comparison to the rest of their product lines, the Mac Pro was receiving little attention in comparison to the then popular iPod, and not the laptops, iPhones, and iPads.

Before the announcement, Apple met with a small group of news outlets, which included BuzzFeed and TechCrunch in addition to John Gruber’s Daring Fireball.

[Image by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]

The company even openly admitted that the design of the current Mac Pro was not a good one. It’s often been dubbed the “trash can” Mac Pro since it looks like it could easily be mistaken for a sleek, black trash can. It will be interesting to see how they take the current design and improve it or if they just scrap it all together and have a completely new design.

So for the Apple fans, you can expect another announcement on the products in the future to give more details and information on the release date or dates for each line. In the meantime, if anyone desperately needs a Mac Pro, they will have to settle for the current model, the 6-core and dual GPU, which Apple has listed at $2,999. The $3,999, 8-core and dual GPU model is currently out of stock.

If you can, your best bet would be to wait and see what Apple has in store for the Mac Pro reboot.

[Featured Image by Stephen Lam/Getty Images]

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