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Apple finally announces all-new Mac Pro

Ed

By Ed

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The wait is finally over, Tim Cook made good on his promise of doing something special for the Mac Pro.

 

Apple today gave a sneak preview at WWDC of its all-new Mac Pro that its engineers are still working on, unveiling a relatively diminutive black cylinder form factor that is dwarfed by its outgoing predecessor.

 

Like the current Mac Pro, it's been designed around air flow, but with cool air being drawn in from underneath and hot air being expelled upwards, not too dissimilar from the ill-fated G4 Cube from 2000.

 

Indeed, it's in fact smaller in size than the PowerMac G4 Cube, at just 6.6" diameter and 9.9" tall, compared to the Cube which clocked in at 7.65" square, and 10" tall due to its elevation for air intake and cables into the bottom.

 

Based on the new-generation Intel Xeon E5 chipset, the new Mac Pro will pack 12 cores like the current model, but with PCI Express gen. 3 and 256-bit-wide floating-point instructions.

 

A first for any Mac are dual GPUs as standard, with the ability to power up to three 4K resolution monitors(!). Apple are hard at work on an updated version of Final Cut for video editors to take full advantage of this cutting-edge hardware. The GPUs are AMD FirePros with 6GB of VRAM.

 

Like with all current Apple hardware, the new Mac Pro does away with legacy technology such as optical drives and hard disk drives. Instead, storage is handled by next-generation PCIe flash storage.

 

Unsurprisingly, most of the size and weight loss is down to the removal of the PCI slots, meaning expansion is handled solely through the 6 Thunderbolt 2 ports (up to 20Gb/s) on the rear of the new Mac Pro - illuminated by white LEDs no less. Connectivity is rounded off with USB 3, Bluetooth 4.0, 801.11ac Wi-Fi, dual Gigabit ethernet and HDMI, plus audio I/O.

 

No word on an exact release date, which is no surprise given the uncharacteristic nature of this "preview", but one could hazard a guess that it may ship with the newly announced Mac OS X 10.9 "Mavericks". Will we finally see a black Apple mouse & keyboard to match the svelte gloss black gorgeousness of this new Mac Pro? Maybe even some high-end Retina Cinema Displays to boot? Place your bets now...

 

Head on over to Apple's new Mac Pro preview page on their website for more juicy pics and details.

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Baudouin

Other tests with Macworld :

 

http://www.macworld.com/article/2082568/lab-tested-new-mac-pro-is-the-speedster-weve-been-waiting-for-finally.html

 

http://www.macworld.com/article/2082022/the-new-mac-pro-first-impressions.html

 

one more thing : I quote Macworld : "It’s not black. The color of the Mac Pro’s enclosure is a lot lighter than you’d expect. Apple’s PR videos and images make it look like a dark, metallic gray—almost black. But it’s much closer in color to the new Space Gray finish of Apple’s current iOS devices. In fact, as you can see in our first-look slideshow, when a bright light or sunlight is reflecting off of it, the Mac Pro looks downright silvery".
 

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flamevtx

I dunno, about this 400W heat dissipation thing, i like to think that Apple will really save no expenses on this one and work with novel dissipation technologies. I wonder about the positioning of all the components, though. A keggle like this is probably going to present some rather unconventional distribution.

 

Alas, the design does remember a trash bin. So people that will not like it might probably throw it away as is.

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3.14r2

As far as I understand, only some of the EXISTING (that is factory installed integral components) can be upgrade. IMO this does qualify is a user UPGRADABLE (well, sort of...) computer. Almost the same level of upgradeability most non-Apple notebook have to offer (Apple produced notebooks are different thing in this regard).

 

The functionality can't be EXPANDED with user-installed INTERNAL expansion cards (that is PCI-E card like in the previous gen. Macs) - only via external (TB, USB) modules/devices. Not sure if this (external versus internal) expansion path is a better way to do things.

 

For a computer savvy person, installing an internal expansion card is is quite simple task. For an average Joe external devices might be a better option though. IMO Apple is thinking more of an average Joe then of geeks.

Edited by 3.14r2
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Long Cat

As far as expansion goes, this image pretty much sums it up for me:

 

macproexpansion.jpg

 

Everyday people who use this thing will probably have 1-2 external HDDs and a disk drive attached... at the least. The baseline 256GB is not nearly enough to satisfy anyone who's willing to drop 3K on a computer. Then for certain pro's comes all your expansion cards, application specific stuff, etc... and then comes the power cables... before you know it you've got a big octopus on your desk! :rolleyes:

 

It's not very Apple, is it? In fact in some ways I think it's more PC than a PC, which brings this image to mind... simplicity has always been a selling point for the mac.

 

neat_mac_vs_pc_mess.png

 

I do get the regular users vs pros vs geeks argument... but then again, if someones job depends on installing a sound card, they're gonna figure out how to do it in the end.

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zarac

Stop it... again you know better... Were does the HD-X card go... or the SAS card... or the fiber channel card... or the Red Rocket card... or the SATA controller... or the... get the point... 

If you already have PCI variants of those products, you'll need a Thunderbolt PCI Expansion Chassis. There's a few of them on the market.

If not, just get Thunderbolt variants.

 

Remember when Apple dropped PCI-X? There were lots of users who couldn't plug their existing cards into a new machine. This time at least there is a TB converter.

 

Everyday people who use this thing will probably have 1-2 external HDDs and a disk drive attached... at the least. The baseline 256GB is not nearly enough to satisfy anyone who's willing to drop 3K on a computer. Then for certain pro's comes all your expansion cards, application specific stuff, etc... and then comes the power cables... before you know it you've got a big octopus on your desk!  :rolleyes:

So, "everyday people" with those old Mac Pros have their external HDDs without cables? Their video cards (AJA, blackmagic, etc) don't have cables to breakout boxes? No card readers? No power cables?

 

The "clean" old Mac Pro image on the left is obviously for the completely bare model - no expansions whatsoever. My old Mac Pro looked like that only the day I unpacked it. Now it's a cable-ridden mess.

 

mac_set_up.jpg

 

The new Mac Pro without expansions looks clean as well.

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zarac

It looks cool and all (reminds me a little of the G4 Cube), but it's overpriced and not upgradeable.

 

1. Overpriced - not true:
 
Please feel free to add up the retail prices of nMP (or very similar) internals:
 
GPU:
AMD FirePro W9000 (similar to D700) is $3400 EACH - http://goo.gl/luVof
AMD FirePro W8000 (similar to D500) is $1400 EACH - http://goo.gl/qpsPXH
AMD FirePro W7000 (similar to D300) is $700 EACH - http://goo.gl/dXuomn
 
CPUs: 
12-core 2.7 GHz Xeon E5-2697 v2 is $2750 - http://goo.gl/UIYIhI
8-core 3.0 GHz Xeon E5-1680 v2 is $1973 - http://goo.gl/9r4Zog
6-core 3.5 GHz Xeon E5-1650 v2 is $658 - http://goo.gl/G1ekLK
4-core 3.7 GHz Xeon E5-1620 v2 is $332 - http://goo.gl/kwKNcc
 
storage:
960GB PCIe flash drive (somewhat slower than MacPro’s) is $999 – http://goo.gl/6aG8P0
480GB PCIe flash drive (somewhat slower than MacPro’s) is $540 – http://goo.gl/y4Kazl
240GB PCIe flash drive (somewhat slower than MacPro’s) is $327 – http://goo.gl/C9BUa6
 
memory:
64GB RAM (same specs) is $895 – http://goo.gl/lXuipv
32GB RAM (same specs) is $450 – http://goo.gl/8aJsGg
 
You'll still need a motherboard, a power supply and a case.
 
Besides, Dell Precision T7610 workstation costs $3059. It features a 2.1GHz 6-core Xeon, 3GB NVIDIA Quadro K4000, 16GB RAM, 1TB 7200 rpm HDD.
HP Z820 Workstation at $4400 features a 3.5 GHz 4-core XEON, 3GB NVIDIA Quadro K4000, 16GB RAM, 1TB 7200 rpm HDD.
 
Still think nMP is overpriced?
 
 
2. Not upgradeable - non-issue for most users:
 
 
But, CPU upgrades do not provide that big of a boost these days. Last 3 generations of Intel CPUs we're seeing a very slow progress in terms of performace: http://goo.gl/SCWaho.
 
GPUs on the other hand have been progressing much faster.
But Apple has been using very, very weak consumer-grade graphic cards in its Pro line. Actually, so weak, they were at lest 2 years behind at the MP release date already, even for consumer use.
 
At the time MP 2008 came out, PC people (consumers, not pros) were already using nVidia 280s and Radeon 4870X2s - Apple chose to use nVidia 8800GT and Radeon HD 2600 XT, with a $2,850 option for nVidia Quadro FX 5600.
A year later (2009), they upped their default GPUs to nVidia 120 and Radeons 4870 - wow (/s)
In 2010 they started used Radeons 5770-5870 which were in use until today.
 
Those GPUs needed to be replaced at release date in order to do almost any pro work.
 
The GPUs in a nMP are stupidly fast, they don't need to be upgraded at release date, if ever for most users. These are professional cards that smoke the consumer competition (very unlike previous Apple stock GPUs). In a few years they will still be very usable, just as today a dual quadro 6000 (non-K) system from 2010 is indeed very, very fast and usable. If Apple decided back then (in 2010) to use the most advanced workstation GPUs, no upgrade would be needed today for majority of users - seriously.
 
Now, let's see what is today's best upgrade option for older MPs: nVidia Quadro K5000 at $1900 or K6000 at $5000. Dual cards? Double the price.
 
See my point? I'd rather buy a nMP.
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joe75

Apples low end gpus were purposeful; they expected you to upgrade it!

 

I agree with your price points above but you should add in the extra cost of these "TB Expansion" cases and External storage options.

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zarac

Apples low end gpus were purposeful; they expected you to upgrade it!

My point exactly - they were milking their customers.

 

I agree with your price points above but you should add in the extra cost of these "TB Expansion" cases and External storage options.

Valid point, but only for current MP users with PCI expansions who need TB-PCI converters.

New users who need those expansions will buy Thunderbolt variants just as before they bought PCI ones.

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