Apple has finally stopped ignoring professionals and will be refreshing the Mac Pro line

[Master Disaster]

So a few days ago Apple did a reshuffle of the Mac Pro lineup swapping out CPUs and GPUs for newer variants

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The former $3,999 model is now the $2,999 base model, while the previously built-to-order 8-core model with dual D700 GPUs is now the high-end stock configuration for $3,999. Both models are equipped with 256GB PCIe-based flash storage, four USB 3.0 ports, six Thunderbolt 2 ports, and dual Gigabit Ethernet ports. 

The former quad-core model with dual AMD FirePro D300 GPUs and 12GB of RAM now has 6-cores with dual D500 GPUs and 16GB of RAM, while the 6-Core model with dual AMD FirePro D500 GPUs is now 8-cores with dual D700 GPUs and 16GB of RAM. There are no other hardware changes—not even Thunderbolt 3 ports. 

Well Tim Schiller has recently confirmed that Apple are designing a new MP model, as yet the release window and hardware specs are unknown but this is still amazing news for any professionals who had given up on using an Apple to do their work. He did say it wouldn't be coming this year and it would be a modular design.

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Meanwhile, Apple said an all-new Mac Pro will be a high-end, high-throughput modular system that will "take longer than this year" to complete. It will be accompanied by an Apple-branded external display in at least one size, essentially marking the return of the discontinued Thunderbolt Display. 

Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller via Daring Fireball:

 

With regards to the Mac Pro, we are in the process of what we call "completely rethinking the Mac Pro." We’re working on it. We have a team working hard on it right now, and we want to architect it so that we can keep it fresh with regular improvements, and we’re committed to making it our highest-end, high-throughput desktop system, designed for our demanding pro customers. 

As part of doing a new Mac Pro — it is, by definition, a modular system — we will be doing a pro display as well. Now you won’t see any of those products this year; we’re in the process of that. We think it’s really important to create something great for our pro customers who want a Mac Pro modular system, and that’ll take longer than this year to do. 

In the interim, we know there are a number of customers who continue to buy our [current Mac Pros]. To be clear, our current Mac Pro has met the needs of some of our customers, and we know clearly not all of our customers. None of this is black and white, it’s a wide variety of customers. Some… it’s the kind of system they wanted; others, it was not. 

In the meantime, we’re going to update the configs to make it faster and better for their dollar. This is not a new model, not a new design, we’re just going to update the configs. We’re doing that this week. We can give you the specifics on that. 

The CPUs, we’re moving them down the line. The GPUs, down the line, to get more performance per dollar for customers who DO need to continue to buy them on the interim until we get to a newly architected system.

He also gave a strong hint the trashcan design would be dropped stating the old design was responsible for hitting thermal limits

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I think we designed ourselves into a bit of a thermal corner, if you will. We designed a system that we thought with the kind of GPUs that at the time we thought we needed, and that we thought we could well serve with a two GPU architecture… that that was the thermal limit we needed, or the thermal capacity we needed. But workloads didn’t materialize to fit that as broadly as we hoped. 

Being able to put larger single GPUs required a different system architecture and more thermal capacity than that system was designed to accommodate. And so it became fairly difficult to adjust. At the same time, so many of our customers were moving to iMac that we saw a path to address many, many more of those that were finding themselves limited by Mac Pro through a next generation iMac.. And really put a lot of our energy behind that. [But,] while that [upgraded iMac] system is going to be fantastic for a huge number of customers — we want to do more.

https://www.macrumors.com/2017/04/04/apple-updates-mac-pro-and-more/

 

Interesting stuff, a lot of hardcore Apple users had all but written the MP lineup off. I wonder if they'll stick with exclusive Intel/AMD systems or maybe include Ryzen CPUs and Nvidia GPUs?

[Techicolors]

this would be a cool way to go about a mac pro 2

 

http://pascaleggert.de/macpro.html

[PCgamer324]

repost - reported

 

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, PCgamer324 said:

repost - reported

 

I actually searched for Mac pro in these forums and found nothing?

 

Lock pls mods.

[RGProductions]

3 minutes ago, Technicolors said:

this would be a cool way to go about a mac pro 2

 

http://pascaleggert.de/macpro.html

You mean mac pro 3?

 

/s

[Doramius]

58 minutes ago, RGProductions said:

You mean mac pro 3?

 

/s

Those Mac Pros are still the most sought after body style.  Many of them selling for more than the trash can body style, even though the older body type might have slightly inferior hardware internally.  While compatible form factor DOES play a role in this, the modular functionality is the largest portion of the popularity.  

 

I feel Apple had an idea to make the unit smaller and more aesthetically friendly.  However, they've gained such a large market share of computing, recently, in their OS redesigns and mobile devices.  They seem to be realizing that they have markets they are starting to unintentionally abandon, and it is impacting them in an unexpected way.

[The Benjamins]

3 minutes ago, Doramius said:

Those Mac Pros are still the most sought after body style.  Many of them selling for more than the trash can body style, even though the older body type might have slightly inferior hardware internally.  While compatible form factor DOES play a role in this, the modular functionality is the largest portion of the popularity.  

 

I feel Apple had an idea to make the unit smaller and more aesthetically friendly.  However, they've gained such a large market share of computing, recently, in their OS redesigns and mobile devices.  They seem to be realizing that they have markets they are starting to unintentionally abandon, and it is impacting them in an unexpected way.

My dad just got a 2012 mac pro, it has the 6 core CPU, 32GB of ram PCIe SSD, some AMD GPU. he uses it for music production, as a hobby, and it was cheaper and faster then the trashcan for what he needed. It is crazy to think getting that is better then the "new" mac pro. 

 

this is were he uploads his songs if anyone cares 

 

[Doramius]

Out here, the 2010 Mac Pro

Spoiler

with dual 2.4 XEON, 6GB memory, 1GB GDDR5 video card, and 256GB SSD

is selling for about the same price as the 2016 Mac Pro

Spoiler

with 8-core 3.0 XEON, 16GB memory, 6GB GDDR5 video card, and 256GB SSD.