Apple Mulling Preview of New Modular Mac Pro at WWDC in June

[Kabeyun]

what he meant was that the fact that they are mulling it over means that they are nowhere near finishing it. WWDC is the perfect platform for such device and it shouldn't be a question at all. The MP should be shown by default. In 2016 they realised they have a problem, in 2017 they said they are working on it and 2019 is the year for release. By now they should have a prototype that works etc. and is probably in final stages. So previewing a video (just like nMP in 2013) is a must. If they are mulling then that signals that the product may not be nowhere near solid and that what he was referring to.
Personally, I'm pissed off with Apple too. nMP was cool concept but silly in practice. I was mostly disappointed with no dual cpu setup. Most rendering is CPU based.
Anyway, if they don't preview it at WWDC then I doubt we will see it in 2019 and therefore Apple fails us again.

The whole Mac Pro is a disaster. They should have sticked to the cheesegrater and work from there. 12 core 2010 Mac Pro was by far the best computer I had from Apple.
Now I have ****** 2017 MBP which is all gimmick and no fun.
So, waiting either for iMac and go there or the updated Mac Pro if they don't mess up again.

Did you read the Bloomberg article? No? Here’s the single sentence, at the very end and utterly not the focus of the article, that this MacRumors “article” is about, and over which everyone’s going apoplectic: “The company has also internally weighed previewing a new version of the high-end Mac Pro, according to people familiar with the deliberations.”

That’s it. This could signal any number of things or nothing at all. Apparently one thing is does signal is that (rightfully) disenchanted consumers with a hair trigger awaiting a new Mac Pro have some fresh meat to pounce on.

 

[twistedpixel8]

Check book/credit card standing by to purchase

^ why Apple is rich without actually having to make the best products anymore.

 

[dazzer21-2]

I can't get excited about this. I imagine it's going to be a Mini (or similar size - I hope bigger, though) with a Xeon in it. Or 2. Or 4. Then it will be more enclosures, similar in looks and size, stacked - as has already been suggested. This just makes for one hell of an expensive game of Jenga! I can't see this being anything other than a closed system architecture. With the Cheesegrater Mac Pro, everything was enclosed in a single unit, with room for all the RAM, all the graphics cards, all the CPUs you could want, and the available parts were many from many vendors... If modular means what we all seem to think it does, it's going to effectively be that the Mac Pro 'mothership' will need to connect a Mac Pro-specific RAM chassis (maybe), a Mac Pro-specific Graphics Card Chassis, a Mac Pro-specific Storage Chassis and so it goes on, all in a proprietary design... Will they be cable daisy chained? Maybe have some sort of interlocking system? Or would it just have a stack-load of breakout ports and you can plug all of your existing components into it? Like a 2013 Mac Pro. Maybe that last suggestion is a little flawed... I get the feeling that looking nice is probably higher up the priorities list than it ought to be...

 

[MacsRgr8]

Me too. Apples idea of “modular” will be a lot different then our idea of “modular”.

For example, you want to upgrade RAM? Buy this custom Apple hardware “module” that has additional RAM soldered to the module. With no way to just swap in normal memory sticks.

It doesn’t take this long to make a easy to upgrade Mac (ie swap in new memory or change graphics card). Hackintosh people have been doing it for years. It takes this long to make a expensive to upgrade module Mac.

I hope I’m wrong.

I'm afraid of that too.

Want a better grfx card? Well, it wouldn't surprise me that all future Mac Pro - grfx cards will be connected via TB 3 (Apple branded - eGPU) and 3rd parties will not work due to the T2 (T3?) chip.
I don't expect Apple letting users open the casing and swapping the PCIe grfx cards like in the brilliant cheese-grater Mac Pro.

Choice between AMD VII and Vega 64 until 2020.

Same for SSD etc.

I'm sure Apple will not make this Mac upgradable so that you can squeeze the most to of its life, i.e. cheaper in the long run for the user, but upgradable so that Apple can sell newer and more advanced future upgrades which will still cost a lot.

For the user that wants best hardware available, then this is superb.
For the pro-sumer who simply wants an upgradable Mac Pro for it to last 5 years.... it will be far, far too expensive.

 

[MacsRuleOthersDrool]

I am guessing "Pro workflow Team" will make this "the most expansive Mac we have ever shipped!" This is ridiculous, businesses have to plan for purchasing of equipment. All this secrecy over a desktop computer is complete nonsense and a giant "FU" to every professional user that has supported Apple.

Considering how good China is at industrial espionage, and how quick they are to copy things, vs. how slow and deliberate Apple is, if they leaked this NOW, there would be chaos, and quite frankly, the Chinese Knockoffs would likely hit the market before Apple gets their prototypes ready for

 

[Porco]

Who is going to buy a modular Mac Pro when it has been more than 6 years since the last upgradeable Mac Pro was produced?

Hi!

Of course many people have moved on to other computers or even platforms. That doesn’t mean they can’t move back, if Apple get this right.

My 2010 MP is still chugging along, and really should have been replaced by now, but this mythical Mac Pro is still keeping me waiting... for now.

I could probably get by on an iMac or Mini, but ideally I want something more expandable/upgradeable. I went from G4 Power Mac > G5 PowerMac > 2010 Mac Pro, and I heavily upgraded my desktop Mac every time. If I buy an iMac or Mini now I know I’ll hit a brick wall a few years (or less) down the line and might wish I’d waited. But it all depends on what this new Mac Pro will be. If it ends up only being for super-high-end uses and priced out of reach I’ll be sad and have to consider my other options.

My current MP has lasted way longer than I expected. Apple has already effectively lost a sale of a desktop to me in the meantime. I hope they don’t make it two in a row.

I guess I’d just rather have my ideal machine that lasts twice as long and costs twice as much, than one I have to replace twice as often and I never really love in the first place.

 

[GnOm]

sure... and it will be available at the end of december 2019

Yes, the low end model, the high end models end of March 2020.

 

[Horselover Fat]

My primary need with the Mac Pro is for audio. I don't need VR-level graphics, just a reasonably powerful processor, high RAM capacity, loads of internal storage and PCI-e capability. I can't believe that Apple actually has me worried that they won't deliver this [at some non-stratospheric price point]. I mean, Logic Pro is a core Apple software product, right? I can't be alone in needing this type of setup, and Apple has to realize that - right? Right?!

You‘re not alone. I’m with you in this tiny minority. There‘a also this audio disaster with the T2 Chip. I wonder whether anyone outside the audio world cares. Thank god I‘m still on a MP 2009.

 

[Joe Rossignol]

This is the same Bloomberg that has the unverified and unretracted story about Chinese spy chips, correct? OK, just checking.

- IMHO, every Bloomberg story ought to have an asterisk with the title regarding their journalistic integrity. </.02>

I judge by author. Mark Gurman is solid.

 

[PickUrPoison]

Part of the problem, of course, is that there is no 2018 Mac Pro, and we're left wondering when in 2019 we'll finally see a new Mac Pro.



I could go on all day about what's wrong with the Mac mini, and if I'm not careful, I just might.

128GB is pathetic for a desktop computer. If it's entry level, give it an HDD. If it's midrange, give it decent storage. $799 is too high of a starting price, as as I complained earlier, things just get more ridiculous when you start to upgrade.

That the price of a Mac mini 128GB SSD went up only $50 since 2014 hardly excuses Apple. In 2014, a 128GB SSD might have been somewhat of a luxury. Today, it's beneath low-end.

re: the 2019 Mac Pro, we may or may not get a sneak peek at WWDC, but Apple will no doubt have something to say about it, including the launch schedule.

re: your complaints about the mini, keep in mind it’s not a cheap entry-level home/consumer computer targeted at “switchers” anymore. Look at Apple’s website; it’s all about performance, and it now targets the business/pro market. A $100 10Gb Ethernet option tells you all you need to know about the market Apple’s after. If there’s any doubt, look at the benchmarks they provide: Xcode, WebKit compile, Adobe Photoshop CC, Pixelmator Pro, Luxion KeyShot, Autodesk Maya, Compressor, Final Cut Pro X, Logic Pro X, MainStage and since you need to unwind, Rise of the Tomb Raider

No one wants an HDD boot drive, and there are plenty of users who find a 128GB internal drive sufficient. Pros often tend to use external storage, including RAID arrays, NAS or SAN. If you want more than a 128GB boot drive it’s available but there’s no reason to force others to pay for capacity they don’t need.

You may not like the change in target market, but that’s where Apple sees a market for the mini. Of course there’s nothing wrong with home/consumers buying it. Feel free to attach a $99 WD 4TB USB 3.0 HDD. In any case $799 is in no way too high. In fact it’s a bargain if you want what it offers; try to find a PC that small and quiet that offers four Thunderbolt 3 ports, regardless of price.

And there’s no point in complaining about Apple’s upgrade pricing on the mini—disk and RAM upgrades are priced exactly the same as iMac and MacBook Pro. If you want cheap upgrades buy your own RAM and plug in some Samsung T5 or X5 drives and be done with it.

If you can really “go on all day about what’s wrong with the Mac mini”, you really don’t understand the product—or its market—at all.

 

[d5aqoëp]

All these years in designing iPhones and only iPhones has caused Apple to “forget” how to create real computers.

At the moment Apple should call themselves a toy company.

 

[xnu]

What happens if the new MacPro is just the 6K display with a built in GPU that you are suppose to use with a Mini, iMac, or MacBook?

Expansion like never before... "BYOC" bring your own computer... now you can use any Mac and make it a Pro.

Prepare yourself for utter disappoint. And the GPU is laptop grade, three generations old AMD.

 

[jonnysods]

I don't want a Mac Pro, but I'm so curious about it. This will show me how serious Apple is about the future of the Mac.

 

[pl1984]

re: the 2019 Mac Pro, we may or may not get a sneak peek at WWDC, but Apple will no doubt have something to say about it, including the launch schedule.

re: your complaints about the mini, keep in mind it’s not a cheap entry-level home/consumer computer targeted at “switchers” anymore. Look at Apple’s website; it’s all about performance, and it now targets the business/pro market. A $100 10Gb Ethernet option tells you all you need to know about the market Apple’s after. If there’s any doubt, look at the benchmarks they provide: Xcode, WebKit compile, Adobe Photoshop CC, Pixelmator Pro, Luxion KeyShot, Autodesk Maya, Compressor, Final Cut Pro X, Logic Pro X, MainStage and since you need to unwind, Rise of the Tomb Raider

The Mini's performance looks good in comparison to Apple's other Macintosh products merely because those other products use dated technology. I find it amusing a Mini easily outperforms the Mac Pro, which costs several thousands of dollars more, in many tasks. Not because the Mini is so wonderful but rather the Mac Pro is, now, so anemic.

No one wants an HDD boot drive, and there are plenty of users who find a 128GB internal drive sufficient. Pros often tend to use external storage, including RAID arrays, NAS or SAN. If you want more than a 128GB boot drive it’s available but there’s no reason to force others to pay for capacity they don’t need.

This issue has an easy solution: Allow the user to replace the SSD.
[doublepost=1550689690][/doublepost]

Of course many people have moved on to other computers or even platforms. That doesn’t mean they can’t move back, if Apple get this right.

If I've spent time and money switching to an alternative it would have to take a lot from Apple to get me to switch back. Not only technology but a commitment to continue updating that technology instead of letting it languish without a single change for half a decade.

 

[Menthol]

You‘re not alone. I’m with you in this tiny minority. There‘a also this audio disaster with the T2 Chip. I wonder whether anyone outside the audio world cares. Thank god I‘m still on a MP 2009.

But are we really so tiny a minority? What happened to the pro audio market? Is everyone on a laptop now?

 

[oneMadRssn]

But are we really so tiny a minority? What happened to the pro audio market? Is everyone on a laptop now?

Every pro audio guy I know is on a laptop now, and has been for over a decade. They use what they learned on, and nearly every music school teaches entirely on, and requires students to use, Macbook Pros.

 

[potatis]

"Mulling"... I get visions of a 80's design Mac Pro with a mullet.

 

[MatrixRabbit]

Just my two cents, I don't see Apple in the least bit a "Pro" company. The "Pro" is just easier to differentiate to their better offerings for those consumers with money. I own many of their products, and find them excellent, but am in NO way a professional Mac user. If they do a superb job, the Asus StudioBook S with Xeon processors, 17", Quadro, 64GB Ram, and a gorgeous design could destroy all competition. It's not yet released, but it's the first laptop that had me glance twice, I'll be curious the "catch", like a non-precision track-pad or 2 hour battery.

My Vega 20 is fantastic for relaxing in bed, school, listening to music (excellent speakers), and surfing the internet. There is no 15" Air, so there's no choice but to go "Pro". The Vega 20 was an easy choice for resell. I just have the touch-bar set to display the normal shortcuts permanently. It's just a fancy, expensive, consumer-level product. I find there's always some compromise in a Windows laptop (track-pad, battery, QC, speakers, etc) that leads me back to Mac.

I swap over to my 12.9" iPad Pro for some magazines, gaming, book reading. My XS Max has been excellent. Apple seems just great for the consumer, assuming you have the bucks. When I hear Apple, I think more of an artist or wealthy college student than a 9-5 "Professional".

I am debating swapping my gaming PC for a '19 Mac Pro. I enjoy the OS, and don't plan on going below 32", so the iMac Pro doesn't interest me. I don't really "game" these days since the XB1-X looks gorgeous on my OLED. You lose some precision, but on a big screen and home theater in a recliner, it's almost laughable to play at my desk.

 

[jimothyGator]

re: the 2019 Mac Pro, we may or may not get a sneak peek at WWDC, but Apple will no doubt have something to say about it, including the launch schedule.

re: your complaints about the mini, keep in mind it’s not a cheap entry-level home/consumer computer targeted at “switchers” anymore. Look at Apple’s website; it’s all about performance, and it now targets the business/pro market. A $100 10Gb Ethernet option tells you all you need to know about the market Apple’s after. If there’s any doubt, look at the benchmarks they provide: Xcode, WebKit compile, Adobe Photoshop CC, Pixelmator Pro, Luxion KeyShot, Autodesk Maya, Compressor, Final Cut Pro X, Logic Pro X, MainStage and since you need to unwind, Rise of the Tomb Raider

No one wants an HDD boot drive, and there are plenty of users who find a 128GB internal drive sufficient. Pros often tend to use external storage, including RAID arrays, NAS or SAN. If you want more than a 128GB boot drive it’s available but there’s no reason to force others to pay for capacity they don’t need.

You may not like the change in target market, but that’s where Apple sees a market for the mini. Of course there’s nothing wrong with home/consumers buying it. Feel free to attach a $99 WD 4TB USB 3.0 HDD. In any case $799 is in no way too high. In fact it’s a bargain if you want what it offers; try to find a PC that small and quiet that offers four Thunderbolt 3 ports, regardless of price.

And there’s no point in complaining about Apple’s upgrade pricing on the mini—disk and RAM upgrades are priced exactly the same as iMac and MacBook Pro. If you want cheap upgrades buy your own RAM and plug in some Samsung T5 or X5 drives and be done with it.

If you can really “go on all day about what’s wrong with the Mac mini”, you really don’t understand the product—or its market—at all.

Actually, my complaint about the Mac mini is that it doesn't have a target market. It's too expensive to be entry level, and too underpowered to be professional. You're absolute right I don't understand the market for the Mac min; as best as I can tell, it doesn't have one. That's my point. That's the problem.

If your best defense of the Mac mini pricing is that it's just as ridiculous as Apple's pricing on other computers (a point Glockworkorange also makes), then you're making my point for me: Apple's pricing is ridiculous. I said Mac mini exemplifies how out-of-touch Apple has gotten with their computers. I never claimed it was alone in this regard.

You say it's all about performance, but it is only available with integrated graphics. Plunk down $1,200 for a big honkin' box that gets you lower performance than a $400 graphics card.

Once I've added an external hard drive and GPU, it's no longer "small and quite", and it sure as heck isn't cheap. Let me stress this again: To get it to reasonable amounts of storage and RAM, you're either paying out the nose, or throwing whatever advantages a Mac mini might have out the window.

It's an over designed, overpriced, under powered machine, and it does not bode well for the future Mac Pro.

 

[mi7chy]

Sounds like a FrankenMac PC but with the Apple tax.

 

[Freida]

Did you read the Bloomberg article? No? Here’s the single sentence, at the very end and utterly not the focus of the article, that this MacRumors “article” is about, and over which everyone’s going apoplectic: “The company has also internally weighed previewing a new version of the high-end Mac Pro, according to people familiar with the deliberations.”

That’s it. This could signal any number of things or nothing at all. Apparently one thing is does signal is that (rightfully) disenchanted consumers with a hair trigger awaiting a new Mac Pro have some fresh meat to pounce on.

That is still the same though.
The Mac Pro is 6 years old so thats a long time without an update. We know the reason but we also want a fix. WWDC is developers conference and as such Mac Pro is a fitting product. They previewed the trash there so its time to fix it with a proper computer and not a specific toy. (although I love the trash can as it was design marvel but useless for most people)

 

[Peperino]

I fear the next Mac Pro will take everything wrong with the mini and crank it up a few notches. We don't need an "modular" Mac; we need an upgradeable one. There's a simple elegance to being able to easily add memory and storage, and to keep everything neatly contained inside a single box, so you don't have a tangle of cords and devices. I could do that with my PowerMac towers. Even my 2009 iMac I was able to upgrade with an SSD and an internal hard drive (I removed the DVD).

We need easily upgradable desktops that do not cost an arm and a leg.

I'm not going to say, that's it, I'm moving to Windows. I won't. I hate Windows. I love macOS. I used to love Apple. Which is why it's so frustrating to see them with their heads up their you-know-what. The irony is that they'd produce better machines if they tried a little less hard. If I sound frustrated, it's because I am. It's hard to believe that such a group of smart, talented people can be so stupid.

They are, look at the entire so called "Pro" line up. Macbook Pro is a Joke, and and iMac Pro it is unaffordable.
It seems that the engineers at Apple are extremely arrogant and do not learn from their mistakes. They keep sacrificing functionality for design and there is zero innovation.
Look at the Surface Studio external design. The iMac has been the same for the last 10 years...!!!

Innovation... What is that?

Even the lame advertising, said "what is a computer".

 

[PickUrPoison]

A T2 with soldered SSD is cause for concernn if that becomes the only location from which to boot into macOS. Workstations should be able to boot an OS from multiple drive locations, including external drives, and there should be no artificial limitations on which OS is booted (e.g., Linux). I don’t need Apple to determine whether or not my OS is “secure.”

Your concern is appreciated, but there’s no need to worry about any artificial limitations. It’s already possible to do what you want.

If you don’t need to boot a trusted OS, select the “no security” option for Secure Boot. If you want to boot from an external drive, select the “allow booting from external media” option for External Boot. The you can run MacOS, Windows, Linux or whatever.

 

[VictorTango777]

It's modular because the power cord is detachable

 

[pl1984]

It's modular because the power cord is detachable

That's what makes it upgradable too