Apple Says New Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR Are Coming in September [Updated]

[norbinhouston]

And here I thought computers were supposed to get cheaper and faster. I guess Tim Cook didn't hear that part.

 

[Zdigital2015]

There's still a product gap between the Mini and the Pro for a headless yet serviceable Mac Desktop. iMac's don't really fit that because of the all-in-one nature coming with a display you can't replace and components that aren't easily accessible. Something LIKE a Mac Mini in consumer grade parts, but big enough to fit at least a moderate sized GPU in, with swappable storage and RAM would be what a lot of nay-sayers are looking for.

Something Apple used to provide with the original Mac Pro cheese grater, which price point was "high" but at least somewhat comparable to other PC's of similar function of the time ($2,500ish start price)

the New Mac Pro isn't a bad machine, but starting at $6k for performance that can be had in a computer costing 1/2 of that, it seems to miss that entire product segment. So the old Mac Pro users who would be fine with a $3000 "mac" just don't really have an option in that price range for that computer.

I believe that in Apple's eyes, there is an incredible downside to building a smaller/cheaper/less expandable Mac with an x16 PCIe slot and selling it at a price that sells in large(r) numbers. The downside would be that customers would be asking for NVIDIA support, in larger numbers and on a more frequent basis. This is not something Apple wants to do under any circumstances. They only have a few more models with NVIDIA GPUs that they are supporting in Catalina. I think dropping support for the 5,1 Mac Pro was to shutdown those asking for official NVIDIA Drivers for Pascal and Turing GPUs. Now all that is left before dropping NVIDIA support completely is to age out the Mid 2012 through mid-2104 MacBook Pros and the Late 2012-Late 2013 iMacs. For the most part, these computers are served well by the drivers that Apple ships already and don't require more than simply maintaining them until the computers age out of service sometime around 10.17 or 10.18, so, 2021-2022, based on the fact that the mid 2014 MBP and Late 203 iMacs were sold into early and late 2015, respectively.

Apple made the Mac Pro expensive enough and is trying to make the value proposition that the AMD Vega II and Vega II Duo are the best for those who might be asking for NVIDIA. They may even allow NVIDIA back in with drivers that only run on Catalina and require an MPX module GPU which will be restricted to the RTX Quadro lineup to make it worth Apple and NVIDIA's time and money. I still think there is less than a 5% chance they will do it, though.

Releasing the mythical Mac, xMac, Mac mini Pro...whatever you want to call it, with an open x16 PCIe 3 slot simply opens a Pandora's Box that Apple has zero interest in dealing with on a number of levels.

I think Apple was very calculated when pricing the new Mac Pro and one of those calculations is how do they make it expensive enough to make someone wanting to shove an NVIDIA GTX 1660Ti into it to use for gaming, CUDA, Premier Pro, whatever that is not optimized for AMD say, "this is too expensive, I'm out." Apple will not allow itself to be held hostage by NVIDIA in any way shape or form period. Even if that means losing potential Mac Pro customers.

Just my theory.

 

[JosephAW]

In ten years I'll be able to pick one of these up for less than $100 just as I did with the G5 Power Mac.
These new units will be the last of the best Macs before they transition away from Intel processors.
At least they are not water cooled and should last a while, most of my water cooled G5 tower servers have given up the ghost. The air cooled are still going strong.

 

[IllIllIll]

So many people on this thread unable to distinguish between needs and wants.

 

[LordVic]

I believe that in Apple's eyes, there is an incredible downside to building a smaller/cheaper/less expandable Mac with an x16 PCIe slot and selling it at a price that sells in large(r) numbers. The downside would be that customers would be asking for NVIDIA support, in larger numbers and on a more frequent basis. This is not something Apple wants to do under any circumstances. They only have a few more models with NVIDIA GPUs that they are supporting in Catalina. I think dropping support for the 5,1 Mac Pro was to shutdown those asking for official NVIDIA Drivers for Pascal and Turing GPUs. Now all that is left before dropping NVIDIA support completely is to age out the Mid 2012 through mid-2104 MacBook Pros and the Late 2012-Late 2013 iMacs. For the most part, these computers are served well by the drivers that Apple ships already and don't require more than simply maintaining them until the computers age out of service sometime around 10.17 or 10.18, so, 2021-2022, based on the fact that the mid 2014 MBP and Late 203 iMacs were sold into early and late 2015, respectively.

Apple made the Mac Pro expensive enough and is trying to make the value proposition that the AMD Vega II and Vega II Duo are the best for those who might be asking for NVIDIA. They may even allow NVIDIA back in with drivers that only run on Catalina and require an MPX module GPU which will be restricted to the RTX Quadro lineup to make it worth Apple and NVIDIA's time and money. I still think there is less than a 5% chance they will do it, though.

Releasing the mythical Mac, xMac, Mac mini Pro...whatever you want to call it, with an open x16 PCIe 3 slot simply opens a Pandora's Box that Apple has zero interest in dealing with on a number of levels.

I think Apple was very calculated when pricing the new Mac Pro and one of those calculations is how do they make it expensive enough to make someone wanting to shove an NVIDIA GTX 1660Ti into it to use for gaming, CUDA, Premier Pro, whatever that is not optimized for AMD say, "this is too expensive, I'm out." Apple will not allow itself to be held hostage by NVIDIA in any way shape or form period. Even if that means losing potential Mac Pro customers.

Just my theory.

I think it's more that they've spent a lot of time and effort to lock down machines to make them replacable commodities. They want us replacing computers every 2-3 years when they become "old" and not just upgrade bits and pieces. Apple gets zero revenues if you upgrade your Apple computer from 3rd party supplies.

Apple gets full computer revenue for each computer you have to replace now. There's no reason why Their computers can't or won't support Nvidia GPU's. They've just made a business decision not to.

Most of these decisions can always boil down to money and Apple's methods to maximize their profit above all else. Just like the Current Mac Mini. There is absolutely zero technical reason why the Storage is soldered in, except as a limit to how long and how much lengevity that will get.

I also think that these decisions were done to help kill the after-market for Apple computers. Apple again, doesn't want you buying a 3-5 year old Mac and upgrading it to meet your requirements. They want you buyin a new mac. All of these current soldered and glued down Macs are going to have resell value problems in the future. They will not get the same return as Apple computers used to get on resale because of it.

It's all about shortening the life of devices so that you replace them.

 

[Dorje Sylas]

And here I thought computers were supposed to get cheaper and faster. I guess Tim Cook didn't hear that part.

Faster yes, cheaper... only if you want to buy older hardware. Or rather buy hardware that was expensive and now is very cheap to make. Apple has mastered getting people buy yesterday's hardware at tomorrow's prices.

Although you should talk to Texas Instruments about their graphing calculators. Things are still 100+ dollars for a chip you can emulate on an ARM phone at double or triple speed. Those things are almost pure profit for TI.

 

[ksec]

Go price an XDR comparable display

You cant, because there isn't one on the market at this price point. Assuming this is really as good as the spec listed, this XDR will sell like hot cakes. To customers that aren't even using Mac for production.

 

[bernuli]

Yeah and the way the monitor attaches to the stand is really slick. No doubt some time and thought went into this thing. Perhaps expensive materials as well. I’m waiting to see it in action to really make a judgement. But I have a bad feeling I might walk away saying “$1000 for a stand?!?!”

I you look at the official introduction video at 4.15 minutes, you will get a glimpse into the mechanics inside the stand, that may explain the price at least partially.

(

)

 

[CoachRocks]

If the XDR Display is certified by Dolby as Dolby Vision compatible reference monitor, it is definitely a very competitive price point. You can basically build a Post Studio based around this system and DaVinci Resolve and start delivering 4K HDR content. Then the ROI starts making sense.
[doublepost=1560186920][/doublepost]

You cant, because there isn't one on the market at this price point. Assuming this is really as good as the spec listed, this XDR will sell like hot cakes. To customers that aren't even using Mac for production.

https://www.asus.com/Monitors/ProArt-PA32UCX/

 

[avkills]

I believe that in Apple's eyes, there is an incredible downside to building a smaller/cheaper/less expandable Mac with an x16 PCIe slot and selling it at a price that sells in large(r) numbers. The downside would be that customers would be asking for NVIDIA support, in larger numbers and on a more frequent basis. This is not something Apple wants to do under any circumstances. They only have a few more models with NVIDIA GPUs that they are supporting in Catalina. I think dropping support for the 5,1 Mac Pro was to shutdown those asking for official NVIDIA Drivers for Pascal and Turing GPUs. Now all that is left before dropping NVIDIA support completely is to age out the Mid 2012 through mid-2104 MacBook Pros and the Late 2012-Late 2013 iMacs. For the most part, these computers are served well by the drivers that Apple ships already and don't require more than simply maintaining them until the computers age out of service sometime around 10.17 or 10.18, so, 2021-2022, based on the fact that the mid 2014 MBP and Late 203 iMacs were sold into early and late 2015, respectively.

Apple made the Mac Pro expensive enough and is trying to make the value proposition that the AMD Vega II and Vega II Duo are the best for those who might be asking for NVIDIA. They may even allow NVIDIA back in with drivers that only run on Catalina and require an MPX module GPU which will be restricted to the RTX Quadro lineup to make it worth Apple and NVIDIA's time and money. I still think there is less than a 5% chance they will do it, though.

Releasing the mythical Mac, xMac, Mac mini Pro...whatever you want to call it, with an open x16 PCIe 3 slot simply opens a Pandora's Box that Apple has zero interest in dealing with on a number of levels.

I think Apple was very calculated when pricing the new Mac Pro and one of those calculations is how do they make it expensive enough to make someone wanting to shove an NVIDIA GTX 1660Ti into it to use for gaming, CUDA, Premier Pro, whatever that is not optimized for AMD say, "this is too expensive, I'm out." Apple will not allow itself to be held hostage by NVIDIA in any way shape or form period. Even if that means losing potential Mac Pro customers.

Just my theory.

Apple should have never released a machine with empty x16 slots and not expected people to want nVidia support. There are a lot of scientific applications that only use CUDA. Just sign the web drivers that nVidia makes on their own and let nVidia deal with the support issues. nVidia is never going to make a MPX version of any of their cards; but hey stranger things have happened, maybe they will. Maybe that is what the hold up on drivers has been.

 

[theluggage]

his is literally what've been saying too. People who purchase luxury items like BMW and Benz aren't doing it because of the money.

I dunno. Do VW offer an 'entry level' model Bugatti Veyron, for an affordable $500,000 with a 1400cc 4 cylinder engine, top speed of 150 mph and PVC upholstery? ...and did they stop making $50k Volkswagen SUVs at the same time?

(I'm not even gonna do the 'wheels optional' thing).

This particular Mac was built for a professional client that will understand and appreciate the value they can get from such a capable machine.

Which 'particular' Mac?

The one with 28 cores, quad Vega IIs, 'afterburner' and 1.5TB of RAM that they demonstrated at WWDC, and quoted impressive benchmarks for, but didn't announce the price of?

Or, the $6000 (wheels extra) entry-level model with a worse spec than the iMac Pro (which itself is only tolerable value at $5000 because it includes a $1300 display)?

The Mac Pro has always been configurable to a high-end beast that only a media pro would need, it has always come in a premium, quality enclosure that sets it apart from PC beige boxes - but it has always started at a few hundred bucks above the price of a top-spec iMac (non-pro) and provided a viable option for people who want a decently powerful, general purpose, expandable desktop, but didn't need it to make Toy Story 5.

...even that demo was mainly demonstrating the latest tech from Intel and AMD which will be coming to a beige-box Xeon tower near you real soon now... 28 cores and Quad Vega II graphics. Of course, if price is truly no object, there are already systems on the market that can take dual Xeons giving up to 56 cores - there are also specialist systems that can take 10 GPUs.

 

[avkills]

If the XDR Display is certified by Dolby as Dolby Vision compatible reference monitor, it is definitely a very competitive price point. You can basically build a Post Studio based around this system and DaVinci Resolve and start delivering 4K HDR content. Then the ROI starts making sense.
[doublepost=1560186920][/doublepost]

https://www.asus.com/Monitors/ProArt-PA32UCX/

Flanders Scientific 31" 4k reference monitor is $45,000. Now if the Apple monitor has built in scopes, then it is a steal at the price they are asking; but I doubt it does. But it is priced very competitive if it is accurate enough to be a reference monitor.

 

[theluggage]

...and can someone PLEASE come up with something a little more original than "Cheese Grater"? Pretty much every single poster that says that seems to think they're the first who ever thought of it!!!

Actually, people have been calling Mac Pros 'cheese graters' since the G5 tower came out in about 2003... This one is almost a parody of the original design.

However, looking more closely at the structure of this one, I think it is better described as a 'Swiss cheese grater;.

 

[EdT]

3 more months for us to sell our kidneys.

(Okay, okay, I know that this product is not for us and is for the real pros )

I’ve been reading where it’s too expensive for most professionals who in the past used the Mac Pro. It’s way over my head in both what I need and what it costs, but I’m wondering what do professionals consider entry, mid range and top of the line performance, and what does that cost from other platforms? I haven’t seen a platform to platform comparison.

 

[BigBoy2018]

There is always iMac Pro that cost cheaper but can get the work done for many Pros on a budget.
Honestly, the price does not shock me at all. This machine is just on another level and exactly what the Pros have been asking for! Lot's of real Pros seem to be excited about it. Is this gonna sell on a small number? Damn right. And I think Apple knows that.

Absolutely agreed. The price to me is a tad off-putting, but overall, I am delighted, even 'relieved' that Apple has made a modern mac that can truly leverage the upper echelons of power. At the end of the day, it's a great release for mac lovers such as myself (who also believe in end user upgradability).

I may not buy one anytime soon, but it does make me feel good to know that this mac is out there and I 'could' buy it ... if I really felt like it
[doublepost=1560187588][/doublepost]

Actually, people have been calling Mac Pros 'cheese graters' since the G5 tower came out in about 2003... This one is almost a parody of the original design.

However, looking more closely at the structure of this one, I think it is better described as a 'Swiss cheese grater;.

Parody is an apt description. They really took the whole 'cheese grater' thing and ran with it on this design.

 

[4487549]

The base iMac Pro is more powerful than the base Mac Pro, costs $1000 less, and includes a 5k monitor. That's a 2-year machine without a single update. That's the issue.

 

[GoodWheaties]

And nobody knows how fast these Radeon Pro Vega 2 are going to be. And the fact that you can stick 8 of them in there using the dual cards (unless I am reading into it wrong); **** that is a lot of GPU power.

The GPUs appear to be similar to an Instinct MI50 or Radeon VII, except with 64 CUs rather than 60. They could be MI60s with only 16GB HBM2 but who knows. Possibly underclocked or undervolted to keep within the power limit.

Also it’s only up to 4 of them total. Two modules with two GPUs each.

Edit: actually it might be 32GB MI60s as it says up to 128GB of HBM

 

[farmboy]

Again the prosumer has a choice between thermal throttling or overkill/selling the kidney.

The biggest story here is apple let down those in the middle of the market.

Absolutely not. What's wrong with an iMac (pick your model)? It's way more capable than the Original Recipe CheezeGrater, just lacks the expandability, which the Middle of the Market doesn't need--and never really has. But if you insist on the ORC, there are several places online that sell upgrades that will make your unit up to date. That's what I would do if ours start failing to meet our needs.

 

[CoachRocks]

Flanders Scientific 31" 4k reference monitor is $45,000. Now if the Apple monitor has built in scopes, then it is a steal at the price they are asking; but I doubt it does. But it is priced very competitive if it is accurate enough to be a reference monitor.

Exactly! if Dolby or Netflix come out and say it's ok to do HDR Finishing work on an XDR (as opposed to a Flanders o an x300) now THAT would be a game changer.

 

[th0masp]

A genuine question:
I have an 8-core Cylinder MacPro, with the dual AMD D700 graphics (12GB VRAM) and 64Gb RAM. It's a pretty amazing machine, I am creating large 3D scenes with it. I am happy with it's performance (while being aware the limitations). I am not into 8k videos.

My question is: is the new basic version of the Mac Pro significantly better than what I have now?

Because it looks to me that the new basic version would not offer me a massive performance jump. Am I wrong? So my thinking is that it would only make sense to upgrade now if I can make a significant investment and go for a 20-28 core version, with a monster GPU setup. But I cannot make that investment, so it's almost better to stick to what I have, save the cash and maybe get the 2019 Mac Pro later, on the 2nd hand market?

Good question - we don't even know yet what model of CPUs are being utilized and as to what extent you can upgrade the machine yourself with aftermarket parts. What's for sure is that there haven't been massive improvements to the CPUs over the years aside from stuffing more and more cores into them. 8 core vs 8 core perhaps you'd be looking at a 30% CPU speed improvement (wild guess) and overall faster throughput but nothing like twice the speed or better. GPUs might be a different topic but then you do at least have the option to go eGPU on yours and get a better card than what the new base model ships with.

I still think the trash can Mac Pro looks much nicer. Black chrome (or whatever it's referred to as) is so pretty.

The new one looks very un-Apple for sure. Have to admit I do find the shiny surface of my 6,1 a bit silly to look at - it produces a distorted reflection of its surroundings, quite odd when you are sitting in front of it while wearing a white shirt. Matte would have been a better choice IMO, also less of a fingerprint-magnet.

 

[farewelwilliams]

Great news for tens of dozens of people who will actually buy these. A vast majority of the creative individuals like video editors, musicians, photographers and graphic designers is priced out of the Mac Pro market.

Enterprise will buy these by the thousands.

 

[ElectricPotato]

... make due with a Mac mini or iMac.

Make do is weak sauce. How about a product that generates excitement for people wanting cooling and expandability (this excludes mini/imac) and is affordable to enthusiasts willing to pay $3K entry point of previous Mac Pros?

 

[farewelwilliams]

What’s the justification for the $999 monitor stand? I understand that if you’re spending almost $10000 on a monitor and computer together, another $999 isn’t a killer. But there’s nothing else special with that stand, right, other than being designed specifically for that monitor?

1 second magnetic attachment and easy to adjust.
[doublepost=1560188613][/doublepost]

Wait...

ITS not even ready for sale now!?

what the hell has Apple been doing for the last 5 years.

they're timing it with what makes sense for quarterly reports.
[doublepost=1560188729][/doublepost]

That assumes someone (including Apple) releases new MPX modules. If not, you’re in the same boat as with the Trash Can which /also/ had upgradeable dual GPUs, but a new one never came out. You could just upgrade to the top tier which kept its price 5 years later because it was still the current sku.

except the Mac Pro has PCI-E slots where you can stick regular PCI-E cards in. if Apple doesn't have new MPX modules but still have AMD graphics support, you'll likely buy new AMD graphics cards from third party. in fact, you can buy a Pro 580x off the shelf and stick it in this.
[doublepost=1560188837][/doublepost]

I've worked for quite a few wealthy companies with very skilled workforces. None of them would even think of getting such a machine, because none of them did high-end video/music editing. I think the market for the new Mac Pro is very limited.

i've worked for a large company in the creative department. if editors are asking for it, they'll make room in the budget for it. of course that means less upgrades in other areas.

[doublepost=1560188912][/doublepost]

The amount of people who think this is just an ordinary consumer computer with an Apple premium is incredible.

That amount is near 0.

 

[th0masp]

View attachment 842105
I am going with this LG thunderbolt 3 display for the new Mac Pro. No one says you have to buy a $5000 monitor to work with the new Mac Pro.

Is that an LG 38 or 34 UC99 by any chance? If so you might want to look into getting a separate stand because the default one ...wobbles.

 

[theluggage]

The base unit contains everything needed to support a fully maxed machine: 8 PCIe slots (including three x16 and one x8 double wide slots, which also support the 475W MPX modules that include four additional Thunderbolt 3 ports each), 12 RAM sockets, 1.4kW power supply, noiseless enclosure, Afterburner support, 2x 10GbE ports, T2, etc.

Except why on Earth would you want to "max out" a machine that "only" has an 8-core CPU (it's not officially user-upgradeable and no true scotsma... sorry... media professional is going to void their warranty/service contract on day 1)?

NB, just specced up a Titan workstation and, yes, its more expensive than the Mac Pro at $6,220 except... wait... Oh that's with dual Xeons and a total of 32 cores... Of course, if you're a true media pro working at the bleeding edge who will pay whatever it costs for the right tool you won't buy that. No - you'll get the 56 core, 4.0 GHz version (it can take quad GPUs too, by the way... Oh, and the case is fairly swish, too) or maybe look at their more exotic options with 10 x16 slots for real multi-GPU monsters.

I don't think the people enthusing about how the new Mac Pro is some wonderful monster breakthrough worth whatever price Apple asks to a true pro have any idea what is actually available outside the Apple bubble.