Apple's Revamped Mac Pro to Launch in 2019

[Krakken]

Seriously, have they forgotten they used to make towers? No need to reinvent the wheel here people. They act like they've never seen any pros use their machines and are a completely new company!

By the time they actually release these in summer or fall of 2019, most pros I know that haven't switched to PC will have iMac Pros.

 

[Rustus Maximus]

Apple's Pro Workflow Team finds and addresses the issues that come up, even down to tiny details like tweaking a graphics driver, and it's not just Apple's products that benefit - the company's employees are also working with third-party apps. From Tom Bogar, senior Mac marketing director:The Pro Workflow team, in addition to improving current Apple products, is also an essential part of Mac Pro development. Their work is "definitely influencing" what Apple's planning for, with Apple achieving a "much much much deeper understanding" of pro customers, their workflows, and their needs. This understanding is "really informing" the work Apple is doing on the Mac Pro," according to Bogar.

they're working with third-party apps, even...

an essential part of Mac Pro development...

definitely influencing...

really informing the work...

Holy balls this thing is drenched in "Fresh Squeezed Corporate-speak Nonsensical Jargon Juice™".

 

[paulcons]

Well, this tears it... here's my reasoning. In 2017 they actually announced the trashcan was a dud and that users wanted an expandable, modular machine. THAT MEANS they knew this in mid 2015 most likely. I mean, pretty much 90% of their "pro users base knew this in... 2013 when the trashcan was released. 2 YEARS later, they had to know what so many knew 2 years EARLIER.

This isn't rocket science, designing a laptop with a built in screen like the iMacs is hard, to keep it as thin as possible, along with cooling it and keeping it silent (note how as the years rolled by, it got more and more totally closed?). Designing a box to hold replaceable parts? Sheesh, the cheesegrater does it VERY nicely. Take it, a bigger PS, options for NVME storage, RAM, updated firmware, can be much smaller, what's the problem? The COULD have done it, it COULD be on the market right now.

EXCEPT they have this uber expensive laptop with a big screen they obviously poured a lot of money into. This is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT all about nothing more than filthy lucre (MONEY$$$). That is the ONLY reason they are NOW telling us they lied last year and are not planning to bring such a machine to market until 2019. If EVER. When did Apple become Steve Ballmer?

Here is the final pisser... my 5,1 cheesegrater got fast storage via a PCI card with dial SSDs on it, a decent video card in a 980 by way of upgrades. With a single 6 core 3.3GHz Xeon CPU (my model), it's actually better than mid-range hardware to run M$ software. I know instinctively that 10.13 will likely be the last OS they will allow to run on this machine, 10.14 and forward will be made to insure it will NOT run on my machine (not to mention they flat out lied to us about supporting SSDs in HS for their new file system, and their promise to fix it was unfulfilled and now long forgotten). So fine, I don't think they can figure out a way to "change" Bootcamp to restrict it from running winblowz.

Gotta accept that this is the last Apple desktop I will ever own. My run of Apple desktops started in May 1984 and will most likely end when my beloved cheesegrater totally gives up the ghost.

 

[MaxBlast]

Why not just do the good old tower... why does apple always have to reinvent the wheel?

 

[CodeJoy]

Please explain something to me:

The Mac has been around since the 80's, they have the most loyal customers of any computer build, and they have been targeting roughly the same core customer groups from the start. The world of computing has changed, but I don't know if I've really seen completely new professional fields pop up that require something wildly different from computers. What I hear people asking for is CPU, GPU, RAM and connectivity.

How is it that they need to start a new team now in order to understand their customers workflow?

 

[MacsRuleOthersDrool]

why so long????

Because this is hard stuff, if you do it right.

Sounds like they are doing it right.

 

[nvmls]

Typical Apple PR blowing smoke all over the place "transparency", "communicate openly with our pro community", "we care", bla bla, 2013 to 2019 for a pro desktop computer, they even had time to throw in a "pro" iMac no one asked for in-between and keep their atrocious pricing on the current trash can/Mac Mini, and people go like "makes sense" lol, no wonder these PR/keynotes sound like kids fairy tale.

 

[9081094]

I wonder if the delay is more than just the Mac Pro itself. A modular Mac Pro tower would be trivial to design and manufacture compared to something like the iMac Pro, with its severe packing and thermal constraints.

If this rumor is true and Apple is looking at workflows, then they might be looking at a complete solution. Meaning not just the Mac Pro, but also servers to store your content, Mac Minis (or similar) for render farms and software to tie it all together.

I can only dream of what you have said. But let’s face reality and be ready to get underwhelmed again. Last year they promised a Mac Pro for 2018. Even longer before that Tim Cook said the Mac mini was very important to Apple... it’s the same song from the last 6 years again... we have great things coming and there is amazing stuff in our pipeline... same song for 6 years! And we’re the donkeys running behind the carrot Tim Cook is holding in front of us.

If it takes a company the size of Apple this long to develop a product that used to be their core business... I’m holding my breath for its future.

Tim Cook is right about one thing though:

No one is capable of doing this and you only see this coming from Apple!

If Dell or HP or any other computer manufacturer did this they went out of business.

 

[brentsg]

That is not a high-end Mac. It is for beginners and people with simple needs. It is not an important product for Apple.

It should be a priority for Apple. A lot of the current Pro users got started with Apple II computers, and that flowed through a lifetime of use. The Mini is a great starter computer for a family, and it's a great computer for Mac people on the other end of life too. All of their other products fit in between.

NOW that we have EGPU support on Macs, why do we need a Mac Pro desktop?

iMac can now be expanded and TB3 is sufficient

There are a lot of people (myself included) that will NEVER own an iMac. I don't want an all-in-one, and I'll never own one. I'd move to a Windows PC first (which I have).

 

[HiVolt]

Bizarre to imagine the development gap in-between 2013 to 2019 for the pro users... Unacceptable.

Well, there is the stop-gap iMac Pro, but it comes with a glossy display many pro people don't like or need.

But otherwise, that's what you get when you rely on a company that clearly wanted to quietly slip out of the pro market, discontinued the X-Serve, neutered OS X server to the point of being an app addon, the TrashCan Mac Pro was not really Pro, MacBook Pro Touchbar wasn't so Pro with the USB-C only interfaces, etc, etc, etc...

With PC's, you have many high end workstation manufacturers and HIGHLY customizable compared to what even the Tower Mac Pro's used to be, or you can build one yourself with high end off the shelf components.

I work in the printing/publishing industry, which was heavily reliant on Macs, due to their superior graphical environment and reliability.

Almost all of our clients have switched to PC's because they're cheaper to buy, cheaper to fix, upgradeable, and cheaper to eventually replace.

We used to have dozens of Macs, now there is a handful left to support some legacy customers. It's all PC now, and it works well.

 

[hawkeye_a]

You'd think this *could* be the year of the Mac Mini.... oh wait, Steve's not in charge anymore.

 

[kwikdeth]

ARM or Intel? Intel of course. Do you buy right before a possible CPU architecture transition? Hopefully we'll know more about Intel -> ARM by the time this Mac Pro is released.

Precisely. There's no way I'd plunk down that money now. Already learned that lesson in the aughts with the quad-core G5.

 

[tdar]

Reading this article causes me to step back and look at Apple's entire desktop strategy. Historically that has been a AiO and 2 desktops, one small and one big. In 2018 (and it seems after reading this, we can believe that it will not be changing during 2018) that's 2 AiO's and a hopelessly outdated small computer (Mini) and larger computer (Pro).
The AiO's are fine. The iMac will most likely be updated in 2018 to 8th gen core processors and more modern graphics. But what's the deal on the others? First the subject of this article the Pro. Why in the name of everything holy does it take 6 years to create a new pro level system? The Windows competitive systems from Dell and HP will be updated 4 to 6 times during that 6 years. Why can't Apple not even do just 1 update? As many noted here in this thread, pro level desktops are not that hard. Use a tower style case and a MB with 1 or 2 xeons , some PCI slots and room for bunches of Ram. Add drive bays. Done.

The mini is more interesting as a challenge I believe. I'm typing this on a Intel NUC. A computer that makes a mini look huge. It costs what we want a mini to cost and does for the most part what we want it to do. It (or it's Motherboard equivalent) is available to OEMS like Apple. So Apple could buy it from Intel. Change the roms so that it can run OS X and put a Apple case around it and go. They even have a version with a thunderbolt 3 port. I expect the real problem is the price. If you have a built out NUC, (from a vendor -not if you build it yourself) it can run over $850. In a Apple design isn't that a $1200 to $1500 computer? Who wants to pay that for a Mini? Dell sells a small computer in the business line, that reminds me of a Mini for $950 in the Apple like configuration. Again that's probably $1500 from Apple. I wonder if the price is the problem here in replacing the Mini.

 

[skippermonkey]

More and more, this makes me feel like buying an iMac Pro, and keeping my old cheesegrater for rendering, back-ups and 32-bit apps (I see no point putting High Sierra on it). As well as the extended time frame (hey, it could be another 18 months from now), I just think this thing might be horribly expensive to spec up.

I mean, even more horribly expensive than the 10-core iMac Pro, which I have my eye on...

(Oh, and the way this is all phrased feels like a, "go on, buy an iMac pro everyone. Then upgrade again in a year's time.")

 

[lantree]

Anybody else miss the days when you could walk into a Apple store and walk out with a brand new base Mac Pro tower. Go home insert hard drives and expansion cards and be ready to go with out any down time ?

 

[MacsRuleOthersDrool]

I'm guessing this will include the Mac Mini too. It makes sense to create a Mac that if bare boned can be used as a Mini and built up to a Pro.

Although that SOUNDS like a good idea, I don't think it is practical from a "target-price" point of view.

There are design-decisions that would have to be made that would either make the base Mac mini too expensive and/or the Mac Pro too low-powered for true "Pro" work.

Maybe a new mini will fall-out of this research; but I don't think that an "infinitely-expanding mini" is in the cards this time around.

 

[dirt_farmer]

Alternate translation: Please buy the iMac Pro. They are not selling as expected and we moved all the engineers developing the next MP over to the HomePod group so the MP is not coming any time soon.

"We are selling 2013 hardware at new prices for some reason and we think that if we remind professional users how badly we have cornholed them and let them know that they can expect the same treatment for yet another year, they will take our their wallets and give us money. Oh god why are the accountants making me say this it sounds even dumber when I say it out loud."

 

[cajun67]

It'll be in the shape of a dodecahedron.

Good luck getting that video card upgrade to fit in there!

 

[Gata]

I'm hoping that, with Apple's seeming recent swivel back towards functionality over form, that this bodes well for the Macbook Pro lineup.

 

[doc james]

"Fiscal reasoning" - we don't sell many of these, there needs to be a margin. Users don't even (mostly) use them to make Apple money - for every one that's being used to make AI apps for iPad, 99 are being used to run Photoshop in ad agencies [citation needed]

People want it to be expandable or they won't buy it. So, do Apple:

1) Make it user upgradeable like the old cheese grater? No way! Users have changed the RAM, the Hard Drives, the GPU - all without giving Apple a dime. Some of them claim their 15yr old machines are still perfectly adequate. This cannot be.

2) OK, make it like the trash can then? No way! Users have voted with their feet - they'll spot that one if Apple do it again.

3) Make it like LEGO with interchangeable proprietary parts? Hmm, maybe. But then Apple will need to commit to updating those proprietary parts for 8yrs or so, so had really better make sure it's going to be profitable.

I don't think there's any easy solution. Only that Apple know they're never going to make much money out of these venture so don't want to spend much, while at the same time looking like they care deeply.

 

[9081094]

Yawn. Whatever. It's just going to be some overengineered piece of crap instead of what pros really want ... something that looks like a regular PC and uses parts that can be easily upgraded.

Why does Apple even bother with the pro market anymore? The industry switched to Windows years ago.

Sad but true! They’re not trustworthy with hardware. I know lots of business that used to be very happy with Apple until they stopped releasing up to date hardware and canceled whole product categories. Apple needs to regain trust and that means losing profits in the beginning and showing they really care in the pro market by releasing compelling choices at reasonable prices. Not the Apple I know from the last 6 years though.

 

[fokmik]

Lets hope for an all in one, but with the very easy to exchange the RAM, SSD and GPus

 

[MacsRuleOthersDrool]

*Boardroom filled with Pro Workflow Team members, all thinking hard*
"Guys... get this... what if we let the customers... upgrade the RAM... themselves?"

*head explodes*

The term "Modular" implies upgradability/expandability.

I wonder if Apple is going to go into the module business; which would allow them to offer systems that are tailor-made to a particular application, and upgradeable, like traditional "tower" systems; but with more panache than just a big metal box filled with cards, which, in the end, really ISN'T that TRULY expandable.

 

[9081094]

Why not just do the good old tower... why does apple always have to reinvent the wheel?

Because they want to make sure to squeeze your wallet to the max. Sad but true

 

[theluggage]

Modular as in you can swap in first-party devices after purchase or 3rd party interface modules will be supported? Being apple I predict the former.

Go back and read the transcript from last year's press briefing critically: To Apple, modular just means in it doesn't have a built-in display.

They've since said it will be "upgradeable" but post iMac Pro that could just mean send it back to an Apple-approved service centre and they'll cut through the glue, dismantle it, upgrade the RAM with official Apple parts and glue it back together again.