Concept Imagines What a Modular Mac Pro Might Look Like

[Sasparilla]

The mockup is cool looking. It looks too small for practicality for me though.

Um Apple, just give me a tower where everything can be inside and neat (and has room for full size hard drives - at least 2), quiet cause the thermal load is spread out - no garbage of wires going this way and that except for power and connections. Yeah I wouldn't mind still having the DVD/BluRay on it either. Definitely want old style USB-A ports, like this design, cause the world still uses them.

While this looks nice, doesn't look like space for internal HDD's. And I don't want Apple outsmarting themselves again and giving us another shape of the Cube (although I liked my Cube alot) by making it as small as possible (please get away from that ethos). JMHO...

 

[meaning-matters]

Silly impossible design because rotation space is lacking.

 

[honeycombz]

just make the 5,1 rose gold super fast with thunderbolt and modernized ports, and 2 inches thinner. done.

what happened to iterative improvements.

 

[Return Zero]

The Mac looks meh, the display absolutely terrible... As pictured, it wouldn't even be able to stand up on its own without falling forward (since the center of gravity would seem to be over the curved portion of the 'backwards' base).

Still, kudos for their imagination.

 

[MLMcMillion]

This looks like it was designed by someone who has never assembled a computer before.

 

[Unami]

yup - too small, way too ugly - looks like acer or alienware trying an "apple-inspired" design. but, apart from the aesthetics, nice ideas.

 

[braintumor]

Great idea and a solid 3D job, but it will not work, too small and ventilation/heat issues are not considered!

 

[Mousse]

Meh... Bring back the Cheesegrater chassis. 1/4 the size of the original G5 and no stinking touchbar.

Gads. Ever since Steve died, no is around to reign in Johnny's crazy ideas. Even the worlds best engineers are at the mercy of physics.

 

[farewelwilliams]

No no no no...they got everything wrong.

 

[jimmirehman]

would it be too much to ask for just a tower?

 

[StrangeNoises]

Too small for a modular Mac but great work

I tend to agree: it looks more like the "not so mini" replacement for the mini... also anticipated of course if it means not underpowered like recent minis.

 

[69Mustang]

This would be a nice Mac mini. Mac Pro, not so much. In fact, I would really dig this as a Mac mini. Keep the monitor though. No interest there.

 

[honeycombz]

LONG LIVE THE CHEESEGRATER!

 

[fokmik]

My god people, ITS JUST AN CONCEPT. The real thing could be tall like the current mac pro but with the ability to swap components like we did swap the dvd in the past

 

[peterdevries]

Total fantasy and therefore there should not be any reason to put this on the front page.

 

[thisisnotmyname]

That's beautiful and I would love to own such a device but I doubt all the toolless components are practical (how are outputs from that gfx card connected?) and cooling in such a tight package with all that plastic packed inside seems like it wouldn't be sufficient.

 

[Thunderbird]

Very cool, but probably not thin enough for Apple's liking.

 

[KindredMAC]

While the Hard Drive swapping is a great concept, does this person even know how RAM is seated into the socket? As well as the Graphics Card??? And then they label Thunderbolt as Firewire?

 

[meaning-matters]

Reversing the monitor stand looks ugly and is a waste of desk space.
What a crap design!

 

[Rogifan]

Nothing I hate more than the stupid concepts from graphic designers. That monitor is ridiculous and would tip over just looking at it. It's not difficult to mock something up in photoshop or whatever when you don't have to care about engineering or making the product actually work.

 

[Wackery]

It looks like that would be a thermal nightmare. Nice work on the concept but it's not practical, just give us a more traditional tower form factor and we'll be happy.

impracticallity hasnt stopped apple before (G4 cube)

 

[nwcs]

I like the base idea. Now if they re-imagined this concept and made the mac-pro modules that are stackable that would be cool. Imagine daisy-chaining several of these together to run in parallel. That could be some serious horsepower.

 

[peter2]

I hope not. Way too small. What is needed is a large thermal capacity => large proportions (unless you want noise). Desktop is not a portable anyway.

 

[Rogifan]

Yeah, those aren't designers. A real industrial designer needs to consider things like usability, manufacturability, cost, thermal and ventilation, safety and more. These are just artists.

Plus it's not just industrial designers building these things. Hardware engineers are involved just as much if not more so.

 

[Michael Scrip]

I hope Apple doesn't try to be so "clever" with their next workstation computer. They already made that mistake with the 2013 model.

We know how CPU sockets work. We know how motherboards work. RAM, heatsinks, etc.

Hell... we already have PCIe GPUs that are a standard. Why invent something new?

Just build a workstation in a tower case. Like... ummm... you used to do with the 2012 and prior Mac Pro.