At the very least, they have a $3699 iMac (non Pro, but with fastest processor and a 1 TB SSD) to stay on top of.
A base of 1TB for the SSD is simply base price inflationary. If just using the boot SSD as a basic OS+Apps+"core" user home drive than the same sizes the MBP start off at is just as viable. The 2018 MBP 13" starts off at 128GB; so 256GB would be quite reasonable.
A completely different issue as to why the Mac Pro would be limited to one and only one internal drive. That is a bigger goof up by Apple than locking in the base drive size to 1TB (because only one drive.)
The other problem with a $3000 -$4000 Mac Pro is that there's no processor for it.
No factual basis to back that up at all. ( addressed earlier above).
If they used an 8700K (or successor), they would have a whole different motherboard (different socket) for the low-end model only -
Strawman off in the swamps. The iMac Pro skipped 6 cores because the mainstream iMac is likely to get 6 cores this year. That's why; not because there wasn't a 6 core option. The 8 core iMac Pro regularly being put on sale is indicative that Apple may have priced it a bit too high. ( it looks like it is base price was pushed clear of the iMac BTO options on purpose which isn't a well grounded idea. )
there's nowhere to go from there. If you use Xeon-W chips, you're in the iMac Pro price range.
Nope, if you actually look at Xeon -W prices which start at $500; which is vastly different than the 8 core's price ( $1,100).
Scalable Xeons put you in the Z8 price range.
Again no. The HP z6 has Xeon SP processors and are in the $2K-3K range toward the base. This whole $4K 'has to be the bottom" is just hand waving; not market analysis.
They've NEVER built an expandable Mac with a non-Xeon processor through the whole Intel era.
"Expandable" means PCI-e slots? Because RAM and drives there have been some Mac Mini options. ( go to two HDDs and add RAM. )
Yes, there's a customer base clambering for it, but Apple has always forced iMacs down their throats by not offering the machine they want (they probably consider it a low-profit machine that's a support headache because it can turn up in a ton of configurations).
There a very substantive difference between the "xMac" and the Mac Pro. Back in most of the first 3/4's of the Mac Pro era the iMac had mobile CPUs and mobile GPUs. The current context is substantially different. The iMac Pro has desktop class both. (not completely maxed out on clock, but not entry level desktop either. )
The folks who spent 2012-2018 not buying an iMac (or iMac Pro or MP 2013 ) haven't had anything forced down their throats at all. They've either bought nothing or have jumped ship (from Apple). That is a signficant fraction of what Apple is missing. Anyone who is willing to wait 3-5 years isn't boing to budge any time soon. Those have clearly demonstrated that they are market segmented on something other than CPU (and default GPU) performance . It is a clearly segmented market.
There is
another set of folks who would like to fratricide the mainstream the mainstream iMac. That is a completely different issue that Mac Pro characteristics ( higher than average RAM ( + ECC to cover high RAM usage) , higher than average core counts, significant higher priced PCI-e add-in cards, etc. ). The xMac are really far more so about "keeping up with the PC Joneses" with mainstream 3rd party PC part prices. Pragmatically that is more so about keeping up with the mainstream drop in average selling prices. )
I'd be 100% shocked if this changes (defined as any Mac Pro with a processor below the base iMac Pro, or priced below $4499 (low probability of $3999)).
I'd be 100% shocked if the iMac Pro entry level price points stayed the same on the next iteration. There wasn't a really good rational basis for them in the first. So why Apple would stick to them when they presented a problem would be mystifying.
I'd put a 50% probability on an iMac Pro level machine, with "reasonable" configurations ranging from $4499 to $9000 or so (some corner cases may be higher, with huge RAM configurations or SSDs).
That isn't going to work especially if Apple allows access to the RAM and there is room for another internal drive. Apple partially gets away with goosing the iMac Pro base RAM and SSD capacities higher becaues it is so 'hard' to get into the machine. Even the MP 2013 allowed easy access to the RAM (and technically the drive... although reasonable replacements didn't particularly show up). There isn't a good reason for Apple to drop that access from a new "modular" Mac Pro worse than it was in the 2013. A 2nd standard M.2 slot and standard DIMMs would be a solid differentiation point for a new Mac Pro. ( that doesn't mean the vast majority of folks would flee off of the iMac Pro at the low end at all. Lots of folks want a system that just works out of the box... they don't want to tinker with it over time. )
The other 50% is a Z8 level machine that protects the iMac Pro by starting at $7499 and having "reasonable" configurations WELL into five figures, with corner cases significantly over $20,000.
Z8 is largely misdirection. The Z4-Z6 is more likely more in the center of Apple's cross hairs. Apple isn't going to be shooting for maximum number of slots and flexibility. The older Mac Pro were in the zone between the Z600 and z800 ( z6 / z8 and the Dell 5000 / 7000 series ).
Apple offers their very expensive ProCare support ($500/year), which is equivalent to HP workstation support. A very expensive Mac Pro might include it, OR it's not that big an expense on a machine over $10,000, especially if it covers several of them in a company - ProCare covers up to 5 computers for that $500,
Apple has outsourced a significant amount of their enterprise support to IBM services. They aren't completely walking away but it is also not a core competency. The high maintenance is more than just troubleshooting hardware failures.
More than a few of them tend to operate on the "one throat to choke" camp so they want one vendor for all (most) of the hardware. If in that space there is push to be in the the "make everything for everybody" camp. That's isn't Apple core competency.
If Apple did a above iMac Pro system as the next iteration of Mac Pro ( ie. moving from $2,999-2,999 base to $6+K then the rate of refresh would probably be no better than the last 6 years. Apple would go back into Rip van Winkle mode and nothing would happen for 3-5 years again. The volume would be too low to really matter and when other stuff came up ( because "stuff happens" ) in the Mac product line up the Mac Pro would be last on the priority totem pole and would "starve out" once again for a large block of time. if want to kill the Mac Pro over the long term there aren't much better plans than to spike the base entry price by 100%.
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I think one main selling point of the nMP could be a T3 coprocessor that helps speeding Pro workflows. I wouldn't understand months of development aside professionals just to design where to place a TB3 port or how much RAM they would need.
There is extremely likely no magical, Area 51 technology necessary for the delay in a new Mac Pro. If no one was working on a new one 2-3 years ago then no new system will come soon.
The T2 (and likely T3 ) is far more so about subsuming functions that already exist in the I/O stack than some major "offload" of the CPU (or GPU). The SSD aspect is just keeping up with the Joneses in terms of crypto offload and performance. There are security aspects. It is extremely unlikely there will be some Mac Pro only T-series processor.
( the point will more likely be to get the cost of the t-series processor down by spreading the same one across the whole mac line up; variances on SSD NAND configs perhaps but same core T2 package. )
If Apple had no active team and was completely dead in the water then 18 months wouldn't be surprising. Add in some synchronizing with the next Xeon W update ( and probably a GPU update ) and it wouldn't be surprising that they didn't finish engineer test and production testing until end of 2018 and launch in 'early' 2019.
Apple is probably not building a simple box with slots clone either. So it isn't like take the Intel reference board and slap an aluminum case around it. They aren't shopping for production parts down at Sunnyvale Fry's store. Apple probably had all available resources allocated to the iMac Pro until it was largely finished and only then seriously started working on the Mac Pro. There is no indication whatsoever that Apple has concurrent large scale resources on every mac product running concurrently in parallel at all. None. ( that isn't a "hates pros " thing, that's across the whole Mac product line up 'thing'. )
Right now the tMP costs more (800$ less, which is less than the 5K display) than the iMP offering slower SSD, GPU and RAM (try comparing 8c/32/1TB option), which doesn't make sense unless it's a clear message of the price point of the nMP.
The current MP 2013 pricing has little to do with priced to sell. That is probably just a likely priced to goose folks looking for a MP 2013 replacement into a iMac Pro as much as anything else. It isn't competitively priced in a general context at all. ( Apple wants to sell something else and just goose the inventory stocks until have a replacement. Priced high so demand is slower and inventory draw down in this case is lower. Normally Apple avoid inventory like the plauge but they probably aren't trying to make too many more of these MP 2013 models at all. )
The new Mac Pro is probably more so aimed at folks who avoided the MP 2013 and iMac Pro. The iMac Pro base pricing is far more about not overlapping with the mainstream iMacs BTO pricing, than the dregs of the Mac Pro Apple is currently stuck with.
Apple's SSD pricing is so outside the mainstream that throwing those option pricing into the mix of a system tends not to illuminate anything in terms of inter-system pricing. It is primarily that the SSD is relatively "high".
My hope is that at least the base config (8c min, I am pretty sure about that) could still offer better performance than the iMP, without the 5K screen, at the same cost of the present tMP 6c, which makes sense if you compare the price difference of Mac minis and iMacs.
Easiest way for Apple to get to MP 2013 6c pricing is to go with 6 core Intel W ( and swap 2nd GPU costs for boosted base SSD capacity, case/infrastructure costs , and/or T2 cost overhead. ). Approximately, same sized SSD and RAM as current model too.
I wouldn't pay the T3 and the modularity as much as a similar computer with a 5K display added, they need to be a least 500/1000$ lower.
If there is a T3 it would just as likely be added to a iMac Pro as it would to be an Mac Pro. If they both have it there isn't going to be much of a differentiation there at all. wouldn't be surprsing if it ended up in a regular iMac ( and if can get costs low enough, Mac mini if revise it. ). Where there is an Apple SSD there will likely be a T-series chip (only expect where base price is so low it won't work. which probably won't be restricted to the top of the line once get to the 3rd iteration and the system inclusion volume ramps up. )
