Apple has now announced that its Mac Pro, the the tubular desktop computer that was unveiled in December 2013, has been updated with newer specifications. The company has also confirmed that an all-new Mac Pro with Apple-branded pro displays will launch in 2018.
The base model now costs $2,999 and you get a six-core Intel Xeon processor with two AMD D500s and 16 GB of RAM, instead of the quad-core Intel Xeon E5 processor with dual AMD FirePro D300 graphic cards and 12 GB of RAM.
The $3,999 model comes with an octa-core Xeon processor and two D700 graphic cards, but both models are still missing USB 3.0 ports. Instead, there are six Thunderbolt 2 ports, two Ethernet ports, an HDMI port, and four USB-A ports.
With regards to the Mac Pro, we are in the process of what we call “completely rethinking the Mac Pro.” We’re working on it. We have a team working hard on it right now, and we want to architect it so that we can keep it fresh with regular improvements, and we’re committed to making it our highest-end, high-throughput desktop system, designed for our demanding pro customers.
As part of doing a new Mac Pro — it is, by definition, a modular system — we will be doing a pro display as well. Now you won’t see any of those products this year; we’re in the process of that. We think it’s really important to create something great for our pro customers who want a Mac Pro modular system, and that’ll take longer than this year to do.
In the interim, we know there are a number of customers who continue to buy our [current Mac Pros]. To be clear, our current Mac Pro has met the needs of some of our customers, and we know clearly not all of our customers. None of this is black and white, it’s a wide variety of customers. Some… it’s the kind of system they wanted; others, it was not.
In the meantime, we’re going to update the configs to make it faster and better for their dollar. This is not a new model, not a new design, we’re just going to update the configs. We’re doing that this week. We can give you the specifics on that.
The CPUs, we’re moving them down the line. The GPUs, down the line, to get more performance per dollar for customers who DO need to continue to buy them on the interim until we get to a newly architected system.
