Apple’s finally addressing their lack of a current professional workstation with a new MacPro.
With 8 internal PCI-E slots, Apple has clearly listened after the last Mac Pro that lacked the ability to upgrade.
The Mac Pro uses a 28-core Intel Xeon processor and can access up to 300 watts of power to ensure it’s not thermally limited. The power supply is a massive 1.4kW power supply.
That power combined with extensive graphics options, enables the Mac Pro to crunch 3x streams of 8K video, or 12x streams of 4K.
Apple has a new design that’s much more like a tradition PC tower. This can handle as much as 1.5TB of memory.
In terms of design, the external chassis looks a lot like a cheese grater, but there is a reason for it.. thermals. The vents enable the internal components to adequately vent which keeps the system noise to a minimum. Apple claims this could be as quiet as an iMac.
The Mac pro actually has optional wheels you can get if you plan on moving the Mac Pro frequently.
If you’re a creative video editor, then you’ll love the flexibility that the new Mac Pro offers and during the unveiling, Apple also revealed a new Afterburner video card that can handle video in its native formats, rather than go through the timely video conversion process. While they didn’t discuss the price of this option, it definitely won’t be cheap.
With a workstation, you’ll need an appropriate monitor to work on. Apple has also announced a new ProDisplay XDR is a 33″ Retina 6K display. Given the 8K editing capabilities of the Mac Pro, shipping a 6K display, although a serious upgrade on their last update, does seem like a strange decision.
The back of the displays also feature the new cheese grater look. While the chassis of the Mac Pro did this for cooling, it seems the design here is simply done to match.
If you need 120 million pixels, you can actually combine up to 6 displays together.. let’s be clear, nobody needs this.
Price and availability
Available ‘this Fall’, the Apple Mac Pro will start at US$4,999. While the system supports a 28-core Intel, the starting model comes with an 8-core Xeon, 32GB memory, a Radeon Pro 580X and a 256GB SSD.
The new monitor starts at US$4,999.. which doesn’t come with a stand? Apparently that comes at a cost of US$199 for the VESA mount and US$999 for the desk stand. That’s an incredibly hard price, even for Apple to justify.
