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Apple's Newest Mac Pro Turns Four Years Old Today

Tuesday December 19, 2017 2:00 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Today marks the fourth anniversary of Apple last updating the Mac Pro.

The second-generation Mac Pro was released on December 19, 2013 for $2,999 and up, and it remains the current model despite having at least four year old hardware.

That hardware includes up to a 12-core Intel Xeon E5 processor, 64GB of ECC RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, and dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs, with prices topping out at $6,999.

The lack of a Mac Pro refresh in several years generated concerns that Apple was less focused on professional users, eventually prompting the company to respond.

Specifically, in April, Apple took the rare step of revealing it is working on an all-new Mac Pro with a modular design, while a high-end iMac Pro was released earlier this month.

Apple briefly reiterated that promise at the bottom of its press release about iMac Pro availability last week, noting that the new Mac Pro will be not only upgradeable, but also a high-performance, high-throughput system.
In addition to the new iMac Pro, Apple is working on a completely redesigned, next-generation Mac Pro architected for pro customers who need the highest performance, high-throughput system in a modular, upgradeable design, as well as a new high-end pro display.
Apple hasn't provided any additional details, including tech specs or a release date, but fingers are crossed for a 2018 launch. As we discussed in our story last week, Apple could return to a similar design as the 2006 to 2012 tower Mac Pro, but its exact definition of modular remains to be seen.

Apple still hasn't provided any word about when if ever we can expect a new Mac mini, which hasn't been updated in over 1,150 days, according to the MacRumors Buyer's Guide. The current Mac mini launched in October 2014.

Related Roundup: Mac Pro
Buyer's Guide: Mac Pro (Don't Buy)
[ 181 comments ]


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Bryan Bowler
11 months ago
Less emojis, more Macs please.
Rating: 36 Votes
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Naaaaak
11 months ago
Apple should spin off the Mac division into its own subsidiary with employees who actually care to make and update them regularly. Apple Inc only cares about phones, Beats, thin, their campus, Tim Cook's politics, lame self-produced content, and emojis.
Rating: 26 Votes
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RedKite
11 months ago
I still adore that design. I don’t think it’s proper to do so, but here I am.
Rating: 25 Votes
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MrGimper
11 months ago
Possibly one of Apple's biggest mistakes?
Rating: 19 Votes
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Marx55
11 months ago
Apple should release more headless Macs, including low, middle and high products, from Mac mini to Mac Pro, and also a new mini tower. CPU may last seven years (then you cannot install new macOS releases but displays last more than 20 years. Fight programmed obsolescence, protect the environment and fight climate change and global warming.
Rating: 16 Votes
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ReneR
11 months ago
Apple became a disgrace to the professional / creator community. Not only #peakbugs, but the glossy mirror displays of MacBooks and iMacs are a pain to work with, too. So many people leaving for Windows, and Linux. Creators to the first, web developers for the later, ...
[doublepost=1513683125][/doublepost]

"Only a few"? A few hundred? A few thousand? A few million? C'mon...just because a Mac Pro would never sell the same quantity as a Macbook or iMac, it's unfair to say that a properly designed (and one that didn't have the trash can moniker from day one) wouldn't have sold much more than the one they released, let alone say they'd sell "just a few". Those with aging aluminum mac pros and mac minis and even iMac owners that wanted to be able to upgrade something, ANYTHING, would have been attracted to it.

We will never know, of course, or maybe we will if they ever come out with a redesigned, modular Mac Pro.


Yeah, also the professionals are the influencers who convinced the Joe users to go for a Mac a decade ago, and are not happy today anymore, ... So each Pro customer left, are many more users to follow later, ...
Rating: 16 Votes
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Kobayagi
11 months ago
I'm really interested to see what the new display will look like.
If they took the Thunderbolt Display and made it 5K, added a better mic, better camera, better speakers and more ports to act as a hub since the new MacBook Pro's only have USB-C. Oh it would be perfect.

I mean, just look at it, it still looks great, even with the huge bezels. The sturdy aluminium design is still lightyears away from that new LG monstrosity.

Edit: And while you're at it, add a HDMI port. It would be great if I didn't have to use a separate display to play on a console once in a while.


Rating: 14 Votes
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Enabledobject
11 months ago
Happy Birthday!!!!
Rating: 13 Votes
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superduperultra
11 months ago

Everyone is excited for a new modular MacPro, while the 2013 was aleready designed as a modular.




I think we designed ourselves into a bit of a thermal corner, if you will. — Craig Federighi

What people want is something like this:

[MEDIA=youtube]9rkvj-EPT0Q[/MEDIA]
Rating: 12 Votes
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Quu
11 months ago

So you said builds get cheaper. Yet then say the builds Apple uses aren’t cheaper. Huh?


Yes because third parties use parts that make sense. The 1950X from AMD is used in non-Apple builds and offers equivalent performance to Intel's 16 Core XEON that is used in the iMac and potentially in the new Mac Pro. For significantly less cost.

But Intel and Apple have some kind of special relationship so you get a worse part for more money. Similar situation with AMD Graphics and Apple. The Titan XP is faster than both the Vega 56 and Vega 64 but Apple chooses not to use it because they have some special relationship with AMD for Graphics (but not CPU's) so you get a worse product.

Basically Apple needs someone to help with their desktop Macs that actually can make decisions based on the facts and not the partnerships Apple has forged years ago, those partnerships have locked them into purchasing parts that don't make sense from a financial, performance or feature perspective.

Here is another example. Pro's want a Mac Pro with Workstation class hardware, ECC Memory etc. But average Mac users don't need that. They would prefer to have a small tower that is somewhere between a Mac Mini and a Mac Pro.

ITX form factor with a single PCIe slot and two RAM slots with a socketed processor that could take a Core i3/i5/i7 or an R3/R5/R7 from AMD. The price would be around $1,000 starting price and go to about $2,999 when maxed out to 64GB of RAM, Core i7/R7 CPU, NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti or AMD Vega 64 with 512GB to 1TB of M.2 SSD storage.

That is the Mac most desktop Mac users have wanted for years. Buying the Mac Pro and getting much more CPU and GPU grunt than you need with workstation class stability features like ECC memory are just not what the majority of people have needed. Putting the start price for a Mac Pro at $4,999 will not make anyone happy, not the professional users who will feel ripped off when you can get a cheaper workstation half the price elsewhere and not the Mac consumers who just want a headless Mac desktop instead of an non-upgradable iMac or Mac Mini.

I hope what I'm saying makes sense, in the grand scheme Apple doesn't care, they make money hand over fist and it's the money they care about, they're a business they don't owe us anything, it's about the money and I get that, but it doesn't change that their Mac's aren't competitive, it just means the iPhone is all they care about now and if you like the Mac you're seeing it slowly being put out to pasture.
Rating: 8 Votes

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