“So if you take Apple at its word, the next Mac Pro is being developed as we speak, but it won’t arrive this year. That said, there has been some speculation it might not arrive next year either, but it’s not as if Apple would offer too many specifics,” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl. “I will take Apple at its word that an all-new Mac Pro is forthcoming, but there are loads of unanswered questions, and plenty of room to speculate about what’s will come.”
“My feeling is that the new box will be sized somewhere between the 2013 model and the previous model, still compact but allowing for some level of internal expansion,” Steinberg writes. “So you could add multiple drives, more RAM than you can now, and perhaps expansion cards. How many is an open question mark, but Apple ought to consider what a typical user would require, while leaving plenty of external expansion ports for the edge cases.”
“That said, is there something Apple is doing that takes more than the usual time to design such a computer?” Steinberg writes. “Some tech pundits suggest that Apple really didn’t come to a conclusion about what direction to take with the Mac Pro until very recently, and that’s why it will take another year or longer to get the work done. Is it at all possible Apple is waiting for a new CPU family from Intel and perhaps a new graphics processor to flesh out the package? I suppose, but the graphics are more intriguing in light of a recent development.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Not just iPhones and iPads, but will future Macs utilize Apple in-house GPUs, too?
SEE ALSO:
Why Apple’s ditching of Imagination is critical for the future of the iPhone – and maybe even the Mac – April 5, 2017
Apple aims for more control, less cost as it accelerates in chip design – April 5, 2017
Apple could look to buy Imagination Technologies after ditching the chip firm, share price plunge – April 4, 2017
Imagination Technologies’ shares collapse after Apple dumps UK chip designer – April 3, 2017
Apple nabs top talent from iPhone 7 GPU chipmaker Imagination Technologies – October 13, 2016
After failed takeover talks with Apple, Imagination Technologies sells stake to state-owned Chinese company – May 9, 2016
Apple in ‘advanced talks’ to acquire Imagination Technologies for PowerVR GPU – March 22, 2016—
Apple’s Mac Pro rethink is a good idea, but will it be good enough? – April 14, 2017
Laggard, trailing Apple needs to catch up HP’s workstation designs – April 7, 2017
Why Apple’s promise of a new ‘modular’ Mac Pro matters so much – April 6, 2017
Apple’s cheese grater Mac Pro was flexible, expandable, and powerful – imagine that – April 6, 2017
More about Apple’s Mac Pro – April 6, 2017
Apple’s desperate Mac Pro damage control message hints at a confused, divided company – April 6, 2017
Who has taken over at Apple? – April 5, 2017
Apple’s embarrassing Mac Pro mea culpa – April 4, 2017
Who’s going to buy a Mac Pro now? – April 4, 2017
Mac Pro: Why did it take Apple so long to wake up? – April 4, 2017
Apple sorry for what happened with the Mac Pro over the last 3+ years – namely, nothing – April 4, 2017
Apple to unveil ‘iMac Pro’ later this year; rethought, modular Mac Pro and Apple pro displays in the pipeline – April 4, 2017
Apple’s apparent antipathy towards the Mac prompts calls for macOS licensing – March 27, 2017
Why Apple’s new Mac Pro might never arrive – March 10, 2017
Dare we hold out hope for the Mac Pro? – March 1, 2017
Apple CEO Cook pledges support to pro users, says ‘we don’t like politics’ at Apple’s annual shareholders meeting – February 28, 2017
Yes, I just bought a ‘new’ Mac Pro (released on December 19, 2013 and never updated) – January 4, 2017
Attention, Tim Cook! Apple isn’t firing on all cylinders and you need to fix it – January 4, 2017
No, Apple, do not simplify, get better – December 23, 2016
Rare video shows Steve Jobs warning Apple to focus less on profits and more on great products – December 23, 2016
Marco Arment: Apple’s Mac Pro is ‘very likely dead’ – December 20, 2016
How Tim Cook’s Apple alienated Mac loyalists – December 20, 2016
Apple’s not very good, really quite poor 2016 – December 19, 2016
Apple’s software has been anything but ‘magical’ lately – December 19, 2016
Lazy Apple. It’s not hard to imagine Steve Jobs asking, ‘What have you been doing for the last four years?’ – December 9, 2016
Rush Limbaugh: Is Apple losing their edge? – December 9, 2016
AirPods: MIA for the holidays; delayed product damages Apple’s credibility, stokes customer frustration – December 9, 2016
Apple may have finally gotten too big for its unusual corporate structure – November 28, 2016
Apple has no idea what they’re doing in the TV space, and it’s embarrassing – November 3, 2016
Apple’s disgracefully outdated, utterly mismanaged Mac lineup is killing sales – October 13, 2016
Apple takes its eye off the ball: Why users are complaining about Apple’s software – February 9, 2016
Open letter to Tim Cook: Apple needs to do better – January 5, 2015
I with they’d make this in the meantime:
http://pascaleggert.de/macpro.html
Cute but the power supply for all that would be bigger than the case. 300W/graphics card. 600W/Thunderbolt 3 bus.
Yes! Very nice!
I figure the real reason for the delays is that they’re trying to make it smaller, even though the pros want it bigger. 🙁
Why is Apple’s next-gen Mac Pro taking so long?
Because Pipeline Timmy spends more time getting his asshole waxed than thinking about the Mac, that’s why.
I want to like a sleek black Mac, but it just doesn’t work for me as a pro workstation. This concept might have been good as a mainstream Mac consumer desktop model, that’s about it.
Pascal Eggert might be great at pretty design, but this concept appears pretty limited from a thermal analysis standpoint, just as constrained as the current Apple trashcan. If you’re truly a pro and running hard, you need more airflow.
There are other things wrong with the concept as a Pro machine too. Apple themselves admitted that they were wrong about the direction graphics processing would go. Forcing everyone to buy two modest GPUs and offering no way to increase the future thermal footprint as later chipsets came along was stupid. Few hardcore number crunchers need two GPUs. Most of them either want massive CPU capacity with one modest GPU for a single monitor;, others want the most kickass single GPU for a huge 4K or greater resolution color accurate monitor for video or photo work. Those who do use 2+ 4K monitors obviously are a significant subset too, but not a majority. So bottom line, Apple needs to give up nesting small GPUs in a skinny cylinder and provide a proper row of PCI slots that is ready for the future.
8 Thunderbolt 3 ports is a waste of time, internal PCI is faster and having an octopus with cables all snaked to one end is bad design. Like the Apple trashcan, forcing the device to be positioned on a desktop in the vertical position is just silly. Make it a cube or rectangle so people can shelf it in other ways or rack mount it.
Also it should be abundantly clear that any Mac Pro needs to have more internal hard drive expansion options too. No matter what Apple seems to believe, Fusion is the worst of both worlds and SSD is not appropriate for all needs. Give the users options. Without that, all you are doing is continuing the mistakes of the 2013 Mac Pro. Bigger is better, so don’t stop with a middle of the road solution if you want to serve all the pros.
One may be able to shrink down the cheese grater design by 10% and put a radius on its sharp edges, but fundamentally that’s about it. If slim design is what Apple wants to sell, theere is nothing stopping them from adding the Jony Ive signature Edition models in pink. But for the rest of us, please offer 3 or 4 different size standalone Macs for desktop and UNDER desk towers: the market needs a bigger dual drive Mini, updated current can or this dual can as a mainstream Core i5 & i7 Mac desktop, proper fully capable Mac Pro tower, and a proper rack mountable server that Apple could use to run its own business.
Apple is only about 5 years behind in delivering a complete range of Macs that addresses all the needs of the diverse Mac community. Now we finally know that they got the message we’ve been sending, let’s see if Apple actually follows through with proper products that keep up with the competition. A 17″ portable MacBook Pro workstation is long overdue as well.
I will never understand why Apple did not simply take the 2010 Mac Pro tower case and puts in the new stuff – new mainboard, newer Xeon processor, new Thunderbolt 3. That should not take too long, and there are still plenty of pro users who do need bays for hard drives, Tim!
In my own company I am stilling running 12 (!) MacPros of 2010, updated with 1 TB SSD plus 4 x 4 TB hard drives. Even I truly love my new 15″ MacBook Pro late 2016 when I travel and for office work, the old Mac Pro is a beast, especially with a lot of RAM and a new graphic card.
and a new power supply to run it and new cooling system you are talking about a whole new machine anyway.
Easy, cause Ive doesn’t like big, fat cases, it doesn’t fit in with the thinner is better mantra that Apple has. And no upgradable components that Apple seems to love.
Everything you mentioned is pretty much a pro anathema and high incentive for a hasty platform workstation switch. Apple’s record now on giving pros what they want is officially suspect so waiting another year could be excruciating folly, if your need is now.
New 2018-19 Mac Pro = The new Homer?
That’s a nice design, too bad Apple will never use it. Once somebody posts these concepts that almost guarantees the company who owns the product will never use it. Legal issues.
The 2013 MacPro shows the direction Apple want go with further optimizing the hardware to their ecosystem. The dual GPUs work great with FCPX and Motion and not so well with third party applications where the developers decide not to explore the additional programming it requires. Apple is probably looking at a repeat of the proprietary GPUs found in the MacPro while opening up an avenue for GPU upgrades in the form of PCI16 card slots or GPU boxes with a direct PCI connection to the MacPro.
” Apple is probably looking at a repeat of the proprietary GPUs ”
eh?
At the Apple Mac Pro Meeting :
Federighi:
” I think we designed ourselves into a bit of a thermal corner, if you will. We designed a system that we thought with the kind of GPUs that at the time we thought we needed, and that we thought we could well serve with a two GPU architecture… that that was the thermal limit we needed, or the thermal capacity we needed. But workloads didn’t materialize to fit that as broadly as we hoped.
Being able to put larger single GPUs required a different system architecture and more thermal capacity than that system was designed to accommodate. And so it became fairly difficult to adjust”
TECHCRUNCH (Panzarino who was at meeting) :
“Ternus says that the team didn’t fully come to grips with the limitations of this architecture until much later than they’d hoped ….
Specifically, as mentioned a bit above, it was the unique triangular design of the Mac Pro’s thermal core that proved to be the limiting factor. Because it was designed to carry roughly balanced loads of heat on all three sides, it just wasn’t equipped to take on the task of supporting the now incredibly popular single massively powerful GPU configuration.”
——–
The SVPs tried mightily to spin it but the gist was that they made a massive mistake with the ‘twin GPU’ design as the trend today is single powerful GPU and they admitted they caught it very slowly ( Federighi ” There were periods of denial and acceptance. We all went on that arc”) and that’s why they are having such a long delay to fix the issues because they have to rethink their entire ‘Cylinder’s 2 weak GPU thermal ‘ mess.
Of course if they just made a Tower with enough cooling and slots that are powerful enough they could pop in two or more powerful GPUs – instead of two weak GPUs as the Cylinder now (and with right software enable their tandem capabilities like Crossfire or SLI. )
((btw: the 980ti I have in one of my Cheese Graters has 3 times the GPU speed of the high end D700 and the new MBP for certain tasks. Typing this on another upgraded Cheese Grater).
Classic case of the boy who cried Wolf. That is the Apple of today. Arrogant, doesn’t really care about their users (they won’t admit it, but actions speak louder than words), and BEHIND THE CURVE.
While they’re at it, how about updating the Mac Mini, too? Four cores again, please.
Apple can’t walk and chew gum anymore. I wouldn’t expect too much from the company
What would be bice would be some continuity of design and features between a Mac mini and a new Mac Pro. A modular system that stripped down to the basics would be a Mac mini, but that could be built with various higher spec components so that ultimately you ended up with a top-notch machine. I guess there might have to be a basic case and a bigger case, so there might not be a full continuity between the two systems. But it would be really nice to be able to more easily add more power and options to a Mac mini as well.
What’s taking so long? Easy. They didn’t care.
*IF* they are waiting on some new CPU architecture (which I seriously doubt), I wish they would make the jump to AMD. The new Zen processors are off the hook efficient and cost effective. Intel is making lame promises for a future that it is currently unable to keep, and Zen still has that future beat today.
GPUs are a different matter, at least for today. But I suspect that when Vega has had a few months to work out the kinks, AMD graphics won’t get the heat is does today. I get that many will still want NVidia add ons, but AMD will be a contender enough that Apple won’t be given crap over including it in a Pro box.
Put the two together in a single box, and the whole “it just works, because it was made to work together” thing reaches new heights.
Anyone using Adobe’s apps (especially Premiere pro) finds anything other than Nvidia and their support for CUDA acceptable. It’s not up to Apple to decide for Pros what they need. The option should ALWAYS be given. That’s what people wearing big boy pants do.
Pro gear and components should always be thought of as user-designated out of necessity and need. It’s called “choice” and the realization one size does not fit all.
Premiere Pro users only find Nvidia video cards acceptable that is. (Where’s that edit button after years of asking?)
MAIGA, DPT.
1. Apple never planed to update the Mac Pro but replace it. They were to use the iMac Pro to ween people off the Mac Pro. That’s why the iMac Pro will be released this year. But something happened and Apple had to say a new Mac Pro would be out, but in 2018 or something.
2. Apple has their heads up their but.
They are starting over. If you saw the video they released it pretty much explains everything and why.
I’ve been thinking about Apple’s production problems while in their Apple Store in Cerritos, CA the other day. The store was busy and loud. Just the thing a retailer wants.
But I had to wait over an hour, even with my appointment, because they were so busy. Watched Captain America Civil War on their 27 inch iMac as they slowly got to me.
I observed two things; the emphasis is on mobile at Apple and the store was sorely understaff for the amount of people there to be served.
Now let’s get to the org chart for Apple. If they wanted to make yearly updates to their products it would be simple to re-arrange the org chart at Apple and tell them to do it.
It isn’t hard, right? I mean, readers here know what they want. Apple obviously reads the Mac related websites for a pulse on what the community is up to nowadays.
It is management of setting goals, hiring people to see that it is done, and give them the resources to do it.
Yearly updates on Mac Pro.
Yearly updates on iPhone.
Yearly updates on iMac.
Yearly updates on MacMini.
Some years may be minor and others may be major revisions.
It isn’t hard. So where is the bottle neck?
It’s obvious the org chart has somebody stopping things from happening in the company.
So who is responsible for this cluster action? Who takes responsibility for allowing these products to wither and fall behind the competition?
These are simple questions that need answering.
And the answers to these question would provide a pathway to fixing the problems at Apple, Inc.
You’re dead on target. It’s the org chart and that they have operated by consensus. If everyone didn’t agree nothing would happen – hence the seeming paralysis. There’s no Steve to say, “I’ve heard your concerns but you’re wrong. We’re doing it this way. March!”
If it’s not a tower with enough space to get all the crap off my desk I’m not interested.
Function first. Aesthetics next. For a long time Apple have had this the wrong way around.
I have three Apple products which are wrong-headed: 12″ MacBook with the worst keyboard in history and Mac Pro which is the most stupid design in history, iPhone 6 with the most stupid button layout in history.
Believe me, I am not going to make the same mistake again.
What’s taking so long? Better late than looking average
It has to be pretty and compact and it will use very powerful parts inside. For Apple functionality alone is forbidden
Based on current Apple trends I can’t imagine anything close to the 2012 design. So I won’t expect dual CPU sockets (not absolutely necessarily) or even twin GPUs as they explained the market inclined for a single more powerful GPU option. I think Apple will design the most powerful workstation on the smallest footprint, even if they use a modular design.
The sad truth is most Apple consumers dread PCs more than they despise current Mac designs. Meaning, Apple has a captive audience.