“As you might expect, Apple has been relatively tight-lipped about the next Mac Pro,” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl. “That they’ve said anything at all clearly demonstrates the pressure they confronted as pros made it clear they didn’t believe they had the love.”
“I do believe Apple is telling us the truth, such as it is, as to what they are working on. The next Mac Pro will be modular and allow for easy upgrades. But it’s not as if it will resemble the cheese grater design of the original,” Steinberg writes. “I’m expecting something more decorative, in keeping with Sir Jonathan Ive’s design sensibilities.”
“Since this is Apple, so expect something innovative when it comes to a cooling system. It won’t have lots of fans,” Steinberg writes. “But it may be more than that, at least based on a published report about Apple trademarks for the Mac Pro that mentioned ‘augmented reality displays’ …If Apple can fulfill its promises and deliver a future-proof workstation and high-resolution display for professional Mac users, the platform will prosper for many years.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, we’ll get at least a smidgen more information about the future of the Mac Pro this June at WWDC 2017.
SEE ALSO:
Apple may be converting Mac Pro from a dead-end vanity project to a serious powerhouse – April 28, 2017
Apple updates ‘Mac Pro’ trademark to cover augmented reality displays, smartglasses and more – April 26, 2017
It’s not that hard for Apple to design a new Mac Pro – April 20, 2017
Why is Apple’s next-gen Mac Pro taking so long? – April 18, 2017
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
There should one MAIN priority: easily upgradable by pro-consumers and Apple. And don’t go chintzy on the ports fer cryin’ out loud.
Size, weight, and power consumption should all take a back seat.
Noise, however, is important to audio pros.
Nary need to say any more
What is with Apple’s obsession with minimal number and types of ports. I am not asking for a scsi port, but what is wrong with a FireWire port? I have a lot of external drives that use FW.
Just go buy a $40 dongle for each one.
Port adapters should be free at time of purchase. The raping of customers with insanely priced and poorly designed adapters needs to stop. Apple is one of the worst offenders in this regard.
Firewire’s dead. It’s not coming back.
FireWire accessories that still work should not be dumped because Apple is obsessed with eliminating them. They own FW so they do not pay a licensing fee.
People don’t throw away perfectly good peripherals just because Apple wants them to.
‘Ive’ and ‘decorative’ in the same sentence without the word ‘anathema’ in between, whatever will we see next.
Certainly an anathema to pros. We don’t need a Mac Pro hobbled by cutesy useless design by someone who doesn’t understand the needs of professionals.
Frankly i think Ive should be kept hands off of this reinvention version. He has already demonstrated he’s not ready for Mac Pro prime pro time. Stick with the consumer stuff Jony and let the adults handle the pro stuff.
I repeat, well said …
Riffing on Fesarius’s comment..
With their top-line products Apple must abandon the design aesthetic and build trucks that haul ass.
Now, real [pickup] trucks have got to possess sex appeal; your ride is an extension of your manhood, a symbol of your toughness and also a nod to your suave personal style. That’s why the F150 sells so well: it identifies you as the Marlboro Man, without the cancer stigma.
But computers, which hide anonymously beneath your desk, are not overt ornaments like pickup trucks. With computers, power and versatility, reliability and upgradability, ease of use, are what matter. They are purely your tools of trade, unlike your truck: which precedes your arrival on the construction site with a roar of downshifting and a blazoning of colourful company logos screenprinted onto your cab door — a grand royal entrance that calls attention to your magisterial participation. Computers are more like table saws — no one cares who made them, only that you used them skilfully and made precise bevel cuts.
Let Ive’s crew of designers focus on miniaturisation—always a worthy goal—but leave the trucks alone. If the fenders or truck racks are inelegant, we’ll get by.
A most excellent post! One of your best. 😊
Yes Apple, I need a sexy truck …
Ive can put his “decorative” where the sun don’t shine.
A separate chassis for PCIe expansion is okay, as long as there is a 16-lane PCI Express bus between it and the processor chassis.
A separate chassis for magnetic media storage is fine with TB3.
I suspect most people strongly prefer an integrated solution for drives gpus and pci cards. Pci slots are faster than thunderbolt, and the cost of cables adapters and docks is not insignificant.
Real pros want a chassis that gives them future options. The trash can forced everything to use thunderbolt2, which was expensive, constrained, and now obsolete. Apple had better not make that boneheaded move again.
For them (Apple), the less they say about it, the better. It gives them an easy out, if they decide to scrap the whole thing, but if they promise something, they will get slammed into eternity.
If Apple doesn’t offer its Mac community something to look forward to this WWDC, how many more cutting edge computing customers will leave the Mac platform? Apple hurts itself by allowing bloggers to fill in the silence. Apple needs to learn how to make consistent regular product improvements and news releases year round.
Enough Said
That is hilarious, and spot on! Thanks!
Apple lives in a bubble. They know what you need and you don’t need anything the guy listed.
Apple very clearly does not understand its Mac customers in many market segments. Apple totally lost its place in education, video production, etc. Apple never was able to gain a decent share of the engineering, finance, and scientific markets. no gamer uses a Mac. Timmy instead sells fashion laptops for the avid Facebook crowd and for iOS programming. Photographers do fine too. That is all.
If Apple knew and cared about its customers, it would not leave them high and dry for 4 years with overpriced second rate hardware. Not a single Mac today is class leading by any objective measure of overall performance or value. That makes me sick.
It’s wrong that no gamer uses a Mac. You stated that, and it is wrong. The rest of your statements may have validity, or not, but your assertion about gamers is false.
Your intention to blacken Apple by reciting a litany of crimes against humanity is understandable, but don’t throw us gamers into your indiscriminate meat grinder.
Agreed!
Gotta admit, that was funny. It was also painful to watch, because it was so cuttingly to the point. Apple has to do better with the next version…much better.
🎯 🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯
Plus… the dude did not stop at hardware…he took Shot at MacOS..
“Can u run 3ds Max?….. without installing windows? ”
Which brings me to the thought….. why hasnt this Application been ported to osx/macos ?
There may not be a decisive need to port 3Ds Max to OS X. 3D production is dominated by the PC and Windows and it has been like this since the beginning. The Mac plays the catch up in this industry and again the 2013 MP could have put OS X in an additional disadvantage. The 2013 MP is not an ideal machine for continuous 3D rendering (it overheats) and small studios and 3D artist had been recycling 2012 Mac Pros.
Also Maya has been available for OS X, I think, since 2001 since it was produced from Alias Wavefront Alias wavefront ported Maya to OS X in 2001 but Autodesk never ported 3D Max to OS X. Then in 2006 Autodesk acquired Maya from Alias Wavefront and Autodesk continued its OS X development. These are the 2 most popular 3D packages today.
lots of people have good points here although they might be 180 on their specific needs (ports , internal storage) etc.
Perhaps this could be solved by them making a
POWERFUL mini like the HP mini AND a proper many port internal storage Tower? The current mini is a neutered design anyways.
(but perhaps Apple’s solution is an extremely powerful Xeon iMac with TB 3 as rumoured AND a MP for next year ?)
(The current controversy of the MBP might be averted if they had ALSO a heavier 32 GB many port MBP for ‘Truckers’. Many people love the current MBP as an ‘executive’ type laptop (it’s more a heir to the Macbook Air) but some ‘Trucker’ pros are complaining, the GPU for example is weak).
Also I don’t know how this ‘augmented reality’ or whatever they have planned going to play out in their design needs.