“Apple is considering previewing its upcoming redesigned Mac Pro at its Worldwide Developers Conference this June, according to a new report by Bloomberg today,” Tim Hardwick reports for MacRumors.
“Apple has said it is working on a high-end high-throughput modular Mac Pro for its pro user base that will be easily upgradable and will feature components for the most system intensive tasks,” Hardwick reports. “According to sources who spoke to well-connected Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman, Apple has ‘internally weighed previewing a new version of the high-end Mac Pro’ at this year’s WWDC, although no firm decision appears to have been made.”
Hardwick reports, “We still have no word on when in 2019 the Mac Pro is coming, but Apple did promise a 2019 launch date in early 2018.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple had better do something Mac Pro-related at WWDC, lest the pitchforks that have been out for approximately three years threaten to get used!
SEE ALSO:
Lusting for Apple’s professional 6K display – February 19, 2019
Are Hackintosh users more passionate about the Mac than Apple? – February 19, 2019
Ming-Chi Kuo: Apple to unveil all-new Mac Pro, 16-inch MacBook Pro, 31-inch 6K monitor, and more this year – February 18, 2019
“Apple Mulling Preview of New Modular Mac Pro at WWDC in June”
I’m “mulling” over buying a PC Workstation NOW if Apple doesn’t tell us real soon what’s going on and not waiting until Dec. 19th 2019 to start selling these goddamn ultra-late machines (and inevitably only truly available Feb.-March 2020).
Bastards! Does Apple have ANY idea how livid & angry the pro market is with them???! Stop with the reassurances and show us action, not placating but hollow words.
If it does not have multiple REAL full length PCI slots, this thing is a non starter and will go the way of the trashcan mac pro. Pro/enthusiasts need expandability. Some boloney thunderbolt modular cage will not cut it.
Ideally it would have 4 NVMe slots for fast SSDs and maybe a couple 3.5″ bays for big mass storage.
Let’s hope they dont blow this. They’ve had over 5 years to get this right.
They’ve had seven years to get this right, not five. You don’t start designing a new computer after the current model starts shipping. If Apple had started working on a new Mac Pro design when they should have (back in 2012) they’d have had time to polish every electron going through the prototypes.
I’m with you on the PCIe and SSD slots. I want a minimum of four PCIe slots (minimum of two 16x and two 8x) conforming to the PCIe 4 standard. They’re rare today, but there are companies shipping PCIe 4 support.
I’d prefer at least two additional PCIe based SSD slots (M.2 is OK if it is upgraded to PCIe 4). The race is on for faster enterprise class SSDs as exemplified between the high end Optane and Z-NAND drives. And, I will echo the desire for a minimum of two 3.5″ drive bays with full compliance with SATA 3.2.
I have a fantasy of a new Thunderbolt 4 at a minimum of 80 Gbps as the rumored 6K display will likely require two cables at TB 3 unless you want to be limited to low refresh rates. The same goes for the few 8K displays of today and the 10K displays of the not too distant future. In my fantasy, we’d get a minimum of four of those TB 4 connections.
I don’t want any requirement for eGPUs. I want to be able to put a minimum of two top end GPUs in the box. Having the ability to gang up to four GPUs (two internal and two external) might be a nice option as a test bed for some of our very high end projects (currently projected to require up through eight top end GPUs), but eGPUs are not a true need for us.
In the April 2017 meeting Apple claimed they had already started working on the next Mac Pro. There are only two reasons why it could possibly take more than 2 1/2 years to design a new Mac Pro and get it to customers: 1. incompetent leadership or 2. incompetent engineers. My vote is for the former.
Apple is currently aping the worst, consumer-hostile tactics employed by Microsoft: vapourware.
High-end pro users don’t need some over-thunk, first-generation, expensive, and untested (in real-world) modular system with a Jony Ive-approved design, as this ridiculously long wait is suggesting it’ll be. They needed a basic tower with expansion capabilities, and they needed it yesterday. Hell, five years ago. Any other reputable PC hardware company could’ve produced one in 2 months flat, but no, Apple has to take over 10x longer because of vanity.
So the thought not yet realized is to do a stupid preview like at the 2013 WWDC for the Trash Can Mac Pro, which basically told us the bare minimum about that thing. Then we get to have new Mac Pros start shipping in extremely limited quantity in late December 2019. Then we get true availability (ability to walk into an Apple store and walk out with one the same day — without pre-ordering) by March or April 2020.
The sad thing is I’ve had the staff slowing moving our compute intensive projects to other platforms for some time. We’ve been doing so slowly hoping we didn’t have to do so completely. However, if the above timeline holds true, there won’t be anything being done by us on Macs other than administrative tasks and maybe not even that.
Bite the bullet, get it done, you’ll all be happier once the machinations of Apple no longer gives you any heartburn 🙂
When I was helping folks years ago, I actually thought I was moving too fast. That I’ll get this person converted over and then the DREAM MAC PRO would be released and I’d have to help them switch back. That never happened.
I’m quite confident that, anyone basing their next computer purchase on the expectations their cheese grater ownership… such that they haven’t purchased a new system since BEFORE the MacPro, will NOT like whatever it is Apple comes out with. Because what they come out with will be a modularly enabled MacPro (because their goal will be to make MacPro owners happy, not cheese grater owners).
No one even in the mess created by Cook, will convince me to enter the world of the PC. I really wonder if from my experience I had to deal with that world day in and day out for my work, if I would still be alive and healthy its so depressing. It’s stressful enough having to help or suffer the troubles of others in my life of professional vacinity that affect me thanks despite the endless claims that the bad old days have gone from that platform. Fine you will get the monotomous PC weenies delivering their long in the tooth nebulous rhetoric like above, but there is little sign that it is having, despite their inane claims to the contrary, that it is actually having any significant effect on Mac users. Indeed when such things are actually a reality rather than childish wishful thinking, you generally have no need to spend so much time on forums line this trying to bullshit us about such false realities. So I will worry when they actually stop their desperate tactics of mis direction, till then they are just a vague annoying buzz in the ear to contend with.
Enough of the waiting! Preview it at the March 25th conference
Necessity will bring change. If Apple doesn’t change they are going to lose a portion of it’s customer base. As they say, all good things must come to an end. It will be interesting to see if some new company will come along and fill the void. We don’t want the usual pc stuff but someone to provide the old “It just works” systems.
That has happened, it’s called Boxx
I prefer Puget Systems in Washington State.
It takes massive balls to insult the customers with a “preview” two years after promising an upgrade last year and six years after the last update. Amazing. If it’s previewed in June can we expect general availability before 2025?
Exactly my thoughts…”Preview”? Are you frickin’ kidding me?! It better ship in July if it’s previewed in June.
For the record, it turns out I am a moron–I’ve been waiting, using my mid-2007 iMac for the past how many years–for an iMac that met my needs or a Mac Pro that I could afford. What the f*ck have I been doing?! It was always “coming soon”, “Be here next year”…argh!
Testament to this old machine, sure, but I’ve purposely put off starting new projects until I could get a better machine with a decent GPU. What’s another year or two at this point I guess.
How many 1000s of people does it take–how many billions of dollars are needed–to plan and communicate your product roadmap for a product you’ve been making since you began? Shouldn’t be that difficult, should it? Which only means it’s being done intentionally. sigh
Is this the new equation? I hope not.
Modular = MORE DONGLES?
Please revise your terminology: its “MODULAR dongles”
The only good news about a potential preview is that it should unfreeze customer decision-making in 2019 one way or the other.
Naturally, Apple will try to avoid doing that by withholding key information such as price.
“The only good news about a potential preview is that it should unfreeze customer decision-making in 2019 one way or the other.”
God yes. Precisely. The Mac Pro 2019 Preview would give a much clearer idea on whether pro users should wait or switch to Windows immediately and not waste any more of our time waiting on their foolishness.
Again a total misunderstanding of just how wide a base the ‘professional’ user is and their requirements in a computer. People like you are actually talking about no more than 10% of actual professional users. Which is why it’s difficult to take your views seriously. Perhaps you should define your view of what a professional user is in your opinion because vague references to what has become a meaningless term at least as you use it, is effectively worthless in an otherwise very important discussion of the future Mac Pro. Because ‘professional’ and ‘Mac Pro user’ are not by any stretch of an inflated imagination one and the same thing.
I don’t care if you or anyone else take my views seriously or not. That’s highly irrelevant. I only know what I need and want. I am a VFX DP, VFX Supervisor and post production professional with over 30 years experience. I also sometimes produce side projects. I know of many others in the industry equally perplexed and angry at Apple. Some though (wiser souls) have already left for the dark side.
Who cares if it is only 10%, or 3% for that matter? Professional developers, artists, designers, were part of what made Apple Apple.
If it required Apple to slow down on iOS or otherwise impact their bottom line, it’d be different. We’re just asking for current hardware refreshed regularly with components that are user-replaceable. This is a problem that’s already been solved. A company with Apple’s resources couldn’t mange to do this, while also coming up with “the next big thing”?
While its pedantically true that “Pro” does not necessarily exactly equal “Mac Pro” … that’s besides the point, because this conversation is – – and has always been – – about the Mac Pro and its customer base.
Whoever that customer base is, the simple facts of the matter are that they’ve been poorly treated by Apple. Even though the Mac Pro has frequently been (and correctly) referred to as Apple’s “Flagship”.
A product reveal is very much a milestone at which people will make purchase decisions — and the reason why Apple is probably reluctant to preview is obvious: because some portion of the customer base will be disappointed and walk.
But this is actually quite irrelevant to Apple, even if they don’t realize it: those customers AREN’T buying old 2013 Mac Pros today, so if they don’t like your Modular Mac, then the fact that they didn’t become a buyer in March 2019 is fiscally no different than them not becoming a buyer in December 2019.
And sure, we can try a tap-dance that just maybe these frustrated customers will go buy an iMac Pro in the next ten months … but that ship has already sailed, because that’s been option for the past year, so those who could settle for the iMac Pro have already done so…
Thus, there’s no downside risk of lost sales for Apple — because the upside is for Apple’s Mac Pro PC competitors: they have the potential opportunity for their sale of a PC replacement for the Mac Pro to come in April 2019 instead of in January 2020.
Minor correction:
I misread this as a “preview” at the March 2019 event, not WWDC in June 2019. As such, the April 2019 should be July 2019, etc.
Dongles…hope not. More a series of bolt on units that are upgradeable but otherwise locked down would be modular. I don’t mind what their approach is as long as it runs cool and silent. I doubt we will see another cheese grater – what a brilliant design, unfortunately.
It had better be something between a cheese grater and a mechano set.
The new Mega Mini!!!
Action, not words, Apple.
And action includes banning user-unfriendly changes.
So don’t do mad things like deleting the magsafe cable, losing ports, even forgetting the light-up logo.
I sure hope the new Mac Pro works well out if the box! All this rushing to push it onto the market! Maybe they should take their time with it.
How many years should it take Apple to update a Mac?????
Apple is still selling the trash can with TB2 ports which were obsoleted 4 years ago. Is it Apple’s strategy to skip 3 generations of chips and 5 major leaps in graphics cards before it even begins to plan the next Mac update? Or is Jony busy perfecting nonstandard internal tamperproof alyooominyum locks to ensure users cannot replace any components? What takes so goddamn long for Apple to deliver competitive current hardware ?????
Apple indeed cannot innovate Schiller’s fat ass if it is so hard it is for the shallow thinkers in Cupertino to design a proper Mac workstation in 6 years and counting (not to mention the other glaring holes in the Mac lineup like rackable server, small expandable desktop tower, 17” laptop, cheap education Mac, etc).
I blame the idiot manager fashionistas running Apple today.
Cook is a useless POS if he can’t maintain the fundamental pillar that supports Apple, the Mac. He clearly doesn’t get it. If it wasn’t for the easy money flowing in from Jobs’ ios app store, the current mismanagement would have killed Apple faster than any prior inept CEO that Jobs erroneously allowed to infect Apple. Because today performance and quality are plummeting while prices and constraints are getting ludicrous for everything, especially Apples antique Macs like the unloved trash can. Apple’s plans to be a movie house and fashion watchmaker will not go well. Without solid personal computer updated IMMEDIATELY and REGULARLY, mainstream Mac users will follow the pros back to Windoze.
A smell of further delay.
Preview to hold people up?
Or Apple is so proud and cannot wait to show the results.
Hope the latter.
Sorry, I became too skeptical on anything Apple does these days, particularly since late 2017 when they hyped the iPhone X only to observe the declining sales later. They had better impress (surprise?) us this time.
Trouble with that argument is that sales after the launch of The iPhoneX were initially rather good especially compared to the oppositions attempts. Sadly the market a year later has been rather less conducive to expensive smartphones or simply new iterations of that leap forward. Apple needed to compensate in other ways in and outside of the iPhone on price and other products but rather failed to see that very expensive phones are far less likely to be updated as regularly while the market itself is becoming satuated and they had done well to maintain momentum this long. Lack of vision again.
In retrospect, the decline of iPhone sales had been going on even before the hyping of the X. The X was Apple’s measure to counter this decline and they were desperate. They overpriced it to maintain the ASP and started rather an unusual campaign to hype the X. It sounded very strange. It involved the investment community and created the hype of what was then called “super cycle” that was supposed to coincide with the Holiday Season. The hype was so unusal and many thought that something was behind it. During the 2017 Holiday, the sales apparent was “not bad” just because it was a Holiday season. But no Supercycle ever happened. Far from it. Investment community started becoming a bit skeptical. When the year changed, it was revealed from the various sources, including the supply chains that the top seller was actually the 8 Plus. But during this time, Tim Cook became even vicious to shore up the declining sales, he kept hyping telling such things as “the sales of the X have been through the roof. For sane eyes, it was so unusual and I thought it was a borderline deception. This was when I totally lost the trust and confidence in Cook. He was desperate to support the stock price. He continued this attempt by eliminating the unit sales reporting etc, which further deepen the suspicions in the investment community. But in the end, it was no avail. He had to tell the truth and he finally did.
I HATE to say it, but if Apple doesn’t introduce a new iMac this year, I’m switching over to Windows or Linux. At least I can get a computer that has new components. I hate Windows, but I will live with it. This is how far Apple has sunk, IMHO. Would NEVER have even considered this before, but if they disregard their computer systems this drastically, the software faces the same. And I am not going to give them any more time to right this ship.
The Mac Pro is just a hobby.. because you know.. giant corporations have uh.. hobbies.
It’s genuinely amazing to me how much Apple has taken it’s eye off the ball. The executive shakeup is evidence they’ve been aware of it for a while now. As many analysts have pointed out, the pattern of tiny acquisitions has not built out a broad capability to enable dominance. Being complacent is not in service to shareholders. The Mac Pro is a tiny component of the business to be sure. But the point is to be the BEST and in several key areas Apple just is nowhere near it. As AR matures it’s going to need a voice component that matches it in sophistication and SIRI is sorely lacking… it’s just awful. So.. where will Apple actually LEAD? That’s a key question for Tim going forward. Where can people look and say.. yes.. Apple is the acknowledged leader.. At the moment.. I can’t say they are the leader anywhere. And I love the company. I have thousands of shares.. They are my nest egg (as they are for many). Leadership means being bold. And Apple has been TIMID.. full on pun intended.
Tim Cook, Steve’s worst mistake
Maybe Steve is trolling everyone from the grave LOL! He always said he’d use the mac for all it was worth, then get started on the next big thing. What better way than to leave a note in Tim’s pocket saying “Mac is done. If it’s not dead in 15 years, I will come back to haunt you”.
This will be known as the Mac mini Pro.
Tim will have to own this failure.
I gave up on a new Mac Pro last year. My company buys PCs now, and we run Linux and Windows.
Screw Apple.
Sadly the fate of many thanks to Apple incompetence and lack of vision.
Real artists ship.
The pathetic reality is that while Cook chased iOS based consumer fashion junk and streaming media, computing pros have had no choice but to buy hardware and software from companies that actually support them. The Mac is a joke not just because of bad hardware design constraints and dongle hell, but also because most Mac apps are second class ports of fully capable Windows programs. Apple has done absolutely nothing to achieve app leadership in any field. Its own apps are for the most part poor as well, seldom updated, and less user friendly than ever.
Cook has so thoroughly mismanaged the Mac that 90% of professional grade software is available only on Windows or Linux. It may be too late for Apple to recover the lost users it pushed away through total uncaring and incompetence.
Looks to me like Cook is following Sony into a long decline. Except of course that Sony was diversified before it decided to be a movie studio. Cook thinks Apple is sustainable by building less than 50 major products, all of them designed only to hook users into rental streaming media or “in-app purchases”. Weak local storage, no expansion, no user control or repairs. Fashion first.
Last chance Apple. If you can’t support pros, you are dead to me.
I’ve posted here dozens of times over the PRO neglect years. 2019 is make or break for this PRO. Apple owner since my Lisa…
You and me both GoeBBie. Want to see a presentation at WWDC come hell or high water so I can know sooner than later whether to jump ship.
Sad that once most pros leave they’re not coming back. It takes far less to keep customers by doing the right thing than screwing up for years and trying to get them back.
Could not agree more, Fesarius. Apple owes the computing universe a long overdue preview sooner, rather than later. Anxious pros need assurance and not more of the same.
I’m only interested in the MAC PRO for my freelance business. Company I work for purged all Macs in 2014 after the lackluster and expensive Trashcan debacle. We were running PC pros with Windows 7 up until last month.
For the first time in decades 100% off Mac at work with some concerns. Month later, no big deal only a few keystrokes named differently and over 90% of operation is the same and productivity actually increased in some areas.
Heads up to all the PRO APPLE weenies, fanboys and diehards out there. If you have NEVER worked on Windows, then you have zero credibility to knock it.
Last month my employer purchased all new pro PCs running Windows 10. Honestly, 10 is the closest OS to a Mac I have ever used and actually like it (gasp!).
Bottom line: Will run all the PRO PC specs cost comparisons when Apple releases the new MAC PRO. If Apple disappoints AGAIN it will be the last. My MAC PRO 36-year marriage will end in divorce… 😢
Could not agree more, Fesarius. Apple owes the computing universe a long overdue preview sooner, rather than later. Anxious buyers weighing buying decisions is Customer Service 101.
I’m only interested in the MAC PRO for my freelance business. Company I work for purged all Macs in 2014 after the lackluster and expensive Trashcan debacle. We were running PC pros with Windows 7 up until last month.
For the first time in decades 100% off Mac at work with some concerns, sorry for the drama. Month later, no big deal only a few keystrokes named differently and over 90% of operation is the same and productivity actually increased in some areas.
Heads up to all the PRO APPLE weenies, fanboys and diehards out there. If you have NEVER worked on Windows, then you have zero credibility to knock it.
Last month my employer purchased all new pro PCs running Windows 10. Honestly, 10 is the closest OS to a Mac I have ever used and actually like it (gasp!).
Bottom line: Will run all the PRO PC specs cost comparisons when Apple releases the new MAC PRO. If Apple disappoints AGAIN it will be the last time. My MAC PRO 36-year marriage will end in immediate divorce… 😢
I just shake my head. How hard could it possibly be to build a box, a design essentially unchanged since the original IBM PC.
The whole “we’re in the post-PC era” was entirely Apple marketing department spin – it was never reality.
The Trash Can Mac Pro was Johnny Ives wank-fest, how Apple ever thought it was an improvement on their Cheese Grater “build whatever” box defies comprehension.
And then to bubble along for years knowing it was a complete product disaster and not do anything to rectify the error by quickly bang together what the market actually wanted, but instead proclaiming “we’re right, the customers are just stupid” – what the hell happened at Infinitely loopy?
Even when Motorola/IBM did next to bugger-all improving the PPC Apple would tinker to extract every extra ounce of power delivered in the same standard and much loved beautifully designed and engineered box, periodically presented with a prettier face.
I guess that’s what happens when you believe your own marketing propaganda. The arrogance of that company will be its downfall if this continues.
Tim Cook is the WORST CEO in History. You have the keys, talent and money to sustain the world’s most innovative brand and hardware and he FAILED all over the place. Unacceptable!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!