“Rumours had been circulating for months about the goodies that Apple might unveil at this week’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. A new professional Mac? The new OS X 10.5 operating system, known as Leopard? What about a new iPod? Or perhaps even, some speculated, the appearance of an iPhone,” Bobbie Johnson reports for The Guardian.
“The crowds at WWDC are, by the event’s nature, Mac developers, and Monday’s announcements were squarely aimed at the professional user. The centrepiece product was the high-level desktop Mac, the Mac Pro,” Johnson reports. “Based around a pair of dual-core Intel Xeon (Woodcrest) processors, Apple is not joking when it calls this the fastest Mac ever: the quad core machine can run at up to 3GHz, and its 64-bit Core 2 Duo architecture means that it’s future-proofed for some time yet.”
“But although the interior may be radically different, nothing seems to have changed on the outside. Just as the iMac switched to Intel without ditching its form, so the old PowerMac ‘cheese grater’ look has been used for the new Mac Pro with only a few tweaks. Why has Apple, a company that prides itself on innovative design, stuck with old styling? Observers say it is partly to assuage the fears of the hardcore Mac faithful, and partly because the design works – it is, after all, the same basic shell that has been banging around Cupertino for years,” Johnson reports. “With the Mac Pro, Apple has put the final pieces of the Intel puzzle into place and, despite a few casualties along the way, has completed the transition inside 14 months without much of a hitch.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We hope that those who still do not recognize the Mac Pro’s exterior case design as the work of genius will someday be able to understand why it is an industrial design masterpiece.
Related MacDailyNews article:
Power Mac G5 industrial design is simply genius – June 26, 2003
My dual G5s sit on top of my desks at home and at work, because they are just that cool looking to me. They are functional and beautiful to my eyes. And they are just so much better looking than the other crappy PC cases I see coming in day after day at work for repair. Dell, Gateway, HP, Compaq, Sony, Generic PC cases all have nothing on Apple’s case design.
Wasn’t the original iPod released at a special event? Why would this be any different?
Watch for the new ipod in the next two weeks.
Just in time for back to school…and the iphone to either follow or be announced at the same event. Remember the original announcement of the first itunes capable phone..that was MASSIVELY upstaged by the nano?
Apple could have done worse. The Cheese Grater is OK, but I prefer the G4 look-n-feel.
Right, a great design introduced 37 months ago is an “old design”. The guy’s an idiot.
The so called “Cheese Grater” is in my opinion the best case ever, Its just nice and clean, simple and professional. The other PC cases out there are the “Cheesy” ones. Much like cheap toys for kids.
The MacPro design is faultless.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Look Mirosoft works very hard to hire sincere sounding types to bash OS X and Macs. Now please, the least you can do is show a little sympathy. Imagine for a moment that you are so talentless and useless that the only thing you are good for is trashing other people’s work. Now imagine you have hit the ultimate low ( a low on par with Ewan McGregor’s chatacter in “Trainspotting”, when he shoves his hand in the toilet) and you start taking money from Microsoft to bash other PC’s. That is where the Dvorak’s of the world are, with the arm shoved down the shit covered toilet of yellow journalism.
We don’t need to bash these guys. They need an intervention.
Just my $0.02
Correct me if I am wrong but the Xeon dual core “Woodcrest” chips are not Core 2. They are the 5100 Series chips. Shoddy reporting again.
Bill H.,
You’re wrong:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060524-6898.html
Woodcrest is Intel’s top processor in the Core 2 lineup.
Fred, you beat me to it and my computer wouldn’t let me post.
it is also found here on Intel’s site.
http://www.intel.com/technology/architecture/coremicro/
There has been several radical changes to the Macs in the last year, not the least of which is the switch to Intel processors. The old G5 case design provides a ‘comfort zone’ to purchasers. I expect Apple has some new enclosures in the works, possibly to be introduced as early as the MacWorld Expo in January.
For Apple to shift their processors from PPC to Intel without changing the case designs is intentional. Apple wan’ts branding continuity for its current user base. The message is, it’s still a Mac, even though we are moving in a different direction. That’s a strategy. Look for new case designs next year probably once the transition has a year under its belt.
“Apple could have done worse. The Cheese Grater is OK, but I prefer the G4 look-n-feel.”
This is a tough choice. As a designer I’d say the G4 Quicksilver is the most beautiful case design ever created. It is literally a work of art (YES literally – I keep this poster on my wall:
).
My main machine right now is a first Gen, dual 2GHz G5. The exterior grew on me, but the genius of the G5 case is 2 fold:
First is the cooling. Nice airflow keeps the fans OFF 99.9% of the time keeping the machine virtually silent (mine is on 24X7).
Second is the interior (
). Here we enter into “work of art” territory again. I used to pop open the side just to show people how beautiful this machine is inside (Look Ma, no wires!)
I can’t believe that the Mac Pro looks even better inside (Thank GOD there’s no “intel inside” logo in there). The drive bays and covers have an elegant simplicity (
)
Will I be buying a new Mac Pro – Yes… As soon as Adobe stops dragging their feet. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – APPLE, BUY ADOBE AND DISCONTINUE THE WINDOZE VERSIONS OF ALL PRODUCTS.
Wot, no attribution for the ‘heads-up’ ?
What Jim said.
the thing with intel now is that there are so many product lines… what is quad path for what? Clovertown, Tigerton, or Kentsfield?
Somehow appropriate… Other company’s build “cheesy” looking desktop PCs. Apple builds the “cheese grater.”
I’m also glad Apple kept the same basic external design. On the inside, it almost seems like this case was made for the Intel transition. The four slide-in harddrive “slots” is the coolest feature. It’s even better than before…
Damnit. I’m not seeing a place to stick a padlock. Unless that ‘lever’ on the back will somehow secure the inside and allow a way to lock it down. If I have to start superglueing those ugly ass security cable things to the case I’ll be pissed. The last batch they bought for our PC’s looked horrid.
“Unless that ‘lever’ on the back will somehow secure the inside and allow a way to lock it down.”
Yes, there is a locking latch on the back.
I think Apple will update the exterior of the MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacPro in the next 1-2 revisions. Just guessin’.
Christ- There’s a strip along the back that includes a place for a lock. I don’t know the mechanics of it, but it’s on Apple’s Mac Pro site.
Forget about the case. Look inside:
http://www.geekpatrol.ca/blog/135/
A whopping 7% increase in performance? Yesterday I was criticized for saying it was only a 50% the way most used it.
I say again and again… we deserve better, Apple can deliver.
As smart consumers, as in NOT BUYING it until it’s the best possible technology, is the only way to go if you want to escape the marketing machine and a big let down when you are all set up, after spending something like 5 grand, and find it’s not much more than the G5 you just set aside.
Pete Peterson,
So for that 7% increase in performance there was about a significant decrease in cost. $2500 vs. $3299.
I hate it when I get more performance, more room to expand and less power consumption for less money. What is this world coming too?
Oh yeah…it says that at the bottom of your article