“It would be an understatement to say that Apple’s Mac Pro workstation was getting a little long in the tooth. As of summer 2012, it was missing Apple’s own Thunderbolt ports, not to mention 802.11n WiFi,” Dana Wollman writes for Engadget.
“Finally, though, Apple released an updated version, and it addresses a little more than just the wireless card and I/O options. Redesigned from the ground up, it’s now much smaller and lighter, with a space-age cylindrical shape, an overhauled cooling system that’s half as loud and a spec sheet that includes standard dual GPUs, PCIe SSDs, 802.11ac WiFi, up to 64GB of RAM and the latest Intel Xeon processors, once again going up to 12 cores,” Wollman writes. “In short, these are specs that bring the Mac Pro into the modern age — and make it ready to handle the coming onslaught of 4K content.”
“It’s hard to say if the Mac Pro is pricey, per se, given that there’s nothing else quite like it. There are plenty of Windows-based workstations, certainly, but none are quite this small or quite this portable (many aren’t quite this quiet, either). And if you’re a creative professional already hooked into Mac-only apps like Final Cut Pro, this is really your only choice: The new Mac Pro is a serious improvement over the old model in every way,” Wollman writes. “So, while $2,999 (let alone $10,000) is indeed a big investment, it’s well worth it for people who live and die by their workstation, and for whom (rendering) time is money.”
Much more in the full review here.
Related articles:
The first 24 hours with Apple’s new Mac Pro and Final Cut Pro X 10.1 (with video) – December 20, 2013
T3 Mac Pro review: Unboxing, hands-on, and first impressions – December 20, 2013
Apple’s powerful new Mac Pro a good value; far from the most expensive high-end Mac or high-end PCs – December 20, 2013
CNET hands on: Apple’s radically reimagined Mac Pro is a powerhouse performer – December 20, 2013
It has been the ‘space age’ since 1957.
I paid about $2200 for an iBook years ago, so $2,999 for this is very much a deal. I wish I needed it!
You betcha! I will probably order sometime in January or February for financial and tax reasons. Hope Mac Pro orders don’t keep getting pushed out until summer 2014! The size of the new Mac Pro is truly astonishing compared to the old. Not to mention every other advantage it has, except for internal expansion.
>and for whom (rendering) time is money.<
New Mac Pro owners will be saying, "Rendering? What's that?"
The PC losers over at the Engadget comments section are seething with a blood red rage of envy. Most of the comments are bewildering in their bottom-feeding stupidity. Apparently, you’re “tech savvy” if you have nothing better to do with your booger-picking existence than to “build” (read: assemble) your own PC. As soon as one of those geniuses “builds” a PC that does ALL that the new MacPro can do, and also not take up 10 times the real estate, and not sound like a turbo prop airplane, and be “half the price,” as is their claim, I want to see it.
Yes, the comments at Engadget are really pathetic. Anybody looking at this from the perspective of a gaming PC has no clue about workstation computing. Considering what I used to spend on Sun and SGI hardware during the ’90s, this is a real bargain. Mine will be crunching data from scientific instrumentation that dwarfs the cost of the Mac Pro. And the license fees for some of the software I run also dwarfs the machine costs. A lot of these are going to turn up on college campuses very quickly.
That machine is pure “wow”
So now that the new Mac Pro is out, when do we get matching peripherals? The current thunderbolt displays, keyboards and mice just don’t go with the DarthMac and esthetics are important. We are not PC people after all. Tsk.
+1
Agreed. I want a black keyboard, mouse, MagicPad, speakers and display.
The Xeon chips alone are priced in the thousands. It’s really hard to match everything the Mac Pro has going for it at the same (much less lower) prices. I’ve been looking and comparing. I admit that it is a huge paradigm shift (not to mention expense) to move heavily into TB peripherals, but that’s the about the only place one can save money in doing their own build if they are truly matching specs. There are some that will want more than 64GB ram too.
And it looks like things are going very well on the assembly line. I ordered a Pro for my home office, and it showed a ship date of December 30. I received a shipping notice a few minutes ago, and the cpu will be in my hands on the 26th.
Typical Apple!
Or, somebody in Cupertino likes you! When did you place your order?
As far as I can tell, I got the order in about 4:30 AM CST on the 19th, which I think is about 10 minutes after the site went live.
And I have my dog to thank, because I wasn’t even going to check the website until around 8 AM PST. He was snoring so loudly I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to go upstairs and surf a bit. I hit the Apple Store, and lo and behold, the ordering page was active. I quickly assessed the BTO options and decided to just go with the stock 6-core.
The only upgrades that interest me are RAM and the SSD. Both are user accessible, and I’m not sure when I’ll need a boot drive larger than 256 Gb.