Chance Miller reports for 9to5Mac:
At WWDC 2019, Apple unveiled its new modular Mac Pro, slated to be released later this fall. Hidden in the second developer beta of macOS Catalina is the return of the Expansion Slot Utility application, which allows users to manage the PCI expansion options of the Mac Pro.
Expansion Slot Utility was originally available on the early Intel-based Mac Pros, but support for the app was dropped with the 2008 revision. This was because the early 2008 model of the Mac Pro did not have a configurable PCIe setup as all lanes had fixed assignments.
With the all-new Mac Pro, however, Apple is bringing the Expansion Slot Utility application back.
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, yes! Copyright 2009-2019. ‘Tis happy news for professional Macintosh users!
Expansion Slot Utility in macOS Catalina, for the new Mac Pro pic.twitter.com/SL0YHS50id
— Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) July 1, 2019
$6000 machine.
Can’t connect a hard drive natively.
Apple moving to 100% SSDs internal makes sense. Using space and power internal to the new Mac Pro does not make sense in this day and age.
Spinning disk drives connected over TB3 should be fine for large storage for anyone. Even in a RAID configuration TB3 should be fast enough for most users. There are enclosures that allow for up to eight drives and drives are available for up to 16 TB for an aggregate of 128 TB. That should be enough for almost anyone. If you need more than that go to a NAS or SAN.
While 4 TB (2x 2TB) SSDs can be restrictive, it’s probably enough for 95% of users of the new Mac Pro. I do wish they had four slots instead of two for a nice stand alone system — primary Mac drive and internal backup plus primary Windows/Linus drive and internal backup drive for those. That would have made a nice, self contained system.