Apple is Rethinking Its High-end Desktop
The cylindrical desktop tower by Apple – Mac Pro was intended for a professional content creation audience. Mac Pro was introduced to much fanfare in 2013. But it has remained essentially unchanged ever since.
Mac Pro.
The 2013 Mac Pro shunned the more familiar PC tower design of its predecessor. This allowed for easily user-upgradable drive bays, memory and graphic cards. The unique tubular design 2013 system meant only a handful of components could be updated later on. Even those components were difficult to access.
Mac Pro With An Upgrade.
Apple’s Senior Vice-President of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller, confirmed that there is a new Mac Pro in the pipeline, during a briefing at the company’s Machine Shop hardware prototyping lab.
This month, Apple updated the processors and RAM on the Mac Pro. The company also revealed that an entirely new Mac Pro desktop design is in the works. That sounds like something close to the classic desktop tower Mac Pro. But that future system isn’t still close to current. It’s said to be coming at some unspecified time after 2017. This recent announcement was made as a part of a one-two punch of Pro-level update announcements.
What Can We Expect?
Apple’s thinking of giving the Mac Pro a new twist. It could revolve around a modular design that will be able to pack in top-end processors for ultimate performance. The most powerful graphics chips and the ability to install and upgrade new components are along the way.
Apple’s launch last year of the new MacBook Pro range saw a new feature being launched with the Touch Bar, but also a resetting of the price point. This tends to happen with any major shift in the MacBook Pro range. It keeps the margins high and as components become cheaper over the years the price can drop while the profit remains.
The entry-level $2,999 model of Mac Pro included a quad-core 3.7GHz Intel Xeon processor. It had 12GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and AMD D300 FirePro graphics.
Earlier this month, that $2,999 base model was updated. Now it includes 3.5GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor. It comes with 16GB 1,866MHz DDR3 ECC memory and 256GB PCIe-based flash storage. It now has Dual AMD FirePro D500.
Interesting Desktop.
The step-up version now gets you an 8-core CPU and Dual AMD FirePro D700 video cards. The step-up version is available for $1,000. Mac Pro is a very interesting desktop with some notable features. It has an impressive aesthetic design. It’s a potentially good choice if you need desktop-level power in a very portable package. It will be very useful for travel or on-location video editing work.
Apart From Mac Pro.
If you don’t want to wait for 2018 or beyond for a new Mac desktop. They are expected sometime this year. These already offer 5K screen options, but very limited CPU/GPU choices. A more Pro-friendly iMac could potentially improve on those and bridge the gap between more consumer-level Macs (and MacBook laptops) and the very high-end, very expensive Mac Pro desktop.
Bharat Mamtora is Online Marketer at Nimblechapps Mobile Game Development Company. We provide mobile game development services for iOS and Android Platform.