Apple Updates Mac Pro, Says All-New Model With Apple-Branded Pro Displays Coming Beyond 2017

Apple today introduced spec-bumped versions of the current Mac Pro, marking the first updates to Apple’s pro-oriented desktop in over three years. Apple also confirmed it is working on a “completely rethought” Mac Pro with Apple-branded pro displays that will launch at some point beyond this year.

The existing Quad-Core model with dual AMD FirePro D300 GPUs is now 6-Cores with dual D500 GPUs for $2,999, while the 6-Core model with dual AMD FirePro D500 GPUs is now 8-Cores with dual D800 GPUs for $3,999. Apple said there are no other hardware changes, so Thunderbolt 3 ports remain notably lacking.

Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller via Daring Fireball:

With regards to the Mac Pro, we are in the process of what we call “completely rethinking the Mac Pro.” We’re working on it. We have a team working hard on it right now, and we want to architect it so that we can keep it fresh with regular improvements, and we’re committed to making it our highest-end, high-throughput desktop system, designed for our demanding pro customers.

As part of doing a new Mac Pro — it is, by definition, a modular system — we will be doing a pro display as well. Now you won’t see any of those products this year; we’re in the process of that. We think it’s really important to create something great for our pro customers who want a Mac Pro modular system, and that’ll take longer than this year to do.

In the interim, we know there are a number of customers who continue to buy our [current Mac Pros]. To be clear, our current Mac Pro has met the needs of some of our customers, and we know clearly not all of our customers. None of this is black and white, it’s a wide variety of customers. Some… it’s the kind of system they wanted; others, it was not.

In the meantime, we’re going to update the configs to make it faster and better for their dollar. This is not a new model, not a new design, we’re just going to update the configs. We’re doing that this week. We can give you the specifics on that.

The CPUs, we’re moving them down the line. The GPUs, down the line, to get more performance per dollar for customers who DO need to continue to buy them on the interim until we get to a newly architected system.

More information to follow…

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