Apple tells reseller new Mac Pro coming in spring 2013

Please make it smaller and cheaper....I bet it will sell well.

It can't come soon enough. Unfortunately, many pros have simply moved on to an iMac or MacBook Pro, so I wouldn't be surprised if sales are a bit soft.

 

Also, they really need to get back to their previous pricing structure where they would sell a bare bones Power Mac for ~$1799.

I'll be watching... Mathematica powerhouse. 

The irony here is that I would love one for my iTunes/Apple TV server and to be my iPhoto/Aperture machine, but, as it is now? The Mac mini is near ideal.

Depending on what they do with it (safe to assume it won't be as power hungry), I may pick one up to be a headless Mac. Hook it up to my plasma to set up and then just remote in for editing photos, ripping, etc.

So!!! finally March it is! Hurray, can't wait to get my fingers on this one. Now I start to be glad, that I skipped the last upgrade. To my surprise quite aged MacPro runs Mountain Lion quite all right, but I guess it is going to be stuck with it.

I say my spared money is waiting.

I also can't wait to see what it is. I hope it brings TB and state of the art "really desktop level" graphics not like the mobile cards used in the iMac right now. While the nVidia GTX 680MX is a good card for all around general purpose, it still is a mobile card and no where near powerful enough for heavy duty tasks or for high FPS @ very high screen resolutions. 

 

We need a real desktop that also is expandable and has easy access. Hope they get good accessories with it, enterprise class SSDs or WD Velociraptors instead of the old SAS drives. BTW BRING ON SATA 3 :D I almost forgot how out of date the current Mac Pro is.

 

My cash is also waiting.

This is bullshit. I work in an Apple Premium Reseller as well and if there is one thing we don't know it's new product releases. Especially brand new design releases etc.

The APR is probably just telling this to keep their customers from not buying the current Mac Pro because it is hard to get in the current distribution channel (it's being faded out in Europe).

Make it so. 

 

That or March 1st and Europe will go dark for a few months as the new Mac Pro could be introduced on June 19th, the very last day of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere.  Hey, they said iMac would be available in November and it was...  November 30th!   

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I would *never* open a business in France. Just sayin.

Just let it fit into a 19" rack mount without needing to saw off the handles!

 

It may in fact be smaller and cheaper, but to try and design it that way on purpose kind of goes against the whole raison d'etre for the Mac pro in the first place.  

 

It's not a mini tower for joe average to tinker with in his basement just because he "doesn't like" all-in-ones.  It's a professional grade machine. 

I don't trust this reseller. If it's true, they should know better than say anything because release information is supposed to be proprietary. If Apple were to leak it, they'd leak it to one of the major journalists or newspapers, such as Walt Mossberg @ WSJ.


I think they even used to have a single 1.8GHz G5 at $1499 USD. The problem was that model didn't compare well with an iMac in the same price ranges. I recall a dual socket G5 used to cost $2000, and the entry point for Mac Pro even climbed to $2700 temporarily. Down to $2500 now.

 

The Mac Pro isn't, and never has been, a "desktop".  It's a Pro grade machine.  The Mac/iMac is the only "desktop" class machine that Apple has ever sold. 

I really hope they keep the same design. Don't need a new one right now, but when I do it'll look great next to all my old ones that I lined up. The interior has always been redesigned, so I expect nothing less there.

edit: this news will make DigitalClips happy

I'm 68 years old (still building web sites) and I figure I've got one more PC to go in my life. I think I'll hold on till DDR-4 arrives!

It's actually both: it was marketed as de desktop for professionals. And the iMac was the desktop for consumers. Surely you remember that slide fromt he old iCEO days. Desktop/Laptop / Professional/Consumer

 

I'm all in for a Mathematica powerhouse. The problem is you need the right licence to make use of all the cores - and that gets expensive rather quickly.

 

Correct, its a desktop. It may not be sitting on your desktop, but its still classified as a "desktop" computer. And, you don't have to be a Professional to use a MacPro. I've owned both a PowerMac G5 and a MacPro simply because of its upgrade capabilities (video card, hard drives, etc). There are more reasons to own a MacPro than just being a professional. The fact of the matter is, there are many who use an iMac for "Professional" tasks as its more than capable for doing such things and its much cheaper and things an iMac cannot handle efficiently would be handled better by a Mac Pro. 

 

 

There isn't enough demand. The bulk of the market is already being serviced by other form factors, and has been for several years now. Desktops are only *potentially* profitable in the Pro space, but even there, with the Rise of the Prosumer, a lot of that power is unnecessary.

I doubt it. Apple has to remove the Pro soon - and will not want to go longer than necessary without a Pro. They announced almost a year ago that it would be available in 2013, so they've had plenty of time. I think the more likely interpretation is that the APR is correct.


I don't think that will happen. I think that, if anything, the Pro would go even more upscale. Before Thunderbolt, expandability was a major driver for the Pro since expanding the iMac was limited. TB changes all of that - you can easily get incredible performance from a large RAID array or SSDs or even an external video card. That will make the iMac replace even more of the low end Pro users.

The only exception I could see involves the CPU. Apple made a decision to use the dual CPU capable Xeon chips for the Pro. I could see them offering an i7 as a single processor entry level Pro and save the Xeon chips for the high end dual CPU systems. However, I doubt if the volume is high enough to justify two different motherboard designs, especially since the i7 iMac meets most peoples' needs.


I'm pretty confident that you'll get your wish on the graphics card. Apple has always offered desktop level graphics on the Pro and I can't imagine that that would change. As for the drives, you can buy one with a single drive and add Velociraptors and massive SSDs if you wish. The whole point of the Pro is that it's simple to add new drives, so Apple doesn't have to offer them as a factory option.

One feature that no one else has mentioned - I could also see them adding SLI for the graphics on the new Pro systems.

Exactly. The iMac is a highly capable machine, especially now that TB is available. Very, very few people are in the Pro target audience. Apple will not cut corners to try to bring the price down.

Spot on!

 

It is a pro desktop sure! But the fact of the matter is it is still a desktop. Or you can argue that a Macbook is a laptop while the Macbook Pro is not a laptop but a pro grade machine.

 

Spring 2013 starts March 20th and ends June 20th, so the probability is that you're more than a little optimistic.

 

We fall into the category of those pro users who bought an iMac (27" previous model) where normally we'd have gone with a Mac Pro. It was impossible to justify buying such an old design. On the other hand we still have one first generation Mac Pro (model 1,1) which won't run Mountain Lion and will need to be replaced this year. I'm looking forward to seeing what Apple offers. The "sealed for life" current iMac design doesn't suit our long term needs very well.

Of course it's a desktop. So what?

The fact of the matter is that it is targeted at high end professionals and is not expected to be a high volume consumer product.

The Mini is the entry level desktop. The iMac is the mainstream desktop. The Pro is the high end desktop/workstation computer intended to meet the needs of only a tiny percentage of the population. There really hasn't been a distinction between 'high end desktop' and 'workstation' for quite a while.

 

 

To each their own, but I would love to have a business in France. The French are very passionate people and we need more of that in the world. 

 

A "desktop" starting at anywhere between $2,499.00 and $3,799.00 US.

 

That aint no ordinary desktop. And it sure as hell isn't aimed at the bulk of the consumer market, who, even it were more affordable, still wouldn't buy into it to any degree that would justify its promotion and development. 

 

We're already seeing this:

 

 

 

Edited by Quadra 610 - 2/6/13 at 7:05am

I'm in a university environment and buffered against the cost a little and so I acknowledge your concern. Hopefully, as Wolfram Alpha becomes more and more capable, as witnessed in the data entry facility of the pro version, the cost of entry and later the overall cost, will fall. Cannot say that I have a vision for this but with at least one knock-off becoming popular (if that is the case, I really don't know for sure), there will be downward pressure on pricing.

 

 

Yes, Apple used to have an entry level Power Mac around that price point. The processor was usually good, but the rest of the specs average. The real feature was expandability. I think the problem was it ended up competing for sales with the iMac. I would buy a Mac Pro if the price point of an entry level model came in at a hundred dollars or so over a mid range iMac. It shouldn't compete with the iMac too much because of the lack of a monitor. 

Should be titled "Rumor: New Mac Pro might be headed to France in Spring"

I'm French, and I have to say, like Apple, hire French guys in the USA (or Canada). Not in France, unless you're a megacorp.

Apple's increased transparency regarding their plans for the Mac Pro is really encouraging. Granted, they're still clear as mud compared to other companies that sell workstation-class computers, but for Apple it's a big improvement to have Tim Cook announcing a new product way in advance and then this communication to the reseller (if it's legit, which given Cook's earlier announcement, I suspect is legit). 

 

I take this to mean that Apple is planning to take the Pro market much more seriously, including enterprise/government/higher.ed users (ie, not just pro-sumers). 

 

I think that if Apple really tried, they could take half of the workstation market in the US. Granted, it's a small market, but the people who use workstations are people you want as customers (money, influence) 

 

Did you read the past comments? 

Where did i argue it was anything like ordinary desktop? I never said that. I said we need a "proper desktop",

I'm in a university environment as well - unfortunately this does not mean I'm buffered against cost. I know from different institutions that Wolfram is very difficult to deal with when it comes to licencing. So I don't expect the price to go down. It that way, Mathematica is like Apple: great product, and it will most certainly keep its premium. (It's quite funny that the name Mathematica goes back to a suggestion from Steve Jobs.)

I love the MacPro.  My 2007 8 core model is still a powerhouse.  A new model or design would be great.  Can't wait to see it.

That's true, but at the time, the iMac was clearly an entry level machine. Even though I didn't consider myself to be a power user, I bought a Mac Pro at the time - because I wanted the expandability and better capabilities. There were a lot of people for whom the iMac was not sufficient.

Today, the iMac is a very different beast. With i7 processor, up to 16 GB of RAM, SSD, and TB expandability, it's far more power than most people need. Only a tiny percentage need something like the Mac Pro.

Hopefully with numeric keyboard with USB 3 hub.

Remember, Apple can't sell the current Mac Pro in the EU because of power and fan problems so this could simply be a redesigned enclosure to pass regulations.

 

As for the desktop issue, the Mac Pro is closer to the historical "workstation" nomenclature than calling it a pro desktop. A workstation class computer came with the same power as the mainframe but could be moved around while the desktop was a reduced capability computer that sat on an individual's desk and ran simplified programs. Because of the growth in CPU power, these lines have been blurred but the fact the Mac Pro is the only Mac that can be upgraded with more than its memory and disk makes it a workstation, since it can be tailored to the specific requirements of the user. Because Apple is a consumer company, they didn't want to alienate potential buyers by calling the Mac Pro a workstation so they simply called it a pro-desktop or prosumer product. As a workstation, it beat the snot out of Dell, HP and Sun workstations but has languished in recent years. Apple needs to make a statement with this workstation-class computer redesign to remind all those professionals, scientists, and media people that running on Apple hardware with Apple software is not a step backwards into the consumer market but a step forward into professional computing.

Will they create a new tagline, or simply reuse an old one?

1. The Power Macintosh G3: Performance, capabilities, and style that will dazzle you every day you use it.
2. Move over, speed of light. Introducing the Power Mac G4.
3. Two brains are better than one.
4. Power Mac G4 Cube. So much technology. So little space.
5. Power to burn.
6. Pro create. Introducing the new Power Mac G4.
7. Introducing the new Power Mac G4. All with dual processors.
8. The new Power Mac G4. Faster, more expandable, and more affordable than ever.
9. The Power Mac G5. The world's fastest personal computer.
10. The new Power Mac G5. Engineered for the creative class.
11. The 64-bit professional dream machine.
12. Power Mac G5. The power of four.
13. Room to grow. Introducing Mac Pro.
14. Professional velocity.
15. The new Mac Pro. Tower of 8-core power.
16. The new Mac Pro. Beauty outside. Beast inside.
17. Mac. To the power of 12.