keithw

I would argue the 2013 Mac Pro became obsolete the day they started shipping the iMac Pro, which is what replaced my “trash can.”

If they had just packaged a 5k Retina Monitor based on the hardware from the current iMac, and announced it alongside the new display, nobody (or fewer) would be criticizing.  Sure, there's the LG, but folks want an Apple-branded display to go with their headless Mac.

Great editorial!  I have to laugh at all of the naysayers. Back in the late 80s I used to sell/support "engineering workstations" from Apollo Computer and then HP.  They cost (in today's dollars) tens of thousands of dollars and their performance was at least two orders of magnitude (maybe 3) slower than what is available today.  There are alternatives, even though people complain about those as well.  iMac, Mac Mini, or iMac Pro with eGPU are all options.  So is the new MacBook Pro.  So I'm not buying the "it's too expensive" line at all.

I have an iMac Pro and the nVidia eGPU works just fine under Windows 10.  I have a 1080 Ti in the eGPU enclosure, and it consistently out benchmarks equivalent workloads from the internal AMD chip.  I just wish I didn’t have to run Windows to get this functionality.

IMHO whatever they come out with must be able to take COTS (Commercial Off-the-Shelf) AMD and/or nVidia PCIe cards.   Whether in the main chassis or in an eGPU chassis isn't  that important.  The graphics card is almost always the first thing to become obsolete in a pro computer.   Save very obsolete graphics cards in the 2013 Mac Pro, it still is a pretty fast platform, even after 5 years.