the mac Pro reborn… and it really is for pros
You may not be able to afford it, but the Mac is back on the workstation map
clever aS 2013’S cylindrical Mac Pro was, flexibility was limited, and by 2017 Apple was talking about its replacement. That in itself suggested a willingness to listen, and the machine finally unveiled by Tim Cook at WWDC really is what pro users had demanded: a traditional modular tower — with a few twists. The industrial “cheesegrater” grille on the front and back of the one–piece aluminium sleeve, reportedly based on an older Apple prototype, unites the Mac Pro and its companion Apple
Pro Display XDR while solving airflow challenges for both.
Angular steel hoops form handles at the top — a nod to previous Mac Pros — and feet at the bottom lift the case off the floor. While aiding heat dissipation and avoiding dust, this does make for a slightly ungainly impression. Castors will be an option, and a rack–mount version was mentioned.
The chassis, accessible from all sides with the cover off, has eight PCIe slots, four suitable for standard graphics cards. (Apple also
announced DriverKit, a framework for third–party device drivers.) Alternatively, you can install two– slot MPX modules that combine PCIe, Thunderbolt and power, and can each hold up to two GPUs, with passive cooling. Apple says the Mac Pro’s three large front fans will run as quietly as an iMac Pro.
Storage comes as NVMe SSDs; fingers crossed these are standard, allowing third–party drives at keener prices than Apple’s. Promise has announced MPX modules with up to 32TB of hard disk space, something
you definitely couldn’t fit into the previous Mac Pro. All your options are covered by a massive 1.4kW power supply.
IT ALL ADDS UP
At $5,999, the base model has an 8–core, 16–thread 3.5GHz Intel Xeon W, slightly faster than the 3.2GHz Xeon W in the iMac Pro, with 32GB of RAM. Beyond that, it looks a little basic, with an 8GB Radeon 580X GPU (comparable to Nvidia’s GTX 1060, now superseded by the 2060) and a 256GB SSD. Options range into the stratospheric, with up to 28 Xeon cores, 1.5TB of RAM (lower than the theoretical maximum of 2TB, but still pretty ridiculous), dual Radeon Pro Vega II cards, and 4TB of SSD. An Afterburner option, as yet unpriced, accelerates Apple’s ProRes video codec.
As for the 32–inch Pro Display, its 6K resolution, beyond–HDR color, extreme contrast, and advanced backlighting should smash previous quality expectations even at the high end. Apple is keen to stress that studios pay tens of thousands for reference monitors, so if its calibration can satisfy the industry, $4,999 will look reasonable — even if it’s an extra $1,000 for nano– etched matt glass, on top of $999 for the adjustable desk stand or $199 for a VESA mount.