Apple’s new Mac Pro expected to launch in 2019
A new report gives us an updated time frame for Apple’s all-new desktop Mac. Jason Cross reports
We’ve known for awhile that Apple is going back to the drawing board with the Mac Pro. The firm signalled as much a year ago, while making sure everyone understood that the newly revamped model wouldn’t come that year.
Speaking to Techcrunch in April, Apple confirmed that the new Mac Pro will be a 2019 product. The tech giant was keen to clarify the date because it doesn’t want customers who are currently considering the imac Pro to hold off, anticipating a Mac Pro launch later in the year.
Apple revealed its new product development methodology for pro users. It all starts with the
‘Pro Workflow Team’, a new unit within the firm that examines and determines real workflows for real pro users. The focus, at first, is on visual effects, video editing, 3D animation, and music production.
The Pro Workflow Team, comprised of real professionals in these fields, find the bottlenecks, pain points, and inefficiencies, and then take that information to the engineering teams. Maybe it’s a hardware performance limitation, maybe it’s drivers, maybe it’s software design or a bug, but Apple is using that information to design its new
Pro products from the ground up.
It’s also good news for Mac Pro users, who have been frustrated by some of Apple’s design choices around ports, keyboards, and the like. Hardware Engineering VP John Ternus is quoted as saying, “I want to be clear that the work that we’re doing as a part of the workflow team is across everything.
It’s super relevant for Macbook Pros, it’s super relevant for imacs and imac Pros, and in the end I think it helps us in dialogue with customers to figure out what are the right systems for you.”
Apple confirmed that it’s still viewing the upcoming Mac Pro as a very modular system. Tom Boger, Senior Director of Mac Hardware Product Marketing: “As we said a year ago working on modular was inherently a modular system and in looking at our customers and their workflows obviously that’s a real need for our customers and that’s the direction we’re going.”