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Computers

Apple finally releases all new Mac Pro

By Jonathan Fincher
December 19, 2013
Apple finally releases all new Mac Pro
The new, completely redesigned Mac Pro
The new, completely redesigned Mac Pro
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The new, completely redesigned Mac Pro
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The new, completely redesigned Mac Pro
The new Mac Pro features a striking cylindrical design, with all the main components revolving around a fan-cooled thermal core
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The new Mac Pro features a striking cylindrical design, with all the main components revolving around a fan-cooled thermal core
Measuring just 9.9 in (25 cm) tall and 6.6 in (16.8 cm) in diameter, Apple claims its latest home computer has only an eighth of the volume of the previous model, but can still house more advanced components for a much more powerful machine
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Measuring just 9.9 in (25 cm) tall and 6.6 in (16.8 cm) in diameter, Apple claims its latest home computer has only an eighth of the volume of the previous model, but can still house more advanced components for a much more powerful machine
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Apple has been promising that its redesigned Mac Pro would be reaching consumers before the end of 2013, and it looks like it's actually delivering ... less than two weeks before the year's end. The new, completely redesigned Mac Pro is hitting store shelves and Apple's online store starting today, with several varieties to choose from.

Just to reiterate some of the details we first learned about back in June, this Mac Pro features a striking cylindrical design, with all the main components revolving around a fan-cooled thermal core. Measuring just 9.9 in (25 cm) tall and 6.6 in (16.8 cm) in diameter, Apple claims its latest home computer has only an eighth of the volume of the previous model, but can still house more advanced components for a much more powerful machine. To expand its capabilities, the computer also includes a staggering six Thunderbolt 2 ports, as well as four inputs for USB 3.0 and one for HDMI 1.4 UltraHD.

The most basic model retails for US$2,999 and includes a quad-core Intel Xeon E5 processor that can reach 3.9 GHz in speed, two AMD FirePro D300 GPUs with a combined 4 GB of VRAM, 12 GB of DDR3 ECC memory, and 256 GB of PCI Express flash storage. Starting with these specs – which are still nothing to sneeze at – customers can also opt for processors with six, eight, or 12 cores, as well as further improved GPUs, up to 64 GB of memory, and as much as 1 TB of solid state storage. You may want to be selective with the options you choose though, since, judging from the current pricing on Apple's website, the Mac Pro tower by itself with maxed-out hardware will cost a whopping $9,599.

Beginning today, Apple will be offering the new Mac Pro through its website, official store, and authorized resellers. If you really want one in time for Christmas though, you're going have to brave the mall, since the website states that online orders won't begin shipping until Dec. 30.

Product page: Mac Pro

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10 comments
Jonathan Fincher
Jonathan grew up in Norway, China, and Trinidad before graduating film school and becoming an online writer covering green technology, history and design, as well as contributing to video game news sites like Filefront and 1Up. He currently resides in Texas, where his passions include video games, comics, and boring people who don't want to talk about either of those things.

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b@man
i can build a more powerful PC for less than half that, and it won't overheat.
Michaelangelo
b@man… I bought a big bad MAC pro and is has worked faultlessly unlike all my 6 PC's in our work group.. gets heated when people can not get time on the MAC's.. so build them all you like.. proof my friend is in the pudding and the amount of work, images and video editing we do stands to prove that the dollars you save don't mean Jack. Leave your little builds to play toys and leave us productivity guys churn out real work… I hate MAC slammers you have no idea. I use both.. and in our office, we always go back to the MAC…
DanCope
b@man i completely agree, people like Michaelangelo have no idea what they are talking about
Charles Jones
You get what you pay for !
I have over 30 Macs still in my arsenal , one of them dates back to 1986, all still working ... play with your windows dos toys all you want but they don't have the quality and I don't see anyone standing in lines to buy Microsoft or Google products , how strange , there must be a reason for that , perhaps all the buzz about apples products are not buzz ? Facts have always spoke louder than words. When I walk into my office, I see all my Macs waiting on me , I never turn them off , they never sleep and are always ready for another day of work. We are Windows pc free , thank God !
Bryan Haslett
Having used both platforms throughout my working career (Macs at home, PC at work) I never understood how the work place mentality allowed PCs to rob them of productivity without questioning it. Windows has been around so long I suppose they were just inured to the concept, in the same way we learn to live with other annoyances.
Each platform has its uses, I suppose, but I do not now and never will understand the gut level vitriol some spew about Apple and it's products. How is it possible to engender so much hate for a product?
Did they have a really bad experience once? Perhaps they were once molested by a Mac?
My idea would be just don't buy the product.
I don't care for PCs in general because I have had bad issues one after another, every time I have used them. I can easily account for 2 hours of a work day lost due to "glitches" in our software. Extreme slowness, outright freezes and such. We used some really beefed up Dell laptops and often the answer for a freeze fix was unplug it then take the battery pack out. They just froze and neither the power button or just unplugging was good enough. Seems too me that if a computer won't do one of two most basic functions, (turn on and off) they must be seriously flawed.
Still, I don't hate PCs or the people who use them. I just don't understand them. Even if you pay half as much for a machine, if it causes frustration and lost productivity it isn't worth it at a quarter the price or even free. A week's lost production would buy the Mac.
I rode through the late 80s and 90s with Apple because they still had a product better than the others. I'm glad they are putting out great quality products today and that large numbers of people know and use them.
If in the future they put out a bad product, I won't stand defending them blindly. Any given day Microsoft or even IBM could reinvent themselves and churn out revolutionary products that will change the world. More power to them.
Gregg Eshelman
What? Back to zero expansion slots again? The overpriced cube was a flop so now Apple tries a cylinder.
What's next, sphere or pyramid?
Nicolas Zart
Hello Hackintosh! Sorry, I've witnessed Apple's quality and support dwindle over the past four years. I'm not giving them money for something I can build, over spec and all of it for about $1,000.
Maybe Apple should concentrate on innovations again, instead of shrinking a professional workstations. Seriously?
Apple is on a steady decline, hopefully Tim will do something about it...
Synchro
b@man: ok, show us. Dell and HP's boxes (about the only companies in the same markets as this) are about the same price. D700 (W9000) GPUs alone will cost you over £2,500 each, a 12-core E5 starts at around £3,500, so you've not got much wiggle room to fit in everything else, and I don't know where you'll find a motherboard with three PCIe 3.0 16x slots to provide the i/o bandwidth. And after all that, you'd have to run Windows, which would make the entire exercise pointless.
Nicolas Zart
I'm still not sold. Great idea, great possibilities, but I don't care about shrinking my professional workstation. Instead, I'd rather Apple goes back to taking care of its older clients, bump up the quality (let's face it, it went down the past four years, including customer service).
I was about to upgrade all ours, but seeing the problems I had with my MacBook Air (dead mother board within six months, dead HD the following six months and now a cracked screen out of the blue which Apple won't do a thing about), it's clear Apple is more interested in selling iPhones and iPad to a younger, less demanding generation, then those of us long timers.
In the meantime, goodbye Apple, hello Hackintosh. I can build a much more powerful computer for a fifth of the price running OSx. Thanks Apple, but go back to what attracted us to you in the first place, you have different priorities.
Synchro
@Nicholas Zart "you have different priorities"; sure, but you seem to have no idea what yours are! On one hand you say you can "build a much more powerful computer for a fifth of the price", but on the other you say you want to "bump up the quality" and cite falling customer service (which you apparently value, though are unwilling to pay for). Do you not see a conflict here? How exactly you propose to build an entire machine for less than the price of a bare CPU is also beyond me.
Your motherboard will have been replaced under guarantee. Hard disks die; you broke your screen. Neither are Apple's fault, and you could have seen the same issues from any manufacturer.
BGR did a little test, trying to build a Windows machine to the same spec as a Mac Pro using generic parts from cheap suppliers. They failed, overshooting by about 20% on price, and not including any support or guarantee beyond individual components, i.e. they did not end up with a machine appropriate for the market the Mac Pro (and Dell or HP workstations) is in. http://bgr.com/2013/12/26/mac-pro-windows-diy-cost/
Another site tried to do the same thing, and also failed: http://www.futurelooks.com/new-apple-mac-pro-can-build-better-cheaper-pc-diy-style/3/
And yet you claim that they are all wrong and you can build one for not just less than $9600, but less than $1920???
BTW, OWC have demonstrated that Mac Pro CPUs are removable and upgradable, using a standard LGA 2011 socket.