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Mac Pro

Just over four years ago, Apple unveiled a new Mac Pro that it swore would reinvent the concept of a workstation. The new organisation was definitely daring — information technology ditched internal expansion for six Thunderbolt 2 ports and told users with internal hard drives to buy new external chassis and employ those instead. It shipped with dual graphics cards every bit a standard, despite how Apple has never demonstrated aptitude or involvement in pushing GPU-centric calculating (the company's operating systems have been stuck supporting ancient versions of OpenGL for years now).

Today, the company finally took a modest stride towards upgrading the current Mac Pro design, but it also acknowledged what nosotros've all known for years — the trash tin can aesthetic of the 2013 Mac Pro makes it a serious pain to piece of work with. As of today, Apple has tweaked the Mac Pro to include a six-core CPU (up from four) in the $2,999 model and an eight-cadre CPU (up from half dozen) in the $3,999 model. The GPUs accept as well been slightly updated; the $two,999 arrangement now ships with dual D500s, while the $3,999 rig ships with dual D700s. Given that these are GCN i.0 GPUs with the D700 equivalent to AMD'south one-time HD 7970, we tin't really recommend them.

According to Daring Fireball, Apple tree is planning a major overhaul to its Mac Pro lineup side by side year, with a more modular design and a product that's easier to update. As for why the Mac Pro hasn't been updated for 4 years, here's DF'due south explanation:

Allow's say you're Apple tree. You lot're faced with the post-obit problem. Three years ago you launched a radical new lineup of Mac Pros. For multiple reasons, you haven't shipped an update to those machines since. At some point you came to the conclusion that the 2013 Mac Pro concept was fundamentally flawed… [T]chapeau tight integration made it hard to update regularly. The idea that expansion could be handled nearly entirely by external Thunderbolt peripherals sounded expert on newspaper, but hasn't panned out in practice. And the GPU design was a bad prediction. Apple bet on a dual-GPU design (multiple smaller GPUs, with "pro"-level functioning coming from parallel processing) only the industry has gone largely in the other direction (machines with i big GPU).

It's rather frustrating to encounter corporations declare, years afterward the fact, that things end users immediately called out as problems are actually, you lot know, issues. Heck, Apple tree's workstation competitors have been mocking its blueprint with salient points virtually the limitations of the trash can since the platform shipped four years ago, as captured in the advert below by Boxx:

I respect Apple for trying to build something new and unusual, I truly do. But the Mac Pro went too far in the incorrect direction in its quest to constitute itself as unique and different. A whisper-quiet workstation with high-terminate peripherals is a noble goal, but not if it fundamentally handicaps both the end-user and the corporation that designed it from upgrading the underlying platform.

While Apple has upgraded the Xeons inside the Mac Pro, we recommend against making a purchase until more information is bachelor on what these chips can exercise. While clock speeds on modern chips have scarcely budged since 2013, certain capabilities, like AVX2, notwithstanding may not be available. It depends on whether Apple stuck with Ivy Bridge-era Xeons (as I'chiliad guessing they did) or actually updated to a more recent iteration of Intel'south Core architecture.

Apple tree's new, "completely rethought" Mac Pro volition be available adjacent year, as volition a new "Pro" brandish. Maybe by then, the (presumably) next-gen Oculus Rift will support it?