Is there any hope for an Apple Mac Pro refresh?
During this week’s keynote, we have been trying to read between Apple’s lines, to determine whether there would be any hints regarding other product refreshes in the near future. The only safe hint is that the Apple MacBook Air won’t get anymore radical updates, except for the occasional incremental refresh, and no further than what Apple is willing to invest, outside the MacBook Pro and any successor to the 12 inch MacBook, making the MacBook Pro and MacBook, the two laptops sure to survive the test of time past 2017.
One big question remains in regard to the Apple Mac Pro, whose last meaningful refresh dates back to 2013.
Powered by a 4-12 cores Intel Xeon E5, the Apple Mac Pro is still the fastest, most powerful Mac, clocking at a top 3.9GHz when in Turbo Boost mode, and with up to 25MB L3 cache. Also, the Mac Pro still offers the maximum amount of RAM configuration on a Mac, which can be topped up to 64GB.
The Mac Pro is currently also the only Mac that is capable of connecting to up to three 5K displays, and six Thunderbolt displays (or what passes for a Thunderbolt display after their retirement). With that said, the Dual AMD FirePro GPU is being rapidly put to shame by NVIDIA’s latest 10-Series GTX graphic cards.
With that in mind, the landscape of professional workstations is shrinking, as newer processors continue to push the envelope of speed and performance, and newer applications are exponentially optimized to use less resources, which translates in lower costs for companies that may no longer be willing to spend more than six grand on one single workstation.
The rise of the Apple iMac, as well as the sudden inception of Microsoft’s response to Apple’s flagship high-resolution desktop, in the form of the Microsoft Surface Studio, are indicative of a trend that calls for smaller, more powerful machines, and a more agile workflow, compared to the old days when massive computing resources were a necessity driven by processing power that is now much more affordable, and present in an increasing number of light-weight systems.
To the question on whether the Mac Pro has a place in future Apple line-ups, the answer is still unclear, as Apple has kept its Mac Pro product page largely unchanged since the last refresh.
Rumors of a new 5K Apple Display may still come true, and bring hope to those who still believe that the Mac Pro will be reintroduced in a new, modern configuration and design, but that doesn’t necessarily mean much, since the most powerful displays on the market can be handled nicely by existing product lines, including the iMac and the newest MacBook Pro.
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