While Microsoft introduces sleek computers with crazy hinges and beautiful touch displays, Apple’s computers have grown outdated or updated with huge compromises. But Apple has finally had its mea culpa moment and revealed it is “completely rethinking the Mac Pro.”
Apple revealed its plans to release a brand new Mac Pro—but it didn’t say when. Apple did confirm that the updated Mac Pro would not be arriving this year, and it was coy about it even arriving some time next year. Alongside the Mac Pro, Apple will also release a new pro display that would work in tandem with the new computer setup.
The move comes after massive complaints from pro users who felt ignored with the lack of updates coming to the Mac Pro. Apple revealed why in an interview with BuzzFeed News.
“We designed ourselves into a bit of a corner,” said Apple’s Craig Federighi. “We wanted to do something bold and different. What we didn’t appreciate completely at the time was how we had so tailored that design to a specific vision that in the future we would find ourselves a bit boxed in—into a circular shape.”
One of the key elements in which Apple put itself into the corner was with the Mac Pro’s GPU system. The current Mac Pro pushed a smaller two GPU system, but the industry moved toward a larger single GPU system. This severely limited Apple’s ability to update the computer’s GPU given the architecture differences.
Apple’s admission of guilt is refreshing and exciting
Apple isn’t known for revealing its roadmap years in advance, but it seemingly felt it had to give pro users something. The admission that it messed up with the Mac Pro and has ignored pro users is refreshing and exciting because it shows Apple is listening to its fanbase. For a while there, it felt as if Apple was solely focusing on the iPhone, but now we know that’s not the case.
Sometimes it takes a while for Apple to admit an error—remember how long it took Apple to increase the iPhone’s display size?
In the meantime, Apple did throw in a minor refresh for the current Mac Pro—the first ever for the computer. The $2,999 model was bumped up to 6-core Intel Xeon processor (up from a 4-core), Dual AMD FirePro D500s and 16GB of RAM while the $3,999 got a bump up to an 8-core Xeon processor (up from a 6-core) with a dual AMD FirePro D700s.
