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Apple teased a revamp of its desktop Mac Pro at WWDC today. According to Phil Schiller it's for users who want only the "fastest, most expensive Mac in existence." It also sports a striking new cylindrical design and a remarkable power boost, and yet is just one-eighth the size of the current Mac Pro.
The all new Mac Pro is built around a unified thermal core, allowing it to share its thermal capacity more efficiently with all processors. It's got super-fast ECC memory and 60 GB per second of bandwidth, which is twice as much as the previous model. It's also 2.5 times faster than the previous Mac Pro, delivering 7 teraflops of computing power, and its new PCIe-based flash storage is up to 10 times faster than conventional desktop hard drives. Finally, it's the first Mac to come standard with dual workstation GPUs, giving it a faster, more powerful graphical performance.
Let's talk about its expandability. It's got six Thunderbolt 2 ports that transfer information at 20 GHz per second, as well as four USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI out. It's also backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 1 and Firewire. That means you can connect a ton of external storage and displays to it easily, and transfer information between Macs faster than ever before. It can also impressively support up to three 4K displays simultaneously, so you now have enough power to edit 4K video while rendering effects in the background.
In addition to all its power-user tricks, the Mac Pro's got some subtle design features that will make it more user-friendly. On top of the Mac Pro is a handle for ease and portability, and when you turn it, lights go on to show you where the I/O is, so you won't have to search for miniscule I/O icons anymore. It's also got the Designed-in-Cali, Made-in-the-USA seal of approval. Much like the redesign of iOS 7, also revealed this morning, nothing on this Mac Pro exists to simply be there. It is yet another example of how Apple is obeying the design rule that form follows function.
There's no word on pricing or availability, but it's probably best to go ahead and start saving up now. This thing isn't going to come cheap.
