Apple quietly announces new Mac Pros

[cmatthias]

I suspect the reason that they did this quietly was that these are not new Mac Pros at all. Rather, they are same as the "Mid 2010" models they replaced, with minor bumps to the CPUs and memory. They continue to use the same generation CPUs that were available in 2010 (and same chipset, I presume), despite the fact that newer generation Sandy Bridge CPUs have been available for months now.

IMHO, the RAM bump wasn't even that good -- the base config now includes only 6GB, which is still laughable for a professional machine costing $2500.

Pretty pathetic if you ask me.

[ROFISH]

The CPU offered in the lowest Mac Pro today is the W3565, a "Bloomfield" model, based on Nehalim-B. For the record, that is now three generations behind, being behind the W36XX "Westmere"/Nehalim-C Xeon chips, the Sandy Bridge Xeon E3/E5, and the Ivy Bridge Xeon E3. A quick Googling cannot give me when the Ivy Bridge E5s are due out, but probably not soon.

EDIT: Apple does offer "Westmere" Xeons, but only as 6-core CPUs, which when looking at the website, is all but the cheapest option.

[simonsarris]

This situation sounds awfully familiar.

I remember in 2010 writing about how it was quite possibly the worst time to buy a Macbook Pro because they don't change the price even though the hardware was extremely old[1]. Then I did a followup story[2] when they updated the hardware and the internals were still not up to par for comparable machines.

I always thought it odd that they don't discount their outdated machines. Buying a MacBook Pro last week was a raw deal. Apple sells hardware that is two years old at higher-than-competing-modern-machine prices, but people buy them, so they must be "good enough" or enjoyable in some other aspect.

[1] http://simonsarris.com/blog/19-mac-envy

[2] http://simonsarris.com/blog/22-mac-envy-2

[RegEx]

8GB of 1066 DDR3 was $400 from Apple until just recently. I laughed so loud in the office when I saw that on their website.

[rdl]

Looks like time for a Hackintosh. I wonder what the best platform for an E5-based hackintosh would be. Like, pretend you want more than 16GB (or 32GB maybe) of RAM, in something vaguely current, and ideally with ECC.

[cmatthias]

Here's a forum thread posted by someone who's using a Supermicro Intel C606-based board with dual xeon E5s and 128GB of memory:

http://tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=169&t=55963

Looks like they had trouble getting the network functional, but everything else worked fine.

32GB of ECC ram compatible with a motherboard like that would only run you $300:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820161...

Apple charges $975 for an upgrade from 6GB to 32GB. Highway robbery.

[stevengg]

http://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/

[there]

And a new Airport Express that no longer plugs directly into the wall. https://www.apple.com/wifi/

[c0nsumer]

...that has dual wired ports. This is a good thing.

[rafski]

You should be able to plug it into the wall with the old one's removable international plug if that helps.

[nsxwolf]

Looks like a white Apple TV.

[whalesalad]

I was hoping for new Mac Pro's this WWDC. These look to simply get a processor upgrade. No Thunderbolt.

[Bud]

Also no USB 3, and no Bluetooth 4.0, which means, they didn't design a new motherboard.

Which, in turn, says rather loudly to me that the Mac Pro is not a high priority for Apple right now.

[hasker]

According to David Pogue Apple will have a new Mac Pro, possibly in 2013: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/an-explanation-of-...

[theorique]

Their laptop line has been competitive enough in pricing that I'm willing to spend for the ergonomics - I don't expect a powerhouse machine as a portable. (My last 3 laptops have been either MB Pro or MB Air)

But where's the benefit - and who's the customer - for a desktop machine at these prices? Unless you absolutely need OS X with a higher powered machine, why not just use Ubuntu in that desktop / server application?

[daleroberts]

Again, no Nvidia CUDA support for scientific computing. Not even faster ATI cards... I think my next workstation is going to be Linux on Dell or HP.

[adsr]

They have been heavily involved in OpenCL for a while though, which is not tied to any specific graphics card manufacturer, or graphics cards specifically. There are some pretty nice OpenCL tutorials here btw: http://www.macresearch.org/opencl

[MattRogish]

I haven't been able to determine - did their iMac line get anything? They all seem the same...

http://www.apple.com/imac/specs.html http://web.archive.org/web/20110719193344/http://www.apple.c...

[shadowfiend]

Everything that was refreshed is tagged "new" on the main store page at http://store.apple.com/us . So no :)

[akandiah]

According to arstechnica, there's a more serious update that's being worked on by Apple: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/06/mac-pro-gets-minor-upda...

[jedberg]

I'm pretty sure I was able to get one of these yesterday. Or did they just rev the specs?

[eswangren]

For anyone who's interested I will be purchasing $1500 worth of hardware from newegg, assembling PC's, and selling them for only a 100% markup. And oh yeah, they'll be more powerful than this load of crap they want to sell you.

[mephi5t0]

quietly? how's that quiet if they sold out 8000 tickets for their "quiet announcement" and it was covered by the tech blogs and their uncles?

[mortil]

It's quiet because the Mac Pro upgrade was not announced in their big announcement, but only with a little "New" sign on their webstore after the show.

[pat2man]

They didn't announce it at the keynote. They just updated their site with the new specs.

[mrkmcknz]

I believe they didn't actually announce it at WWDC, also they only changed the processor from 2.8Ghz to 3.2Ghz.