The Verge reports that at WWDC 2019 on Monday, Apple announced its brand new Mac Pro, along with the Pro Display XDR display.
Having admitted that its glossy “trash can” Mac Pro of 2013 was a mistake, Apple has long promised that the next update to its most professional computer line would be a return to more modular, less thermally constrained computing. That was realized at WWDC 2019 with the official debut of an all-new redesigned Apple Mac Pro.
Although it’s a new design, the 2019 Mac Pro is also a throwback to Apple’s classic “cheese grater” look. The interior is structured for modularity and flexibility, addressing one of the big pain points of the outgoing Mac Pro design.
The new Intel Xeon processor inside the Mac Pro will have up to 28 cores, with up to 300W of power and heavy-duty cooling, “so it can run unconstrained at full power at all times.” System memory can be maxed out at an eyebrow-raising 1.5TB, says Apple, with six-channel memory across 12 DIMM slots. There are also eight PCI Express slots, with four of them being double-wide to accommodate larger expansion cards. Two USB-C and two USB-A ports will grace the front of the system, which is at least one more USB-C port than you’ll find on a majority of desktop PC systems and cases today.
With this Mac Pro, Apple is launching a custom expansion module it calls an MPX Module, which takes advantage of a dedicated Thunderbolt 3 backbone that Apple built into the motherboard to deliver additional power and high-speed connectivity to components. The MPX Module is a giant quad-wide PCIe card that fits two graphics cards, has its own dedicated heat sink, and also has a Thunderbolt 3 connector to hook into that backbone. Apple says you can spec that out with AMD’s Radeon Pro Vega 2 or Radeon Pro Vega 2 Duo — and you can configure the system with two of the latter, giving you four GPUs in total.
The power supply of the new Mac Pro maxes out at 1.4kW. Three large fans sit at the front, just behind the new aluminum grille, blowing air across the system at a rate of 300 cubic feet per minute. Apple throws in a blower as well, though it claims the machine remains quiet. And you can spec the Mac Pro out with optional wheels, if you want to have your workstation transportable.
The new Mac Pro is launching this fall with a starting price of $5,999. That’s with a spec vastly below its maxed out exciting new features: you get 32GB of memory, an octa-core Intel Xeon CPU, Radeon Pro 580X graphics, and a 256GB SSD.
Apple seemed to be in launch mode, as they also introduced the new Pro Display XDR, which stands for extreme dynamic range. The Pro Display XDR has a 6016 x 3384 resolution with 6K Retina display, P3 color and 10-bit color with reference modes built in. The 32-inch display will cost $4,999 at launch and a Pro stand will sell separately for $999.
It’s 40 percent larger than the iMac 5K display and has an anti-reflective coating. It has the same “cheese grate” styling on the back as the Mac Pro, which acts as a heat sink. It can display 1,000 nits at full-screen brightness indefinitely, and can hit a peak of 1,600 nits. It’s a display specifically built for pros, and video editors and photographers can work with HDR images and footage.
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