A new Mac Pro coming this spring? 'Mais oui!'
Well, it depends on exactly what you mean by 'new'
Apple will release a new Mac Pro this spring, according to a French fanbois website that got its mains on what it says is a memo from a Gallic Apple reseller.
"Apple nous informe qu'une nouvelle gamme Mac Pro va sortir au printemps 2013," France Systèmes wrote in a missive to its customers informing them of the February 18 deadline for European Mac Pro orders, Mac4Ever claims.
Pardon our rudimentary comprehension of the French language, but it appears that France Systèmes is saying, "Apple tells us that a new Mac Pro will be released in spring 2013."
It's unclear whether the aforementioned nouvelle gamme Mac Pro will be a fully redesigned version of Apple's top-of-the-line Macintosh, or whether it will merely be the same Mac Pro design that Apple has been shipping since August 2006, but one that's been tweaked to satisfy the European regulators who have barred shipments into their well-protected continent after March 1 due to an unspecified breach of Amendment 1 of regulation IEC 60950-1, Second Edition.
Last June, Apple CEO Tim Cook responded to an email lamenting Cupertino's lack of Mac Pro love by saying "we're working on something really great for later next year." Those 10 words inspired fans of the Intel Xeon-powered content-creation workhorse to hope that a new version was in the works.
Of course, printemps is not what one would normally consider to be "later" in the year – that would be été, automne, or even hiver. But those of us who attempt to divine Apple's plans from such sketchy clues as CEO hints and purported reseller memos must take what we can get as we fluff our delicate soufflés rumeur
Merde. ®
COMMENTS
Re: Whatever the change will be,
It'll be knife-edge thin on the ends so it looks all thin and futuristic.
Of course, to achieve all of that thinness, some components will have to be scrapped - Optical drives, extra hard drives, processors, you know. All of that stuff that a true Mac connoisseur doesn't need.
Re: Nah.
Can you describe a Dell Optiplex 200? Can you describe it so that I wouldn't mistake it for an HP XXXX100? Thought not. A great many people can recognise the Mac Pro. What Macs "of one form or another" did the company you worked for, use? We use Mac Pros, iMacs, Mac minis, lots of MacBooks and MacBook Pros. They are quite distinct from the usual PC stuff. I can tell you what laptop my web developers use - a MacBook Pro. Can I tell you what laptop my Project Managers use? No. It's possibly a Dell, or an IBM or Lenovo, maybe an HP. Who knows? They all look the same.
So, for the simple reason that the Mac Pro is distinct from all other PC desktops, it is more recognisable.
Re: Nah.
Perhaps a dictionary would help you, look up what "recognisable" actually means. Then you won't look such a plum fool.
Re: hmm
I have a 1st generation Mac and it does support 64bit, indeed I have it running Mountain Lion 10.8.2.
The little sting in the tail is that the UEFI or EFI or whatever the low level BIOS is called only supports 32 bit loaders which means that it can't load up the latest and greatest (YMMV) version of Mac OS X.
However the reasonably easy way around this, is to trick the Mac Pro to boot another OS through bootcamp, which actually then boots Mountain Lion rather than Windows. This is all done at startup and to be honest 99 people out of 100 wouldn't actually know there's an additional automatic startup step in the process. This is how the Hackintosh system works but the advantage is that a) I'm running this on a genuine Mac with b) a legal paid up copy of Mac OS X so am struggling to work out why this isn't completely legitimate.
I agree (in advance) that it's completely pants that Apple won't release a 32bit loader for 10.8.2 as the rest of the OS works perfectly well.
My machine has 8 cores, 32GB of memory and quite a lot of disk. It runs OS X Server as well and just sits there quietly doing it's job. I'm loathe to replace it as I'm not going to get a lot more speed for a hell of a lot more money. It's stands me about about £1,200 with the genuine Apple graphics card (which is the latest and slowest), a new machine is 2-3x that price and for what, i7 chipset , 3Ghz cores vs 2.6Ghz cores, a snappier graphics card to run the games I never buy or play?
Perhaps thats the problem and why the Saintly all-knowing, never wrong, android hating Jobs never really liked the Pro and why Acolyte Cook is struggling to replace it. It works, it doesn't go wrong (for me) and its cost effective.
Re: hmm
The main thing about the existing Pro is that you aren't beholden t Apple for anything in terms of upgrades.
My memory came from Crucial and just slotted in, HD's are standard and just slot it, likewise DVD drives (you have to remove the front bezel though, a 10 second job). Swapped out my GPU for a Quadro (naturally you must get a Mac version) and added an ESATA card from Amazon (just had to make sure I got one with the right chipset).
I needed to add wireless to mine and could have gone for a standard adaptor, but picked up a second hand airport card instead. So technically in that case I did use an Apple product to upgrade the box, but it was actually cheaper than a new generic card anyway.
All the connectors internally are standard. So its just a question of making sure you have a driver for whatever you intend to plug in.
