Apple officially confirms that its next-generation modular Mac Pro is set to launch in 2019

Apple’s overhauled, modular Mac Pro is coming in 2019.

This is now official: TechCrunch editor Matthew Panzarino recently took a trip to Apple’s Cupertino campus where he was given a crucial update on the state of the modular Mac Pro.

Tom Boger, Senior Director of Mac Hardware Marketing, told Panzarino that the modular Mac Pro design is still in development. He also provided a launch timeframe, saying that “we want to be transparent and communicate openly with our pro community so we want them to know that Mac Pro is a 2019 product, it’s not something for this year.”

“We know that there’s a lot of customers today that are making purchase decisions on iMac Pro and whether or not they should wait for Mac Pro,” he added.

2019 makes a lot of sense. I’m just speculating here, but both the Thunderbolt 4 and PCI Express 4.0 standards should be ready sometime next year and those technologies would surely fit Apple’s pro desktop perfectly. Just don’t get your hopes high for a WWDC 2018 preview of the modular Mac Pro, Panzarino cautions.

Additionally, the iPhone maker has created a new Pro Workflow team.

Led by John Ternus, Apple’s Vice President of Hardware Engineering, this team works closely with the engineering organization on the development of Apple’s products catering to professional users. They reportedly listen to feedback from both end users and award-winning artists and technicians that Apple employed full time in an effort to better identify any “sticking points that could cause frustration and friction” for Apple’s most demanding users.

This may include things like adjusting a graphics driver.

“We’ve gone from just engineering Macs and software to actually engineering a workflow and really understanding from soup to nuts, every single stage of the process, where those bottlenecks are, where we can optimize that,” says Bogar.

“We’re getting a much much much deeper understanding of our pro customers and their workflows and really understanding not only where the state of the art is today but where the state of the art is going and all of that is really informing the work that we’re doing on Mac Pro and we’re working really really hard on it,” he added.

These executives have maintained that the hardware teams at Apple have been challenged with “completely rethinking” Mac Pro and the good news is that it will “by definition” be a modular system allowing customers to easily swap the CPU, GPU, SSD, RAM, etc.

Apple is also working on high-end pro displays.

Modular Mac Pro concept courtesy of German magazine Curved.de