Mac Pro

Concept imagines next-generation Mac Pro with modular design and edge-to-edge display

As part of doing a next-generation Mac Pro, Apple will be adopting a modular system that its pro customers have been yearning after ever since the company debuted the current trash bin design more than three years ago. While it’s going to take longer than this year to do such a system, German magazine Curved has created renderings imagining a modular Mac Pro and an edge-to-edge Apple display.

Will the next Mac Pro ship in 2018 or 2019?

Apple has confirmed it’s working on a completely rethought, highly modular Mac Pro that won’t arrive this year. Thom Holwerda, managing editor of OSNews, is not entirely convinced that the machine will ship next year either.

After talking to people and sources “who know their stuff”, he now suspects we won’t see the new Pros before late 2018 or early 2019 given how long it takes to develop a new desktop like a Mac Pro.

Keep in mind that his comments appear to be derived from anecdotal evidence, meaning you should take the story with a grain of salt.

Is Apple working on 8K display for its completely rethought Mac Pro?

Apple is working on a “completely rethought” Mac Pro model with a highly modular design, slated for release in 2018, that should cater to the needs of its most-demanding pro users. As confirmed by company executives earlier this week, its engineers are also developing an external display that will launch at some point next year, too.

According to the Pike’s Universe blog, the rumored Apple-branded display will feature a massive 8K resolution, giving it twice the pixels of a standard 4K screen and sixty percent more pixels than the 27-inch iMac with 5K Retina display.

Apple is “sorry” about “a pause” in Mac upgrades

A quick look at MacRumors’ Buyers Guide is all it takes to realize Apple’s neglected its Mac fans with slow upgrades. Part of the problem lies in Apple’s heavy reliance on Intel. Making matters worse, the chip maker abandoned its tick-tock release schedule as it’s become economically unsustainable.

Perhaps that’s why Apple summoned its senior executives Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi and John Ternus for “a small roundtable discussion about Mac” with five journalists (Matthew Panzarino, Lance Ulanoff, Ina Fried, John Paczkowski and John Gruber).

Apple updates Mac Pro, confirms new model with modular design and pro displays due in 2018

Apple’s Mac Pro, last updated in December 2013, is receiving a spec-bump with faster Intel chips and other updates. The current Mac Pro model with a quad-core Xeon chip and dual AMD FirePro D300 graphics now has a faster processor with six cores and dual D500 GPUs for $2,999. The $3,999 six-core model with dual AMD FirePro D500 graphics now comes with eight CPU cores and dual D800 GPUs.

Senior Director of Design for Mac lineup leaves Apple for engineering role at Tesla

Apple was trying “very hard” (in Elon Musk’s own words) to recruit top talent from Tesla.

Now that its Project Titan has shifted gear from building an electric vehicle to developing an autonomous driving software, some of the engineers associated with the initiative have departed for Tesla.

Just as we’ve discovered that Swift creator Chris Lattner was leaving the iPhone maker to take a position as Vice President of Autopilot Software at Tesla, Electrek.co is reporting that the guy who designed many of Apple’s iconic Macs will now be building Tesla vehicles.

No company is perfect, but did Apple stop trying to be?

About a week ago, Apple did something not entirely unprecedented yet rare enough to make big waves across the tech world. Without warning and seemingly off-the-cuff, they backtracked on the AirPod release date, postponing indefinitely a product they had massively built up themselves in September.

It is by no means the first time Apple is somewhat behind schedule in rolling out a product (take the Mac Pro, the iMac Retina 27”, or watchOS 2 in 2015), but it is for the first time pertaining to the product accounting for Apple’s biggest following and largest share of revenue: the iPhone.

While this might help explain the sheer scope of reactions to the announcement this time around, one cannot help but wonder if an increasingly unfavourable public perception of Apple’s standards also plays into the response. To be clear: in a world where billion dollar companies ship spontaneously combusting devices it’s a hiccup that must not be dramatised. With that said, Apple have once again given ammunition to critics who like to point at an expanding trail of imperfections. Could Apple be slacking off?