New Mac Pro Tech Specs

Still don&#x27;t understand the justification for this machine, I waited years for a MacPro but when it became clear that Apple actually considered it a dead product and behind the scenes were building the iMac Pro to fill the niche I switched to windows and now run a dual 1080Ti workstation (Uses CUDA for 3D rendering path-tracing) for around half the price of a iMac Pro.<p>Apple bloggers said time and time again the reason they were not making a tower was that there isn&#x27;t really a market for one anymore, yet when they finally made it they decided to build something that only really serves the highest of high end video editors.<p>Completely ignoring 3D, mid range video editors, developers who need high core counts + ECC, deep learning, etc.<p>Before they made it we kept being told &quot;There isn&#x27;t enough of you to justify them making it&quot;<p>They finally make it and the narrative turns into &quot;It&#x27;s not for you it&#x27;s for people who edit Marvel movies&quot;

I think they should include Apple Care for their professional equipment. This won&#x27;t put any any more money in Apple&#x27;s pocket but I could see it being another differentiator and a good bit of PR, especially to all of those price arguments. Plus, it&#x27;s only $300 and I&#x27;m sure Apple could suffer that &quot;loss&quot; on a $6,000 - $30,000 purchase.

A great machine to be sure for high end content creation but Apple is not chasing the deep learning dev market because of the lack of CUDA. That market is better served by Linux boxes with appropriate GPUs for TensorFlow, PyTorch, etc. support.

Slightly off-topic, but who here uses a HEDT (high-end desktop) or workstation computer for software development? Does it make a significant difference in comparison with a standard business laptop?

People here seem to think this is just a random set of components not as good as X+Y+Z. This machine was designed and specced based on talking with the people who will be buying them, not the general public. Complaining its not X+Y+Z is like saying IBM didn&#x27;t design a mainframe for your needs. Not everything has to build for everyone.

330 Comments, No one asked why was this submitted.<p>We have discussions on HN [1] when it was announced. The Tech Spec page has been there since day 1, I looked hard and dont see any significant changes, if any changes at all.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20087315" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20087315</a>

The starting 256 GB SSD sticks out like a sore thumb on a machine as expensive as this. The barebones Mac Mini comes with 128 GB and 6-core Mini with 256 GB. And upgrading it is gonna cost an arm and a leg.

It is still not shipping so there&#x27;s not really a reason not to use a Threadripper for lower price AND higher performance. Or even Epyc chips. We know the Titan Ridge Thunderbolt controllers work on AMD motherboards. Alpine Ridge had firmware problems but Titan Ridge is fine.

I wish I could afford these, but I’m really curious to test a hackintosh with threadreaper 3 following what they did on Linus tech tips with a virtualized PC and Mac running at the same time on the same monitor <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;EozeSDeV3Vo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;EozeSDeV3Vo</a>

Doesn&#x27;t a single thread ripper basically slay this thing?

This thing is pulling almost 12 amps by itself. Add a couple monitors and hopefully you have recent vintage wiring in your office...

And all of that will be pretty laughable compared to the stuff AMD is releasing later this year.

&gt; 802.11ac Wi-Fi wireless networking<p>Surprised there&#x27;s no 802.11ax&#x2F;wifi 6. Why not use the same wifi chips as the iPhones?

Is this saying that I can have 1.5 <i>TERABYTES</i> of RAM?<p>That’s wild<p>What’s the professional use case for that?

I&#x27;m bummed out that there&#x27;s no sign of Navi cards as an option. The 5700 series seems right at home in this machine.<p>I&#x27;m still holding out for a Navi product from Apple. There&#x27;s some mention of support in the Kexts but alas my 5700 XT does not work in Mojave or Catalina (Hackintosh).

Why do the different processor quantities have different base frequencies (higher for lower CPU count) but the same &quot;Turbo Boost&quot; frequency of 4.4 GHz?<p>If you ran Folding@Home on one of these, would you get sustained 4.4GHz clock speeds?

Looks like a company finally listened.

Not impressive. New MacPro hosts only PCIe gen3 when all PC motherboards are on gen4 already. New MacPro is old and it did not come out yet.

Surprised no one(?) commented on the case yet - looks like they came to their senses and went back to the &quot;old&quot; case design.<p>I&#x27;ve been seriously considering a second-hand, early Mac pro - just for the case. Not sure if they fit regular&#x2F;modern psus - but those cases were very nice.<p>Good riddance to the trash can design...<p>Now, if these wouldn&#x27;t be priced like a car, and came with some proper AMD cpus ...

Still no Nvidia cards?

Please forgive my ignorance but the specs on this are just average in my opinion. Why would I choose this over a custom build pc with almost the same, if not better, components?<p>My experience with all apple products at work has been quite bad so I might be a little biased.

I was very skeptical of this machine and the whole Mac Pro as concept car idea [1] but the Afterburner Accelerator Card has me wondering if I was wrong. Especially if Apple finds a way to support more works flows and applications with it. That could be a real advantage moving forward and it’s not hard to understand how it could trickledown to other products.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hypercritical.co&#x2F;2013&#x2F;03&#x2F;08&#x2F;the-case-for-a-true-mac-pro-successor" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hypercritical.co&#x2F;2013&#x2F;03&#x2F;08&#x2F;the-case-for-a-true-mac-p...</a>

The only shocking things here are the lack of ports. Only 2 usb A and 2 usb c ports. Its basically required to use a usb hub on this device since once you plug in a proper mouse and keyboard you only have the usb c ports left

I like it. You pay the Apple tax for sure but the design makes sense <i>and</i> is nice. I wonder thought when they are gonna to announce the new MacBook 16”. It has been rumored a lot.

I wonder what a maxed out one will cost

&quot;Maximum altitude: tested up to 16,400 feet (5000 meters)&quot;<p>Does anyone know how or where they do this testing? Seems quite bothersome to do.

I wish Apple would just sell me the damn OS and let me install it on whatever hardware I want.

This page would look better if they used high-quality 3d animated renders instead of the simplified 2D-graphics. Someone on the design team thought this was a great idea? It looks unpolished and out of place (in comparison to other well-done Apple product pages).

Imagine having to hibernate a 1.5TB RAM machine :D

So apart from the pleasure of being able to use MacOS, I presume it will be cheaper to just put these parts together myself, yes?<p>If the form factor is just a tower, well I can buy a tower myself. What is the advantage of paying for Apple a (presumed) bunch of money to build it for you?<p>If you don&#x27;t want the hassle of building a PC (which is fair) there are an endless supply of places that will put PCs together for you, with (I&#x27;m presuming) a much smaller cut than Apple.

For that price, it should come with Apple Care, Final Cut Pro X, and Logic Pro X included.

&gt; Configure two MPX Modules with up to four GPUs<p>That&#x27;s total, right? Not 4 GPUs per MPX module?

Still waiting for my xMac; the spiritual successor to the IIcx&#x2F;IIci :(

What’s the best explanation as to why Apple is not supporting Nvidia GPUs?

So I can easily make a machine with more RAM than hard drive space...

What are people doing that require such high-powered desktops?

And next to each component, &quot;Market Price&quot;

Kind crazy you can’t configure this thing with an NVMe drive even if you’re ready to drop $30,000 on it.

Or they can just open up OS X to more hardwares.

reminds me of a sun ultra 45

What happens when Apple drops Intel and these become obsolete? I wonder if you can even boot Linux and use the internal storage...

At the base configuration (single 8-core Xeon W) with 256GB SSD and 32GB RAM for $6000, it&#x27;s about twice what it should be. I could build a faster dual Xeon Silver series with more cores, Nvidia graphics, much larger SSD and 32GB RAM in a nicer case for around $3000. So, that Apple logo and macOS are the other $3000.

The biggest new feature im looking for is the removal of the touchbar.<p>Until then, I’m going to just buy upgraded but used 2012-2013 macbook pros.<p>It’s one of those sounds good on paper but useless in real life. Not only that, it’s a hindrance for coders like me who need to be able to hit the escape button and other top buttons quickly with force feedback.