Apple's professional and advanced technical users have been, with a half broken heart, pining for Apple to introduce a flagship product, a new Mac Pro that would stun and stagger us. The company has not disappointed. Plus, it was oh, so smart to give us a sneak peek at WWDC, so that developers would see what would soon be in the hands of customers. Now we can start to dream again. The drool factor starts NOW.
As Apple's new website for the Mac Pro says, "Engineered around workstation graphics with dual GPUs, PCI Express-based flash storage, high-performance Thunderbolt 2, new-generation Xeon processors, ultrafast memory, and support for 4K video, the new Mac Pro delivers state-of-the-art performance across the board." Of course. Naturally.
Wow.
Of course, you can read about the tech specs at Apple (use Safari) and TMO has also summarized the news.
A miniature Cray on your desk. 7 teraflops.
The Dream is Alive
What I'd rather discuss that this point, about this 7 teraflop beauty, is something more fundamental. Namely, Apple customers of all kinds have been hoping that Apple wouldn't just give up on the dream of the ultimate desktop Mac.
Over the last few years, I have been a strong proponent of Apple giving us the very best that money can buy in a gorgeous, powerful Mac Pro. Even so, many readers lamented that perhaps Apple would give up on us. Go the jaded consumer route. Not take up the challenge, as car companies do, and give us a high end, racing class, Ferrari-class Mac.
Sure, Apple may not sell as many of them as iPhones, but that's not the point. Just as Lexus proves to us that it knows something about high performance cars with the LFA, Apple proves to us that it knows something about the design of high performance Macs. The product's very existence is its own marketing for Apple.
The spirit and taste of Jonathan Ive is written all over this new Mac Pro, and it's married with the engineering genius of Bob Mansfield's team, and we're loving it. Our faith has been restored in Apple. An untold number of technical professionals will line up for this new Mac Pro because the technology under the hood is so incredible. And it is such an awesome, dark beauty destined to grace our desks.
Matching expansion chassis anyone?
Finally, Apple was smart to give us a preview at WWDC. Even though this Mac won't be ready until "later this year," we don't really care about exactly when. To know that it's coming lifts our spirits and renews our faith in Apple as a visionary company that can take us where no Mac has gone before.
Thanks Apple. We have been suitably stunned and staggered.