Credit: Roman Loyola/IDG
You’ll finally be able to order the new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR on Tuesday 10 December, according to a “Save the Date” email Apple sent to some customers last week.
Last month, Apple announced it would ship in December, but today the first time we’ve seen an actual date. Notably, Apple has yet to say when the Mac Pro will actually ship.
Pricing for the Mac Pro starts at US$6,000, but you can expect to pay a lot more than that if you stuff everything you can inside it - although, so far Apple hasn’t provided pricing for customised models. We likely won’t see those prices until the 10th.
And that’s not even counting the Pro Display XDR, which costs $5,000 and comes with an optional $1,000 stand. (Fortunately, Apple is also offering the option of buying a $200 VESA mount.) On the realistic low end, you’re already looking at $12,000.
Credit: Apple The entry-level Mac Pro comes with an 8-core Intel Xeon W processor, 32GB of RAM, and a laughably tiny 256GB SSD.
If you have the cash - or, more likely, your company does - you can stuff it with as many as four GPUs along with a whopping 1.5TB of RAM.
As for the 32-inch Pro Display XDR, it does much to justify its price with a Retina display resolution of 6016x3384, 1,000 sustained nits of brightness, and 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio.
With that $1,000 stand, you can also adjust the Pro Display XDR’s height and tilt. And if that still isn’t expensive enough for you, you can spend an extra $1,000 for a “nano texture” matte coating that lowers reflectivity and glare.
We’re happy the Mac Pro is about to go out to the Apple faithful at least, even though we know it’s probably not going to be a wild success in terms of units sold.
As Macworld columnist Jason Snell said earlier this month, the Mac Pro is important mainly because of Apple’s long association with the high-end creative professional market. It’s upgradeable, attractive, and powerful - and it’s a symbol that Apple hasn’t forgotten its roots.
