Apple has pledged to “rethink” the ailing Mac Pro, giving the company’s miniature desktop PC a new lease of life.
When Apple relaunched the Mac Pro at the end of 2013, critical reception was largely positive. The quirky cylindrical build sat well with many reviewers, and the fact that it was significantly smaller and lighter than the first-generation version helped too. But it’s been four years since we’ve seen any real progress in the Mac Pro space, so what is Apple cooking up?
During a roundtable with press, Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller revealed that Apple would be “completely rethinking the Mac Pro”, as quoted by Buzzfeed. Schiller continued: “Since the Mac Pro is a modular system, we are also doing a pro display. There’s a team working hard on it right now.”
Unfortunately, it’s not coming any time soon – not in 2017, at least: “You won’t see any of these products this year,” Schiller revealed.
One of the chief problems with the Mac Pro was its lack of upgradeability. Though the minimalist design was popular, making hardware improvements proved difficult: “We made something bold that we thought would be great…and what we discovered is that it was great for some and not others – enough so, that we realised we had to take another path…and look for the next answer.”
Craig Federighi, Apple’s SVP of software engineering, offered a similar sentiment: “We designed ourselves into a bit of a corner. We wanted to do something bold and different. What we didn’t appreciate completely at the time was how we had so tailored that design to a specific vision that in the future we would find ourselves a bit boxed in – into a circular shape.”
It’s not clear how Apple plans to improve the next generation of Mac Pro devices, but John Terns, Apple’s TV of hardware engineering, hints that we may see a more flexible design. Speaking about the old Mac Pro, Terns said: “It served its purpose well. It just doesn’t have the flexibility we now know we need to have.”
The second-generation Mac Pro was launched during Apple’s WWDC opening keynote in 2013; perhaps we’ll see a similar announcement at WWDC 2018.
Related: MacBook Pro vs MacBook Air
How would you like Apple to improve the Mac Pro? Let us know in the comments.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
