Apple says new Mac Pro is on the on the horizon...

And by which they mean, next year at the earliest. Yay.

Phil Schiller - “As part of doing a new Mac Pro — it is, by definition, a modular system — we will be doing a Pro display as well. Now you won’t see any of those products this year; we’re in the process of that. We think it’s really important to create something great for our pro customers who want a Mac Pro modular system, and that’ll take longer than this year to do.”


So apparently it's a ground-up redesign and there will be a new cinema display. My guess would be that they're probably aiming for a display that outclasses the current iMac's 5k display. Apparently it will not be a touch screen display, which is no shocker since Apple thinks the iPad Pro addresses everyone's touch and stylus needs (it does not even come close, but whatever).


Apparently one of the big issues with the current Mac Pro was that it was designed in such a way that it could not cool a single high-end graphics card, which limited upgrade options for new iterations of the Mac Pro. They also admitted that limiting the configurability of the machine pissed off a lot of customers (yours truly included) and limited it's appeal to Apple's pro customers. As they say, admitting you've may a mistake is the first step in fixing it, so I would say this is good news.


“We’re committed to the Mac, we‘ve got great talent on the Mac, both hardware and software, we’ve got great products planned for the future and as far as our horizon line can see, the Mac is a core component of the things Apple delivers, including to our Pro customers."


Of course once you've been burned as badly as we pro film/video people have been by Apple in recent history, you view statements like these with a little cynicism. I'm taking a "wait and see" approach and we'll see what Apple actually delivers next year. On the software side, Apple's "pro" apps have been dumbed down beyond repair, so they would also need a ground-up redesign to be worthwhile to anyone again, with the exception of maybe Logic, which seems to still satisfy a lot of people after they've turned on the advanced mode, or whatever it's called.


In the meantime, Apple is offering new configuration options on the current Mac Pro, none of which seem particularly compelling and if you've waited this long to trade in your cheese grater Mac Pro, you'd might as well wait another year and see what that brings.

More details are available at TechCrunch