Apple Shows Off Next-Gen Mac Pro: Big, Black & Cylindrical

For a while, the Mac Pro was the most neglected of Apple's entire line up. As the computer company was seemingly leaning further and further to the consumer electronics line of phones and tablets, professionals who preferred Apple workstations were beginning to wonder if they had been forgotten.

Today at WWDC, Apple gave a preview of the next Mac Pro, and its design is as radical as the "cube" Mac. It's all glossy black and is cylindrical in shape. Phil Schiller called the center of the design a "thermal core". While that is a fancy term that Apple loves to throw around, the cooling solution is pretty innovative. The center part of the casing is made of a three-sided heatsink, where each side cools the entire length of each PCB. Then, a single large fan pulls the hot air upwards and outwards.

The entire casing is 9.9-inches tall, 6.6-inches wide, and inside are next generation Xeon processors (up to 12 cores), dual AMD FirePro GPUs, six Thunderbolt 2 ports, PCIe-based flash storage, and ECC memory.

In another move to bring manufacturing back to the USA, the Mac Pro will be assembled right in Apple's home country.

“With the latest Xeon processors, dual FirePro GPUs, ECC memory, PCIe-based flash and Thunderbolt 2, all built around a revolutionary thermal core, the next generation Mac Pro is the most radical Mac yet,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “All this performance and expandability is packed into a dramatic new design that’s one-eighth the volume, and best of all, it will be assembled here in the USA.”

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No pricing was announced, and availability was only shared to be later this year.

For a look at the design, check out Apple's presentation-style webpage here.