2019 Apple Mac Pro is a sign that Apple is finally paying attention to pro customers
It’s official: Apple has decided to take a step back and rethink its approach to high-end computing for the pro market.
It’s been a year since Apple discussed openly its plans to re-release the Mac Pro, before a handful of reporters at its Cupertino headquarters. At the time, Apple acknowledged the fact that emphasizing style over performance and practical workflow turned the 2013 Mac Pro into a novelty product with little appeal to pro customers.
Most recently, a Pro Workflow Team has been officially announced, with Apple’s VP of engineering John Ternus at the helm, guided by a far humbler stance in regard to design, hardware and workflow, in comparison to five years ago.
In a recent interview, Tarnus provided a promising insight into Apple’s new approach to redesigning the Mac Pro:
“We said in the meeting last year that the pro community isn’t one thing, It’s very diverse. There’s many different types of pros and obviously they go really deep into the hardware and software and are pushing everything to its limit. So one thing you have to do is we need to be engaging with the customers to really understand their needs. Because we want to provide complete pro solutions, not just deliver big hardware, which we’re doing and we did it with iMac Pro. But look at everything holistically.”
Yes, the iMac Pro has proved itself to be an amazing product, however, as Tarnus puts it, the ability to push hardware to the limit and do things in a radically different way than the mainstream Apple consumer, is crucial to the success of all future high-end Apple products catering to designers, engineers, filmmakers, and plenty more categories with different requirements.
For example, when it comes to graphic design and print design, the iMac Pro does a wonderful job. However, a 3D animator required to work with software like Autodesk Maya or similar high-end 3D software, would find the rigid, unupgradable nature of the iMac form factor, frustratingly limiting, whereas a more flexible design, such as the 2006 Mac Pro’s, widens the spectrum of possibilities for professionals to get the tools they need, without resorting to build their own custom rigs, as many already do, especially when it comes to intensive workflows like 3D animation.
The need to integrate high performance graphic cards and other hardware is also extremely important, as creative professionals in the high-end market, have very specific needs for hardware that Apple isn’t yet able to widely support, even as third party external peripherals, such as Nvidia’s GTX and Titan X cards, that, with the old approach used for the 2013 Mac Pro, would have been integrated on the mainboard itself, making it impossible to upgrade to a better card.
Apple’s Pro Workflow Team has been assembled specifically to gain an in-depth understanding of how creative professionals work, and what they need, beyond a beautifully designed conversation piece, and down to hardware options, and practical, real-world workflow scenarios.
By this token, the 2019 Apple Mac Pro will be a completely new product, divergent from all previous tenets, from its exterior, to its core internals.
Ready to shop?
Looking for the most powerful desktop created by Apple? PortableOne is where you can buy the All-New Apple iMac Pro a production powerhouse for high-end creative professionals, with endless possibilities, and unprecedented specs.