Apple’s redesigned Mac Pro is coming in 2019 .

The overhaul of Apple’s most performant desktop Mac involves just a little more waiting

By Nick Statt 

on April 5, 2018 11:32 am

  

Apple’s long-awaited update to the 2013 Mac Pro won’t be released until sometime next year, the company confirmed in an interview with TechCrunch. We’ve known since a press roundtable in April 2017 that Apple was “completely rethinking” the Mac Pro, in the words of marketing chief Phil Schiller. Now, we have confirmation that the product is arriving next year after some speculation that it could make an appearance this year at a fall hardware event typically reserved for MacBook announcements.

“We want to be transparent and communicate openly with our pro community so we want them to know that the Mac Pro is a 2019 product. It’s not something for this year,” Tom Boger, Apple’s senior director of Mac hardware product marketing, told TechCrunch. “In addition to transparency for pro customers on an individual basis, there’s also a larger fiscal reasoning behind it.”

APPLE WANTS PRO CONSUMERS TO KNOW THEY’LL BE WAITING AT LEAST ANOTHER YEAR FOR THE MAC PRO

Apple understands that its new iMac Pro has a substantial crossover with the customer that might purchase the updated Mac Pro, and so the company wants to give some timeline clarity to help those pro users better grasp where the products stand in the pipeline. “We know that there’s a lot of customers today that are making purchase decisions on the iMac Pro and whether or not they should wait for the Mac Pro,” Boger added.

There’s a lot we still don’t know about the device. First and foremost, we’re unsure what shape it will take. The trashcan-style design of the Mac Pro was divisive, yet it was an integral design decision from Apple to enable a more modular setup with easier access to core components like memory and graphics. “As we said a year ago working on modular was inherently a modular system and in looking at our customers and their workflows obviously that’s a real need for our customers and that’s the direction we’re going,” Boger said in the interview.

Apple has also created an all-new internal team, called the Pro Workflow Team, dedicated to coordinating efforts across the company’s hardware and software teams to better ensure the end product meets the needs of the core target audience. In other words, Apple needs Final Cut Pro to run well on the new Mac Pro, so the Pro Workflow Team helps keep those two projects closely aligned. The workflow team is also tasked with interfacing directly with pro consumers and the communities of workers who use Apple hardware and software across graphic design, film editing, animation, and other industries.

There is also some talk now that the new Mac Pro may be one of the first devices Apple outfits with an ARM-based processor, as part of its groundbreaking shift away from Intel chips revealed by Bloomberg earlier this week. The timeline for that to happen is 2020, so it seems unlikely the new Mac Pro would use an all-new custom Apple chip set. But it is a possibility. Unfortunately, we won’t probably hear more about the new Mac Pro until much later this year, and even then details are likely to be sparse.

Apple Patent Reveals Dual Screen MacBook, and It Looks Incredible

It could also be a two-in-one tablet.

By Kevin Litman-Navarro on February 28, 2018

Filed Under Augmented Reality, Cars, Computers & Design

On Tuesday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released a set of recently approved Apple patents.

Among the 26 new patents is a design for a dual screen MacBookthat would eliminate the keyboard and trackpad from their classic laptop design. Replacing the keyboard with a second display would allow Apple to radically reconfigure their MacBook series. Presumably, the new display would be touch-sensitive, meaning it could be used as a sketchpad and a touch keyboard, among other things.

The patent shows how the second display would replace the keyboard and trackpad.

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According to the patent, there are two different versions of the dual screen system. In one, the displays would be attached by a hinge, making it very similar to a traditional laptop. Another option would allow the two screens to separate entirely, making it more of a two-in-one device.

In addition to the dual screen function, the patent includes information about a design that would allow users to wear sunglasses while using the computer. “Polarizer layers and other optical layers in the displays may be configured to provide a viewer with the ability to view images on the displays while wearing vertically polarized Sunglasses,” the patent says.

It’s not too surprising that Apple is potentially building a new MacBook. Just last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that the company is currently working on technology that won’t be available for years, in part because of the long lead time to gather the necessary silicon.

“You have to have a forcing function,” Cook told Fast Company. “For us, on the product side, we have to come up with our silicon requirements three, four-plus years in advance. So we’ve got things that we’re working on now that are way out in the 2020s.”

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Some speculated that Cook was referring to advances in augmented reality and self-driving cars — perhaps we will get to see the dual screen MacBook in the coming years as well.

Apple Mac App Store Launches With Software Update 10.6.6

Apple Mac App Store Launches With Software Update 10.6.6

Apple's App Store launched today! If you haven't done so yet go to your Apple Menu and check your Software Updates to upgrade to 10.6.6 and after reboot the App Store icon will appear next to your Finder icon in the tray. So how is the App Store? At first glance totally fantastic - have you been putting off upgrading to the newest version of iLife '11? I had too until about five minutes ago when I downloaded iPhoto '11 and iMovie '11 indivdually for $14.99 each. That's right, instead of buying the boxed version for $49 you can download individual components for $14.99 and since I personally never use GarageBand I just saved some money - even if you do download all three, you still save $5 and no trees are killed in the making of your software. While we're sure there may be minor glitches and snags along the way right now we're extremely pleased.