Way back at WWDC in June, Apple finally announced that the next generation of Mac Pro would be coming in ‘the fall of 2013’. Well, fall’s nearly here and gossip is starting to spread that the release is imminent (possibly as early as mid-September).

What can we expect?

Well, the naysayers think its a marginal upgrade, but we think this is a radical reworking of the Pro computer. Recent experience has shown us that no longer are we held back (as much) by CPU speeds – our machines are struggling to keep up with huge quantities of data being pumped around them by hungry applications working on huge files like high resolution images and HD video. The trend has begun for SSD to become the norm, but that in itself raises serious heat and power dilemmas for the engineers building these machines. The old Mac Pro was big and heavy (to allow heat dissipation from multiple spinning hard drives and high-rated power supplies). The move to SSD allowed engineers to look at new architectures to reduce the size of the machine, whilst at the same time increasing the performance. As always with Apple, we can expect a beautifully designed, manufactured and packaged machine (probably at a premium price), despite the obvious comparisons to a recycling bin!

Time will tell on whether this new Mac Pro will be a sign of things to come in terms of desktop design. But we can’t wait to get our hands on one to see how well they perform in comparison to the current top end machines.