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Jony Ive turns Mac Pro RED for charity
Suddenly, the 20th Anniversary Mac seems downright commonplace. Apple's Jony Ive is teaming up with recent design partner Marc Newson to auction a one-of-a-kind red Mac Pro as part of a Product RED charity fundraiser. It's not clear what's different on the inside versus the regular black model, but look at that outside -- it's guaranteed that this workstation will be the centerpiece of the office. Be prepared to pony up if you like the idea of an ultra-exclusive system, though. Sotheby's estimates that the red Mac Pro will sell for $40,000 to $60,000; while that's a steal next to an Apple I, it's not exactly chump change. Check out both the Mac and some (slightly) more affordable rose gold EarPods at the source links.
Sotheby's auctioning off special Jony Ive designed Product (RED) Mac Pro
The entry level Mac Pro will set you back about $2,999, but If you've got much deeper pockets you might want to take a look at this one-of-a-kind Product (RED) Mac Pro that was custom designed by both Jony Ive and industrial designer Marc Newson. The candy red and super sleek Mac Pro will be up for auction at Sotheby's and is expected to fetch any where between $40,000 and $60,000. The auction is set to kick off on November 23 at 7 PM. Recall that the uniquely colored Mac Pro won't be the only special Apple product up for auction come November. A pair of 18k gold EarPods, also designed by Ive and Newson, will also be up on the auction block.
Promise Technology intros first Thunderbolt 2 storage solutions
Whether you just picked up one of the new MacBook Pros with Retina display or you're waiting for the debut of the Mac Pro later this year, there's good news for those who want to take advantage of the ultra-fast Thunderbolt 2 ports built into the new hardware. Promise Technology has introduced two Thunderbolt 2 storage solutions that boast input/output speeds of up to 20 Gbps. The Pegasus2 Series comes in four-, six- and eight-bay versions housing up to 32 TB of raw capacity. The RAID enclosure supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60. Promise also introduced the SANLink2 Thunderbolt Fibre Channel bridge, perfect for connecting portable and desktop systems up to high-speed Fibre Channel SAN. The SANLink2 box delivers dual 8 Gbps fibre channel ports, and the two 20 Gbps Thunderbolt 2 ports support DisplayPort and Device Daisy-Chaining. Both products will be available through the online Apple Store and Promise VARs and distributors. The Pegasus2 devices should be available next month, while the SANLink2 bridge will be arriving in December.
A look at how Mac Pros are made
Ever since Apple first gave us a peek at the all-new Mac Pro at WWDC, Apple fans have been champing at the bit to learn more about the highly anticipated machine. During this week's media event, Apple was all too happy to oblige, announcing that the machine will begin shipping in December with pricing that begins at US$2,999. In typical fashion, Apple also released a video detailing the manufacturing process behind the Mac Pro. Interestingly enough, Apple executive Jeff Williams notes at the beginning of the video that Apple, in making the Mac Pro, had to "pioneer entirely new processes." Now the video is certainly interesting, but the significance of what it depicts may easily be lost on folks not steeped in the latest manufacturing trends and processes. To address that, product designer Greg Koenig took an in-depth look at the video above, extracting a number of fascinating and informative tidbits about Apple's manufacturing methods and innovations in the process. What the Mac Pro video puts on display is Apple's unique talent for bringing together disparate manufacturing technologies to produce incredible precision at extremely high volumes. Sure, having $140B in the bank and the ability to bring a mind boggling number of zeros to a purchase order has its benefits, but plenty of resource rich product companies would never think of combining processes in the manner that Apple does routinely (see: injection molding, machining, polishing and coating an iPhone 5c case). With the Mac Pro, Apple has elevated a relatively low-precision/low-tolerance process (deep draw stamping) used to make my dog's water bowl and toilet brush canister into the creation of an aerospace grade piece of desktop jewelry. Simply put, if you'd like to learn more about just what all of those crazy machines in the video above are doing, check out Koenig's piece in its entirety. While folks always love taking a look at teardowns of Apple products, sometimes it's just as nice, if not more interesting, to take a look at how those products are put together in the first place. To that end, Koenig provides some great context for Apple's latest manufacturing video.
Next-generation Mac Pro in various states of undress (eyes-on)
It wasn't behind protective glass this time, so that's definitely a step in the right direction for the next-generation Mac Pro, which was first trotted out at WWDC back in June. Today it was beautifully sprawled out for all the world to see, in various states of deconstruction. The display certainly speaks to just how easy it is to take the pro desktop apart, so you can go in and rejigger the components as you see fit. As mentioned before, the $3,000 workstation is surprisingly compact for such a powerhouse -- you'll likely have no difficulty lifting it up with the handle at top. We got a gallery below featuring a slew of different angles on the Pro, so you can get a close up view of the 3.7GHz quad-core Xeon CPU, 12GB of RAM and, of course, the Darth Vader mask vent. Hopefully that'll be enough to tide you over between now and the product's December launch date. And what about power? Thankfully, this time out there were a trio of Pros actually plugged in. The most impressive of the three demos was 4K video editing in Final Cut. Thanks in no small part to the dual-GPUs, our friendly Apple rep had the tower hooked up to two monitors (you can do up to three in Mavericks, mind), editing 16 angles in 4K with no discernible delay in rending occurring. An impressive feat, to say the least. The new Pro is likely to maintain Apple's spot as a darling amongst pro video editors -- and, naturally, we can't wait to get our hands on the thing for a little benchmarking action.
New Mac Pro in production and heading for a December appearance
Apple wowed video and graphics professionals with the Mac Pro pricing today. Most seemed to be expecting a starting price of about US$4,500, but $2,999 will be pretty attractive to pros and semi-pros. Apple also got industry leaders who have been using the Mac Pro to enthuse. "From the blazing-fast performance of DaVinci Resolve to real-time video capture with UltraStudio 4K, Mac Pro is a revolution in pro desktop design and performance," said Grant Petty, CEO of Blackmagic Design. "At 20 Gbps, Mac Pro's Thunderbolt 2 blows away anything on the market and completely changes the external storage landscape," said James Lee, CEO of PROMISE Technology. The new Mac Pro features four-core, six-core, eight-core or 12-core Intel Xeon processors running at Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9 GHz that deliver double the floating point performance of the previous-generation Mac Pro. Two workstation-class AMD FirePro GPUs with up to 12GB of video memory provide up to seven teraflops of compute power and up to eight times the graphics performance of the previous-generation Mac Pro. OpenGL and OpenCL are optimized in OS X Mavericks to leverage the full computing power of the Mac Pro CPU and dual GPUs. Apple also announced new versions of Final Cut Pro X to take advantage of the new hardware. The Mac Pro will be available in December. Apple showed some video today of its US assembly line getting the Mac Pros ready to ship. The Mac Pro is available with a 3.7 GHz quad-core Intel Xeon E5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9 GHz, dual AMD FirePro D300 GPUs with 2 GB of VRAM each, 12 GB RAM and 256 GB of PCIe-based flash storage starting at $2,999; and with a 3.5 GHz six-core Intel Xeon E5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9 GHz, dual AMD FirePro D500 GPUs with 3 GB of VRAM each, 16 GB RAM and 256 GB of PCIe-based flash storage starting at $3,999. I would expect this new, most-powerful Mac to be a mega-hit with video editors, photographers and graphic artists. The current Mac Pro was released in June 2012, and has been falling behind other workstation machines in terms of specs and features, so the new Mac Pro will give Apple a needed competitive edge for others to aim for.
Long-awaited Mac Pro gets pricing and availability
Apple's highly anticipated Mac Pro has been advertised on the Apple website as "Coming later this year" for months. A sneak peek appeared at WWDC in June, and today's Apple event ended the mystery. The Mac Pro will have an Intel Xeon E5 chip with up to 12 cores. There's no hard drive option; it uses SSD drives instead. It's kitted out with a PCI Express generation 3 bus, USB 3.0, Thunderbolt 2, HDMI 1.4, Gigabit Ethernet and Bluetooth 4.0. The form factor is completely unique for an Apple product or any other workstation for that matter. The new Mac Pro is one-eighth the volume of the current model. The new Mac Pro starts at US$2,999, much cheaper than some were predicting. Apple says it will be available in December. This computer is really going to excite video and photo professionals, and will also find its way into many semi-pro setups as well.
Mac Pro launches in December for $3,000: 3.7GHz quad-core Xeon CPU, 12GB RAM, 256GB SSD
Apple's latest Mac Pro rolls off United States assembly lines and into consumers hands in December for $3,000. The base model features a 3.7GHz quad-core Xeon CPU ("with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9 GHz"), 12GB DRAM, two AMD FirePro D300 GPUs, and a 256GB SSD. Apple senior VP of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller announced as much during an event this morning on the company's Cupertino, CA. campus, where he went into some finer details about the upcoming cylindrical computer. For one, the machine starts at the above configuration, but expands to 64GB DRAM and 1TB flash storage. Should you prefer the whole cloth route, there's a $4,000 option with a 3.5 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon E5 processor ("with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9 GHz"), dual AMD FirePro D500 GPUs with 3GB of VRAM each, 16GB of memory, and 256GB of PCIe-based flash storage. Considering Apple's touting this as the computer you'll have for "the next 10 years," perhaps some expansion beyond the base model is worth a thought. The machine is apparently as quiet as a Mac Mini -- perhaps owing to its single fan design -- and leaves a light carbon footprint as well (it uses 70 percent less energy than the previous generation Mac Pro, Schiller said). As promised, the new Mac Pro is being assembled and designed in the United States. Schiller ended today's Mac Pro section of the talk with a video showing the new machine in production in American factories. We've got our own video for you just beyond the break going eyes-on with the new Mac Pro back at WWDC 2013 if you'd like to join us!
Taking the cover off Apple's October 22nd event: what you can expect
Apple's iPhone event last month was undoubtedly crucial for the company, but it left quite a few would-be customers wanting more. Much of Cupertino's product lineup is practically begging for an update. There haven't been new iPads in a year; both OS X Mavericks and the Mac Pro redesign have yet to ship; and two Mac lines are still stuck on last year's CPUs. As such, Apple likely isn't being hyperbolic when it claims that it has "a lot to cover" at its October 22nd event. But what, exactly, are we going to see on that fateful day? There have been rumors of everything from "natural" updates, like iPhone 5s-derived iPads, to more fanciful excursions like watches and TVs. While there may not be many surprises in store for tomorrow's liveblog, we'll help you make sense of it all.
Apple posts Mac Pro intro video to YouTube
Apple has released a short promo video of the soon-to-be-released Mac Pro up on YouTube. The clip is similar to what was shown at the June Developers Conference in San Francisco. The new model, with a unique and fetching form factor, is much smaller than the current Mac Pro, but also will need to have most peripherals external rather than built in. It promises to be extremely powerful. There's no specific release date yet, but Apple says it is "coming this fall." Apple has also been promoting the Mac Pro in theaters this month. The new workstation class machine is expected to have dual gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 1.4, Thunderbolt 2.0 with DisplayPort 1.2 and support for up to three 4K displays.
Apple running Mac Pro teaser trailer in movie theaters
Beginning last night Apple has begun running Mac Pro teaser trailers in front of select films in cinemas across the country. According to MacRumors, those that have seen the trailer says it shows the "sleek black curves of the product from multiple angles." The trailer ends with the tag line "Fall 2013." Choosing to spend ad dollars on expensive cinema ads for a device which is sure to have some of the lowest sales numbers out of all the products Apple sells might seem a bit odd. However, since the Mac Pro is used heavily in the entertainment industry, some film professionals or hobbyists are likely to be in the audience.
American redux: Apple, Motorola, Lenovo and the pulse of stateside manufacturing
Google introduced the Nexus Q close to a year ago. It was an intriguing device with a standout design, but its high asking price and limited functionality meant it wasn't long before the Q was pulled from virtual shelves. A peculiar product and, perhaps, a cautionary tale, but the sphere was also interesting for another reason: it was manufactured in the USA. That credential is a rarity, and in the consumer technology business, almost an anomaly. It's fast becoming a lot more common, however, with some big players setting up a stateside manufacturing presence. Awareness of the potential advantages of doing so can only increase, and serve to debunk the myth that future technology can't be built on American soil. After flirting with the idea, then committing to build a computer in the US, Apple chose its redesigned Mac Pro for assembly in the states. Lenovo has a PC production facility up and running in North Carolina, and Google-owned Motorola will be putting together its next flagship, the Moto X, in Texas. Time will tell whether other companies will follow suit, and to what extent, but if the arguments in favor of US manufacturing hold up, we could see the trend sustained in the long term, leading to many more gadgets bearing a US birthmark.
Switched On: Form in the USA
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. The Mac Pro might have been worthy of the "One More Thing" kinds of reveals that Steve Jobs used to do at Apple events. Despite being foreshadowed by Tim Cook as a product the company was going to make in the US, it was virtually carted in from left field at an event that focused broadly on new operating systems before a crowd of developers that could appreciate its power. That said, it will likely require OS X Mavericks, a thematically fitting release for a product that represents a new wave in Apple's design. Some have said that iOS 7 may be the company's New Coke. The Mac Pro, though, is the new can. Its cylindrical form represents a new design for Apple, albeit one that jibes with the company's affinity for simple, rounded, iconic shapes. Like the new AirPort Extreme, it has a significant vertical profile, but is a fraction of the size of its predecessor designed to accommodate multiple optical drives and hard drives.
Early Mac Pro benchmarks show major speed increase
The new Mac Pro isn't supposed to launch until later on this year, but Geekbench has nabbed a new set of benchmarking tests which appear to be from the new machine itself. The computer is labeled as "AAPLJ90,1" in the report, which seems strange, considering that a retail build would probably be listed as "MacPro6,1." But perhaps that "J90" is a code name of some sort, suggesting a pre-release build. The machine in question is running a 12-core processor, and 64 GB (!) of RAM, along with a pre-release build (Build 13A2054) of OS X 10.9, which we now know as OS X Mavericks. The motherboard ID also matches one known to be in the new Mac Pro, so it's likely this set of benchmark results is legit, though it might not match up to a final release of the machine. And what's the verdict? It's fast, of course. Significantly faster, in places, than a current 2012 Mac Pro build. Of course, Apple bragged during WWDC 2013 that the latest model would be "up to 2X faster" than previous Mac Pros. While that might be true for some applications, this machine doesn't meet that figure consistently. Still, considering this is probably an early version that's less than fully optimized, there's no doubt at all that the new Mac Pro will be a very slick machine indeed. [Via MacRumors]
MacStadium to provide new Mac Pro hosting and colocation
For the Mac faithful, it won't do to share space on just any server -- you want to use a Mac server. Likewise, we like to have our own Mac servers colocated at a place that specializes in Macs. That's why hosting providers like MacStadium are so popular. Now MacStadium has announced that as soon as the new Mac Pros arrive, they'll be ready to rack 'em and stack 'em in their hosting and colocation center. The company expects to be able to fit 270 Mac Pro servers per POD on only 12 square feet of floor space in their datacenter. That's what that Lego-like image above represents, with Mac Pros sitting on their sides stacked 15 tall, nine wide and two deep. That MacStadium facility provides redundant cooling, power and security systems, and each of those Mac Pros will be connected to the world with Gigabit Ethernet through a 50 GB/s network backbone. The existing Mac Pro, according to MacStadium, has never been popular in the hosting and colocation world because of their huge physical footprint and high power draw. MacStadium will be able to provide Mac Pros as a monthly rental or purchase, or you can send in your configured Mac Pro for collocation.
Daily Update for June 17, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Apple let developers from The Foundry and Pixar test out the new Mac Pro weeks before WWDC
AppleInsider was able to spend some time talking to developers from The Foundry who shared how they were able to get some quality alone time with Apple's Mac Pro weeks before the public was first made aware of the upcoming beast during this year's WWDC keynote. In recounting how they were given special sneak-peak access to Apple's newly revamped and cylindrical Mac Pro, The Foundry explains that they were placed in a "room at Apple HQ known as the 'Evil Lab'" where they were able to test out their MARI software on the Mac Pro. MARI, if you're unfamiliar, is world-class visual effects software often used in movies. Of course, seeing as Apple has always been keen on the big reveal, the Mac Pro itself was hidden inside a locked metal cabinet during testing. "We were essentially doing a blind tasting of the machine," said Jack Greasley, MARI product manager at The Foundry. "All we could see was the monitor, and the Mac Pro was encased in a giant metal filing cabinet on wheels. Experiencing the machine in this way was actually really cool, because I can tell you that the speed and power of this machine really stands up. MARI running on this machine out of the box is the fastest I have ever seen it run." Hop on over to AppleInsider for the full scoop as to how folks from The Foundry and Pixar found themselves able to give Apple's upcoming Mac Pro a spin. Lastly, and per The Foundry's website, MARI will be coming to the Mac as a beta product in the near future.
Engadget gets a glimpse of the new Mac Pro
Apple usually doesn't announce products until they are ready to hit the market, but the company made an exception today when it announced the long-awaited update to the Mac Pro. A prototype of the workstation was on display at WWDC, and Engadget went eyes on with the unique, cylinder-shaped computer. We've embedded the best Mac Pro shot above as well as Engadget's video overview below. If that is not enough eye candy, you can hop over to Engadget's website and check out the rest of their photos.
The Daily Roundup for 06.10.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Apple unveils new and interactive Mac Pro site
During today's WWDC keynote, Phil Schiller gave us a rare, if not unprecedented, look at an upcoming product that won't be shipping for a while. If you saw today's keynote, you likely caught Apple's eye-catching 30-second teaser video for the next-gen Mac Pro. We reported earlier today: The Mac Pro will have Dual Workstation CPU FirePro processors, up to two times faster than the current Mac Pro. There is built-in support for up to three 4K displays, HDMI out, GB Ethernet and internal storage with 1.25 GB/s reads and 1 GB/s writes. The new Mac Pro features Thunderbolt 2, and it's backwards-compatible with the current-generation Thunderbolt accessories. And did we mention that the new Mac Pro is only 9.9 inches tall? Shortly after the keynote finished, Apple updated its website with a new, very cool, informative and interactive page for the Mac Pro. Head on over here to check this puppy out in great detail. As Phil Schiller said, "Can't innovate anymore, my ass!" We'll keep you posted as to when shipping and pricing information on this beauty become available.
