Ship date for built-to-order Mac Pro slips to February; fully loaded config tops $18K

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Three words: pent-up demand. That is what's behind the quick jump from a label of "shipping in December" to "shipping to February" if you're trying to order a Mac Pro configured to your specifications on the Apple online store. The way the backlog has increased in just a few short hours has us believing that the ship dates may slip even more. If you want one of these towers of power soon, heading to your local Apple Store with credit card in hand may be your best option.

Speaking of configuring a Mac Pro to order, a quick calculation using the online configurator tool showed that selecting the "power user's" option for every item that can go into one of the little cylinders can add up quickly. Grabbing a six-core and dual-GPU model and then tricking it out with 12 cores, 64 GB of memory, 1 TB of flash storage, dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6 GB of VRAM, a 32-inch Sharp 4K display, a Magic Trackpad, an Apple Wireless Keyboard and an AppleCare Protection Plan will set you back US$13,581.

While you're at it, you may as well add on a black 2.0 meter Thunderbolt cable and a PROMISE Pegasus2 32TB Thunderbolt 2 RAID system. Now you're up to a cool $18,219. Fortunately, many creative professionals have been saving their pennies for this day and can write off the equipment purchase as a business expense...