MacPro at WWDC?

[Jarek Zabczynski]

I know there's no evidence and Ivy Bridge Xeons aren't ready, but I still love talking about the subject. Personally, I don't care if it doesn't ship till next year at this point, just as long as they announce it or at the very least address the issue at WWDC.

 

[Nick Pasquariello]

There's good money on them announcing new laptops. The thing with Apple is, and this is a huge advantage, they never announce ANYTHING unless you can actually have it in your hands within 3 months or less. And usually it's that week. The only time I've seen a window longer than a week or two, was for the iPad and the iPhone: brand spanking NEW lines. But the announcements came with concrete dates ("You can have this new thing on THAT SPECIFIC DATE").

Other companies will show prototypes, or demo products before they're ready, etc. People are fatigued by it. Apple is the only large company out there that only shows you cool things if you can actually own them really soon. Look at Google Glass. Tons of hype, slowly trickling around in beta, but you can already feel the hype around them dying down. And you still can't just purchase a pair.

So, they'll spend 30ish minutes on laptops. Another 30-45 on iOS7 and OSX 10.9 (because the software is the actual point of WWDC). Another 15 flattering themselves. I do not expect to hear a word about a Mac Pro. A reporter or three will ask Tim Cook about it after the keynote. He'll say something to make us think it's coming this fall. And then there'll be some sort of announcement around September, possibly rolled into their mobile announcements (their yearly iPod/iPhone/iPad event), but probably separate, making us wait until October.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Unless Tim Cook pulls an Intel-labeled rabbit out of his hat, I expect everything to transpire about like Nick sums it up. New laptops are a given, the Haswell platform is in production now and we should see products rolling off the lines to consumers by the end of next month.

As for the Mac Pro, I think at this point most of it hinges on Intel and the new Xeon offerings. Word out there is those new chips won't ship until September-ish, possibly as late as November now.

 

[Nick Pasquariello]

Of course, because I'm the one that said it, I may be eating my words . . .

Multiple reports of Mac Pro supplies dwindling at retail. Usually happens to products when a new one is less than a month out, not 3 or 4. Intel just revealed more details on Haswell (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013...tel-announces-first-4th-generation-core-cpus/). Still no server class info. Kilgroe, what are the chances they'd use i7 cores in a Mac Pro? What's to be lost by not using Xeons?

 

[Brian Merlen]

I wonder if Apple will call it quits... This long without a substantial update is frightening. I think its 50 50 if they do it at all now lol

 

[Rob Anderson]

Bought a 2012 Mac Pro 12-core 3.06 Xeon. Added eSATA and USB 3.0 cards. Added 128 GB of RAM and changed video cards. Added SSD drives for RAID 0 (applications and scratch only). Added SAS card for external RAID 50.

...Don't know why people keep saying Apple isn't up-to-date.

But yes, I'm excited to find out what gets announced at WWDC. One of my biggest wishes is for revamped monitors. 27" LED just doesn't cut it anymore.

 

[L. Langer]

There's not really anything HQ on the monitor front these days as far as panels go. All the next-gen stuff that Apple wants to sell (and you want to buy) is primed for 2015 including large and small OLED displays.

 

[Stacey Spears]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-5...ro-said-to-ditch-expansions-arrive-this-fall/

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

• It will be heavily reliant on Thunderbolt
• There will be no internal expandability
• It will have support for dual GPUs with three-monitor support right out of the box
• No [Firewire 800] or optical drive
• It will be released in the fall
• It will be a completely new design

Yeah, sounds like it will be incredibly innovative or a complete disaster.

Odds...50/50

 

[Dave Harrison]

I'm hoping that post isn't true. I've loved that I can change my Mac Pro config so easily and making it a glorified Mac mini sounds terrible.

 

[Neil Dearman]

I hope that they make it like the previous one with more power

 

[Neil Dearman]

If I have to I can make a sick hack'n tosh, my friend has one and he loves itloves it