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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1134553
The best system you’ll never own The performance numbers, both for the new Mac Pro and the new XDR (“extreme dynamic range”) Display were staggering and we won’t even begin to summarize them here. Nor will we stoop to sophomoric humor by saying that the new Pro looks even more like a cheese grater than the original. Apple’s creative pro customers said that they wanted more expandability and they got it, with eight PCI slots, expansion chassis (MPX Modules), and an Afterburner card that will make proxy editing of extreme high-def footage a thing of the past. An upcoming release of Logic Pro will be able to handle thousands of tracks. The only pricing that Cook would reveal was that of a very basic model with a Xeon 3.5GHz CPU, 32GB RAM, Radeon Pro 580X graphics and a 256GB SSD: $5,999. (This seemed to us to be a bit like ordering a Lamborghini Huracán with a four-cylinder engine and vinyl seats.) Based on the current prices, add a couple of Vega II graphics cards, max out the dozen slots with something close to 1.5TB of RAM and add Apple’s new display, you’ll be looking at something well north of $30,000. The 6K Apple XDR Display boasts a dynamic range as close as one can currently get to the human eye and designed to out-gun the best reference monitors available (probably the same ones used by the Game of Thrones directors and editors used to make much of the final season too dark for most home viewers to see). There’s a lot of processing power inside of them, allowing a current MacBook Pro to drive two and the latest Mac Pro to command six. To cheers from the crowd, Tim Cook called it the “world’s best pro display,” garnering louder applause than the new Mac Pro he had just introduced. And then he talked price. The standard model has a $4,999 price tag and a version with an anti-reflective micro-etched glass display is $5,999. But that doesn’t include the magnificently articulating stand, which is nearly $1,000 extra. At this, you could easily hear undisguised grumbling rolling through the hall. In reality, this will be a system that most of us will only see in our local Apple Store. It’s built for Hollywood blockbuster budgets. For the rest of us, it will be the best system we’ll never own and probably never need. To us, it was not the best news on which to end the keynote and to us, the iMac Pro has never looked quite as good as it does right now.