Apple’s much anticipated update to the 2013 Mac Pro won’t be unveiled until sometime next year, the Cupertino-based tech giant has confirmed in an interview with TechCrunch.
“We want to be transparent and communicate openly with our pro community so we want them to know that the Mac Pro is a 2019 product. It’s not something for this year,” Tom Boger, Apple’s Senior Director of Mac Hardware Product Marketing, told TechCrunch.
The reason why Apple is planning to launch in some time next year is because Apple understands that its new iMac Pro has a substantial crossover with the customer and Apple wants to give some time to help Pro users better understand where the products stand in the pipeline.
“We know that there’s a lot of customers today that are making purchase decisions on the iMac Pro and whether or not they should wait for the Mac Pro,” Boger added.
While Apple has confirmed the year of launch, no specifics about the Mac Pro like shape are yet known. The trashcan-style design of the Mac Pro proved to be a vital design enabling a more modular setup with easier access to core components like memory and graphics.
“As we said a year ago working on modular was inherently a modular system and in looking at our customers and their workflows obviously that’s a real need for our customers and that’s the direction we’re going,” Boger said in the interview.
An all-new internal team, called the Pro Workflow Team, will be working on the 2019 Mac Pro to make sure the end product meets the needs of the core target audience. Also, as Apple wants Final Cut Pro to smoothly run on the new Mac Pro, the Pro Workflow Team will ensure that both the projects are closely aligned. The workflow team is also tasked with interfacing directly with pro consumers and the communities of workers who use Apple hardware and software across graphic design, film editing, animation, and other industries.
There are also rumours that the new Mac Pro could be one of the first devices Apple fitted with an an ARM-based processor, as Apple is parting away with Intel chips revealed by Bloomberg earlier this week.
Apple will use its own in-house chips for its PC business beginning from 2020. This will boost its financials and could make Apple save $500 million a year, said Merrill Lynch, wealth management division of Bank of America.
Apple and Intel have enjoyed a long partnership ever since Apple made the switch to Intel CPUs with the 2006 MacBook Pro and iMac, but recent trends have made the breakup between them inevitable.
Stagnated Intel’s chip improvements at a time when Apple’s innovation has accelerated could be a strong reason for Apple moving away from Intel.