ass!” But the latest model doesn’t
need anyone to shout about their
buttocks, mercifully. It says
everything it needs to say with its
ridiculous stats: 1.5TB of memory,
a custom design for the most
powerful graphics card on the
planet, 1.4kW of power, live 8K
ProRes editing driven by a special
plug–in module... to have all that
in a box that size is incredible, even
if it’s a less intriguing shape than
the cylinder it replaces.
What really got me, though, is
that it’s a physical manifestation
of Apple’s insistence that it’s really
listening to pro users. Apple
explained that it was talking to
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bottlenecks, whether software or
hardware. And so we got nearly
a dream list: more memory than
the Matrix probably needs to run,
a unique chip to handle the biggest
point of slow-down when video
editing, enough power to simulate
multiple iOS devices at once for
testing apps, and even wheels!
There’s a level of precision to its
engineering that’s distinctly Apple,
but this is the functionality dog
wagging the design tail, and not
the other way round. Design is how
it works, and oh boy, does it work.
Granted, it works at an incredibly
high price, but the increasinglyfast Mac mini and the iMac Pro
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Compare and contrast with
Apple’s last big pro machine
redesign: the MacBook Pro with
Touch Bar display. Granted, that
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speeds up almost nothing. The
Mac Pro is full of boring technical
features, but they help massively.
I wonder what this approach to
design might look like in a laptop.
I’d thought we must be hitting the
limits of what we can do in the
same hinged shape, yet here Apple
used an update of the classic Mac
Pro design as its platform for
something really cutting edge. So
instead of thinking of the laptop
form factor as limiting for Apple,
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my expectations for Apple’s
ambitions there to be sky high.
What could go wrong?I
MUST CONFESS, not for the
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underestimating Apple’s
ambition. When it said it was
making a new modular Mac Pro
that would blow people away,
I struggled to imagine what could
be more modular than the old
cheese grater Mac Pro given the
nature of computer parts. It had
not occurred to me that the mind–
blowing thing might be new kinds
of modules, not the connections
that plug them into the computer.
Or that it would still come in
a cheese grater case.
The new Mac Pro is just as much
a wonder of engineering as the
ill–fated 2013 “trash can” model,
but in a less obvious way. I still
remember Phil Schiller yelling,
“Can’t innovate anymore, myMATT BOLTON thinks the new Mac Pro is
the clearest sign yet that Apple does listen.
Can we get the same approach elsewhere?
THE SHIFT
>>> Matt is the editor of Future’s flagship technology magazine T3 and has been charting changes at Apple since his student days.
He’s skeptical of tech industry hyperbole, but still gets warm and fuzzy on hearing “one more thing”.Image rights: Apple.
The big question is why doesn’t it come in
gold? Come on Apple, you can squeeze in
that option on a $10K machine!The spirit of the 2013 Mac Pro lives on here
in the all–encompassing fans and a shell that
lifts off the body in one.maclife.com SEP 2019 11