New Mac Pro is crazy powerful, and very expandable

It’s taken Apple six years to update the Mac Pro, but it looks like the wait was worth it. 

On Monday, during its WWDC keynote, Apple announced a new Mac Pro, and it’s an immensely powerful machine that addresses many of the last Pro’s drawbacks, such as lack of expandability and poor thermal performance. 

The company also launched a new 32-inch display called the Pro Display XDR, with matching design and 6K resolution. 

First, the obvious: Gone is the trash can design of the 2013 Pro, and it’s been replaced with a rugged aluminum look that echoes the first generation of the Mac Pro. The aluminum case of the machine has a handle for carrying and wheels for pushing around. Inside, it’s organized, well, like most pro-grade workstations, with three massive fans pushing air through the case and over the components. 

In terms of power, the Mac Pro is what you’d expect: An immensely powerful machine, primarily aimed for professionals working with music and video. But this time, it feels like Apple is just showing off, because some specs of the new Pro are totally insane.

It’s got an Intel Xeon processor with up to 28 cores, up to 1.5 terabytes of RAM — yes, terabytes — and graphics up to Radeon Pro Vega II Duo, which Apple calls the world’s most powerful graphics card (and you can have your Mac Pro with two of those). And it’s all powered by a 1.4kW power supply, which commended a gasp from the audience, although honestly, it isn’t even that much for today’s standards. The Mac Pro also comes with Apple Afterburner, an accelerator card that can decode up to three streams of 8K ProRes RAW video, or 12 streams of 4K ProRes RAW video in real time. 

Yes, it’s crazy — but at least no one will complain that this thing is not powerful enough for them. To show off the new Mac Pro’s power, Apple’s presenter loaded up a thousand audio tracks into Logic Pro, and the machine didn’t even flinch. 

Very important: the Mac Pro is expandable, with eight PCIe expansion slots — twice more than the last Mac Pro. In terms of ports, the Mac Pro has two USB-C ports and two USB-A ports right there on the front.

Alongside the new Mac Pro, Apple also launched the new Pro Display XDR, a 32-inch LCD monitor with a 6,016 x 3,384 pixel resolution (Apple calls it the Retina 6K), true 10-bit color with over 1 billion colors, 1,000 nits of full-screen brightness and a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. The monitor has some cool pro-grade features, including a special “nano-texture” anti-reflective coating. Design-wise, the Pro Display XDR has tiny, 9mm bezels, and can be bought with a $999 stand that easily attaches and detaches and lets you rotate it into portrait mode. 

The new Mac Pro starts at $5,999, but that’s with far more plebeian specs: An octa-core Intel Xeon processor, 32GB of RAM, a Radeon Pro 580X graphics chip and a 256GB SSD. The new Pro Display XDR starts at $4,999, the Pro Stand costs $999 and the VESA Mount Adapter is $199. 

All of these new devices will be available in the fall.