Any word on the pricing? With the decline of the desktop and workstation it might finally behoove Apple to lower the entry price a bit.

It would be nice if they would at least announce if they were going to continue this line. My 2007 Mac Pro is no longer supported by Mountain Lion. I would love to buy a new one but refuse to spend $3000 on 2010 technology. At least announce your plans so folks can figure out what their next steps are. iMac does not do it for me, I need RAM and multiple hard drives.

I personally think Apple would be making a big mistake not offering their Pro customers and upgrade path to Sandy Bridge Xeon. There are a lot of creative professionals in Music, Video, Graphics, etc. that would likely migrate to PC platforms...

The Mac Pro is really outdated technology for a workstation. I'd much rather see Apple take something line Sandy Bridge E and make a thoroughly modern and forward looking desktop computer. The Mac Pro was the right approach ten years ago but it isn't the product to base the next ten years of development upon.

So yeah I hope Apple uses this chip, I just hope that it is in a modern implementation that completely leverages the technology they have available these days. Oh and please do it at a reasonable price point.

One might figure that with Apple's profitability they could afford to carry one piece of hardware that doesn't make a huge profit. I'd sure hate to see the Mac Pro line die, although I don't have much use for one since the top-of-the-line iMac is enough for me. It's just that the Mac Pro seems like such a wonderful design. I suppose that isn't enough reason to keep the Mac Pro around if not enough people are buying it. What a shame if Apple discontinues it. Now that Apple is getting into the enterprise, it might have some chance of getting better sales. \

Yes even for Pro users.

Of course Apple has to be careful about what they replace the Mac Pro with. Performance is paramount but the architecture of the current Mac Pro isn't really suitable for further development. To support things like TB, Solid State Storage, optical interconnects and the like requires a bit of rethinking about what a workstation is.

For example supporting SATA in the base unit might be seen as a transitional have to have but long term they will need a port to support very fast solid state storage methods. Not all of these solid state initiatives are flash based so it really needs to be some sort of advanced PCI-Express 3 port. The same thing goes for Thunderbolt, it doesn't look like the requirement for motherboard integration will go away and it will only need to b e faster in the future.

Until Apple addresses a few issues with the iMac I have no need for one. Likewise I have no need for the Mac Pro in its high price configurations. I would go for a redesigned machine if there was one option available at a reasonable price that had respectable performance.

This is in fact one of the Mac Pros greatest failings, there isn't really a viable low cost option. If you are just looking for a bit of expandability in a modern desktop Apple doesn't have one.

It was at one time a wonderful design and still is if you have a need for the top end configurations and can justify the cost. Most people can't though, thus low sales.

There is no shame. Keeping the Pro around makes as much sense as keeping the Apple 2 around. The Apple 2 was an outstanding little machine in its day, but has been well eclipsed buy technology far better. The problem with the Pro is that it is quickly begin eclipsed by the advent of new technologies that make it a questionable investment for Apple. Apple can do much better with a platform that can cover the needs of a wider array of users.

I wonder what the baseline GPU will be? Tahiti is the top end Radeon 7970, nothing in the Mac Pros history suggests they would ship with something that expensive as a baseline. Todays uses the 5770, so my guess would be the 7770, but nothing in the OS code showed Pitcairn support, did it? Something with Graphics Core Next would be nice. And for a "Pro" machine 1GB video memory is just cutting corners, the upgrade to 2GB card-wise doesn't cost much and in professional applications like Mudbox 1GB slows you down, and historically the only way you got more VRAM was switching up to the far more expensive workstation class cards which not everyone needs, so I hope they have 3GB non-workstation options this time.

Also the usual stuff, 2,499.00 for 3GB is just flinging poop at pro mac users, 6GB should be standard.

Wow, it really has been a while since Nehalem, and once the SB Xeons are ready Ivy Bridge on the consumer side will be almost ready, too bad Intel doesn't release them at the same time.

I wonder how Thunderbolt would work on a desktop too, for video out from the video card it would need to be connected there, but it uses a lot of bandwidth, could the GPU pass all that through?

"The Mac Pro was the right approach ten years ago but it isn't the product to base the next ten years of development upon."

I'm curious (not trying to be sarcastic), what would be the "right" Mac Pro to base the next 10 years upon?

That is how does Apple get the TB integration with the GPU's sitting in PCI-E slots. Will Apple even support that integration on the Mac Pro or its replacement? This could be a long discussion and frankly impacts how Apple updates or replaces the Mac Pro.

I honest think they will have to integrate the GPU onto the motherboard. This might result in fixed GPU memory, but if Apple was smart they would put the GPU memory on a separate card. The other option would be multiple Mac models varying in GPU implementation.

The more that I think about this the more I believe that the Pro is due for a total make over. This is just one technical issue that Apple will be running into.

I'm expecting some potentially updated workstation designs seeing as most of them much like Apple haven't updated much since 2009. Some of the Sandy Bridge chips are up to 130W if I recall correctly. I'm not sure how the next two revisions look on power appetite. Quadro variants on kepler will also be a big deal given the relative dominance of NVidia in the workstation market segment. The quadros are mostly driver based adjustments rather than raw hardware, but it makes a very significant difference as long as the drivers are well tuned and tested on the application. Nothing sucks more than lag (aside from perhaps crashes.

HP and Lenovo came out with more compact designs. The HP was an all in one like the imac, but with full access panel. The hardware starts with something consumer level but has a lot of options for workstation gpus, unfortunately they're mobile workstation gpus, and other things. I don't what the display is like. If they have an option that comes close to their dreamcolor displays (even if it's an extremely expensive upgrade) they could actually have something there. Those never caught on in volume, but they are very good. Before anyone mentions it, those ones cater to a different market than the TB display.

All of the really compact models have been pretty expensive thus far. i'm not sure if they required exotic cooling solutions or anything. The point there is that smaller case doesn't necessarily translate to cheaper. With the top end market items, you always pay a much heftier premium, but it does seem to be becoming a much wider price gap. Apparently they do have a dreamcolor option on the display. That display alone sells for $2500 normally for a 24" display, and roughly $3k set up fully for proper calibration and profiling. If the final price point and warranty on the rig makes sense as a whole, it could be okay. I think it's likely that an impressive configuration will be really really expensive early on. The still using a mobile workstation gpu variant thing makes me a little sad.

I seriously doubt any of the 130W cpus will make it into any of these. Last time we saw those kinds of figures in workstation cpus, oems waited it out. The same might be true here. Obviously intel hasn't been that focused on this segment either.