Professional Mac users can now get their hands on the company's all-new Mac Pro in as little as two days, as shipping times for the desktop flagship's standard configurations have dropped to 24 hours for the first time since it went on sale six months ago.
Apple CEO Tim Cook dropped in on the Austin, Texas facility that manufactures the new Mac Pro on Thursday, watching as technicians assembled the powerful desktop computers before expressing his appreciation for the new "Made in the USA" approach.
More than six months after Apple debuted its redesigned Mac Pro, the company has finally caught up with demand and is estimating ship times of three to five days on base configurations sold through the Online Apple Store.
With the concerted effort Apple put into redesigning its flagship Mac Pro desktop, the company was able to shrink chassis size substantially compared previous designs. WaterField Designs is taking advantage of the hard work in a new case made to transport the powerful machine into the field.
Apple on Tuesday rolled out a substantial update to its Logic Pro X professional music production software with various UI tweaks, bug fixes and, most notably, improved support for the company's top-end Mac Pro.
For the third week in a row, Apple has lowered ship-by times for its flagship Mac Pro desktop, with the latest two to three week estimates suggesting the company is quickly catching up with demand.
Exactly one week after Apple improved shipping estimates for its flagship Mac Pro desktop to three to five weeks, the company has again cut down on wait times with orders now showing delivery dates of less than one month.
In a change to the Online Apple Store on Thursday, Apple is now quoting Mac Pro shipping availability at three to five weeks for all configurations, suggesting supply of the flagship Mac is finally catching up to demand.
The latest entry in a growing selection of Thunderbolt 2 capable storage solutions, G-Technology's G-SPEED Studio and G-RAID Studio RAID arrays incorporate high-capacity 6TB HDDs and ultra-fast I/O into small chassis designs.
Other World Computing on Tuesday announced a new turnkey upgrade program for late-2013 Mac Pros that offers replacement Intel Xeon CPUs and cheaper memory options not available directly from Apple.
Apple has made clear its intent to support ultra high-resolution displays with the latest Mac and OS X products, but without a 4K display of its own (yet) the company sells only one UHD monitor as a go-along with its flagship Mac Pro: Sharp's PN-K321.
Memory manufacturer Transcend on Friday announced availability of high-density DDR3 RDIMM RAM modules that bring the Mac Pro's total memory up to 128GB, doubling the max configuration advertised on the Apple Store.
In addition to 3% coupon codes on MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros, this week's deals deliver the lowest prices yet on three CTO Retina MacBook Pros. Meanwhile, dozens of Mac Pros configs are now arriving at authorized resellers at discount, plus tax savings. And Harman Kardon is offering refurbished versions of its award-winning over-ear Bluetooth headphones at over 60% off MSRP.
Apple on Wednesday released an SMC firmware update for the redesigned Mac Pro that enhances Power Nap fan control and fixes an issue that caused recognize low-speed USB devices on system startup.
Already in its second generation, the Thunderbolt I/O protocol has been around for three years, but only recently did manufacturers begin production of optical cables to deliver the tentpole feature of long-distance data transfer. AppleInsider was able to test out this highly anticipated addition with Corning's 10m all-optical Thunderbolt cable solution.
After launching preorders for the completely redesigned Mac Pro in December it looks as though Apple is still struggling to meet demand, as the company's online store now reflects ship times of April for all configurations.
Apple's newly-redesigned Mac Pro ships standard with dual GPUs configured via hardware to support AMD's CrossFire GPU-pairing technology, but only when running Microsoft Windows.
Apple said it's aware of an issue where its latest professional Macs may experience AirPlay Mirroring jitters when connected to certain wireless networks and recommended a temporary fix.
Promise Technology's Pegasus2 RAID storage solution was one of the first products to sport the latest Thunderbolt 2 , offering blazingly fast read/write speeds for data-intensive operations.
A fresh wave of price drops and 2-day sales on Apple's Mac product family this friday are further sweetened by exclusive offers already granted to AI readers, yielding some of the lowest prices seen this year on MacBook Airs, MacBook Pros, iMacs and Mac Pros.
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Sam Oliver
AppleInsider Staff
Mikey Campbell
Daniel Eran Dilger
Katie Marsal
