During a wide range of new hardware announcements at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Apple made no mention of its languishing Mac Pro workstation. However, the company did ever-so-slightly revise the configuration options for the dual-processor version, standardizing on six-core Xeon parts using the now outdated Westmere-EP architecture. The company also added a "server" configuration with Lion preinstalled.
Though Intel started shipping updated Xeon processors based on the server-class Sandy Bridge-EP architecture a couple months ago, and despite rumors ahead of the Worldwide Developer Conference, the Mac Pro was not updated.
Apple did at least make a minor revision to the aging Mac Pro. As noted above, dual-socket systems now come with six-core Xeon processors standard. There is also a 3.06GHz build-to-order option for those wanting to pay top dollar for what is now a grossly out-of-date design. And a server configuration can be purchased with OS X Lion Server preinstalled, starting at $3,000. The machines still come with the positively ancient Radeon 5770 GPU, as rumored earlier today, as well as Intel's last-generation server CPUs.
Most pro users will be sorely disappointed with what Apple is offering, which is essentially three-year old hardware in a 10-year old tower design. Our own sources insist that a more serious update is being worked on, but it seems Apple has left the Mac Pro to languish until that new version is ready.
reader comments
141