Apple officially reveals the 2019 Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR release date
Prices for the basic 2019 Mac Pro start at a staggering $5,999 – it's unclear how much it will cost in the UK
When Apple unveiled its souped-up 2019 Mac Pro at this year’s WWDC 2019, it was a little vague about the release date, simply saying the next-level PC would be available “in the fall.”
Many took this to mean the highly-anticipated machine – a machine that’s been six years in the making since the 2013 Mac Pro went on sale – would be available alongside the latest iPhones. However, the iPhone 11 launch came and went without mention of the Mac Pro, nor of its Pro Display XDR accessory.
It now appears that fans won’t need to wait much longer: those who had registered for updates have been sent emails saying orders for both will open on 10 December. Prices for the basic 2019 Mac Pro start at a staggering $5,999 in the US; it’s unclear how much it will cost in the UK and what each of the customisation options will do to this price.
Needless to say, the Mac Pro is not a mainstream, consumer product.
Given the wording of the email and its references to “orders” rather than the Mac Pro being “available” from this date, it’s unlikely – although not impossible – that the Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR will ship tomorrow. Instead, we’d expect shipping to start at the end of this week, possibly next or even not until the New Year.
2019 Mac Pro
The 2019 Mac Pro is fully customisable and runs on Intel Xeon processors with up to 28 cores and 64 PCI Express lanes for top-level performance and bandwidth.
Memory-wise, it has a six-channel memory architecture and 12 physical DIMM slots, allowing for 1.5TB of memory and its graphics performance reaches up to 56 teraflops. This is the maximum, however.
The Mac Pro graphics options actually start with the Radeon Pro 580X and rise up to the Radeon Pro Vega II, featuring up to 14 teraflops of compute performance and 32GB of memory with 1TB/s of memory bandwidth, and the Radeon Pro Vega II Duo, which, as its name suggests, has two Vega II GPUs for 28 teraflops of graphics performance and 64GB of memory.
Due to the fact that the Mac Pro can accommodate two MPX Modules, customers can install two Vega II Duos to reach the maximum 56 teraflops of graphics performance with 128GB of video memory.
Pro Display XDR
Designed to compete with screens costing tens of thousands of pounds, the Pro Display XDR is a 32in monitor, and Apple’s first monitor since the Thunderbolt Display was discontinued back in 2016.
It’s a 6K screen, with a resolution of 6,016 x 3,384, has HDR, P3 and 10-bit colour, can display one billion colours, and displays up to 1,600 nits of brightness. The standard display costs $4,999 with an anti-reflective coating, although can pay an additional $1,000 for a Pro Display XDR with matte nano-textured glass.
Alongside the screen itself, Apple is also selling a Pro stand, for a further $999. This includes tile and height adjustment, as well as letting the display be flipped to portrait mode.