WWDC 2012: What should have been...

What should have been...

Monday, June 11, Apple, Inc. announced the next generation of their flagship Mac Pro desktop computer. Left untouched for nearly two years, today the Mac Pro received the update many professional users have been looking for.

First up was an all new machined aluminum enclosure. Designed to bridge the gap between a desktop computer and a server, the new Mac Pro can be installed in a standard 19" rack with the optional rails kit. Although Apple has repeatedly expressed their desire to "get out of the datacenter," they appreciated the need of some professional video and audio users to utilize existing rack space in professional editing suites.

As expected, the new Mac Pro utilizes the Intel® Xeon® E3-1275 processor. Apple has partnered with both nVidia® and AMD® to offer professional Mac users three unique graphics options: the ATi Radeon HD 7850, as well as the nVidia GeForce 670 and Quadro 5000 cards. Utilizing up to 32GB of ECC 1600Mhz DDR3 RAM, the Mac Pro includes three Thunderbolt ports (two rear one front), 5 USB 3/2 ports (3 rear 2 front), 4 Gen3 PCIe slots  including one double-width 16x slot, and 3 4x slots. For storage, the machine includes four independent 6gb/s SATA ports, and a slot-loading Superdrive. The default configuration includes a 512GB SSD drive.

The removal of the tray-loading optical drive and the second optical drive bay has some professionals questioning whether Apple will ever support Blu-Ray burning in natively in Mac OS X. Surprisingly, Apple maintained one Firewire 800 port and two Optical digital audio input and output TOSLINK ports on the new Mac Pro. Dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, as well as 802.11 a/b/g and Bluetooth 4.0 round out the connectivity options on the new Mac Pro.

Apple also announced that all Mac Pros would now include Mac OS X Lion server "the simplest server OS in the world."