Reprinted from TidBITS by permission; reuse governed by Creative Commons license BY-NC-ND 3.0. TidBITS has offered years of thoughtful commentary on Apple and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the entire TidBITS archive, visit http://www.tidbits.com/ Mac Pro Available to Order, Shipping in February 2014 Adam C. Engst Apple's much-anticipated new [1]Mac Pro, first announced in June 2013 at WWDC and further described four months later, is now available to order (see '[2]Apple Gets Around to a New Mac Pro,' 10 June 2013 and '[3]Details Emerge about the New Mac Pro,' 22 October 2013). If you haven't been paying attention, the new Mac Pro is a 9.9-inch tall, 6.6-inch wide (25.1 by 16.8 cm) cylinder, encased in gleaming black polished aluminum, and packed with more CPU and GPU power than any previous Mac. [4][tn_New-Mac-Pro.jpg] The 'to order' words above are key; although Apple apparently said that some units will start shipping by the end of December 2013, the Apple Store predicts February 2014 as the ship date for orders placed now. The Mac Pro is being built at a new plant in the United States, and given that it's a completely new industrial design, we're not surprised that Apple might have trouble making them quickly. Although Apple offers [5]two standard configurations ' a $2,999 quad-core model and a $3,999 6-core model ' there's no apparent difference apart from the starting options, which fall into four categories: processor, memory, storage, and graphics. In terms of processor choices, there's a confusing drop in clock speed as the number of cores increases, though we presume that the more cores (and more L3 cache memory), the better the performance for savvy apps, given the price increases. [6]Marco Arment explains some of what's going on ' in short, Turbo Boost causes the clock speeds to drop as more cores are brought into play in order to keep the maximum heat output within manageable limits. * 3.7 GHz quad-core Intel Xeon E5 with 10 MB of L3 cache * 3.5 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon E5 with 12 MB of L3 cache (Add $500) * 3.0 GHz 8-core Intel Xeon E5 with 25 MB of L3 cache (Add $2,000) * 2.7 GHz 12-core Intel Xeon E5 with 30 MB of L3 cache (Add $3,500) With memory, the least you can get is 12 GB, with the jump to 16 GB adding $100, 32 GB coming in at $500 more, and 64 GB putting an additional $1,300 onto the price. Storage is similar, with 256 GB of flash storage standard and twice that ' 512 GB ' costing $300 more. A full 1 TB of flash storage adds $800, but realistically, it probably makes the most sense to stick with a relatively small internal SSD for Mac OS X and your apps, and then store all data on fast external drives. Lastly, if graphics processing is important for your work (and it likely will be for many Mac Pro users), you can choose from dual AMD FirePro D300 GPUs with 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM each, or bump up to dual D500 GPUs with 3 GB of VRAM for $400 more, or dual D700 GPUs with 6 GB of VRAM for $1,000 more. Apple suggests a Sharp 32-inch PN-K321 4K Ultra HD LED Monitor with that, for a hefty $3,595; if you don't want a 4K display, the 27-inch Thunderbolt Display is only $999. If you have the money, the Mac Pro can run up to three 4K displays or up to six Thunderbolt displays. In terms of [7]basic specs, the Mac Pro has four USB 3.0 ports, six Thunderbolt 2 ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, and an HDMI port with support for multichannel audio output. 802.11ac Wi-Fi is standard, as is Bluetooth 4.0. In terms of audio support, it has a combined optical digital audio output/analog line out minijack, a headphone minijack with headset support, and a built-in speaker. Needless to say, the Mac Pro comes with OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and undoubtedly will not support any previous versions of Mac OS X. While the prices of the standard configurations were revealed back in October, it wasn't clear how expensive a maxed-out Mac Pro would be until now. Going for all of Apple's options (but not a monitor, keyboard, or mouse) raises the price to a whopping $9,599. That's a lot of money, to be sure, but in a quick pass through Dell's and HP's Web sites, trying to match configurations resulted in numbers that are similar or even higher. Put simply, if you're buying high-end hardware these days, you're doing specialized work and you're willing to pay more for performance. When I need to replace my current 2008 Mac Pro, it won't be with one of Apple's new cylindrical Mac Pro models because I just don't do anything that an iMac (or likely even a Mac mini) can't handle. In the past, I always bought Apple's Power Macs and Mac Pros because everyday apps like word processors and databases benefited from the power boost, and because only Apple's towers supported multiple displays. I'll just have to get over the fact that I'm no longer a pro, at least in Apple's eyes. References 1. http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/ 2. http://tidbits.com/article/13831 3. http://tidbits.com/article/14216 4. http://tidbits.com/resources/2013-12/New-Mac-Pro.png 5. http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/mac-pro 6. http://www.marco.org/2013/11/26/new-mac-pro-cpus 7. http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/ .