APPLE'S NEW MAC BOOK PRO STARTING PRICE $2999 DUE TO RELEASE IN DECEMBER

APPLE'S NEW MAC PRO

Apple's new and improved Mac Pro, originally previewed at Apple's WWDC conference in June 2013, now has a price and something closer to an actual release date. The powerful desktop, with its new cylindrical design, will be available on a still-unspecified date in December, starting at $2,999.
Apple calls this the future of the pro-level desktop, and the company is emphasizing its use in high-end movie and music production, although I'm sure graphic designers, website builders, and other creative types will be trying to work one of these into their budgets.

That initial $2,999 investment gets you a 3.7GHz Intel Xeon processor, 12GB RAM, a 256GB SSD, and AMD FirePro graphics. That SSD storage is of the faster PCIe type found in the current MacBook and iMac systems. WiFi is the latest 802.11ac standard, also found on MacBook laptops.

Ports and connections are normally covered, but the port panel lights up when you open the cover, allowing for easy access. There, you'll find six Thunderbolt 2 ports that can power up to three simultaneous 4K displays, including one from a built-in HDMI output.

The smaller design is built around cooling and efficiency, and Apple says the new Mac Pro will be 70-percent more efficient than the current Mac Pro desktop, which is a much more traditional-looking tower desktop. It's also reportedly very quiet, with minimal fan noise, which Apple compares to the sound level of a Mac Mini desktop.

New design, new features 

In addition, the Mac Pro at long last has a new look and feel. The current tower design is one of the oldest in the Apple catalog, changing little from when it was called the Power Mac G5. Up until now, the Mac Pro has been missing USB 3.0, Thunderbolt, and other features many MacBook users take for granted.

The new model has a striking new look. The first view we saw was from the top, where the circular design reminded me of Apple's planned new UFO-like headquarters. It's actually a tall black cylinder, but much smaller than the tower it replaces, fitting into one-eighth the volume of the previous Mac Pro.

Components are built around a "central thermal core," and the specs include an Intel Xeon CPU, faster 1,866GHz RAM, and new SSD storage that's 2.5 times faster than current SSD drives. Dual AMD FirePro GPUs are supported (even though current MacBook Pros use Nvidia graphics), and the system can output to as many as three 4K resolution displays.