Apple’s new Mac Pro goes on sale, can be configured to cost $10,000

At long last, Apple’s new, incredibly small Mac Pro is on sale. Starting December 19 (but shipping in February), you’ll be able to pick up an entry-level Mac Pro for $3000 (quad-core). The mid-range six-core model will set you back $4000. Pricing for the eight- and 12-core systems is not yet available, but a fully maxed out system — with two FirePro graphics cards and 1TB of solid-state storage — is $9600.

The new, cylindrical Mac Pro is a long-overdue update to Apple’s line of workstation-class PCs. Compared to the original Mac Pro brushed aluminium tower (pictured at the end of the story), the new model is an almost shockingly diminutive cylinder. It’s hard to appreciate just how small the Mac Pro is until you see it in real life — it is tiny. The tower, fully kitted out, weighed in the region of 40 pounds (18 kg) — the new Mac Pro is just 11 pounds (5 kg). Likewise, when it comes to other dimensions like height and length, the new Mac Pro is just 10 inches (25 cm) tall and 6.6 inches (16.7 cm) across. It is hard to believe that, in just seven years, the Mac Pro’s volume has been reduced by at least 10 times.

The form factor itself is interesting, too. Almost every PC produced up until this point has been some variation of rectangular prism. From beige box PCs, to game consoles, to tablets — their width and height might change, but their cross-sections are almost always rectangular. There are various reasons for this, but it boils down to two main factors: the constituent components (most chips, hard drives, and logic boards are also rectangular), and cost (it’s relatively cheap and easy to design and fabricate a box). Apple, which prides itself on designs that are outside of the box, seemingly decided it was time for a change. Thus, the new Mac Pro is a cylinder.

Because Apple is still forced to use rectangular components and logic boards, the insides of the Mac Pro are not rounded — rather, it looks a bit like a triangle, with a fairly normal-looking motherboard, and then (if you pay for it) two graphics cards forming the other two sides. This triangle shape creates a fairly large empty space in the middle, or “unified thermal core” in Apple speak, where heat from the CPU and GPUs is dissipated by a single heatsink and fan. If you haven’t looked at the Mac Pro website before, you should check it out — it does a good job of explaining (and showing off) the new cylindrical design.

Such a diminutive chassis doesn’t come without caveats, though. The new Mac Pro is, surprise surprise, very hard to upgrade. You can upgrade the RAM, and we believe the PCI-E solid-state drive should be upgradeable, but that’s it. Due to the unified thermal core, it appears that the CPU and GPUs are non-upgradeable.

You can upgrade the RAM (up to 64GB) and SSD (up to 1TB) at Apple’s online checkout, but the price will likely be extortionate (better to upgrade it yourself). CPU-wise, you have the choice of Intel Xeon E5 chips, with either four, six, eight, or 12 cores. There is no option for dual CPUs. The $3000 model will net you two FirePro D300 graphics cards, and the $4000 model steps that up to dual-FirePro D500, but the Mac Pro can be configured for up to two FirePro D700 graphics cards. The D700 is a serious graphics card — it’s probably a rebadged W9000, which retails for over $3,000. Rounding out the Mac Pro’s specs, there are two Thunderbolt ports, four USB 3.0 ports, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, HDMI out, 802.11ac WiFi, and Bluetooth.

Apple’s Mac Pro online checkout isn’t available yet, so we can’t see how much a top-spec Mac Pro will cost, but we’d estimate that, with a 12-core Xeon, 64GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, and two FirePro D700s, you’re looking at $9,600 — and that’s before you add Apple’s suggested display, the $3600 4K 32-inch Sharp PN-K321.