New Mac Pro at NAB ?

[Marcus Moore]

[Craig Seeman] “Already been stated that something is coming this year. We don’t know when or what but they’ve indicated it will be of interest to “professionals.””

This ground has been covered before, but what’s coming isn’t nearly as vague as some might think.

Larry Jordan’s recent post “Will Apple Release a New MacPro”‘ has had the most even handed roundup on this:

https://www.larryjordan.biz/app_bin/wordpress/archives/2119

Basically, though the wording of Cooks email may not have been iron-clad…

Our Pro customers like you are really important to us. Although we didn’t have a chance to talk about a new Mac Pro at today’s event, don’t worry as we’re working on something really great for later next year.

…I think you have to really be trying to pull the wording apart to get the impression that Tim Cook is not talking about releasing a new MacPro.

But this all seems moot since, as per Larry’s article,

Shortly thereafter, Apple PR clarified that Tim’s comments were correct, that a new MacPro was slated for release in “early 2013.” This was reported by David Pogue, Technology Editor for the New York Times. Read David’s entire post here. (I confirmed this with David in a series of private emails after his column.)

So there you go. Unless something remarkable is afoot, it’s a new MacPro.

And even if the form factor does change (and I think it will in some way), why WOULDN’T it be called the MacPro anyway? Within their current naming conventions what else are they going to call it?

Because we’ve been going thru a couple of transitionary hardware cycles, things look way messier than they should. I think we’re going to see a refocusing of the product line as Apple finished these transitions.

Right now on the portables side, we have the MacBookAir, MacBookPro, and MacBookPro with Retina (and the iPad). Thin and light is applicable to all Mac laptops to a certain extent, and the Retina version of the MBP is only going to be around until they can commoditize the cost of the screen enough to get rid of the old model. In a year or two, I think we’ll just have (iPad), MacBook, and MacBookPro.

On the desktop side, there’s the MacMini, the iMac, and the MacPro. The iMac name doesn’t really make sense anymore, as “i” is now synonymous with the iOS stuff- however it’s a brand name that people recognize, so I’m sure it’s been tough for Apple to consider dropping it. But it would make a lot more sense if there were simply the MacMini, the Mac, and the MacPro.

But all this is to say that MacPro is the only name that makes sense based on how they’re naming they’re products, regardless of what it ends up looking like.