hey guys it's Greg with Apple explained
and today we're going to explore the
history of the Mac Pro this topic was
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so the Mac Pro is one of Apple's most
powerful computer models in their lineup
and its story begins in 2006 when the
first generation Mac Pro was introduced
it marked the third addition to Apple's
a desktop lineup that still exists today
including the iMac Mac Mini Mac Pro and
the most recent iMac pro now there has
been quite a bit of drama during the Mac
Pros lifespan and we'll discuss why that
is later in the video but in order to
understand the whole story let's travel
back to Apple's 2006 Worldwide
Developers Conference it was Phil
Schiller who introduced the Mac Pro and
it was certainly Apple's most powerful
machine at the time and keep in mind
that the Mac Pro was replacing the Power
Mac g5 which was updated just one year
prior and had already been a more than
capable computer so it's easy to imagine
that the new Mac Pro drew a lot of
attention from Pro customers who needed
a powerful and expansive computer setup
and power is definitely what they got
with the Mac Pro since the standard
configuration featured two quad-core X 8
Intel Xeon CPUs that ran at 2.4
gigahertz one gigabyte of RAM 250
gigabytes of hard drive storage an
nvidia geforce 7300 GT card with 256
megabytes of memory and a 16x super
drive now keep in mind this was the base
configuration and it costs just $2,499
which was 800 dollars cheaper than a
similarly configured Power Mac g5 now
there were other options customers could
choose from like models with one or two
CPUs or choosing between 4 6 8 or 12
core processors and for those who needed
an even more powerful Mac Pro Apple
offered a configuration with 2 hexa core
Intel Xeon X
5670 CPUs that ran at 2.93 gigahertz
now as far as the system memory goes the
original Mac Pro featured 667 megahertz
ddr2 modules which were later upgraded
to 1066 megahertz ddr3 modules used in
standard configurations from 2009 onward
it's also worth mentioning that the
first generation Mac Pro had pretty
impressive harddrive expandability
features it had room for four internal
hard drives that could be directly
mounted into their slot so there was no
need for cables which could tangle or
disconnect as for the type of drives the
original Mac Pro supported 3.5 inch SATA
300 hard drives now as I mentioned
before the Mac Pro featured a dual-core
xeon Woodcrest processor but Apple
upgraded the original processor later on
in 2007 with a quad-core xeon clover
town cpu and it was upgraded for a
second time in 2008 with a dual
quad-core xeon harbortown processor so
all these changes kept the mac pro at
the forefront of Apple's computer lineup
when it came to speed and it quickly
became one of the most popular machines
for professionals and power users now
part of the reason for the Mac Pro
success was its wide array of i/o and
ports which included a total of 5 USB
2.0 ports 2 firewire 400 ports 2
firewire 800 ports and two Gigabit
Ethernet ports now I should mention that
in 2008 all Mac Pro models dropped the 2
firewire 400 ports in favor of 4
firewire 800 ports instead and asked for
its design the Mac Pro didn't changed
much from its predecessor it was still a
large aluminium tower with 4 built-in
handles but it did have one
distinguishing feature and that was an
additional optical drive bay so overall
the first generation of the Mac Pro
featured really impressive
specifications compared to other pro
machines on the market the computer
supported multiple operating systems
including Mac OS 10 point 4 point 7 and
later Microsoft Windows XP Vista and
Windows 7 both 32 and 64-bit but seven
years after
release of the MacPro a new safety
regulation in Europe prevented Apple
from selling the machine to the European
market it wasn't clear in what way
Apple's Mac Pro violated the new
standards but it likely had something to
do with consuming too much power while
idle so Apple was faced with two choices
tweaking the existing Mac Pro in
adherence to European regulation or take
it off market and address the change in
the next generation model Apple took the
second option since their updated Mac
Pro would be released less than a year
later now by 2013 the Mac Pro hadn't
received a major upgrade since its
initial release in 2006 and reliable
sources reported that Steve Jobs
actually considered discontinuing the
Machine due to this neglect by Apple
some users actually began looking
elsewhere for their pro level computers
Apple recognized this frustration and
knew they had to do something major to
reassure Pro users that they were still
making machines for them so Apple did
something very unusual they gave a sneak
peek of the next generation Mac Pro
before was ready to go on sale this
happened on June 10th 2013
during the Worldwide Developers
Conference and Apple's senior vice
president of marketing Phil Schiller
took the stage to give the audience a
first look at the new Mac Pro it's
radical new design was teased in a short
introductory video and the crowd was
blown away the new Mac Pro featured a
cylindrical design that was an eighth of
the volume of its predecessor but packed
in even more powerful technology it
featured a new generation Intel Xeon
processor that allowed for 12 core
configurations which was double the CPU
performance of its predecessor it had
the fastest memory ever included in a
Mac which also ran twice as fast as
before but the new PCIe flash drive
performed even better
coming in at two and a half times faster
than its predecessor the graphics were
also two and a half times as powerful
and supported three external 4k displays
and I should also mention that this Mac
Pro was manufactured in the US which was
a first for Apple in many decades so
with all of these great performance
improvements the new Mac Pro must have
been a huge hit with power users right
well not exact
cailli and this was because of two
factors in particular first it's base
price was increased from two thousand
four hundred ninety nine dollars to two
thousand nine hundred ninety nine
dollars a difference of five hundred
dollars now this could be attributed to
the added cost of manufacturing in the
US but it could also be because of its
expensive new design which brings us to
the second problem expandability you see
the previous Mac Pro was super
expandable and that's why it was such a
large machine it could house a lot of
extra components internally but Apple
opted for external expandability with a
second generation Mac Pro and that
frustrated a lot of users because the
external components were not only more
expensive but they left your desk very
cluttered and this caused many power
users to resent the radical new design
of the Mac Pro which appeared to favor
form over function now I do want to
point out that over all the second
generation Mac Pro was a solid
improvement over its predecessor and
there were many positive reviews
praising things like its ability to
simultaneously support up to six Apple
Thunderbolt displays or three 4k
displays but as the machine was used
more in everyday life the positive
praise slowly turned into strong
criticism many said the radical Mac Pro
design proved to be more of an
inconvenience than an asset and the
biggest problem with the design was its
cooling system the Mac Pro featured what
Apple called a unified thermal core
which had never been used in any Mac's
up to that point air was pushed through
the core by a single fan rather than
using multiple fans like in the past air
was pulled in from under the case and
pushed out through the top which worked
well for the technology of the day but
didn't work well for emerging technology
the problem was with the GPU the Mac Pro
was designed to accommodate two smaller
GPU cards but the tech industry moved in
the opposite direction as a larger GPUs
were released that required a completely
different system architecture than the
Mac Pro provided as a result of this
incompatibility Apple was unable to give
the Mac Pro a spec refresh since its
introduction in 2013 which essentially
made the machine unusable for anyone
that needed
the line technology Apple eventually
came out and issued a public statement
saying they designed themselves into a
bit of a thermal corner and they were
sorry to disappoint customers who wanted
an updated machine Apple also said they
were working on a new modular Mac Pro
that's slated for release sometime in
2019 but that means power users have to
wait even longer for a sufficient
protest top from the company and this
has caused quite a bit of frustration
from many people in the Apple community
since they already had to wait six years
for a second generation Mac Pro only to
be disappointed yet again now many
people have pointed out that Apple
appears to be investing far fewer
resources in their pro products since
the release of the iPhone and iPad and
this wouldn't be too surprising since
the Mac Pro only represents a fraction
of a percent of Apple's total revenue
and considering Apple's focus on
creating products for the post PC era
it wouldn't be shocking to see the Mac
Pro become discontinued in the near
future especially if Apple believes the
iMac Pro to be a sufficient alternative
but as I mentioned before it sounds like
there'll definitely be at least one more
generation of Mac Pro coming in 2019 and
we're all eagerly awaiting to see what
the new model will bring to the table
and I do have hope that Apple will make
the right decisions for the next model
partly because Apple has created what
they call a pro workflow team run by
John Ternes which communicates and
engages with Mac Pro customers in order
to learn what the users are looking for
and how Apple can best meet their needs
now this appears to have helped Apple
identify issues with the current Mac pro
model and steer them in the right
direction when conceiving of the next
generation so because of this effort
Apple now claims to have a much deeper
understanding of what their Pro
customers need and they're working on
addressing those needs in the 2019 Mac
Pro so although we don't know much about
the future of the Mac Pro we can be
fairly confident that Apple's going to
fix the glaring issues of the second
generation and only hope that they don't
introduce any new problems in the
process all that's left to do now is to
wait patiently to see which direction
Apple heads and cross our fingers that
the next Mac Pro
we'll be a lot better than the last so
that is the history of the Mac Pro and
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