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After letting the Mac Pro become stagnant since 2013, Apple has finally unveiled the new version. In early 2017, Apple made a handful of announcements regarding the product. The company explained that it is rethinking its Mac Pro approach and plans to unveil a new modular model sometime in the future.

The company admitted that its 2013 model approach hasn’t been as upgradable in practice as it had hoped.

At some point [Apple] came to the conclusion that the 2013 Mac Pro concept was fundamentally flawed. It was tightly integrated internally, which allowed for some very nice features: it was small and beautiful (a pro machine that demanded placement on your desk, not under your desk) and it could run whisper quietly. But that tight integration made it hard to update regularly. The idea that expansion could be handled almost entirely by external Thunderbolt peripherals sounded good on paper, but hasn’t panned out in practice. And the GPU design was a bad prediction. Apple bet on a dual-GPU design (multiple smaller GPUs, with “pro”-level performance coming from parallel processing) but the industry has gone entirely in the other direction (machines with one big GPU).

Phil Schiller acknowledged that the 2013 Mac Pro had not been well received by many pros, and it was this that had led to the radical rethink.

With regards to the Mac Pro, we are in the process of what we call “completely rethinking the Mac Pro”. We’re working on it. We have a team working hard on it right now, and we want to architect it so that we can keep it fresh with regular improvements, and we’re committed to making it our highest-end, high-throughput desktop system, designed for our demanding pro customers.

As part of doing a new Mac Pro — it is, by definition, a modular system — we will be doing a pro display as well. Now you won’t see any of those products this year; we’re in the process of that. We think it’s really important to create something great for our pro customers who want a Mac Pro modular system, and that’ll take longer than this year to do.

In the interim, we know there are a number of customers who continue to buy our [current Mac Pros]. To be clear, our current Mac Pro has met the needs of some of our customers, and we know clearly not all of our customers. None of this is black and white, it’s a wide variety of customers. Some… it’s the kind of system they wanted; others, it was not.

In the meantime, we’re going to update the configs to make it faster and better for their dollar. This is not a new model, not a new design, we’re just going to update the configs. We’re doing that this week. We can give you the specifics on that.

The CPUs, we’re moving them down the line. The GPUs, down the line, to get more performance per dollar for customers who DO need to continue to buy them on the interim until we get to a newly architected system.

At WWDC 2019 Apple offered the first look at its new Mac Pro. The new version is a return of the cheese grater design from a generation previous.

Apple says the new Mac Pro was designed with easy access to its components. There are stainless steel handles for modularity, all internal components mount to the frame with 360-degree components.

Mac Pro Specs

  • 300 watts of power, runs fully unconstrained
  • 2933MHz ECC memory, 12 DIMM slots
  • 8 internal PCI slots, four double-wide slots, three single side slots
  • Half-length slot populated with two TB3 ports, audio jack, two USB A ports, two 10Gb Ethernet ports
  • Up to 1.5 terabytes of RAM
  • Intel Xeon processor with up to 28 cores
  • Apple designed a PCI connector with a second PCIe connector and power
  • Multiple graphics options; can configure with options such as Radeon Pro Vega II
  • Two GPUs connected via Infinity Fabric Link, 5X faster than PCI bust
  • Apple built a brand new card called Afterburner for video editing, 6 billion pixels per second. 3 streams of 8K, 12 streams of 4K

Mac Pro Pricing

The new Mac Pro starts at $5999 for 8-core, 32GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. If you include all of the upgrade options, it can reach a $50,000 price point.

Mac Pro Release Date

The Mac Pro was released in December of 2019.

Apple releasing ‘assembled-in-USA’ 2013 Mac Pro tomorrow

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After three years without a substantial update and several months of teasing and promoting, Apple has finally announced that tomorrow it will begin selling the newly designed and more powerful Mac Pro it first showed off at WWDC back in June. (Full press release below.)

The road was certainly not rapid between update cycles with two years of nary a word on whether or not the Mac Pro line had any life left in it and a full year of teasing and promoting the 2013 model being released tomorrow. Let’s take a look at the Mac Pro saga that led to today’s debut…
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Review: Seiki’s 39-inch 4K TV as a display for a 2013 MacBook Pro with Intel Iris

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On Black Friday week, Amazon ($449) and Sears ($499) went into a price war on the 39-inch “120Hz” Seiki 4K displays culminating in a Sub-$400 price (that I jumped on) for the 39-inch variant.

I’ve been using it as a 4K, 3840×2160 display for my MacBook Pro 2013 base model (no discrete graphics) off and on for a week.

How is it as a HDTV? Can you use it as a 4K display? Should you? Here’s my take:
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iPodfather and Nest CEO spotted showing off (RED) Mac Pro, Gold EarPods (Updated)

Famed former head of Apple’s iPod devision and current founder and CEO of Nest Tony Fadell was recently spotted showing off the Jony Ive-designed and auctioned Product (RED) Mac Pro and Gold EarPods.

It’s unclear whether Mr. Fadell was the buyer at either auction, but both photos suggest he is the owner of both one-of-a-kind treasures from the company he helped build strong in the early 2000’s.

[tweet https://twitter.com/kevinabosch/status/410783676801118208]

[tweet https://twitter.com/kevinabosch/status/410767365366763520]

The Mac Pro sold at auction for $977,000 while the EarPods went for just under half a million dollars at $461,000.

Update 12/13/2013: A day and a half following the original tweets showing Tony Fadell photographed with the auctioned products, Mr. Fadell has clarified that he is not the owner of either.

[tweet https://twitter.com/tfadell/status/411508413428813824]

Removal of Sharp display from Apple Store probably doesn’t mean Apple’s 4K display is imminent

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The ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ Sharp PN-K321 4K display

When Apple started offering a Sharp 4K display in its European online Apple Store, then withdrew it shortly afterwards, some speculated that this might mean an Apple 4K display is about to be launched.

It’s possible, of course, but I strongly suspect not. As I argued in October, the launch of the Mac Pro would have been the obvious point at which to announce an Apple 4K display – and current MacBook Pros can’t drive 4K displays at decent frame-rates, so I can’t see Apple launching a display that would leave the bulk of Mac owners disappointed.

The far more likely explanation is that Apple plans to sell the Sharp displays alongside the Mac Pro once it launches – as I suggested it might in that same opinion piece in October. The displays were inadvertently made live on the store before the Pro was launched, and have been removed until the Pro is available … 
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Apple selling 4K Sharp 32-inch displays via international online stores

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Ahead of the next-generation Mac Pro launch later this month, Apple has begun selling Sharp’s 32-inch 4K HD LED Monitor via its online store. The pricy display, which we lusted after during a hands-on earlier this year, has a 32-inch diagonal panel at a resolution of 3840 x 2160. (you can currently pick this up at retailers like B&H in the US  or Amazon where it retails for $3200-3300 – price drops in cart).

With its 32-inch class (31.5-inch diagonal) screen size, 3840 x 2160 high definition resolution and energy efficient edge-lit LED backlight, the Sharp PN-K321 monitor is ideal for professional applications where it’s essential to view detailed information displayed with precision. This super-high resolution display allows you to view the content of four full HD screens on a single seamless display. It also features IGZO* technology, which supports increased pixel transparency and reduced current leakage, thereby making the monitor more energy efficient.

The recent MacBook Pro with Retina display models can drive a single 4K display, while the upcoming Mac Pro can support up to three 4K monitors. Sources say that Apple Stores in the United States will have these monitors available for order in the coming months.

It’s likely that Apple is selling this Sharp unit just to give new Mac Pro users something to use until its own 4K display, which is floating around the Cupertino labs, is ready to ship…


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German retailer claims new Mac Pro availabile starting Dec.16, kicks off preorders

While it’s certainly far from confirmation of a launch date from Apple, German retailer Conrad today posted an availability date of December 16 for the new Mac Pro (via Apefelpage.de).

The retailer is an authorized reseller, but we’re thinking this is more likely a placeholder date. The company is still advertising the Mac Pro listing on its homepage, so it’s not like the listing slipped out accidentally. It’s also taking preorders for two configurations of the device– not a bad way to get some press and capitalize on preorders before everyone else, even if they don’t really know the date. If the Mac Pro does go on sale on the 16th, Apple could have enough time to ship orders out for Christmas.

For now the only release window Apple has confirmed is “December”.

Apple will have several configurations and built to order options available for the next-gen Mac Pro including Quad 6, 8, or 12-core designs. The base model includes a 3.7GHz quad-core Xeon processor, 12GB of DRAM, Dual FirePro D300 graphics, 2GB VRAM each, and a 256GB SSD starting at  $2999, and Apple will also sell a $3999 configuration with a 6-core 3.5GHz Intel Xeon E5 processor, 16GB DDR3 ECC memory (configurable up to 32GB), and Dual AMD FirePro D500 with 3GB GDDR5 VRAM each.

Filemaker releases new version for 2013 with HTML5 data entry, new iOS features and tightened security

Filemaker, a subsidiary of Apple, has just announced its 2013 version of its popular database application. The new version focuses on bringing desktop database solutions to the browser. New in Filemaker ’13, projects can now be managed through a centralized web dashboard, with options for partner portals and file hosting. More importantly, data entry can now be taken in a web interface — HTML5 powered forms enable businesses to manage their deployments on any PC or Mac, as there is no longer a reliance on having the native applications installed.


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Jony Ive and Marc Newson’s special edition red Mac Pro sells for $977,000 at Sotheby’s auction

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The one of a kind, special edition red Mac Pro designed by Jony Ive and Marc Newson brought in a whopping $977k at Sotheby’s (RED) Auction this evening in New York. The custom Mac was estimated to sell for $40-60,000, but ended up fetching quite a bit more than its value, as did the majority of the other items sold at the charity auction. Recently, Ive and Newson shared their thoughts on the auction and design in an interview on Charlie Rose. 


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Apple SVP Jony Ive and Marc Newson on Charlie Rose [Video]

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[tweet https://twitter.com/CharlieRoseShow/status/403659673699905536]

The Charlie Rose Show has tweeted that Jony Ive and Marc Newson are interviewed on the show, which aired last night in some markets and is shown tonight in others.

[ooyala code=”NnaG1raDqtQJgUvvrjx6fWautfqKsifC” player_id=”null”]

The two previously appeared in a five-minute video talking about the items they designed for tomorrow’s charity RED auction, which include special editions of the Mac Pro and Leica M camera, and an aluminum desk … 
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Unlock your Mac by knocking on your iPhone with the new ‘Knock’ app

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyX8FfSKg04

Knock uses a combination of an iPhone app (currently offered at an introductory price of $3.99)  and a Mac app (available for free at Knock’s website) to enable unlocking of your Mac, wirelessly, by just knocking the back of your iPhone.

It’s a surreal experience. After a couple of minutes of initial setup, you lock your Mac and rap the back of your paired iPhone twice. Your Mac unlocks. The app doesn’t even have to be forefront on your phone, although it does have to be ‘open’ in the multitasking tray. In fact, your phone doesn’t even have to be unlocked. When it senses the Mac is near, a notification appears on the lock screen instructing you to knock. There are some nice UI touches too. For instance, echoes of the ‘sound wave’ appear on OS X’s lock screen in real time as you knock. It’s a subtle visual indicator that the system is actually working.


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A look at the hardcover catalog for Jony Ive’s Sotheby’s (RED) Auction

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As we’ve been covering, Jony Ive and Marc Newson have teamed with Sotheby’s to host an auction for Bono’s Product(RED) Charity. The auction, which takes place on November 23rd, is highlighted by several items hand picked by the two world-famous designers. The auction includes one-of-a-kind items such as gold-plated Apple EarPods, an aluminum unibody Leica camera, and a red next-generation Mac Pro.

In addition to the images and online catalog of the products, we thought it would be interested to provide a look at Sotheby’s hardcover version of the catalog. As you can see in the images above, the book has an intriguing front and back cover design that showcase cartoon-like representations of both Ive and Newson. Inside, the catalog provides an in-depth look at the items on auction.

You can see our full gallery of images of the catalog below, courtesy of 9to5 reader Chris:


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Apple promoting new Mac Pro with posters sent to select journalists

Following last week’s Apple event that provided some final technical, shipping, and pricing details for the next-generation Mac Pro, Apple has begun sending out posters to a limited set of journalists to promote the upcoming computer. The posters give a look into the distinct design of the workstation and have an interesting description of the computer’s creation imprinted on them. That image can be seen below. More images on Jeff Carlson’s Flickr (via TechCrunch). The new Mac Pro ships in December.


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Jony Ive and Marc Newson design (PRODUCT)RED next-generation Mac Pro for Sotheby’s auction

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We’ve been posting images of various items designed by Apple’s Senior Vice President of Design Jony Ive and designer & friend Marc Newson for an upcoming  (Product) RED charity auction scheduled for November 23 at Sotheby’s New York. The latest was an aluminium Leica M camera designed by the pair, and today we get a look at a one-of-a-kind red next-generation Mac Pro listed on the Sotheby’s website.

The red Mac Pro is expected to bring in 40,000 — 60,000 USD at the auction. While there is no mention of specs for the machine, compare that with $2999 for the base model of the new Mac Pro that Apple announced earlier this week will begin shipping in December. That model includes a a 3.7GHz quad-core Xeon processor, 12GB of DRAM, Dual FirePro D300 graphics, 2GB VRAM each, and a 256GB 22D, and Apple has a $3999 configuration with a 6-core 3.5GHz Intel Xeon E5, Dual AMD FirePro D500, and 16GB of ECC memory.

Other items designed by Ive and Newson set to be auctioned off on November 23rd include an aluminium desk produced by Neal Feay Studios, a Steinway & Sons Parlor Grand Piano, a 2012 Range Rover, and the rose gold Apple EarPods. Full gallery of the red Mac Pro below. 
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Opinion: What are Apple’s plans for 4K displays?

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There was one notable omission from Apple’s recent flurry of new product announcements: a 4K display. It will launch one in time, of course – and I’ll come to that shortly. But in the meantime, there’s the question of how it demonstrates one of the key capabilities of the new Mac Pro.

Sure, they could hook it up to multiple Thunderbolt Displays, but that’s not the same: Apple made a point when launching the machine of pointing out that it could drive three simultaneous 4K displays. That’s a capability you’d imagine it would want to at least show off in-store, and perhaps even offer for sale …


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Graphics card on new Mac Pro could be upgradeable

French site Mac4Ever says that a hands-on look at the machine suggests that it may in future be possible to upgrade the graphic card in the new Mac Pro. We’ve also heard a whisper of unofficial confirmation from an Apple source.

According to our information, it is possible to change the graphics card in this machine. In fact, the GPU is placed on a daughter card, it is possible to remove and thus replace. As you might expect, Apple uses a proprietary connector (as is the case for SSD array present on the rest of the range). But there’s nothing to prevent, on paper, a manufacturer deciding to offer compatible cards. It’s even possible that Apple would offer upgrades. The other good news is NVidia is no longer (at least on paper) completely eliminated as a future possibility for the Mac Pro.

I’m not sure I buy the official Apple upgrade idea: if Apple intended the machine to be that upgradeable, it would likely have made the CPU upgradeable too. But it certainly seems possible that the construction would make it at least technically possible for third-party graphics card upgrades to be made available at a later date.

Graphics work is a key application for the machine. Apple recently noted that a number of professionals had been testing the machine, among them award-winning extreme sports photographer Lucas Gilman.

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Promise Technology announces first Thunderbolt 2 storage products offering speeds up to 20Gbps

While the Mac Pro was expected to be the first machine to launch with the new Thunderbolt 2 standard announced by Intel earlier this year, Apple just unveiled its updated MacBook Pro this week that also received the new Thunderbolt 2 technology. That means it’s time for companies to start announcing storage products and other Thunderbolt accessories that also adopt the faster 20Gbps, 4k video capable Thunderbolt 2. The first to announce new products is Promise Technology (via MacRumors), with two new storage solutions including the Pegasus2 hardware RAID and the SANLink2 Thunderbolt 2 to 8G Fibre Channel bridge:

Running bi-directionally at 20Gbps – twice the bandwidth of Thunderbolt at 10Gbps – Thunderbolt 2 is a breakthrough technology for video creators and multimedia professionals because it allows for simultaneous transfer and display of high-bandwidth 3D and 4K video files, which often requires 15Gbps… Pegasus2, the ideal external RAID storage solution, is available in 4-bay, 6-bay and 8-bay enclosures, and maximizes the available line rate of Thunderbolt 2 by providing blistering fast transfer speeds for a growing number of 4K applications. With two Thunderbolt 2 ports, 6 devices can be attached – allowing for daisy chaining of up to 6 Pegasus enclosure units, Apple Thunderbolt Displays, or Mini DisplayPort devices.

SANLink2 is a portable device bridge which provides dual 8Gbps Fibre Channel ports and dual 20Gbps Thunderbolt 2 ports and can be used to connect Thunderbolt 2 systems directly to a high-speed Fibre Channel SAN, such as the PROMISE VTrak x10 or x30 RAID storage system or a VTrak A-Class shared SAN storage appliance for scale out capabilities and real time raw video HD/4K footage ingest, editing, and collaboration. SANLink 2 enables connectivity that provides flexibility to 4K workflows by removing limitations of systems previously unable to connect directly to a Fibre Channel SAN, and is backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 1.

Pegasus2 will be available from Apple Online Stores  and other retailers in 8TB, 12TB, 18TB, 24TB, and 32TB variants in November, and SANLink2 will become available in December.

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Analysis of new Mac Pro video shows how it’s assembled in the US

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGg-Uu0WxXc

Yesterday during Apple’s iPad Air event, the company officially announced pricing and availability for the next-generation Mac Pro with the completely redesigned high-end Mac shipping in December starting at $2999. Since the new Mac Pro will be one of the first devices assembled in the US under Apple’s new initiative to bring manufacturing of some of its Macs back home, the company also ran a short video showing off the assembly process of the machine.

Today, industrial designer Greg Koenig has provided an interesting walkthrough of the video on his blog AtomicDelights that gives us an understanding of exactly what we’re looking at in Apple’s video above:

Most metal stampings go through one or two die tools to produce the final shape. With the Mac Pro though, the challenge is to produce a massive amount of plastic deformation without tearing, rippling or deforming the perfect cylindrical surface. To do this, the enclosure is drawn through a series of dies that progressively stretch the aluminum into something approaching the final shape of a Mac Pro.

Deep drawing is a process that very efficiently produces a “net shape” part. Apple could have just chucked a giant hunk of aluminum in a lathe and created the same part, but that amount of metal removal is extremely inefficient. Deep drawing efficiently creates a hunk of metal that is very close to the final shape of a Mac Pro in just a couple of operations. After that, the Mac Pro enclosure is lathe turned to clean up the surface and achieve desired tolerance, polished, placed back in a machining center to produce the I/O, power button and chamfer features and finally anodized.

With the Mac Pro, Apple has elevated a relatively low-precision/low-tolerance process (deep draw stamping) used to make my dog’s water bowl and toilet brush canister into the creation of an aerospace grade piece of desktop jewelry.

You can check out the full walkthrough of the video on AtomicDelights here.

(via @drwave)

Interview with photographer Lucas Gilman, one of the only pros already using Apple’s next-gen Mac Pro

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During Apple’s next-generation Mac Pro portion of its iPad event earlier today, the company took some time to present first impressions from a few professionals that have been using the machine. While the public won’t officially get its hands on it until December, Apple noted that three professionals had been testing the new Mac Pro. One of those pros was award-winning extreme sports photographer Lucas Gilman pictured above next to his Mac Pro setup with a 4K Sharp display. We thought it would be interesting to have a chat with one of the only people in the world currently using the new Mac Pro, so we’ve reached out to Gilman to get his first impressions and learn more about his experience with Apple’s completely redesigned professional Mac line.

Head below for the full interview.
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Pixelmator 3.0 FX released: adds layer styles, ‘Liquify’ warping tools, Mac Pro and Mavericks optimizations

Today, the team behind Pixelmator has released the latest version of their app, version 3.0 FX. As before, the app is available on the Mac App Store for $29.99. The update brings a slew of changes to the already popular image editor, especially considering version 2.2 was only released a few weeks ago. 9to5Mac has had access to a preview copy of the update for a few days … so read on for a full walkthrough of the changes.

The headline feature for Pixelmator 3.0 is the addition of layer styles. Layer styles apply effects such as strokes, fills, shadows and reflections to the entire layer in very few clicks. More importantly, these changes are non-destructive — they affect the layer, not the canvas pixels themselves. This means layer effects can be undone and manipulated without changing the underlying image data. In fact, layer styles can even be copied to the clipboard and duplicated across layers.


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Apple announces new Mac Pro pricing and availability, ships by Dec. starting at $2999

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After first unveiling the completely redesigned Mac Pro at WWDC earlier this year, Apple today gave the new machine a bit of stage time at its iPad event to announce pricing and availability details. The base model of the new Mac Pro (pictured above) will start at $2999 and ship by the end of the year.

While Apple will presumably have several configurations and built to order options available for the next-gen Mac Pro– including Quad 6, 8, or 12-core designs– it only announced base pricing for the configuration above. That model includes a 3.7GHz quad-core Xeon processor, 12GB of DRAM, Dual FirePro D300 graphics, 2GB VRAM each, and a 256GB 22D.

Apple is also listing a $3999 configuration on its online store that comes with a 6-core 3.5GHz Intel Xeon E5 processor, 16GB DDR3 ECC memory (configurable up to 32GB), and Dual AMD FirePro D500 with 3GB GDDR5 VRAM each.

Apple also mentioned on stage that it has new versions of Final Cut Pro and Aperture that support 4k and other features of the new Mac Pro while presenting first impressions from professionals that have been using the new machine.

The new Mac Pro features an all-new cylinder design that is 1/8th the volume of previous generation Mac Pros and also packs in some impressive specs that Apple’s Phil Schiller walked through today on stage (gallery below).  The new machine includes the latest Xeon processors in Quad 6, 8, or 12-core configurations, dual station FirePro GPUs with up to 12GB of GDDR5 VRAM, 4K video support, PCIe-based flash, ECC memory, and six Thunderbolt 2 ports.

Other specs include HDMI, Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11ac WiFi, up to 1TB of flash storage, and a motion sensor that lights up I/O when picking up the Mac Pro.

Apple also noted today that it aimed to have the new Mac Pro as quite as the current Mac Mini and was able to achieve that goal.

The new Mac Pro will be assembled in the USA as part of Apple’s plan to bring manufacturing of some of its Macs back to the U.S. this year. (Full press release below)
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Apple Store goes down for updates in run-up to launch event (Update: iWork on iCloud goes down as well)

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As always in the run up to a launch event, the Apple Store has been taken offline for updates ahead of today’s iPad-focused event. Apple has also taken down iWork for iCloud, promising that it will be back in a few hours with “great new features.”

Additionally, Apple has updated its homepage with a promo for the event … 
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Apple will be live-streaming today’s launch event on web & Apple TV

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Apple will be live streaming today’s launch event, first revealed by the Apple Events channel returning to Apple TV, the icon displaying the theme for the event and a message saying “tune in at 10 am for the live stream.”

The event will also be streamed on the web when it begins at 10am Pacific/1pm Eastern. As usual, live streaming requires Safari 4 or later on OS X v10.6 or later; Safari on iOS 4.2 or later. Streaming via Apple TV requires second- or third-generation Apple TV with software 5.0.2 or later.

Details below of what we’re expecting to see … 
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