I'll be damned - new Mac Pros coming next week !?!

Videoguys by Gary Bettan

Yesterday afternoon while I was at the Adobe CS6 roadshow in New York City, the buzz started trickling in about new Mac Pros coming from Apple next week! This is indeed very exciting news, and something that the Pro Video community has been clamoring and begging for. When Apple launched FCPX and killed FCP7, it sent chills down the spine of the creative community. A year later and while Apple has been improving FCPX, many pros still feel abandoned. They are waiting for the other shoe to drop. So many of my customers have already switched from FCP to either Adobe or Avid. A large percentage of them have also been looking into, exploring and experimenting with PCs. Patience was running out. The Pro community wants a definitive answer from Apple. Is there going to be an updated Mac Pro line-up or is Mac Pro dead?

By now many of you should be aware of the "We Want a New Macpro" page on Facebook, as well as the "Mac Pro Challenge" poll that Michael Kammes and Kanene Flowers launched on twitter. I know that I came back from NAB pretty darn confident that Apple was killing the Mac Pro, and said so in "The Post PC era" section of our NAB report. It looks like I was wrong, and I couldn't be happier!

Here are a few links to the latest Mac Pro rumors:

• AppleInsider: Mac Pro in-store pickup inventory slips ahead of WWDC

Apple's aging tower computer is seeing a drought of in-store availability with many stores quoting new stock shipments on June 12, which could mean that a refresh of the long-in-the-tooth PC is imminent and may be announced at WWDC next week.

• 9to5Mac: After nearly two years without an update, Apple to finally revamp Mac Pro next week

Besides those three Mac lines updates, we were unsure if the either the Mac mini or the Mac Pro would make it as the fourth update. We speculated that it could be the Mac mini due to the newly available Ivy Bridge processors, but now, reliable sources are reporting that Apple will, in fact, unveil a new Mac Pro at WWDC next week.

• Engadget: Possible new Mac Pro part numbers tip up, WWDC attendees raise eyebrows (Update: 15-inch MBP specs too?)

Possible new Mac Pro part numbers tip up, WWDC attendees raise eyebrows. We're still unsure as to whether or not Apple's rumored Mac update smorgasbord will come to pass at WWDC, but if any of it pans out, it looks to be the almost mythological Mac Pro update.

I hope the rumours are correct. I also hope that Apple really delivers a major new advancement on Mac Pro, not just a refresh like they did two years ago. We know they'll have Ivy Bridge, Multi-Core Xeon Processors & tons of RAM. But what else?What new features would I love to see in the new Mac Pro.

1. Thunderbolt ports. At least two. Along with standard display ports.
2. USB3. Thunderbolt is better, but you need a $50 cable and the cost premium for Thunderbolt peripherals is still quite high. Let us use more affordable USB3 devices if that's the way we want to go.
3. NVIDIA Graphics support. Not just one card like we have now. I love the Quadro4000, but many of my cinstomers dson;t need that kind of premium card, and some want even more power. I want to see GTX 670/680 cards supported, as well as Quadro 2000, 4000, 5000 and 6000.
4. Blu-ray. Yeah, I know that Apple hates Blu-ray. They think it's DOA. Well I know that more and more people want to have a deliverable that they can keep on a shelf. Sure Vimeo and other services are great for sharing HD video, but many folks still want it on a shiny disk. Blu-ray players are cheap, affordable and they've become more then just Blu-ray players. Many are cloud devices which extend your viewing to on line services like YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter and web browsing.
5. eSATA. Yeah I know, I already asked for USB3 and Thunderbolt. What can I say. There is a ton of legacy external storage that runs on eSATA.