With the success of Apple’s iPhone and iPad, professional users of Macs might have felt neglected, but not anymore. Apple has announced that it is taking orders for the new Mac Pro, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Apple has had a preview of the new computer with its distinctive cylindrical shape on its website for months, but now it’s finally going on sale.
The computer, designed for professional applications such as video editing and music recording, which has long been one of the Mac platform’s strengths, will cost $2999 for the base quad-core Intel Xeon model. A six-core model will be available for $3,999. Although this is more expensive than most regular PCs, as Mac detractors always love to point out, it’s cheaper than most Mac Pros have been in recent years. For the media production market, price is no object anyway.
Both models come with 256 gigabytes of flash storage, but are upgradeable to a terabyte. Users who need even more performance can order up to twelve processor cores.
The machines will be built in Austin, Texas. Apple has attracted controversy for the working conditions at Foxconn’s plant in China, where Apple’s mobile devices were manufactured, so this might be attempt to avoid criticism.
The new computer comes after some tension between the creative community and Apple. In 2011, Apple released a new version of Final Cut Pro X, its flagship professional video editing software. It was poorly received by editors because it lacked features such as the ability to export to videotape. Some users responded by switching to its competitors Adobe Premiere and Avid.
A lot of professional users also felt neglected by the stagnation of the Mac Pro line as the company’s mobile devices became popular, with some wondering if Apple was simply going to discontinue its high-end Macs.
The new Mac Pro appears to be a signal that Apple hasn’t forgotten about a segment of the market that carried the company through the lean years of the ‘90s, before Steve Jobs’ return.
Edited by
Cassandra Tucker 
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