A more detailed disassembly.

Update PCIe Expansion Cards that work in Mac Pro

So you can install an NVIDIA card (and it will work if you use Windows boot camp) now we need drivers for MacOS X

Adding additional storage

Internal Storage Options for Mac Pro – PROMISE Pegasus R4i RAID Storage MPX Module and Pegasus J2i to conveniently store and speedily access upto 32TB of data over internal buses. Available now at the Apple.com and will be available soon through the Promise global network of distributors and value-added resellers. *Additional Capacities Coming Soon.

Video from Appleinsider

With the Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe card installed in your Mac Pro® tower; Windows® or Linux® PC desktop or server; or Thunderbolt™ to PCIe card expansion system with an available x16 PCIe slot, you can use it for instant-access media storage or as a high-performance scratch disk. Mac® users can even install macOS® on one SSD to create an incredibly fast boot drive(2) and create a RAID 0 set with the other installed SSDs without loss of performance. However you use it, this card’s performance is impressive.

These drives will not be encrypted by Apple T2 chip.

9to5Mac

 

Just in time for Christmas ifixit have done a teardown of the new MacPro

The new Mac Pro is a Fixmas miracle: beautiful, amazingly well put together, and a masterclass in repairability.

It also looks like it is eminently upgradeable, with details of how to upgrade RAM appearing online.

Upgrading the SSD is problematic since they are tied to the Apple T2 security chip, would presumably require Apple or authorised retailer.

 

Apple announced the new MacPro at the WWDC, the page describing the new machine is up and the technical specifications are here.

The intro movie is available here.

 

As a happy owner of a new MacBook Pro I am aware of the limitations of only having USB-C connectors. It is clear that this is the future since Apple are not the only company to make this transition. However a number of the scientific application I use regularly were supplied on DVD and I suspect others may be in a similar situation so I thought I'd mention this tip. Instead of investing in an adaptor if you have an older Mac you can use DVD or CD sharing. Open up system preferences and select "Sharing", click the checkbox for "DVD or CD Sharing".

If you now open a "Finder" window on the MacBook Pro you should find "Remote Disc in the side bar. You may need to change your preferences to display CCs, DVDs etc. (Finder:Preferences)

You can then use it as normal.

 

've posted a couple of entires where I've been looking at the computing power of the new MacPros however this site caught my eye because it shows how the MacPro can be rack mounted.

imgix is an image processing and delivery service that provides a supremely flexible, high performance, ultra–reliable solution to the problem of serving images on the modern internet. We operate our own hardware, run our own datacenters, and manage our own network infrastructure. At imgix‘s scale, maximizing efficiency and performance in image processing is critical for success. For this reason, we decided to incorporate Mac Pros in planning the build of our next generation image renderers. Because no existing Mac Pro server rack suited our needs, we designed and built our own.

The rack mounted Mac minis also look pretty impressive.

Photo Credit to: Miguel A. Cardona Jr. / imgix

 

I know what I’ll be playing with this weekend!

This is the review that everyone has been waiting for, the AnandTech review of the latest MacPro. A comprehensive analysis of all aspects of the latest Mac Pro, from GPU and CPU options to real life performance comparisons.

There is also an interesting thoughts into the directions for desktop computing

 

When I logged in the morning the first message I noticed announced the eagerly awaited MacPro was now available for order at the AppleStore with delivery on December 30th, within an hour or so that delivery time had changed to January, when I check now the delivery has moved to February. Well at least it is free delivery.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes Apple to sort out supply and demand.