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Apple’s latest resultsiPhone and iPad sales are surprisingly flat, but Apple still soars to record revenue in first quarter.. For the second quarter, Apple projects revenue between $60 b

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4 Apple’s latest results

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Apple’s latest results

iPhone and iPad sales are surprisingly flat, but Apple still soars

to record revenue in first quarter Michael Simon reports

Apple’s bottom line In the quarter ending

December 31, 2017, Apple reported a record

revenue of $88.3 billion, a 13 percent increase over

last year’s $78.4 billion (which was also a record)

Additionally, Apple posted an all-time record

quarterly earnings per diluted share of $3.89

And that’s with one less week of sales over last

year’s first quarter

Leading the way was the iPhone, but not due to

unit sales Apple moved 77.3 million iPhones in the

three-month holiday quarter, about a million less

than last year, but revenue grew by more than $7

billion to $61.6 billion While Apple didn’t break out

the different models of iPhone, it’s clear that the

higher price of iPhone X contributed to the gains

Tim Cook said the redesigned handset “surpassed

our expectations and has been our top-selling

iPhone every week since it shipped in November.”

Apple sold 5.1 million Macs and 13.2 million iPads

during the period, versus 5.5 million and 13.1 million

over the previous period Apple’s stock jumped

more than 3 percent on the news

Despite somewhat weak sales, the iPhone X was

seemingly a stronger performer overseas, with all

of its operating segments posting year-over-year

revenue growth In the all-important Greater China

region, revenue grew 11 percent, and Japan was

particularly strong with 26 percent growth

Another big seller over the holiday quarter was

Apple Watch and AirPods While Apple doesn’t

specifically release numbers for these products,

revenue in the “Other Products” category (of

which they are a part) surged more than 35

percent to $5.5 billion Chief Financial Officer

Luca Maestri said revenue from wearables was

up 70 percent year over year, with the product

category contributing more revenue than any

other product besides iPhone

Additionally, Cook said sales of Apple Watch

were up 50 percent for the fourth consecutive

quarter, and Series 3 sales were more than twice that of Series 2 a year ago.

In January, Apple topped 1.3 billion active

devices for the first time, a 30 percent jump in two years The influx of new users helped push its Services revenue to $8.5 billion, an increase of 18 percent over the 2017 but slightly down from the previous quarter

For the second quarter, Apple projects revenue between $60 billion and $62 billion, the first quarter the includes sales of HomePod, Apple’s first smart speaker That would represent an increase of

roughly 15 percent over last quarter’s $52.9 billion

Apple releases iOS 11.2.5 with HomePod support

watchOS 4.2.2 and tvOS 11.2.5 have also been released,

addressing minor bugs, writes Jason Cross

minor point release update has just been released

for iOS, tvOS, and watchOS When you get the

time, you should update all your iPhones, iPads,

Apple TVs, and Apple Watches

What’s new in iOS 11.2.5

You won’t find dramatic changes or really big new

features in iOS 11.2.5, but it does add support for

HomePod (coming February 9th) and the ability for Siri to play audio news That last one is a little odd, because the feature went live last week and worked fine on earlier versions of iOS Here’s what Apple lists in the release notes:

HomePod support

Apple Music, Siri and Wi-Fi settings to HomePod

Siri News

play the news” You can also ask for specific news categories including Sports, Business or Music

Other improvements and fixes

app to display incomplete information in the call list

some Exchange accounts to disappear from the Lock screen when unlocking iPhone X with Face ID

conversations to temporarily be listed out of order

controls become unresponsive after multiple track changes

destinations and AirPod battery level

To update your iPhone or iPad, open Settings,

go to General, then Software Update

tvOS 11.2.5

You won’t find big new features in tvOS 11.2.5

It’s just the standard ‘bug fixes and performance

improvements’ You can update your Apple TV by

opening Settings and going to Software Update

watchOS 4.2.2

As with tvOS, the latest release of watchOS

focuses on improvements and bug fixes and has no

outwardly visible changes Still, bug fixes are good

and you should probably grab this update

To update your Apple Watch, you’ll need to have

at least 50 percent charge, have the watch on its

charger, and within range of the iPhone to which it is

synced Then, on the iPhone, open the Watch app,

select General, then Software Update

What we learned from Apple’s record results

Jason Snell takes a deeper look into Apple’s record quarter

the holiday quarter of 2017, its first financial quarter of this fiscal year, would be the company’s biggest in history They weren’t wrong

In fact, Apple’s holiday quarter generated $88.3

billion in revenue, blowing past even the high side of Apple’s estimates

By just about any way you measure it, this was a great quarter for Apple But of course, the devil’s in

the details, whether it’s line items in the corporate

reports or in tidbits revealed during the company’s

regular phone call with analysts So here’s a look at

four tidbits we learned about Apple’s big quarter

The long and short of it

Apple’s previous holiday quarter (which was in fiscal

year 2017, but calendar year 2016) saw solid results,

with slight sales growth But as many observers

pointed out at the time, Apple was buoyed by a

slightly longer quarter The holiday quarter for

calendar 2016 was 14 weeks long, meaning that

the slight growth was really a slight decline if you

considered the weekly averages

That quirk of the calendar worked to Apple’s

benefit last year, goosing its results But it also

meant that for the holiday quarter of 2017, the bar

would be that much higher – the company’s sales

would have to beat a longer time period to show

quarterly growth

It turned out to be quite good timing for Apple,

because the company did beat last year’s numbers

in most areas In one area, however, it didn’t:

iPhone unit sales Apple CEO Tim Cook declared

the quarter’s sales “the highest number ever for a

13-week quarter,” and pointed out that “Average

weekly iPhone sales were up six percent compared

to the December quarter last year.”

In other words, Apple sold more phones per day

than last holiday quarter but last quarter had

seven more days And Apple wants to make sure

that you know it

The iPhone X strategy

seems to have worked

If you see a story that says iPhone sales in the holiday quarter were disappointing, check to see if they mention the number of weeks in the quarter, or

if they cite overheated analyst estimates Because the numbers make it clear that this is a strong validation of Apple’s somewhat risky strategy

to restructure the contents of its most popular product line In terms of sheer numbers, Apple sold 850,000 iPhones per day on average during 91 days in late 2017, compared to 798,000 iPhones per day during 98 days in late 2016, meaning that unit sales went ‘down’ by increasing by 6.5 percent

Quarterly iPhone sales were slightly down

year-over-year, but only because the quarter was shorter

But look a little deeper: In terms of revenue, the

iPhone generated $61.6 billion, compared to $54.4

billion in the year-ago quarter That’s a 13 percent

revenue increase or a 22 percent increase if you

correct for the week disparity

How to explain this? Pretty simple: The iPhone

X strategy, to release an even higher-end iPhone

above the “standard” iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus

models, worked The average selling price of a

holiday-quarter iPhone jumped by $100 “Since the

launch of iPhone X it has been the most popular

iPhone every week since, and that is even through

today actually, through January,” said Cook (Keep

in mind that iPhone X only started shipping in

November, so it could only impact the quarterly

results for a portion of the time.)

In addition, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus appear to

have continued to sell well “In urban China and the

US, the top five smartphones last quarter were all

iPhones,” Cook said Sales were not, apparently,

slowed down by the late shipment of the iPhone X

Some people bought the iPhone 8, other people

bought the iPhone X, and Apple cashes the checks

A record number of active users

One of the huge bits of information in the

conference call with analysts was Cook’s reveal

that Apple now has an installed base of 1.3

billion devices, which is “an all-time high for all of

our major products” and a 30 percent growth in

two years So, there are more iPads, iPhones, and

Macs currently in use than ever before How does

that work? One reason – and Cook didn’t shy away

from mentioning it – is the long product life of Apple

products, and the resale market When Apple sells a

new iPhone, the old iPhone it’s replacing often goes

to someone else

“The reliability of iPhone is fantastic,” Cook

said “The previously-owned market has expanded

in units over the years And you see in many cases

carriers and retailers having very vibrant programs

around trading an iPhone in, and because iPhone

has the largest residual rate on it, it acts as a buffer

for the customer to buy a new one, and it winds

up with another customer somewhere else that

is perfectly fine with having a previously owned

iPhone And so I view all of that to be incredibly

iPhone average selling price went way

up thanks to iPhone X

positive [The] more people on iPhones, the

better.” While Apple doesn’t necessarily make

money directly from the sale of a used iPhone, it

benefits by having more people in its ecosystem,

as evidenced by the continued growth in Apple’s

Services category That person on a used iPhone

still buys apps, rents movies, and maybe even

subscribes to Apple Music

Analysts still think they can trick Tim Cook

Piper Jaffray’s Mike Olson apparently drew the

short straw at the Analyst Club meeting this

quarter, so he got to be the one to vainly attempt

to get Tim Cook to spill secrets about future Apple

products, which Apple, never, ever does

“I know you don’t talk about future products,

which is often the preface to questions about future

products, and I’ll give it a shot,” Olson said “When

you think conceptually about the path for iPhone

X-style devices going forward, is there any reason

the road map wouldn’t consist of multiple devices,

as we’ve seen with past iPhone upgrades?”

Good try, Olson And to be fair, Cook threw him a

bone – by restating something that was said at the

iPhone X launch last autumn

“As we said when we launched it, we were setting

up the next decade,” Cook said “So you can you

can bet that we’re pulling that string.”

You heard it here, folks: There will be future

iPhones and they’ll build on the iPhone X Aren’t

you glad you asked, Mike?

The HomePod is Apple’s smart speaker that’s

controlled using Siri and designed primarily for high-quality music playback It’s taken its sweet time to arrive, but arrive it has and our ears have decided that it was worth the wait

Naturally, this isn’t merely an AirPlay speaker With Siri built in, you can use it for many other tasks – just as you can with Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant From checking the weather and sports scores to setting reminders, alarms

Apple HomePod

RATING:

£319 inc VAT from fave.co/2rRVNWv

and timers, Siri is a pretty capable assistant It

can also control all your HomeKit devices, such

as lights, heating and switches

As you’d expect, the HomePod is very much

an Apple product It’s designed to work within the

Apple ecosystem and it does this exceptionally

well And if you’re already well established in this

world, the HomePod is a great addition

Design

Whether in grey or white, the HomePod is a

beautifully designed speaker It’s larger in all

dimensions than the Echo 2, a little smaller than

the Harman Kardon Allure and roughly the same

as the Sonos One

If you heard it before you saw it, you’d be

surprised at just how compact it is We love the

seamless fabric which surrounds the HomePod,

feels spongy to the touch and looks as if it’s

been 3D printed

On top is a glossy plastic disc which lights up

when Siri talks and hides touch sensitive volume

controls Tap the centre to play/pause, double tap

to skip to the next track and triple tap to skip back

to the previous one Tap and hold to invoke Siri It’s

all completely intuitive, especially if you’re already

used to controlling music playback with a button

on your headphone cord The captive power cable

is slightly unusual, but aside from the worry it can’t

be easily fixed if it gets damaged, it’s not a deal

breaker It’s not hugely long but should be long

enough to reach a nearby power socket

Setup is quick and easy As with recent iPads, you just hold your iPhone near the HomePod and

it appears on the screen A few taps later and it’s ready to go: Wi-Fi passwords, Apple ID and preferences are all sent wirelessly from your phone

Which music services

does HomePod support?

If you don’t have an Apple Music subscription and haven’t already used the three-month free trial you’ll see the option to try it out Otherwise, it’s

£9.99 per month or you can choose to get your music from another source

Siri can also play music you’ve purchased from iTunes or music stored in your iCloud Music Library. There’s also Beats 1 radio, which doesn’t require an Apple Music subscription, plus the

thousands of podcasts available from Apple

If you already have a Spotify, Tidal, Pandora,

Deezer or Amazon Music subscription (or another

service) you can play this through the HomePod

via your iPhone using AirPlay

You can then ask Siri to control playback, such

as pausing or skipping to the next track What you

can’t do when playing music this way is to ask Siri

to play a specific album, song or playlist Until

there’s proper integration with another streaming

service, Siri won’t be as useful as with Apple

Music where you can say “Hey Siri, add this song

to my favourites” or “Hey Siri, play party music

from the 1980s”

Apple wants HomePod owners to use Apple

Music, which should come as no surprise to anyone

Amazon and Google both make their devices work

best with their own streaming services, too

Of course, you can play any audio you like

through the HomePod as long as it’s via AirPlay

That means you can select the HomePod when

you’re watching Netflix, iPlayer, YouTube or even

when making a phone call – the built-in mics let

it act as a hands-free speakerphone (and the

quality and experience is very good) If you have a

supported Apple TV, you can choose the HomePod

as the audio output, again via AirPlay

What’s missing?

The HomePod doesn’t have an aux in (or out) and

there’s no Bluetooth So it lacks the flexibility of

some other smart speakers While anyone in the

household can ask Siri to play music, set a timer

or do other tasks, they won’t be able to play music from, say, Spotify on their Android phone

There’s no voice recognition in the sense that Siri doesn’t know who’s making requests Once you set

up a HomePod, it pulls information from the Apple

ID you used Siri therefore knows contacts from only one account, making the ability to send text messages and make phone calls useful only to one person You can change the Apple ID associated with the HomePod, but this isn’t something you can do on the fly: you can’t ask Siri to “switch to Miriam’s account”

You can share to-do lists and calendars, though, but only one person can use the HomePod to check what the traffic is like to “work” Everyone else will have to specify the location when asking, so there are workarounds for some things

Apple is late to the smart speaker game, so rivals already have a range of devices, including those with screens, such as Amazon’s Echo Spot It’s possible Apple will broaden the range of

HomePods in a similar way to offer both cheaper, smaller devices as well as a potential Echo Show equivalent where it could take advantage of its FaceTime video calling service

Later in 2018, you’ll be able to use a pair of HomePods to create stereo sound Alternatively, you’ll be able to place them in multiple rooms

around the house and either play music in sync or tell Siri to play a track on a specific HomePod.For now, there is but one HomePod

What can Siri do on the HomePod?

If you’ve used Siri a lot on your iPhone or iPad,

you’ll already know what to expect from the

HomePod as the assistant has – as far as we can

tell – the same capabilities

Most people will use Siri to ask for music and

control playback, but you can also ask for the news

headlines (a new feature added to iOS recently,

too), a weather forecast, unit conversion, general

information (“How tall is the Shard?”) and more

In the UK, the HomePod will default to the BBC

headlines, but when you first ask for the news, Siri

will tell ask if you want to switch to Sky or LBC

With Apple Music, Siri can tell you the name

of the song, album and who played the bass on

that track Some information is pulled from web

sources including Wikipedia while other data

comes ;from Apple Music itself

The HomePod works as a home hub, too This means it can control your HomeKit devices and also allow you to control them remotely from your iPhone If you don’t own any HomeKit devices you’re in the fortunate position of being able

to buy only those which support it Many early adopters of smart home gadgets will find their lights, switches, thermostats and sensors aren’t HomeKit compatible which means Siri won’t be able to control them

HomeKit-compatible devices can also be more expensive than those which don’t support it

You can ask Siri to send a text message or call someone And if you need to use another

service, say WhatsApp, you simply say “Send John a message on WhatsApp” or even “Send Matt a WhatsApp saying ‘Do you want to meet for dinner at 7.30?’”

For reminders, Siri will add your request to your Reminders app on your phone Unlike Alexa, it won’t give an audible reminder from the HomePod

at the time you set: you’ll just get a notification on your iPhone

Apple needs to work on Siri’s speech, though Its pronunciation and intonation aren’t nearly as good

as the Google Assistant or Alexa: it sounds more robotic and less lifelike than its rivals

A while back, Apple opened up Siri to app

developers so they could allow users to control aspects with the assistant The launch of the

HomePod could prompt some to add Siri to their apps which could bring ‘native’ control for music

services such as Spotify It remains to be seen

whether that will happen or not, though

Performance

You’re probably most interested in sound quality, as

this is a speaker after all The good news is that it’s

the best sounding smart speaker we’ve heard By a

clear margin It’s room-filling loud, with no distortion

at all even at high volume Bass is excellent, and

much louder and deeper than you’d ever expect

from something this small

As it’s circular, the main woofer sits horizontally

inside and fires upwards At the bottom, an array of

seven tweeters ensure mids and highs are projected

in all directions And their location means sound

will also be reflected off the surface you’ve put the

HomePod on

Cleverly, an on-board Apple A8 chip uses

the array of six microphones to listen to the

environment and adjust the sound automatically

to optimise it for the HomePod’s location

This happens automatically and invisibly,

so it isn’t possible to hear a ‘with’ and ‘without’ processing to check for audible differences

Nevertheless, the HomePod does indeed sound great pretty much wherever you put it: on a shelf,

a side table or on the kitchen worktop

Bass is also monitored and controlled by the A8 chip to ensure distortion is kept in check While mids and highs sound the same on various surfaces and in different locations, bass does seem to be affected When placed on a thick wooden kitchen worktop with ceramic tiles, the HomePod’s bass sounded much more muted than when it was sat on

a small table in the lounge, further from a wall In the latter location, bass was considerably louder

Regardless of position, the motor-driven woofer

delivers bass frequencies which many rival smart

speakers simply cannot produce The Amazon

Echo, for example, struggles with tracks such as

Fractal’s Itvara and bass is largely absent

Not so on the HomePod In our lounge, it coped

effortlessly with the sub-bass with power that you’d

associate with a much larger speaker

We’ve listened to just about every genre and

the HomePod does a great job with all If you want

to demo the HomePod, pick a simple track with

strong vocals and a deep bass line Diana Krall’s

Peel me a grape, for example, sounds utterly crisp

and clean where every nuance of her voice and

piano can be heard

The accompanying double-bass is similarly

strong, but without overpowering the sound of the

bassist’s fingers plucking each string

On busier, more complex tracks the HomePod’s

processing still manages to create a soundstage

in which instruments have decent separation and

vocals are clear The live version of The Eagles’

Hotel California is particularly enjoyable with the

bright notes from Don Felder’s 12-string guitar

ringing out

On occasion, treble is a little harsh

Play Calvin Harris’ This is what you came for and

the electronic cymbals are a little crashy, and

Rhianna’s voice quite piercing – exacerbated at

higher volumes of course However, that’s the

exception and for the vast majority of tracks the

HomePod simply sounds great

Siri performance

A smart speaker must be able to hear you when music is playing loudly, and thanks to some nifty beamforming technology, the mics can pick up your voice across the room Siri responds quickly when you call, and if your command is quick – “Hey Siri, turn it up” – it won’t even pause the music

If you’re actively using your iPhone, Siri will respond on that rather than the HomePod, but

in general, it’s the HomePod that responds

first Sometimes, Siri will pop up on the phone, then immediately hand off to the HomePod It’s impressive how it can hear you over the music, but

a couple of times during our testing the HomePod failed to respond when speaking at a moderate

level in a quiet room It could be down to a conflict

between the iPhone and HomePod, but we’re

hoping it’s just a wrinkle that will be ironed out soon

Macworld’s buying advice

Even as a first-generation product, the HomePod

feels polished in its design, the way it sounds and

how it operates However, Siri’s voice is a little too

robotic compared to its rivals and you’re limited

to Apple’s music services for deep integration

with Siri The HomePod can control your smart

home gadgets, but only if they’re compatible with

HomeKit All of which means that if you’re happy

to live in Apple’s ecosystem the HomePod is a

great purchase Jim Martin

Mac Pro

Apple hasn’t given much away about its plans for the Mac Pro, but we have an inkling of what to expect Karen Haslam reports

Pro it made a big deal about how it was revolutionary and proof that Apple could still innovate That Mac Pro is now four years old and

Apple hasn’t been able to upgrade it since because,

in the words of Apple’s senior vice president of

Software Engineer, Craig Federighi: “We designed

ourselves into a thermal corner”

This revelation was made at a briefing with

a select few journalists in April 2017 At the

meeting Apple admitted that it had made a bit

of a mess of the Mac Pro and explained that it

was “completely rethinking” the design and its

approach Creatives cheered, or at least those

ones who were still listening

What went wrong with the Mac Pro

The 2013 Mac Pro was built around a thermal core

that cooled a 12-core Xeon processor, a 256GB

flash drive, up to 64GB RAM, and two GPUs, all

squeezed into a tube that was 9.9x6.6in

While some joked about its resemblance to a

trash can, the 2013 Mac Pro certainly did have all

the looks But when Apple had made its design

choices it had made some assumptions about the

path that future workstation technologies would

take, and unfortunately, while the design of the

Mac Pro did a great job keeping it cool, thanks to

the thermal core, the internal design just couldn’t

accommodate the processors and GPUs that

were to arrive over the years that followed, and

as a result Apple was unable to update the Mac

Pro in its current form

This might have been forgivable but for the fact

that those people who did purchase a Mac Pro

couldn’t update their models either Much better

processors and GPUs have arrived since the ones

that Apple used in the 2013 Mac Pro, but no Mac

Pro user was able to take advantage of these

One of the biggest criticisms of the Mac Pro

when it launched back in 2013 was the fact that it

was not user upgradable The old ‘cheese grater’

Mac Pro (pictured below) had been popular because

it could be upgraded with faster graphics cards, better CPUs, extra storage space thanks to the internal drive bays and PCI Express expansion slots With the 2013 Mac Pro Apple tried to tell pros that the Thunderbolt 2 ports provided on the Mac Pro would give them all the upgradeability they needed Pros laughed at the idea and wondered how they would find the desk space.

As a result, in the four years since the

introduction of the trash can Mac Pro many Pros have been creating their own ‘hackintoshes’ with the CPUs and graphics cards they need Those pros who aren’t desperate to run macOS (or

Mac OS X) have just switched to the Windows

of Linux workstations that have left Apple’s Mac Pro for dust

First-generation

Mac Pro

Apple’s plans for the new Mac Pro

There were only two things Apple could do Either it

had to pull out of the workstation space all together

and face the onslaught of bad press about turning

its back on the creatives who made the company

popular in the first place, or it needed admit to its

failings and go back to the drawing board and start

again with the Mac Pro

The company announced that it would be doing

the latter at a briefing with a select few journalists

in April 2017 Apple told journalists that it was

“completely rethinking” the design of the Mac Pro

But what do we know of this “completely

redesigned, next-generation Mac Pro architected

for pro customers who need the highest-end,

high-throughput system in a modular design, as well

as a new high-end pro display,” as Apple’s VP of

marketing Phil Schiller described it?

It would seem that when it made its

announcement in April 2017, the company wasn’t

far along in its reinvention of the Mac Pro Nor

was there any prototype to show off at WWDC in

June 2017, and no more information given at that

event, other than a reiteration of the promise that

something is in the pipeline

However, while Apple has revealed very little

about the new Mac Pro, in December 2017 the

company released the other new pro machine that it

promised at the same April 2017 briefing The iMac

Pro offers some clues as to what we can expect

from the new Mac Pro when it arrives In addition

the comments made by Schiller and the two other

Apple VPs present at the briefing in April give us some insight as to just how much of a revamp Apple

is conducting Apparently it’s a ‘radical revamp’ if you were wondering

The most important aspect of the redesign is that Apple’s not going to back itself into a thermal corner again (surely someone else has made that joke) Schiller said: “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.”

So that’s great; Apple won’t take another

four years (probably by the time it launches, five years) to update the Mac Pro with the next round

of processors and GPUs… But what about user upgradeability That’s that the pros have been crying out for

Upgradeability

Apple does promise that it will be a modular system This suggests that the Apple workstation will have easily replaceable parts that use standardized interfaces Apple being Apple, the fear is that the company will use proprietary connectors, meaning that the computer can only be upgraded with

parts that it approves We can only hope that this won’t be the case

There is some indication that Apple is going to allow users to upgrade the new Mac Pro: the current iMacs are upgradable, at least to a point: It’s

possible to access and update some components in

the standard iMacs, although the RAM in the iMac

Pro is less accessible than the RAM in the standard

27in iMac, Apple recommends that if you want to do

so then you should probably ask an expert

Design

It seems likely that, in order to meet the demands

of a modular system, the new Mac Pro will be larger

than the current ‘trash can’-style Mac Pro We don’t

think that it will revert to the old cheese grater-style

Mac Pro though, if anything, we expect that the

iMac Pro

new design will fall somewhere between the two

However, some concept designs have appeared

that imagine how the Mac Pro might look is Apple

looked to the Mac mini for inspiration

Illustrators at German magazine Curved have

come up with some impressive concept designs for

a more modular Mac Pro The concepts mimic the

Mac mini design, but illustrate a way in which users

could access and replace the processor, graphics

card and other components

We love the designs, but think it’s unlikely that

Apple would unify the Mac mini and the Mac Pro

design in this way, plus it doesn’t really allow for

thermal cooling, the issue Apple has with the

current Mac Pro

That said, there is no need for Apple to make a

Mac Pro that is as large as the old-old aluminium

Mac Pro The old machine needed space for a 3.5in

drive bay, internal storage bays, and optical drive

bays The new machine will just need room for the

SSD cards, GPU, a CPU socket to feed multiple

cores, four RAM slots, and a motherboard In

addition to that some Thunderbolt 3 pros and, the

pros will be hoping, some PCIe expansion slots All

that should fit neatly inside a relatively small case

An older concept illustration, from January 2017

– so before Apple revealed that it has plans for the

Mac Pro – came up with an idea for a Mac Pro that

would be slightly bigger than the current model,

though not as large as the older version

In that case, the Mac Pro was reimagined by

graphic designer Pascal Eggert At the time he

told Cult of Mac: “At it’s core this is really just

a very quick asset I made to try out new render

software, but I also wanted to find out just how

big or ugly a Mac Pro would have to be to fit

standard components.”

He said that, according to his calculations,

the smallest the Mac Pro could be was

150x270x330mm

Cooling

Cooling is obviously the key with the Mac Pro

design Apple said that it had decided on the

components of the 2013 Mac Pro before it set

upon the black cylindrical design, rather than

trying to squeeze the components into something

with an inflexible design

We expect that the company will also take

the same care over the design of the new Mac

Pro: ensuing that the machine is built around the

components, and in such a way to accommodate

future components, rather than the design coming

first and the components being squeezed in

Fundamental to the design will be the thermal

core, as was the case last time Apple spoke about

the thermal cooling of the new iMac Pro at WWDC

in June 2017, which emphasises just how important

it is We can take a look at the design of the iMac

Pro and the way it is cooled to at least get an idea

of how effectively Apple will address the issue of

cooling in the Mac Pro

Noise

Related to the way the Mac Pro keeps itself cool is

the noise it makes, and this was one of the things

iMac Pro’s

cooling system

Apple did get right with the Mac Pro in 2013 The current Mac Pro remains silent even during the most demanding operations, meaning it is ideal for audio workflows and music production It’s the reason why some audio professionals are still choosing the Mac Pro over the MacBook Pro, which can get pretty noisy when it’s working hard.

You can expect Apple to place similar emphasis

on keeping the noise down with the new Mac Pro

When the Mac Pro was first unveiled in 2012

it used Intel’s Xeon E5 V2 Romley processors, a processor generation from 2011 Since then Intel has introduced Xeon’s under the code names

of Grantley (Xeon E5 V3), and now Purely, with Skylake (V5) and Cannonlake (V6) branded

variants Those Cannonlake Xeons may not arrive until 2019 though, which might coincide nicely with the launch of the Mac Pro Although, Apple may not be so keen on waiting for Intel to make the new chips available

The current Mac Pro offers 6, 8, or 12-core

versions The iMac Pro offers 8, 10, 14 and 18-core Intel Xeon W processor options Given that next-generation Xeons are heading towards 28, or even

32 cores, it is a fair bet to suppose that the new Mac Pro will offer more than 18 cores as an option

The clock speed is likely to start from 3.8GHz

and go higher

Another possibility: the system could be based

on the next-generation Ryzen (or Threadripper)

CPUs from AMD

Also, look out for the next generation EFI

BIOS, which will address some of the limitations

of BIOS including making better use of features

in 64-bit operating systems and supporting more

than 2TB of storage

Graphics

The 2013 Mac Pro uses Dual AMD FirePro

D500 or D700 graphics processors Since this

Current Mac Pro

was a product name created for the Mac Pro, it’s necessary to do a little sleuthing to find an equivalent that could be used for the next Mac Pro.The D700 matches the AMD FirePro W9000, which at the time was AMD’s best performing workstation GPU.

AMD has since introduced the Radeon Pro as

a successor to the FirePro line up and Apple is already using the Radeon Pro Vega 56 graphics processor in the iMac Pro

But when it comes to predicting what the next big thing will be after the Radeon Pro Vega we’d need a crystal ball and since we don’t have one we’ll have to wait

That said, maybe what really matters is whether pro users will be able to update their Mac Pro to take advantage of the latest and greatest graphics cards when they launch If Apple allows this then it matters less what’s inside the Mac Pro at launch.High-end users will be looking for GDDR5 graphics cards that support DirectX 12 and OpenGL 4.5 Expect at least 10GB on-package high-

RAM

Officially the 2013 Mac Pro handled up to 64GB RAM spread over four slots (four 16GB RAM