Following an official Apple announcement that it is to cease sales of the Mac Pro in Europe due to new EU regulatory requirements, a French reseller is claiming an all-new model is on its way.
If true, it will come as good news for the legions of Mac Pro users who feel they have been
overlooked by the company that they, more than anyone else, have supported through good times and bad. An iPad may cost as little as $300 but prices for a 12-core Mac Pro professional desktop tower start at $3799. All other products in the Apple lineup, from the iPod to the iMac are in 12-month refresh cycles but the Mac Pro hasn't had a serious upgrade since 2010 and is beginning to show its age. So much so that, as of March 1, it will no longer comply with European regulations due to the fact that it has no internal cooling fan guards and because of the way power is routed to its I/O ports.
French reseller France Systèmes claims in its latest newsletter that a replacement will be released this spring and goes on to say that it has been informed of the update by Apple. Unfortunately, there is no information regarding hardware, but support for USB 3, Thunderbolt and Fusion Drives (i.e., hard disks made up of solid state disks and traditional spinning disks) would be expected as a minimum.
Many professional users have been waiting three years to upgrade their existing Mac Pro and some have been forced to turn to premium PC products, such as HP's range of professional workstations in order to keep up with the pace of professional software development.
Apple hasn't released an official statement regarding when the Mac Pro is to be refreshed other than to indicate that it will happen at some point in 2013. As it stands, Apple will cease shipping new Mac Pro units to EU countries from March 1, but retailers and resellers will still be allowed, under EU law to sell their existing stocks.