It was 2006 when the Mac Pro made its debut. Its bulky aluminium case and industrial-chic design was an instant hit.
The powerful insides of the Mac Pro made it doubly popular with casual users and professionals alike. The Mac Pro had all the power and capabilities to do the business for video and graphic designers, whilst also remaining eminently usable for anyone else who wanted performance and looks.
However, the Mac Pro in its boxy form was coming up to a decade in the limelight, which is a long time for any desktop computer to survive. With Mac enthusiasts everywhere calling out for a new iteration, Apple introduced the 2014 Mac Pro.
Radically different in nearly every way from its much-loved predecessor, the 2014 Mac Pro has the looks and performance to make it an icon.
Putting the new Mac Pro alongside the previous generation, it almost seems as if the two are from completely different companies, so small is the resemblance they bear to one another.
The 2014 Mac Pro, for example, is just 9.9 inches high and 6.6 inches in width. For scale, the old Mac Pro is about eight times larger. The scale that Apple has managed to make the Mac Pro is nothing short of absolutely remarkable. It is almost as if they have taken two or three leaps ahead of the game and pulled something out of the future – that is how compact and different the Mac Pro 2014 looks.
The new Mac Pro weighs all of 5 kilograms, which makes it easy for anyone to pack it up and move it as they need. Definitely not something that anyone could say of the old Mac Pro, which was somewhat of a behemoth.
This means a light and powerful personal computer that, should the user need, can travel around the world with no problems or massive baggage fees. For the user travelling for business, they have a personal computer that is lighter and far more powerful than any laptop.
The 2014 Mac Pro packs a big hardware punch, which we’ll take a look at below, but the manner in which the Mac Pro offers up broad connectivity and smart design are two things that really need addressing.
The Mac Pro has long been the tool of choice for designers in many fields. The robust hardware made it the perfect base for audio, visual and video design. The 2014 Mac Pro carries on this tradition and adds a few embellishments that will have users jumping for joy.
Firstly, the Mac Pro packs in all the connections that anyone could ever need. For those users that require multiple devices and ports, the Mac Pro provides.
On the rear of the Mac Pro are two Ethernet ports, four USB 3.0 ports, a HDMI 1.4 socket, audio line and line out ports and an astonishing six Thunderbolt 2 inputs.
Apple has also come up with a simple solution to an age-old problem when it comes to their ports. Every computer user has experienced the mad scramble that comes from trying to blindly find a port to plug in a USB, or other, connection. Every port symbol on the Mac Pro 2014 has a backlight, which makes it easy and quick to identify the port the user needs.
In addition, the backlighting of the ports come on when the user turns the Mac around and go off again afterwards. This is the kind of intricate design that puts the Mac Pro 2014 way ahead of the class.
As much as the looks and connectivity of the Mac Pro 2014 impress, it is the hardware inside that steals the show.
Apple has managed to include extremely powerful hardware, integrated in such a small space that it almost defies belief. Some might be willing to forgive slightly sub-par hardware because of the space limitations of a 2014 Mac Pro, but the fact is that Apple has put bleeding edge hardware into the Mac Pro 2014.
The base-level Mac Pro 2014 has dual AMD FirePro D300 graphics cards, which each have an amazing 2GB of video RAM. Complementing this is a 3.7 GHz quad-core Intel Xeon E5 processor and 16GB of DDR3 Ram. All of this adds up to a seriously powerful machine, whether it comes to making complex multi-media projects, intricate design, or anything else a user can think to throw at it. Bear in mind – this is the entry-level model.
Fitting this much hardware, performance and power into such a small space is the thing of science fiction films, not reality. Somehow, Apple has managed to do it.
The 2014 Mac Pro comes with a hefty price tag but equally heft looks and hardware. Seemingly jumping two generations of computing ahead at once, the 2014 Mac Pro is an amazing looking machine and does it without sacrificing any of the performance.
