DJ/producer Calvin Harris already has a pre-release Mac Pro in his studio, judging from his Instagram stories. 9to5Mac reports that Harris updated his Instagram account over the weekend with videos that show the Mac Pro in use.
Apple unveiled the Mac Pro in June with a promise to deliver it this fall. The new system will bow with a $5,999 price tag to start. Radically different from the 2013 “turbine”-style Mac Pro that was largely reviled by critics and users from the moment it was released, the new Mac Pro sports a much beefier, more modular design that harkens back to the earlier Mac Pro chassis, complete with “cheese grater”-style vented front and rear panels to maximize airflow. The new unit will also be able to work in rack mount configurations, making it ideal for server environments.
Inside, the Mac Pro sports a workstation-class Intel Xeon processor that comes in configurations from 8-core to 28-core, up to 4 TB of internal SSD storage, 12 user-accessible DDR4 ECC RAM slots with support up to 1.5 TB of RAM, two MPX graphics modules with support for up to four GPUs (AMD Radeon Pro 580X and Pro Vega II or Pro Vega II Duo cards are options), and eight PCI Express expansion slots to support additional graphics cards, high-speed peripheral interconnect, exotic networking or SAN interfaces and more.
Harris is certainly not the only high-profile Apple user with a system like this in his possession. The company is positioning the new high-end Mac model at digital video professionals, musicians, designers, engineers and scientists, and anyone else who can benefit from the massively parallel pipeline the new Mac Pro can manage.
Harris’ Instagram videos make us wonder how soon the rest of us will get our hands on them. Fall doesn’t end until December 21st, though, so Apple still has time to get the new monster Mac just right.