The latest version of macOS is macOS 11.0 Big Sur, which Apple released on November 12, 2020. Apple releases a new major version roughly once every year. These upgrades are free and are available in the Mac App Store. Apple said that the first MacBook with an Apple Silicon chip will arrive by the end of 2020. It seems like this new Mac will be either the 12-inch MacBook or a new 13-inch MacBook Pro, or even a.
I'll admit it, lastweek'snewsabout the new Mac Pro got me excited about the future of the Mac for the first time in a long time.
Note that I am not in any of the target markets for a typical Mac Pro buyer—I don't crunch huge scientific data sets, I don't render massive 4K movies, and I'm not compiling huge programs on a daily basis. But I have always been a fan of the Mac Pro for one reason (up until the most recent one, at least): Customization. Having a customizable Mac means it can last longer, as you can make changes to keep up with technology. I have owned both the Motorola and Intel era Mac Pros, and they were truly excellent machines.
The older Mac Pro (and its predecessors) were—as I recently wrote—wonderful machines, because you, the user, could do so much to them. You could add RAM, of course, but you can do that to most any current Mac.
You could also choose up to four hard drives to put inside the case—no messy cables, no need to worry about a child or pet disconnecting your drive while it's rendering a movie, etc. If you outgrew them, you could easily replace them. In my Mac Pro, I had an internal Time Machine drive (in addition to the external Time Machine drive.)
Beyond RAM and hard drives, though, you could also upgrade the video card and even replace the CPUs.
If you replace the hard drives, the video card, and the CPUs, you've essentially got a new Mac (subject to the constraints of RAM speed and other hardware limitations) without having to replace the machine. And unlike the iMac, even if you do want to replace the entire box, you don't have to also get rid of a perfectly good display, too.
A potential Mac Pro user who needs a machine today—and can't wait for the new model in 2018 or beyond—has a few choices…
Which of these options turns out to be best depends on your intended usage. Need lots of cores for video processing? The 2013 Mac Pro is probably a good bet. Need CPU speed more than cores? Buy a loaded super-fast iMac. Value expandability beyond raw CPU speed or processor cores? Buy the used 2012 Mac Pro (and install some of those upgrades discussed above).
I suggest, though, that there's a fourth option that merits consideration…
Honestly, if you want the best of all worlds today, the hackintosh route is worth serious consideration. Over the years, these homebuilt Macs have gotten more and more Mac-like thanks to the ingenuity of those who create the unofficial installers. You can now, for instance, generally install macOS software updates without fear that your Mac will require a fix of some sort after the update.
You can get lots of cores. And/or lots of CPU speed. And room for as many drives inside as you may want. You can tuck it all in massive case with tons of room to grow. Or a smaller more space-efficient case. A case with neon—the only limits are your creativity and your budget.
And perhaps best of all—especially if you enjoy gaming on your Mac, too—you can get excellent graphics performance with a high-end video card. This is even more true with NVidia's very recent announcement of Pascal driver support on Macs. This means you'll be able to use any of the wicked-fast NVidia 10 series graphcis cards in your hackintosh.
Consider the mid-range GTX 1070 vs. the upgraded AMD M395X in the top-of-the-line 5K iMac:
See the full results on the gpuboss web site. Change the comparison card to the GTX 1080 Ti or the Titan, too. I'd include a comparison to the AMD Fire cards in the Mac Pro, but I can't find a site that has that very old card (its technology dates to 2011) for comparison.
Which route would I take, if I were in the market for a Mac Pro today? Honestly, I'd probably build a hackintosh. It'll cost less than any of the other options (except possibly the used five-year-old Mac Pro), and yet will be more powerful and more expandable. The risks, of course, are that it's not Apple hardware, and Apple could (in theory) break it intentionally with a future software update. But knowing there's a new Mac Pro coming soon, this seems like the best way to get the most performance with the least investment.
And you know what, I am sort of in the market for a faster Mac, so I'm going to be investigating hackintosh builds over the next few weeks.
Fast forward to (hopefully) early 2018, and Apple releases a new Mac Pro. And possibly sometime before then, a new iMac Pro. These are the machines that have my hopes up for the future of the Mac with the 'Pro' segment.
An iMac with a real graphics card and desktop-class hardware (instead of the mobile card and laptop hardware) would be an intriguing machine. And as far as the 'new new' Mac Pro, Apple has a history of building excellent and expandable Pro Macs, so hopefully they can do it again. Between those two machines—and a new standalone display—I'm hopeful that Pro users will have reasons to give Apple their money again in the near future—unlike for most of the last four years. I certainly hope they create something worthy of giving them some of mine.