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Apple is waiting for the successor to the aging X99 Intel chipset. Intel has released the 100 series chipset but there are only max 20 PCIe lanes compared to the 40 max PCIe lanes possible with X99. this means the only possible configurations with the 100 series chipsets is x16,x4 or x8,x8,x4. With PCIe being the central bus with the Mac Pro it doesn't make sense for Apple to have released a new Mac Pro yet. The chipset technology in the current Mac Pro is still top of the line. Sure, you can get new processors with more cores and DDR4, but the number of PCIe lanes and memory speed/latency is optimal for the Mac Pro as as of now there is no better option for them to build a successor.
Intel's newest Xeon processors no longer work with the consumer chipsets such as X99, a Xeon class chipset must be used. If Intel was going to release a new chipset for Xeon, they would have released it with the E5 v4 last week.

It's quite possible Apple was waiting for E5 v4 and is still waiting for AMD Polaris or nVidia Pascal, though.

Some people actually prefer the workstation class mb and there ones designed for use in place of x99
This is where it gets complicated, because both the chipset and the processor have their own set of lanes. Skylake, and the 100 series, have 16 lanes from the processor, and up to 20 lanes from the chipset, with the chipset only able to aggregate in groups of four. The chips that use the x99/c61x chipsets have 28/40 lanes on the CPU, and have up to 8 lanes given by the chipset. So a hypothetical Broadwell-EP Mac Pro would not be stymied by the chipset, as it gets most of its PCI-e lanes from the processor already, and would see a significant performance boost compared to the current processors, given that the high end chip from then is about middle of the road in Intel's current lineup.
Sounds plausible, but why not even release an upgrade to the outdated GPUs or the CPU?

The current 15'' rMBP is faster in single core operations...

As a rule, don't buy a Mac Pro when you're doing single core operations. It's often not worth the money even for multi-core, multi-core plus using the GPUs is when it's the right pick. I'm referring to choosing a Mac, not comparing Macs & PCs.
Or they've decided to cut out of that market segment entirely. Will be interesting to see what unfolds.
It is worth mentioning that many developers were left out in the cold even when the cylindrical Mac Pro was originally announced. I care about CPU speeds and storage, not so much about the GPU, so the form factor and dual-GPU architecture of the new Mac Pro was a set of bad tradeoffs. I never wanted to pay for an extra GPU, and the cost of attached Thunderbolt drive arrays is astronomical.

I hope Apple will release a "developer machine": something with tons of CPU power, easily expandable internal storage, and a mid-range single GPU. And for heaven's sake, don't try to make it small, thin, or round. I'd buy it in an instant.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't hold your breath. It's sad that they are lagging so far behind on internal updates, but at this point I think they care more about how it looks then performance. I'm just hoping they don't ruin the Macbook Pro next.
They kinda already did that with the retina version. you can't upgrade the SSDs(edit: it was the ram that I was upset about originally because they soldered it on the other point still stands) or add an extra SSD and remove the cd drive like you could with the last gen mbp. I want a powerhouse desktop replacement as a developer that I can bring with me places not a more expensive MB air. The screen is nice but not at the value proposition.
Why do you need to many CPUs? I can only think of compiling but in my experience not many compilers can actually handle multiple cores well and you might wanna consider using other tooling if your compiler needs to recompile that 100k LOC again and again instead of just compiling the changed files again (and their dependencies).

As cool as this machine is, it is definitely targeted at video makers who spend more money on powerful hardware (because they need that) compared to developers.

I always suspect Apple built Mac Pro for Pixar and Disney. It would be nice if there is a mid range (higher than Mac mini lower than Mac Pro) Mac that is not iMac and shape in a perfect cube. The outdated spec and high price makes Mac Pro all looks with no substance.
Ditto. I still use the old Mac Pro as my main workstation, and really wish Apple would just release a new pro tower. For the love of god do not merge it with the iMac.
Not to mention the reliability of Thunderbolt drive connections under OS X. I've got an iMac with a 2-drive Thunderbolt enclosure with a homemade fusion drive. At least 1 time in 10, it disconnects 'unsafely' on sleep, and then I cannot get the drives to show up (even diskutil doesn't show them) despite unplugging and replugging thunderbolt, powering off the drives, etc.
The GPUs are important for accelerating video rendering (which is a big Apple market), see https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/all-features/

And today if you work with Deep Learning you'll want a fast GPU

> don't try to make it small, thin, or round

Maybe they'll go back to the cube. Developers seemed to like that shape.

Pretty much this. As my primary focus is scientific computing tasks, which means CPU and CUDA, I basically walked away from the Mac Pro, after using (and loving) the old metal 2012-era version.

My next workstation? Not from Apple.

What does a modern developer do now? Bear with this or an MBP? Cross compile?
The same is true for notebooks too. Compare the top models of the Dell XPS 15 [0] with the 15" Macbook Pro (Retina) ranges [1]:

6th generation Quad-core i7 vs 5th generation Quad-core i7

32GB DDR4 vs 16GB DDR3

GTX 960M vs R9 M370X

3840x2160 4K display vs 2880x1800 'Retina' display

Thunderbolt 3 vs Thunderbolt 2

Both 1TB SSD

1.78kg vs 2.04kg

$3049 vs $3199

It's kind of sad that a few years ago Apple was the one leading notebook technology, but now they are just playing catch up and don't even seem to be trying.

[0] http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-15-9550-laptop/pd?oc=c...

[1] http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MJLT2L...

That's a pretty different comparison. The current-generation Retina Macbook Pro was released almost exactly a year ago. It's due for a refresh. The XPS 15 you're linking was released in October and likely won't be refreshed again for another 6 months.

The Dell might well be the better of the two, but you would expect that since it's a recent release. It's not as if the MacBook Pro Retina has languished for years, though.

I think it's worth mentioning that Windows really still isn't ready for "retina" prime time. Setting a > 100% scaling results in all kinds of GUI horror all over the place, especially in 3rd party apps. Things are better now than they were 2 years ago, true, but still not a good situation.

On the other hand, there is pretty much no problem anywhere on the Mac. Apple just handled it. Pretty much all 3rd party apps were updated within a few months and most just "worked" without modification. A remarkable feat, at least to me.

The Mac is still the only way to go if you want a 100% retina desktop experience without glitches.

That said, I have no clue if linux is better in this regard.

So I guess my point is that the 4K on a Windows laptop is largely wasted. The GPU is not up to driving it for games and the GUI is not up to driving it for daily use. A shame, truly.

Disclaimer: I have a 2013 MacPro (with 2 4K Dell monitors) and love it. I use it for Photoshop and software dev.

Bla bla bla ... it should be understood by now that Apple don't care about these niche markets and will do whatever they want.

The only people using Apple workstations are because they either really want to use a MAC or because the software they use is not available on PC. In both cases they won't buy a cheaper and faster PC.

I'm a disgruntled Apple NON-customer : they never created the desktop I wanted (basically an affordable version of the old MAC pro line) or a phone I could afford without having to sell a kidney on the black market. So I use Windows and Android with the satisfaction of knowing that I use both of the bests keyloggers disguised as an OS on the market.

Apple has been steadily been abandoning the "creative pro" market for a long time. The two most recent indicators were dropping Final Cut Pro 7 for Final Cut Pro X, which was not ready for professional editing at release. The new Mac Pro confirmed the move away from the pro market, since it only supported one CPU. For compressing feature films, dual CPUs are a must.
> which was not ready for professional editing at release

Some would argue that that sounds more like a project management failure than a change in market strategy—that they shipped a beta product as done, that someone screwed up somewhere, etc.

I don't think so, though; I think Apple just made a correct call in shipping the "core" of the product early (in the same way most enterprise products get 'Early Access' releases) to allow actual professionals to start evaluating the architecture of the software and tailoring their pipelines to fit it. Professional-use software doesn't get used on day 1 of release; it gets played with by an internal pipeline infrastructure team for six months while the working craftspeople continue to use the stable pipeline.

Handing out something that would be "patched into usefulness" at right about the same time it would actually be put into use makes sense, in strictly consequentialist terms, for both Apple and the professional studios—although Apple latching onto that release to do a bunch of marketing of their product as if it was usable for indies already, could be seen as a bit scummy.

> since it only supported one CPU. For compressing feature films, dual CPUs are a must.

This might not be the case right now (I don't know much about video encoding), but encoded video has keyframes, and effectively you can "chunk out" a set of raw frames to become a keyframe plus its successor interstitial frames, and then parallelize on those chunks, right?

In which case, I'd expect Apple figured that even if CPU-based compression is currently en vogue for this use-case, it'd be obviated by GPU-based highly-parallel compression soon enough, making the dual GPUs a much more significant benefit and the single CPU a much less significant drawback.

Tell me if I'm getting that wrong; I honestly have no idea.

Could be that they are seeing that few "pro" customers use their Mac as more than a front end for a Linux render farm these days.
What I'd like to see is a new 15" MacBook Pro - with USB C
But not only 1 USB C.
Annoyingly, the MBPs, being "workhorse" machines, depend on 'legacy' connectors to whatever people need to use to get their work done, in a way that the consumer-level notebooks don't. The Macbook can get away with an adapter for USB because people rarely plug things into it. I'm always plugging things into my rMBP, often random things I wasn't aware I would need to plug in, so requiring adapters would be much more annoying.
I'd like to see another 17" model. I miss the extra screen space.
The Mac Pro has not been updated in 841 days (av 449) The Retina Macbook Pro has not been updated in 325 days (average 214).

Although chipset cycles could be part of the delay, I wonder if virtual reality hardware and software support could also be part of the plan too.

further reading: http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/ http://www.macrumors.com/roundup/apple-vr-project/

Considering all the fuss Apple made about the new design of the Mac Pro it is strange they have not kept it top of the line. I guess they care more about the 5K iMac and MacBook being super thin and pretty.
It's really strange. A lot of effort was put into that Mac Pro and it's components. Maybe sales were not as high as Apple expected?
Apple is really starting to suck in the enterprise, windows desktop OS is coming along but still has flaws, android is the future of computing. this is coming from and industry certified apple tech who has been certified on every major make of PC as well. Most dip shots don't need a real computer for surfing the interwebs. google chrome does fine for most stuff out there. Virtualization and web platforms like vision and AWS give low powered devices infinite hardware and software capabilities. Where does a desktop even fit in this world any more, besides the IT office or possibly the accounting offices. I had an apple rep to tell me to drop Open Directory in favor of Active Directory. I am not sure they even care about enterprise customers any more and just want to sell stupid IOS devices they can brick whenever they want you to buy a new one and release an update to kill it. Who would ever want to try and manage mac OS with Active Directory, that is really dumb. I might as well get Windows OS or google chrome OS and manage it with native tools for the OS.
I almost see what you see. In our large enterprise Android is not really even a player. Macs do kind of suck especially for some of our multifactor security requirements(CAC/PIV cards). Windows rules the desktop and iOS is the preferred mobile platform.
I mostly agree with you, but I don't see why iOS isn't a potential contender against Android in the future Enterprise market. Have you been watching what Apple has been doing with iOS in education lately (http://www.apple.com/ca/education/it/)? Seems very likely that's a targeted "first user-story" for technology that's very generally applicable in the enterprise.
They will probably be updated at the coming WWDC in june alongside the macbook and macbook pro.
There's an argument to be made for Apple selling a go-to workstation for making VR content. They might not care about consumer VR (for now), but in terms of their history, it feels a bit weird for them not to support the nascent VR content field.
What history? Apple was never very big in the 3D content creation biz. Their 3D support has always lagged a few years behind windows.
Basically saying that Apple's release cycle is slower for desktop and laptops than the PC counterparts.

Nothing really new here. Because there are several PC makers. Even if all of them releases new hardware in the same rate as Apple (say 2 year generation), having 3 of them can easily interscale release dates and make it look like PCs are releasing new stuff much faster.

I think, also, that Apple is serving an entirely different market with the Mac Pro than the PC makers are (mostly) serving on the high end.

PC makers can get a continuous incremental revenue stream from gamers and independent professionals. But most Mac Pros are likely sold to companies (even if just tiny one-man companies) that refresh them on a set schedule rather than whenever a shiny new thing comes out.

I've got one of these and love it and I know a few other developers who do too. The main negatives I've seen are from people who want to stick PC GPU cards in for gaming. As a developer desktop computer it's a joy to use, virtually silent and can power multiple 4K displays. It's a shame Apple hasn't done an update though.
What about the Thunderbolt display? It is much older and still being offered. At the same launch price.
But the Mac Pro is round. That's the important thing. Other lame computers are square. The cool Apple computer is round. That's what's important.

Half the people who buy that thing probably never use more than the browser and some music/video play apps.

Apple earned only 6-7billion last quarter selling Macs, in a quarter with 50-60 billion in overall sales. [1]

I think there's a real possibility Apple will stop selling computers. They already don't care about the "high-end creative" market. OTOH I don't know what people would use to develop for iOS/Watch, but...you heard it here first.

[1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/263428/apples-revenue-fro...

I suspect that Apple will always continue making the "trucks" of the computing world (to borrow Steve Jobs' analogy).

To continue the analogy, compare their revenue numbers with, say Daimler[0]. Daimler sells more Mercedes cars than their other vehicles, but they still get revenue from trucks and buses and other pro/commercial vehicles.

They're not going to relinquish the only platform to develop iDevice apps on, not to mention the mindshare they get from being a super important dev platform for all kinds of creative leaders. It's just not a financial question, there are tons of downstream implications.
I find it hard to believe. iOS is not ready for prime time and Apple refuses to create a Surface like device and merging iOS with OSX.