Apple’s Mac Pro ships in December with maximum 8TB of storage

Apple is making its Mac Pro and Apple Pro Display available in December, it announced today. The machine was announced earlier this year, but no availability window had been set.

In addition to the previously announced specs, Apple also noted that it would be able to be ordered with up to an 8TB SSD. Apple’s Pro Workflow Team continues to take feedback about wants and needs of its pro customers, and Apple says that the Mac Pro can now handle up to six streams of 8K Pro Res video, up from three streams quoted back in June. 

Apple also says that Blackmagic will have an SDI to 8K converter for productions using a serial digital interface workflow on set or in studio. This was a question I got several times after Apple announced its reference monitor to go along with the Mac Pro. This makes it more viable for many on-set applications that use existing workflows. 

I was able to get a look at the Mac Pro running the SDI converter box as well as a bunch of other applications like Final Cut Pro, and it continues to be incredibly impressive for pro workflows. One demo showed six 8K Pro Res streams running with animation and color coding in real time in a pre-rendered state. Really impressive. The hardware is also still wildly premium stuff. The VESA mount for the Pro Display XDR alone feels like it has more engineering behind it than most entire computers.

The new Mac Pro starts at $5,999 for the base configuration, which includes 32GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and a Radeon Pro 570X graphics card. The Pro Display XDR 32-inch reference-quality monitor that Apple will sell alongside it starts at $4,999.