Apple and their Pro Users
As most may be aware, Apple is a very secretive company. Apple prefers to keep to themselves until they are ready to announce a product. There are only a few times when Apple will reveal a product before it is available. A few of the product that they have done so include the iPhone, the Apple TV, and the 2013 Mac Pro.
It is not often that Apple reveals what they are working on. However, Apple has done just that, although not as explicitly as they did with the iPhone or the Apple TV. Apple invited a handful of journalists to visit their "Machine Lab" on Apple's campus across from One Infinite Loop. Apple did not show off any physical product, but they did describe what they are working on.
In June of 2013, at their World Wide Developer Conference, Phil Schiller unveiled that Apple was working on a revolutionary design for their high-end Mac Pro. This came on the heels of many "pundits" indicating that Apple lost its way. This lead to Schiller giving the infamous "Can't innovate my ass" quote. This is when Apple unveiled the all new Mac Pro.
The design of the Mac Pro is a very customized design that had not been tried before. The thermal core of the Mac Pro is triangular. The Mac Pro has dual graphical processing units occupying two sides of the triangle thermal core. The third side has the processor. The thermal core is designed to move all of the heat up through the central core and out of the top of the Mac Pro.
The exterior of the Mac Pro is smooth. However, from Apple's own wording, the interior design, while ambitious, has ultimately not worked out as well as they would have hoped. In reality, the tolerances for the thermal core were too close and if Apple changed any of the internal components, the Mac Pro would not be able to work properly.
Due to the tight tolerances, the Mac Pro has lacked any upgrades since its introduction in 2013. Apple has made some slight upgrades to the Mac Pro. In reality, they are not upgrades as much as a better value for the same price. The new base model comes with dual AMD D500 GPUs, and a 6-core processor. This is up from the 4-core and AMD D300. The higher-end model comes with an 8-core processor and the AMD D700s. This is up from the 6-core and AMD D500 processors. For now, these are the only changes to the Mac Pro.
At this same meeting, Apple did provide some details on their new Mac Pro. Apple is currently working on a new modular Mac Pro. The modularity is not necessarily end-user modularity, but more likely, for Apple to be able to upgrade the Mac Pro on a more regular basis, but it will not be with the current form factor. Apple indicated that this new Mac Pro will "not be available this year".
Alongside the new Mac Pro, Apple also indicated that it is working on a new display. This goes against what some reports indicated before. Previously, it was reported that Apple was completely out of the display game, since Apple partnered with LG to work on the LG Ultrafine 5k Display that was introduced in the fall with the MacBook Pro with Touchbar.
Apple did not give any more specific information about the Mac Pro. However, they did mention that they are working on a new iMac model that is geared towards professionals. What this entails, is not entirely clear. It is entirely possible that Apple will have even more powerful processors, and possibly even higher maximum amounts of memory. One of the better items that Apple could put into an iMac Pro would be a 6 or 8 core-processor with the possibility of having 64 or 128GBs of memory.
All that we know is that Apple is working on these items. There is no information as to when the redesigned Mac Pro or the iMac Pro will be released, but it is only a matter of time before the new Macs are released. One thing that I would like to see is any new information about a new Mac Mini, but there is no new information about it.