Our first pictures of Apple's new Mac Pro and XDR Pro Display

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Today, Apple has developed two very expensive computer components for professionals: the Mac Pro and the XDR Pro Display. Although we did not have the opportunity to spend time with them, we attended live and in-camera demonstrations and had the opportunity to photograph them.

Apple positions them as direct competitors of the type of video editing bay hardware that costs tens of thousands of dollars, and not as mainstream products. Judged on this scale, they seem to be good business, even if they only concern a few people working in specialized fields.

The big surprise is the modular Mac Pro, so let's start there.

Mac Pro

We could hardly believe it when we saw the announcement – it seems like it's hardly Apple at the moment, but the Mac Pro is a tower PC with modular components. It has a similar design to a cheese grater that, as noted, dates back to the previous Mac tower from many years ago.

This grater design has a function, not just a form: it is essential to the cooling system of the machine. This system-wide solution (that is, there is no separate cooling on the graphics processor) places three giant fans in the front and a fan on the other side; there are two isolated thermal zones. There is, however, a very large separate heat sink for the processor. When it is idle, the Mac Pro is quieter than an iMac Pro. We saw it connected to two Pro Display XDR monitors playing two 6K videos and it was inaudible to us by the silent ventilation in the room.

The Mac Pro doubles the number of PCIe expansion slots compared to this classic tower, with a total of eight. But the Mac Pro is not exactly as a desktop computer in that it is modules designed by Apple's partners. You can load it with MPX modules containing hardware manufactured by partners such as AMD and its competitors, not just for PCIe cards: Apple showed us another MPX module containing a RAID array.

It's kind of an intermediate solution. This will still not please everyone, but it's probably a step forward from the 2013 trash model.

The Mac Pro is available in configurations ranging from 8 to 28 cores, as well as memory up to 1.5 TB with six memory channels and 12 DIMM slots. The price is undeniably steep; the product is named Pro, with ultra-expensive features specifically designed for creative professionals in areas such as video editing and 3D modeling. Apple does not think of Mac Pro in terms of sales to consumers, not even experienced users.

Pro Display XDR

And then there is the XDR Pro Display. It's strange, at least for most viewers. The XDR's $ 4,999 base price probably seems absolutely outrageous to most consumers (and this does not even include $ 999 support.) But there's a reason behind this apparent craziness. Firstly, the XDR is not a consumer display, but in reality it competes on the low-end with high-end displays used by graphic designers and the like – these screens typically cost between 2,000 and 6,000 $, but it also competes with professional reference screens costing $ 30, $ 40, or $ 50,000.

And the choice at the stand also makes sense, despite the price. Some target users will want to mount it on the wall, others will have a proprietary solution and others will want support. Why make them choose? You just have to be willing to spend a lot money to make your choice, more than most people will want to spend.

Unfortunately, consumers can not get a display of this quality, but it is nevertheless potentially revolutionary for its target market. Even at $ 5,000, the price of XDR is such that every person throughout the journey, from shooting to final color correction of a video or film production, can benefit. Normally, only the last person in this chain has the ultra-high-end monitor, which means they'll spend countless hours working to fix image problems that were not visible to them. users earlier in the process.

The Pro Display XDR has an edge-to-edge glass screen with 576 blue LEDs, each modulated to 10 times the refresh rate of the screen. In general, screens of this type use white LEDs because high brightness is essential for HDR content control. But blue witnesses are easier to control. Apple has opted for these and a color correction sheet on the screen changes what you see in white light.

Also inside this screen: a defusing plate that returns light into the cavity. This should allow you to better mix and shape the display before you see the final image.

The XDR Pro Display reaches a maximum brightness of 1600 nits, but it can hold 1000 for a long time. It's far from these professional reference screens, which often darken after a while because they can not maintain it, which creates a workflow problem for the professionals who work on it.

And then there is the contrast ratio of 1,000,000: 1. I own an OLED TV and since I bought it I grit my teeth in front of every TV and LED monitor I see. The level of black is too high for me, and blooming on dark backgrounds behind clear objects like text drives me crazy. I have closely inspected the Pro Display XDR in a dark room, and even if it does not work enough to reach the black levels and the contrast of my OLED TV, it is more than close enough, and it is much closer than I have ever seen in any mainstream screen.

Again, the appearance of the rasp makes all the difference, as it allows the screen to silently ventilate the heat from the back. There is a fan, but it turns at seven decibels, which is almost inaudible.

The XDR Pro Display is so specialized that it is not really a product that we usually look at at Ars. But we are excited to have more time with him when he arrives later this year.