Apple Mac Pro 2013 vs. Mac Pro 2012: spec showdown

By Jacob O'Gara Published October 22, 2013

apple mac pro 2013 vs 2012 388809 schiller and wwdc 13 — Image used with permission by copyright holder

At its latest event in San Francisco, Apple provided additional details regarding the new Mac Pro. Overall, the new Mac Pro is lighter, smaller and runs on the new Mavericks operating system. It also sports unconventional aesthetics which make it worthy of a starring role in a certain Stanley Kubrick sci-fi epic.

The new Mac Pro is also significantly cheaper, with consumers likely to smile ear to ear when they see the $800 price drop over last year’s model. However, if there’s one area where last year’s Mac Pro trumps its younger cousin, its storage space. The new Mac Pro wields a 256GB SSD, while the previous-gen Mac Pro sports 8TB of hard drive space. Sure, SSDs are blazing fast, but storage is a premium when it comes to creative professionals like photographers and videographers, whose files would likely eat up plenty of hard drive space in no time.

Recommended Videos

To give you a clearer idea of how last year’s Mac Pro stacks up with Apple’s latest refresh, we lined up the specs of both machines side by side. This way, you get a simple picture of how they compare.

	Mac Pro 2013	Mac Pro 2012 Image used with permission by copyright holder
Dimensions	9.9″ x 6.6″	20.1″ x 8.1″
Weight	11 pounds	39.9 pounds
Processor	3.7 GHz Quad-Core, Intel Xeon E5	3.46 GHz Quad Core, Intel Xeon
RAM	12GB DDR3 ECC memory	6GB DDR3 ECC memory
Graphics	Dual AMD FirePro D300 GPUs	ATI Radeon HD 5770
Storage	256GB SSD	8TB
Networking	Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0	Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1
Ports	4 USB 3, 6 Thunderbolt, 2 Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 1.4	USB: 5 FireWire 800: 4 Ethernet: 2 Ethernet type: 10/100/1000 (Gigabit) DVI: 1 Mini DisplayPort: 2 3.5mm headphone: 2 3.5mm line-in / microphone: 1 Digital optical audio (S/PDIF): 2
Operating System	OS X Mavericks	OS X 10.8
Price	$2,999	$3,799

Topics

Apple
Apple

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Jacob O’Gara is an editorial assistant at Digital Trends, where he writes about everything from video games to…

Computing

The 13-inch Apple MacBook Air M3 is below $1,000 for Cyber Monday

The M3 MacBook Air in front of a window.

This year's Cyber Monday deals have dropped. For Apple fans who want to take advantage of the shopping event to buy a MacBook, there's an offer from Best Buy that you shouldn't miss. The 256GB model of the 13-inch Apple MacBook Air M3 is on sale with a $200 discount that slashes its price from $1,099 to $899, but probably not for long, as Cyber Monday MacBook deals will be gone soon. You're going to have to be quick to add it to your cart, though, because this 18% discount won't last long.

Why you should buy the 13-inch Apple MacBook Air M3
Our team is a big fan of the 13-inch Apple MacBook Air M3. It currently holds the title as the very best MacBook you can buy in our rankings of the best MacBooks, and it all starts with the performance of Apple's M3 chip. Combined with an eight-core CPU, an eight-core GPU, and 16GB of RAM, the Apple MacBook Air M3 will barely break a sweat when handling your daily activities -- even when you're multitasking between several apps.

Computing

Cyber Monday is here and the Apple MacBook Air M3 is 20% off

2024 Apple MacBook Air 15-inch with M3 chip

With plenty of great Cyber Monday deals to shop now, we’re particularly excited to see the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch M3 for $200 off at Best Buy. That deal dropped on Black Friday but it's still possible to save, which means you don't have to miss out. Usually costing $999, you can buy it today for $799, which is a fantastic deal for a highly desirable laptop. It's still one of the best Cyber Monday laptop deals out there. Here’s what it has to offer at its limited-time discount of 20% off.

Why you should buy the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch M3
The Apple MacBook Air M3 has a lot to love. As our review explains, it offers “excellent GPU performance”, fantastic battery life, and a “compact and beautiful design”. It also provides “impeccable build quality,” meaning it’s easily one of the best laptops around.

Computing

A forgotten Apple patent reveals the original idea for the Vision Pro

A person wearing an Apple Vision Pro headset.

A forgotten Apple patent from 2008 suggests that the company has been working on the Vision Pro for a very, very long time. Spotted by Macworld's Dan Moren while he was browsing the Internet Archive, the old article only shows one diagram from the patent but it looks extremely similar to the display panel of the Vision Pro.

The device is also described as a wearable display with intelligent sensors that can "simulate the experience of being in a virtual environment." It even mentions that the sensors would be able to track head and eye movements. While the tech Apple wanted to put inside it at this point must have been quite different from the product we have now, it's surprising just how similar the shape and design of the headset are.

nproxy.org