Apple's Mac Pro goes on sale today

If you've got at least AU$3,999 spare, you can place an order for Apple's new Mac Pro today. The website isn't ready yet, but you can walk into an Apple Store and put down your cash.

The most interesting, and probably most radical, announcement at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June, the new Mac Pro is a huge departure from its outdated predecessor. It abandons the iconic but aged perforated tower case that was introduced in 2006, moving to a unique cylindrical design based around a unified "thermal core", sharing cooling for every component.

Taking up one eighth of the space of the previous model, the new Mac Pro is as significant a departure from tradition as the Mac Mini was from the iMac. The compact design doesn't mean reduced power, though; the Mac Pro uses a quad-, 6-core or 12-core Intel Xeon processor, dual AMD FirePro graphics cards, up to 64GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of super-fast PCI-Express flash storage.

The new Mac Pro is not an especially cheap computer, but it's not designed to be; the workstation-grade graphics and Xeon processor are a far cry from everyday hardware. In Australia, the base level quad-core Mac Pro will set you back AU$3,999, and the 6-core step-up model is AU$5,299. Apple's US pricing is somewhat cheaper, at US$2,999 (before state sales tax, which in California is roughly another US$270) for the base model and US$3,999 (before state sales tax) for the 6-core model.

At the time of writing, Apple's storefront had not been updated to reflect the new workstation's availability. It should be available "later today" according to Apple's announcement. When it's unlocked, we can't wait to see how pricey a maxed-out Mac Pro is; expect a high-end system to easily top AU$10,000.