It feels like we’ve waited a long time for the new Mac Pro, and in fact, we have. However, in typical Apple fashion they blew away expectations with the new Mac Pro and Apple Pro Display XDR.

I had a chance to see the Mac Pro in action after the keynote in a music studio setting and it was incredible. I saw a Pro Tools and Logic setup, both running hundreds of tracks, with plug-ins running, while playing video, and everything worked seamlessly.

Mac Pro isn’t just an upgraded pro machine, it is completely redone to maximize performance in every aspect of the computer. As Phil Schiller said, it has “extreme performance.”

“We designed Mac Pro for users who require a modular system with extreme performance, expansion and configurability. With its powerful Xeon processors, massive memory capacity, groundbreaking GPU architecture, PCIe expansion, Afterburner accelerator card and jaw-dropping design, the new Mac Pro is a monster that will enable pros to do their life’s best work,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.

If you’re like me, you noticed the similarity with the “cheese grater” Mac Pro of years ago, and for good reason. Both machines are similar in the exterior look, and why not, that was a pro machine that worked.

Mac Pro features Xeon processors up to 28 cores and 12 DIMM slots, allowing for up to 1.5TB of memory.

This type of power allows projects that normally took multiple machines to power to be done on one Mac Pro. The music projects I mentioned earlier were done on multiple machines until the new Mac Pro, when they were consolidated into one project, running on one machine.

As if the introduction of the Radeon Pro Vega II wasn’t enough, Apple also introduced the Radeon Pro Vega II Duo, and the Mac Pro will allow you to run two of them.

With the addition of Apple’s Afterburner accelerator card, the Mac Pro can decode up to 6.3 billion pixels per second. This setup will virtually eliminate proxy workflows, allowing editors to use native formats directly from the camera.

I expected a lot from the new Mac Pro and even I was blown away with what Apple came up with in the Mac Pro.