We’re huge fans of the Apple Mac Pro here at Kineda, and it’d be a terribly sad day if Apple decides to discontinue the line. According to a report by Apple Insider, things aren’t looking very bright:

Although the Mac maker has reportedly developed a revision to the existing Mac Pro that may or may not see the light of day, people familiar with the matter said management as far back as May of 2011 were in limbo over whether to pour any additional resources into the product line.

According to these people, the consensus among sales executives for the Cupertino-based company was that the Mac Pro’s days — at least in its current form — were inevitably numbered. In particular, internal discussions were said to focus around the fact that sales of the high-end workstations to both consumers and enterprises have dropped off so considerably that the Mac Pro is no longer a particularly profitable operation for Apple.

After almost two years, Apple finally announces an update to it’s Mac Pro line, offering up to 12 cores of processing power for up to 50% greater performance than the previous generation.

“The new Mac Pro is the most powerful and configurable Mac we’ve ever made,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “With up to 12 cores, the new Mac Pro outperforms our previous top-of-the-line system by up to 50 percent, and with over a billion possible configurations, our customers can create exactly the system they want.”

Two 12-core options (2.66 GHz or 2.93 GHz) are available with a starting price of $4999. All models are set to begin shipping in August.

Also announced was the release of a new Apple 27″ LED Cinema Display featuring a resolution of 2560×1440. The latest Apple screen features an iSight video camera, microphone and speakers.

(via MacRumors)

Today is Apple goodies day!

Apple’s Mac mini gets a long-overdue refresh with a 5th USB port, FireWire 800, GeForce 9400M and 2.0Ghz Core 2 Duo processor.

Apple’s Mac Pro ($2499) gets a $300 price drop and the Nehalem CPU, available in 4-core or 8-core flavors; both models come with the NVIDIA GT 120 (dual ATI Radeon HD 4870s are optional).

The 24-inch iMac now starts at $1,499, although the 20-inch can be had for $1,199; all iMacs get NVIDIA graphics, from the GT 130 down to the 9400M.