Considering the direction they've been going with MacBooks, I wouldn't be surprised if they went proprietary with most connections. I'd bet on the fact that they'd use their NVMe connector from the MacBooks.
Whether this would matter to most of their pro customers, I don't know. With the availability of lower-cost, higher performance hardware, Apple are pricing themselves out of the professional sector. They're going to have to step their pricing down on future models to compete. Even with the $1000 reduction they've done to all current models, they're massively overpriced.
In my opinion, this concept is exactly where they should be aiming with the Mac Pro. Future-proof, and conforming to widely adopted standards.
My 2009 Tower is not impressed.
It will be just as "Pro" as the MacBook "Pro". 
All ports will be Thunderbolt 3 and if you are lucky, maybe a combo headphone jack. That thing takes up so much space.. 
oh my that looks beautiful i want!!! 
if someone actually made that case and you could buy it i would buy it instantly 2 GPU's hell yeah much better then the case im looking at for my next build
One oversight they made with the concept is the limited space to cool the CPU, but it's still nice.
true but if it actually gets made they will fix that most likely
Yup, even more so when you look at the offerings from HP and Lenovo, cost/performance Apple are just far far too off the mark. Back in the past when we had the big "Silver Tower" Mac pros, yes they used to be competitively priced compared to the competition (Apart from the RAM, lol). Honestly, I'd not be surprised if the "Mac Pro" will just be a "Desktop Apple Mac" rather then an actual serious Workstation hardware. And the cost? Apart from it being a good UNIX system, I guess? That's all it really has going for it.
I expect it to basically be a fancy Mac mini. Very minimalistic on the outside (including a conservative number of ports etc. ) and some slightly better-than-average specs on the inside.
Yeah, see as a Workstation user, I now have a HP one, dual CPUs all the fancy stuff. Plus during my career I've used either Lenovo/HP Workstations for tasks. (3D/VFX) Apart from sometimes some systems packing 1-2 Quadros, or even a Tesla for simulations, they have mass I/O to connect up anything you need externally, PCIe cache disks, nics for high speed networking to connect to the asset servers, ect. (And they're usually all running Linux too, RHEL). Mac Pros just do not have the ability to do this, they'd make a good hobbyist machine, even though imo its FAR too much to spend on a machine as a hobby.
There even was a time you'd see Mac Pros just dominate the sound development sphere; now even then that slowly isn't becoming the case as the Westmere Mac Pros are now ageing, sadly.
Edit: Maybe if you was into seriously making games for iOS devices they could be good to use? But even then, then kind of assets you'd be making for mobile could be made on the Mac Pro laptops or the all-in-one machines they sell.
Going all-in on TB3/USB-C for "data" ports doesn't bother me (although I wouldn't have minded keeping one or two USB 3-A ports, either). What does bother me is losing mag-safe for power, soldering on the only internal storage, having a max RAM capacity of 16GB (and soldering it on), shipping an RX455 (a video card so low-end that AMD doesn't even bother making it for the general public) as the "high-end" GPU option, and the general sacrificing of everything on the alter of thinness and lightness.
Also, no ergonomic keyboard option, but nobody does that so I can't fault Apple anymore than the rest of the industry for that.
According to a quote at the end of the linked article, I think that's what they're actually planning to do. But you're right, even a basic iMac would be more than enough for that.
Federighi: “I think if you use Xcode downloads as a metric, it’s possible software developers are actually our largest pro audience. It’s growing very quickly, it’s been fantastic.”
That was the main deal-breaker for me when I heard about the MacBook Pro.
I still don't see how a mini PCIe port is taking up a lot of space. But that's not the problem, it's just their excuse. If you can't change it later, you most likely opt for the bigger model "just in case", even if you won't ever use the bonus storage/horsepower, and bigger model = bigger profit.
Well it's a "Pro" model, you have to see the context.
If you think about it, it's quite clever. If they sold standard size computers but made all the components soldered on, they couldn't argue that it's all "in the name of thinness and lightness".
The same goes for the iPhone. If it was a "thick" phone, they couldn't argue that the headphone jack was in the way for internal components, when the real reason for its removal is the extra profit from selling Lightning port licenses to their partners, so they can make Lightning headphones, or the license for the W1 chip, so they can make "easy to use" Bluetooth headphones.
The fact that the device becomes thinner and lighter is just engineering porn to show off and give people the impression they're the real innovators in the business.
In the end, it's not Apple's fault for this development, but rather the consumers who don't mind and happily keep buying into this.
holy crap those are some high prices....
Seems counter intuitive to Apples current direction of you replace it not upgrade / fix it.
I have a hard time believing this and i think Apple is just going to refresh the current trash can with new CPU / GPU
I'm really curious as to why they don't think they'll be able to get anything out this year. What could possibly be the reason? Even waiting for Naples shouldn't take that long, should it?
I wonder if part of this "modularity" thing involves a new interconnect or expansion slot or something?
Judging based on the new macbook i am going to say yes. Apple enjoys using a different connector over the stranded M PCI e connector.
If they are planning on making the cpu modular for upgrades further down the road, then I think that they need to go with AMD considering that Intel changes sockets every year or two. Of course they could just use lower end cpus base and then a year or two later, offer "upgrades" with the higher end cpus from the same generation. Let's hope they don't go that route. They seem to have a decent working relationship with AMD, and if they want to have a modular cpu, AM4 seems like the right move. Should also offer the performance needed by their higher end customers (think video editing and the like).
I kinda want them to switch to AMD, but that's tied to my desire for AMD to be on top for a while.
They have been using AMD gpus for a while and are trying to move away from Intel (last I heard) and AMD has better socket longevity. That said, they might just not really offer cpu modularity at all. I'm not really sure what they are planning, but that would be my plan.
It would be nice to see a high end mac again, it has been quite some time with old shit....
Personally I don't think I would buy one but it could be a good indicator if there is any interest in the pro market left at all or if they just try to find a way to integrate the emoji bar into a desktop....
We'll see.