I merely want us to discuss what the available facts are for the Mac Pro, use some cold analysis, and determine when all the pieces will have come together, or not.
At WWDC, Apple is likely to announce the launch date for Mountain Lion ( 10.8). That date plus about 2.75 months is where probably can start the doomsday countdown clock.
Right now the folks deeply worried are those who have their underwear in twist far more than leveraging deep insight into the facts.
I'll fill in the rational below.
The major parts needed for a new Mac Pro are:
1. new CPU/RAM board and new motherboard. ( complete line up of E5 1600
and 2600 models )
2. new, complete GPU PCI-e card line-up ( probably at least partially the 28nm, PCI-e v3.0 cards)
3. revised OS. (every new Mac comes with a tweaked OS).
Some minor parts
4. Apple probably would like HDD prices to retreat some more from "flood" increases.
5. The log-jam of new Mac models waiting to be released. ( Apple is unlikely to release a flood all at once).
Some possible major twists
1. Abandonment of Xeon E5's for E3's ( less than 3 PCI-e slots is the "future").
E5 systems from other vendors look to be getting reading to enter the shipping stage (e.g., HP and Dell projecting before end of May and some as early as this upcoming week). So that roadblock should largely disappear by mid-June (e.g., there are still clouds around lower end E5 1600 models like the 1620 not being a bottleneck.). To date this largely been a non-Apple specific problem. Intel and everyone else is also late.
Similarly, Nvidia and AMD seem to have completed their rollouts of PCI-e cards. The "top" of the line-ups weren't material to dates. Whatever card Apple selected as the 'entry' level card would come out last and be the date roadblock. Nvidia just did the "low" end of the 600GT line up (
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5845/...ased-geforce-gt-610-gt-620-gt-630-into-retail ). While not 28nm , Kepler, or PCI-e v3.0 it wouldn't be surprising to see Apple put a low cost card in the box by default. Again should be completely uncorked by early June.
Also again this have been a workstation wide delay issue; not a Apple specific one.
Even if Apple is lagging on drivers for bleeding edge cards, there has been such a long rollout out that June is plenty of runway to get off the ground.
For both the of above the none of the other major vendors are significantly out in front of Apple in term of actually "next day" shipping of product. There are either lead times or "order now and get later" dates. When those vendors have gotten past their initial shipping wave bubbles across their whole line up then Apple is an oddball.
If Apple goes to a "papa bear, mama bear , baby bear" line up like the MBP ( 13" 15" 17") and uses the E3 for the "baby bear" model then the slide on CPUs is even further into June, possibly July. That's assuming the E3's have shorter ramp to real, shipping products than the E5's have had.
E3's make sense if believe Mac Pro absolutely has to have Thunderbolt. It is nice but really don't. If Apple drank that kool-aid, they could have hobbled the whole product roll-out waiting on the new E3's.
The OS could be a sticking point if Apple decides to punt on releasing the Mac Pro with 10.7. If they decide to skip then the Mac Pro would need to wait for a post 10.8 release date. For example, E3's stall till July and run into the pre 10.8 blackout window for new Macs. Another example could be some feature (e.g., transparent SSD+HDD caching) that is a 10.8 feature that would be more universally leveraged on a Mac Pro, so it makes more sense to wait to roll-out (as oppose to retro-fit into 10.7).
The fact the other Mac products haven't shipped and there is a relatively short window ( couple of months) to 10.8 release means some products are likely going to get pushed to the other side of the 10.8 date. Conceptually, the Mac Pro should be first out the gate because it is the oldest, but it is also likely the lowest volume product too. It certainly is probably the Mac product that gets the most "I have a 4-6 year old version and I'm still extremely happy with its performance" comments. Since those folks aren't in a hurry to buy, there is no pressure for Apple to push out something they aren't going to buy. That is not as much the case for the other Mac products. While it would be generally better to resolve oldest first, they may decide to wait to get higher priority models out the door (i.e., priority is not purely based on 'age').
So far the information about Ivy Bridge E5 follow ons is that they are a year away also (if the announce-to-really-available progression goes like it did this year). It won't shorten the cycle much if pushed to the other side of 10.8 release by a 1-2 months.
If 10.8 release is August the Mac Pro would be at the 2 year mark ( started shipping in August 2011, Announced mid-July). Some reports have stated HDD prices should be back to "pre-flood" prices by Sept-Oct so that not a minor pricing issue either.
If by first two months after haven't announced anything then it is extremely likely there are no major missing pieces to the puzzle. It should also much more clear by then when the new Ivy Bridge E5's are going to arrive ( Intel has a Developer dog and pony show in Sept-Oct timeframe). If there is a solid and believable date on the next generation and Apple hasn't shipped the current one then that's a really bad sign .
Similarly, post the 10.8 release the major competitors with Mac Pro like workstation boxes will probably jumped into hard press FUD mode with any Mac Pro accounts they've had trouble cracking before. The forums here should be well past "melt down" mode by that point.
If just a minor 10.7.x tweak, purely E5's , Thunderbolt isn't the top priority, and roughly the same power range on older PCI-e cards then it should be with the next couple of weeks. The core issue is what design choices did Apple choose.
