New Apple Mac Pro goes on sale

THE most beautiful computer ever made? Apple's brand new Mac Pro has gone on sale and it's a sight to behold. If only we could afford one.

APPLE'S revolutionary new Mac Pro has gone on sale and we hope it's waterproof because we're starting to drool already.

Almost unrecognisable as a computer, the cylindrical machine was unveiled in June to a crowd of dropped jaws and is now available to order from the Apple store today with prices starting at $A3999.

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OK, the price might make most of us wince, but the new Mac Pro has a design and architecture like no other computer on the market and makes current machines look like blocky dinosaurs. The aluminium enclosure stands 25cm tall, has a diameter of 16.7cm and weighs only 5kg. Meaning this desktop will actually fit on a desk.

Why it has such an unusual shape is because the components are built around an innovative thermal core, designed to pack as much performance as possible from a clever, space-maximising, layout. Arranging the innards in such a way means the new Mac Pro is one-eighth the volume of the previous generation of Macs and now delivers eight times the graphics performance.

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While looking like a piece of modern art it also has some serious hardware for professional users. It comes in 4-core, 6-core, 8-core or 12-core configurations as well as your choice of memory. To keep things super quick, the new Mac Pro uses a whopping 1TB flash storage which reads 10 times faster than conventional hard drives. Anyone who is editing super-HD 4K video footage will be well and truly tooled-up for the job.

At the core of this Apple. The unique thermal core structure is the key to the Mac Pro's shape ...

The new Mac Pro is Apple's most radically redesigned professional desktop since the Power Mac G4 Cube, which flopped because it was perceived as overpriced.

Continuing the tradition begun with the original iMac in 1998, Apple has again changed the face of computing. And it's a very pretty one.

A one-off red Mac Pro fetched nearly $US1 million at auction recently to benefit the Product (RED) AIDS charity.

The standard version won't set you back anywhere near that much. Prices for the quad-core configuration start at $3999, while six-core starts at $5299.