While Microsoft and Sony were busy readying next generation console reveals on Monday, Apple was prepping for a next-gen reveal all its own.
During its Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple unveiled the long-awaited new Mac Pro desktop, complete with a drastic and stylish redesign.
Of course, style isn't everything, and the Mac Pro packs a lot of punch into its diminutive cylindrical frame, which Apple claimed would provide "breakthrough performance" at one-eighth the size of current Mac Pros desktops.
Let's take a closer look at just what makes the new Mac Pro a desktop worth getting excited about.

Mac Pro: what's under the hood?

Mac Pro
Inside Apple's short stack (credit: Tech Crunch)
Apple wasn't squeamish about breaking the Mac Pro open to give everyone a glimpse at the innards powering the 9.9-inch desktop.
The Mac Pro brings the noise with Intel Xeon E5 processors, which in turn are capable of supporting up to 12 core configurations to deliver two times the floating point performance.
Coupled with a pair of AMD FirePro workstation-class GPUs, the new Mac Pro is more than ready to handle up to seven teraflops of computations, and delivers speeds more than two times faster than current generation Mac Pros.
Mac Pro
Bask in the Mac Pro's obelisk-like stature
More impressively, Apple is including 1,866MHz DDR3 RAM in the revamped Mac Pro, which gives it the ability to deliver up to 60GBps of memory bandwidth.
With that kind of power, the Mac Pro is a filmmaker's dream, as it's able to render full-resolution 4K video, while also working out rendering effects on the side.
All of this hardware is built around a unified thermal core, which will give the Mac Pro the advantage of distributing that thermal capacity across all the processors evenly.

Mac Pro: Ports galore

Mac Pro
A port for any storm (credit: Tech Crunch)
A desktop wouldn't be any good without a plethora of ports, and the Mac Pro has them in spades.
There are six Thunderbolt 2 ports, each capable of supporting six daisy-chained devices, meaning you could have up to 36 different external devices hooked up to the Mac Pro with ease.
Add in the fact Thunderbolt 2 allows for up to 20GBs of bandwidth to each plugged device, and you've got yourself outstanding external performance almost unheard of to this point.
Even if you don't have a wealth of Thunderbolt 2-compatible external hard drives or displays, the Mac Pro's ports are completely backwards compatible with existing Thunderbolt connections, meaning you won't have to upgrade every last device you already have.
Mac Pro
It's all very 2001

Mac Pro: Apple murky on release date

While specifics about an exact drop date and price for the Mac Pro haven't been divulged, Apple is planning on releasing the black beauty later this year.
It's been a while since Apple's dropped a desktop this revolutionary on consumers, and we can't wait to see what the Mac Pro is actually capable when we get our hands on one.
After all we've seen so far, we're inclined to believe Apple when it calls the Mac Pro "the most radical Mac yet."