If European reseller, France Systemes, is to be believed, the launch of refreshed Mac Pros in the European Union might be closer than what's expected. The development was reported by French website,
Mac4Ever, that published the reseller's e-mail newsletter according to which a "new range of Mac Pros will be released in Spring 2013."
While the newsletter doesn't mention the exact date of the launch, it points to a more specific time frame compared to Apple CEO, Tim Cook's e-mail reply to a user, last year, which said that the company was working on "something great for later next year." The New York Times' David Pogue had also
reported (albeit a bit vaguely) that new models and new designs of Apple's desktop product lines were underway for release in 2013.
Apple had
informed its European distributors that it would cease to ship existing Mac Pros, starting 1 March 2013, as the existing design of the Mac Pro doesn't conform to European Union's new safety regulations. Ars Technica
speculates that Apple could announce a refreshed lineup of Mac Pros or a new replacement at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, which is typically held in June, somewhat falling within 'spring'. The publication also reached out to Apple for a comment but the company did not oblige and pointed towards Tim Cook's e-mail response.
While Apple had updated its MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lineup with new processors, and introduced a new MacBook Pro model with a retina display and a much lighter form factor, during last year's WWDC, it had only slightly revised the Mac Pros, with some changes to configuration options for the dual-processor model. The iMac lineup too got a major update during the later part of 2012, but the Mac Pros have still not been refreshed.