Apple previewed the Late 2013 Mac Pro for developers in June, introduced it to the public in October and then delivered it to users on December 30, but the surprises just keep coming and nearly all to the good. This groundbreaking desktop — trashcan? Vader’s helmut? — is unconventional in the extreme.

Apple has locked down more and more of its products in recent years. However, the late 2013 Mac Pro is easy to repair and very upgradable — two things that neither the critics nor fan boys expected in a such a small, highly engineered package.

Likewise, the reviews have been stellar and, no matter how you spin the numbers, the Mac Pro is a better value than any comparable off-the-shelf or DIY Windows PC.

The last piece of the puzzle, performance, has now fallen nicely into place.

While prerelease 12-core Mac Pro benchmarks came in less than stellar, the latest Geekbench numbers are much more impressive — a multiprocessor score of nearly 33,000, besting 2012’s best, put up by a cheese grater Mac Pro, by about 6,000 points or 22 percent.

Previous numbers were generated by a not fully 64-bit version of Primate Labs’ Geekbench. So, not only are the Late 2013 Mac Pro performance metrics better, but so are the numbers notched by the 2012 cheese grater.

On the hardware side, Apple has produced an excellent pro grade desktop computer. Now, Apple and third-party software developers need to step and deliver fully 64-bit, multiprocessor optimized, OpenCL ready apps…

Now are you ready to a Late 2013 Mac Pro?

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