Apple to take orders for the Mac Pro from today. Price is $2999 only

Apple will start taking orders for its high-end Mac Pro desktop computer on Thursday. The black, cylinder-shaped machine is assembled in Austin, Texas, consistent with Apple's pledge to move manufacturing of an existing Mac line to the US.

The Mac Pro, long considered a work horse among graphics and film professionals, is now one-eighth the volume of the previous, boxy model and is about 10 inches (25 centimeters) tall. With a starting price of $2,999, the computer can be configured with a faster processor, more memory and other attributes.

Apple's new Mac Pro is seen in this file photo. AP[/caption]

Apple isn't making the Pro available for immediate pick up at a retail store. Customers must order online or at a store for delivery or store pickup.

The new Mac Pro has the Intel Xeon processors, dual workstation-class GPUs for Graphics and is only is 9.9-inches tall.

Key features include:

More from News Analysis

• Intel Xeon E5 chipset with upto 12 processor cores.

• It has two AMD FirePro workstation-class GPUs.

• According to Apple, the all-new Mac Pro is up to 2.5 times faster than the current Mac Pro and delivers up to an amazing 7 teraflops of compute power.

• It has 4 USB 3.0 ports, 6 Thunderbolt ports. Users can connect three 4k displays to the machine.

• The new Mac Pro also features PCIe-based flash storage that is up to 10 times faster than conventional desktop hard drives.

With inputs from Associated Press