You'll soon be able to add Apple's $400 Mac Pro wheels yourself

Mac Pro wheels
Mac Pro wheels (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • Apple yesterday shared a white paper for the 2019 Mac Pro.
  • That white paper has tons of new details about the design.
  • One of those details includes being able to add wheels after purchase.

When Apple launched its Mac Pro at the end of last year it gave buyers the option of ordering feet or wheels for its base. Those wheels cost $400, but that wasn't the only bad news. It appeared that anyone adding wheels at a later date would need Apple to do it. Thankfully, a newly released Mac Pro white paper says that isn't the case.

When Apple released yesterday's Mac Pro white paper, Stephen Hacket spotted an important couple of sentences. It seems you can add wheels yourself, even if your Mac Pro had feet when it left the factory.

https://twitter.com/ismh/status/1232105230894075905

This is excellent news for existing Mac Pro owners who want to add the $400 wheels at some point in the future. And it comes after Apple's Mac Pro web page suggested that anyone wanting wheels would need to reach out to an Apple Store or Authorized Service Provider. That, in turn, led most to assume that meant Apple needed to install the wheels – although it wasn't clear why that might be the case.

The wheels, just like many other Mac Pro upgrades including GPUs and the Afterburner card, aren't yet available as standalone purchases on Apple's website. But when they are, go get 'em. Especially if you plan on moving your machine around regularly.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.