Yesterday we told you that an unnamed Apple executive had reportedly confirmed a new iMac and Mac Pro for next year. After that story ran yesterday, confirmation of half of that rumor came from perhaps the last place you’d expect: none other than Apple CEO Tim Cook himself.

As you may know, Steve Jobs was in the habit of responding – seemingly at random – to customer emails to his public email address. Tim Cook has continued that tradition, occasionally answering emails from customers about Apple products, customer service issues, and more. This time, the email in question was from a disgruntled Mac Pro fan. The Mac Pro, the workhorse of the Mac lineup, has been languishing for two years without a major update. As you might expect, the situation is extremely frustrating to Mac Pro fans – many of whom are developers of iOS or OS X software. Given how long they’ve waited many of these fans, including the ones on Facebook, were less than thrilled with the update the Mac Pro finally got on Monday. While the MacBook line feasted on new CPUs and GPUs and more efficient RAM and a retina display, the Mac Pro, was stuck eating the crumbs that fell on the floor: a minor bump in processing power, and a price cut for the 12-core model, and that’s about it.

This frustration, presumably, was reflected in the email sent to Cook asking where the new Mac Pro was. Well, according to Forbes, Cook responded. Here’s the email in its entirety:

Franz,

Thanks for your email. Our Pro customers like you are really important to us. Although we didn’t have a chance to talk about a new Mac Pro at today’s event, don’t worry as we’re working on something really great for later next year. We also updated the current model today.

We’ve been continuing to update Final Cut Pro X with revolutionary pro features like industry leading multi-cam support and we just updated Aperture with incredible new image adjustment features.

We also announced a MacBook Pro with a Retina Display that is a great solution for many pros.

Tim

So if you’re disappointed by the lack of a decent update to the Mac Pro, it looks like you’ve only got another year or so to wait. No biggie, right?

Meanwhile, it seems that David Pogue, who originally reported that there would be new iMac and Mac Pro models next year, might have been a bit off. An Apple spokesperson told Forbes that the report about a new iMac in 2013 is wrong. That could mean that we won’t be seeing a new iMac until 2014. On the other hand, the current iMac is a year old, and while Apple may be willing to let the Mac Pro languish for three years without a major refresh, the iMac is a far better-selling computer, so odds are good we can expect a new iMac before year’s end.