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What's weird is the 13 MBP is still in the line up.
I assume they have some laptop cases / screens lying around still to sell.
Either that or Apple simply didn't have the bandwidth to update the MBP alongside the new M2 MBA this year. Which makes me wonder what their plans for it are. Are we going to see a similar refresh next year (eg: M3 MBP with magsafe) or will Apple simply drop it altogether? Having a fan seems like a very specific selling point, especially when a maxed out MBP is not that far off from the 14" MBP, price-wise.
 
So the Mac Pro use cases are reduced to those requiring multiple AMD GPU or >128 GB RAM that cannot be sent to a compute server. Talk about niche use cases…
 
So the Mac Pro use cases are reduced to those requiring multiple AMD GPU or >128 GB RAM that cannot be sent to a compute server. Talk about niche use cases…
Photoshop retouching isnt a niche use case. I worked in a retouching studio where they were handling 100GB PSD files with a lot of desktop automation using Apple script and plugins.
 
Or to execute professional and scientific use cases that require large amounts of RAM, tons of storage, and/or massive GPU. All things that the new M2 MBP doesn’t have.

BTW - one thing that both that Mac Pro and the MBP can do it run a spell check.

Nice post.

I find it interesting that some of the people dissing the 'Meme Pro' actively gloss over constructive input from actual MP users who know WHY they brought the machine, what they can do with it, and what the actual use case is for the machine.

Gotta love MR Forums. 🤷‍♂️
 
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I know one, but I'm 'old'. I remember this high school teacher that bought a Commodore 64. It was expensive, for what it was worth. Yeah, back then it was hard to tell, but it was very expensive. Somewhat over the return time, Commodore slashed the price. Like nearly in half. OUCH. Buying one at the old inflated price, and bragging about it just fell flat. *shrug* He bought it from the place I worked at. The owner told some prospective purchasers to wait, but he apparently didn't. Oops... Funny... But it was still the same computer, same capabilities. Just bad timing.

A Commodore 64 was worth US$595 when it first released in 1982. The Apple IIe released in Jan 1983 was worth US$1395 (figures taken from google searches).
 
We’re seeing the

But they’re explicitly working on something that is going to blow us away. Why call it a day at the studio when they’ve got their sights set on what they can do in a larger form factor?
Sure. Then blow us away with 20x the performance of top of the line Mac Pro 2019. M2 Extreme Mac Pro with the ability to add more compute modules, each can be up to 4TB of RAM.
 
Saw the writing on the wall. Apple should have just skipped the Mac Pro altogether. Now they are obligated to keep supporting it until god knows when.
You do realize that all this means is that the M2 MBP is faster than an older, base model Mac Pro in a very narrow set of benchmarks. That any kind of workload like Mac Pros are designed for probably wouldn’t even run on a MBP. What do you do if your application requires 512GB to 1TB of RAM to hold the data? What do you do when your application is running modeling on massive GPUs?

Yes, for lightweight tasks, like most of us do daily, the MBP is a better choice, but don’t pretend that the people who gladly spend the money on a Mac Pro would ever be able to use that MBP to get their actual work done.
 
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One thing I wonder now, is where are the other benchmark numbers? From other more professional software? SPEC? Rendering performance? Machine learning performance? Other stuff? Geekbench can’t even produce workloads that are heavy enough to show the difference and “yeah outperform in short burst”. Since Mac Pro is not for everyday machine, benchmarking it should not be treated as such. How about test rendering something big? 100GB project? Fluid simulation? Otherwise this comparison feels super weak.
 
I've hardly been an ardent supporter of the 2019 Mac Pro or it's admittedly extravagant pricing - but some of these comments are just too dumb to endure.

Someone has already said it here, but it bears repeating: if you don't know why you would need a Mac Pro then you don't need a Mac Pro. (The same goes for the M1 Max/Ultra).

Good luck adding 512GB RAM, quad high-end AMD workstation-class GPUs (and yes, they will thrash the M2 on GPU-heavy tasks, especially if they're not lovingly hand-optimised for Metal and the Apple Silicon GPU) or maybe 4 specialist PCIe video/audio interface cards to that MacBook Air - or maybe fitting an internal RAID array. OK you could use an external PCIE cage but those only provide a fraction of the 64 lanes of PCIe bandwidth that the Mac Pro offered.

What's true is that the base, $6000 8 core Mac Pro (with a worse GPU than the iMac) has never made sense as a stand-alone purchase, unless you were in a very small niche that just needed those specialist PCIe cards. With that CPU and GPU, even the top-end Intel iMacs and MacBook Pros offered comparable power.

I'd wager that most serious Mac Pro customers spent at least another $6000 on internal expansions and upgrades (whether they were third party or Apple). That's the bit you can't do on an iMac or MacBook.

What's changed with M1 is that the raw CPU power of the M1 Ultra in the $4000 Mac Studio now beats even the top-end Xeon available in the Mac Pro (something like a $7k upgrade over the base MP) - but even that glosses over a few points, like, the M1 Ultra tops out at 128GB RAM while the MP can take 1.5TB (...about half of that $7k CPU upgrade is not to just get more, but to get the M-suffix version that supports up to 2TB RAM). ...and you have to very carefully pick your benchmarks for the M1 Ultra to compete with some of the high-end GPU options you can fit to the Mac Pro.

The Intel Mac Pro probably is heading for obsolescence in the long term, and we know that Apple are going to offer some sort of Apple Silicon-based replacement Real Soon Now, but the sort or enterprises that need Mac Pro-level expandability can't turn on a dime, and a lot of work needs to be done on optimising the software they use before they can switch to Apple Silicon.

Also remember that computer pricing is enormously dependent on economies of scale - and Apple sell vastly more MacBook Airs than they do Mac Pros.

Even compared to PC hardware you'd probably need to spend Mac Pro-like prices to get Xeon-W, ECC and (these two are important) 1.5TB RAM capacity and 8 PCIe slots with comparable numbers of lanes. However, that skipped over a whole class of much cheaper machines with maybe 3-4 PCIe slots, 512GB RAM capability and maybe better-value AMD procesors. My main beef with the 2019 Mac Pro was not that it was a bad machine, but there was such a huge gulf between the totally non-expandable iMac and the insanely expandable Mac Pro.
This really helps to put things into perspective, thanks!
 
There's a reason I call it the Meme Pro. What an overpriced joke of a computer.

At this point Apple should just pull it from sale even though we're a few months from the Apple Silicon Mac Pro. There's literally no point in owning one anymore outside of you just absolutely hate having money since Macs that are 1/3 of the base spec price outperform it in every imaginable way.
They aren't comparable. This article basically says that, for generic CPU-only workloads that can work on an AS Mac, the AS Mac is faster. Buying a Mac Pro without a specific reason is a horrible idea. Theluggage's response, though kinda rude, goes into detail the many reasons why someone with a specialized workload might need it.

That said, the Xeon CPUs suck.
 
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This is to be expected. My M1 Air utterly decimates the classic Mac Pro I'm typing on right now.
Which is similar to the one I replaced with an M1 mini. I do miss the SATA slots, though. Hard drive enclosures never work 100% the same.
 
Sure. Then blow us away with 20x the performance of top of the line Mac Pro 2019. M2 Extreme Mac Pro with the ability to add more compute modules, each can be up to 4TB of RAM.
Is there anything on the market with even close to that performance?
 
So the Mac Pro use cases are reduced to those requiring multiple AMD GPU or >128 GB RAM that cannot be sent to a compute server. Talk about niche use cases…
What can be sent to remote compute servers, though? Thinking about Adobe, ProTools, FCP, those sorts of things.
 
There's a reason I call it the Meme Pro. What an overpriced joke of a computer.

At this point Apple should just pull it from sale even though we're a few months from the Apple Silicon Mac Pro. There's literally no point in owning one anymore outside of you just absolutely hate having money since Macs that are 1/3 of the base spec price outperform it in every imaginable way.
I've only ever ran into one and that guy had filthy money. Like **** you money. I even told him how poor of a deal it was and he was like whatever, it's here now and I'm ready to go.

What was so funny was, he wanted his videos edited, didn't really want to edit them himself, and when I presented the idea of just taking that 10k on the mac pro and pro display and using it as a fund to pay video editors, the look on his face was as if I slapped his mother in front of him. Shouldn't really be that wild of an idea. Some people didn't need a drop of intelligence for their money and it shows lol
 
With the Apple Silicon speaking a different language than literally everything else on Geekbench, can this be a fair comparison? Something feels fishy, could someone maybe explain further? When I first saw the M1 benchmarks I was astonished and remembered a story of an Android developer, I believe Samsung or one of em, where the device recognized a benchmark was being run, and somehow fibbed the scores. Now someone made the point that hey, even if it did some triple overdrive and hit those scores, at least it hit them - but hey, there's no point if it's not usually at that triple overdrive.
The M1 does seem to have a very low floor and high ceiling which allows for great battery life and high performance.
Could someone explain further as to the validity of these scores? Possibly another cpu test that is more accurate / applicable than geekbench 5? For example, the Bruce X test is an excellent test of GPU speed in a real life applicable way which doesnt use benchmarks

thanks
 
Yeah, so in other news:

iPhones Have 100,000 Times More Processing Power Than Apollo 11 Computer

I get it that both Macs are on sale today, but this is not comparing Apples with Apples.

Apple keeps the Mac Pros for far too long on sale IMHO, or keeps the price too high. Mac Pros are worth their investment quickly after their release, but after a couple of years there are faster computers on sale which cost less.

Apple launches these things with a huge bang, they are usually gorgeous to look at, have extraordinary peripherals (eh.. those wheels...), price them very hugely, and then just keep them on sale for years and years without a (significant) price drop expecting "professionals" will buy them anyway, as they want to use macOS.

We're pretty lucky the M2 is only 12% faster (single core) than M1 (due to higher clock?) otherwise we will have a headline as "M2 MacBook Air faster than last year's M1 Max MacBook Pro!"

Imagine just receiving your M1 Ultra Mac Studio and hearing a M2 MacBook Air is faster... lol
 
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A very cool machine - but prices in EUR have risen like crazy!
The same config as bought 2 years ago for the first M1 Air,
now is more than 1/3 more expensive.
 
Yeah, so in other news:

iPhones Have 100,000 Times More Processing Power Than Apollo 11 Computer

I get it that both Macs are on sale today, but this is not comparing Apples with Apples.

Apple keeps the Mac Pros for far too long on sale IMHO, or keeps the price too high. Mac Pros are worth their investment quickly after their release, but after a couple of years there are faster computers on sale which cost less.

Apple launches these things with a huge bang, they are usually gorgeous to look at, have extraordinary peripherals (eh.. those wheels...), price them very hugely, and then just keep them on sale for years and years without a (significant) price drop expecting "professionals" will buy them anyway, as they want to use macOS.

We're pretty lucky the M2 is only 12% faster (single core) than M1 (due to higher clock?) otherwise we will have a headline as "M2 MacBook Air faster than last year's M1 Max MacBook Pro!"

Imagine just receiving your M1 Ultra Mac Studio and hearing a M2 MacBook Air is faster... lol
In single core performance it likely is …
 
Yeah, so in other news:

iPhones Have 100,000 Times More Processing Power Than Apollo 11 Computer

I get it that both Macs are on sale today, but this is not comparing Apples with Apples.

Apple keeps the Mac Pros for far too long on sale IMHO, or keeps the price too high. Mac Pros are worth their investment quickly after their release, but after a couple of years there are faster computers on sale which cost less.

Apple launches these things with a huge bang, they are usually gorgeous to look at, have extraordinary peripherals (eh.. those wheels...), price them very hugely, and then just keep them on sale for years and years without a (significant) price drop expecting "professionals" will buy them anyway, as they want to use macOS.

We're pretty lucky the M2 is only 12% faster (single core) than M1 (due to higher clock?) otherwise we will have a headline as "M2 MacBook Air faster than last year's M1 Max MacBook Pro!"

Imagine just receiving your M1 Ultra Mac Studio and hearing a M2 MacBook Air is faster... lol
Well the key difference being that the other was released only 3 years ago. We are at the forefront of a significant change. I don't remember the previous mac pros circa 2008-2012 being beaten that fast. Definitely not 3 years.

& to your second point, I do believe they limited the m2 precisely because people are just receiving m1 max Mac Studios. Like most companies, I'm sure they have more hidden behind curtains and just release it in doses.
 
Not too surprising since the M1 got within spitting distance of the Mac Pro and other powerful Macs.

For the vast majority of Mac users it's really just seeing numbers go up at this point.
 
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