Apple Confirms Mac Pro Is Dead, No Future Models Planned

[deconstruct60]

There will be a time when TB6 (PCIe 5?) and perhaps an M6 or M7 Ultra chip in a Mac Studio will finally have parity with the insane amount of RAM and video cards that were usual with the Mac Pro.

Thunderbolt v6? Probably no time soon. Thunderbolt is driven by Intel. And Intel is not who there were 5-10 years ago. Intel is just trying to stop the market share losses at this point. They have multibillion dollar problems. TBv6 isn't going to solve any of those.

The underlying tech USB is run by USB-IF. Again... probably not going to make any improvement that drives up costs. Intel has lost the power to browbeat USB-IF forward. USB-IF is a large committee of which there is a substantive faction that don't want to chase high cost tech, just for higher cost sake.

Intel isn't putting TBv5 on several of their SoCs so that provisioned by default.

Thunderbolt is a x4 wide PCI-e lane. The Mac Pro historically had x16 wide PCI-e connections. x4 isn't going to caught up to x16 wide solutions with even a 2 generation difference ( 2 * x4 is x8 and still short of x16).

And the MP 2019's 1TB of memory had ECC. Apple has don't next to nothing there. An Ultra with 1TB with no protection is still going to loose folks who need accurate long running computations.

 

[hovscorpion12]

The Mac Pro was always a niche product for the less then 1% of the world population. Even from day 1. The Mac Studio showed that the Mac pro should not ever exist.

As far as PCIe, i don't see Apple expanding that on the studio. Folks need to get used to the Mac Studio or buy 4090/5090s

 

[BSDnostalgia]

Sadly TB5 is not fast enough for even 100Gbps Ethernet. As it stands, the mac is now stranded at 50Gbps Ethernet since TB5 is only capable of carrying 4 lanes of PCIe 4.0 for a total of 64Gbps. There is no way now to get 100Gbps, 200Gbps or 400Gbps on a Mac and THAT is the problem here. If Apple has any sense, they should make a MacStudio version available with a QSFP-DD slot so that it can be used in truly high end environments.

Or even two slots. The M5 Max has the memory bandwidth, does it not?

 

[hovscorpion12]

Or even two slots. The M5 Max has the memory bandwidth, does it not?

M5 Max only has 614GB/s memory bandwidth.

The M3 Ultra peaks at 819GB/s memory bandwidth. M5 Ultra will most likely push past 1TB. maybe past the RTX 5090's 1,792 GB/s.

 

[hovscorpion12]

It could also be the greatest April fools prank a company has ever done.

A. It was founded on April 1st
B. They celebrating 50 years.

A+B=C. Solve for C

 

[deconstruct60]

I don’t mean ithe 7,1 will replace the 5,1 as the “archetypal ” Mac Pro, that will always the the 5,1, if only due the the sheer amount of them sold, deployed and kept in use for over a decade. I meant that it did succeed the 5,1, as it it came after, and it kept a lot of the design philosophy of the 5,1, which neither the trashcan nor the M2 iterations did.

Sheer number??? The Mac Pro sold in the 100-200K per year range. The 4,1 and 5,1 were basically the same core chassis. Minor firmware upgrade/hack and a CPU card swap and had a 5,1. The 5,1 also going sold twice. 2010 and 2012 (2012 was initially marked a 'new' but under protest Apple had to relent and take the 'new' tag off. It was just another old Intel CPU options they hadn't used. ) .

So the sheer number was mainly the length of time sold not that any one year was a high fraction of Mac desktops sold. 2009-2013 is four years. Even taking the high end that is 800K. So still less than a 1M. The Vision Pro sells 200K/year and is labeled an huge flop. Run rate at 100K is closer to 400K population. Apple is selling 20M macs a year. That is approxiatemately a two order of magnitude gap.

The other part of the 5,1 mirage was the resell. When a buiness that had several 5,1's failed/folded/merged then the same system is being recycled to the "new" shop that temp workers go to. It is same Mac moving around to be 'sighted' again as presumed different.

The iMac was the dominate desktop unit sellers. In part, because Apple herded folks into the product. Mini was mobile classed for a long time. The Mac Pro crept up in price.


The Mac Pro on Intel never had 'sheer numbers' to solely support the chip development for the parts it used. There was a much bigger server ecosystem underwriting the CPU chip. There was a much bigger ecosystem on Macs that were underwriting GPU driver development. It was never entirely self supporting.

The 7,1 is a lovely, lovely machine, and I hope to add one to my collection one day, but, without knowing the sakes figures fir it, I don’t think it sold anything close to the figure the 5,1 did.

The base price going up by 100% means that never end was the intent by Apple. They were hoping just to make it a profitable enough 'hobby' effort.

There was a point that, if you walked into any recording studio, graphic design house or any “creative/media” business, there’d be at least on 5,1 chugging sling, being the reliable tractor that it was.

It was everywhere.

If walk into 4 large college 100K football stadiums then "everywhere" all folks are big time Football fans.
If a narrow subset of the world then 'everywhere' is a misnomer.

 

[deconstruct60]

M5 Max only has 614GB/s memory bandwidth.

The M3 Ultra peaks at 819GB/s memory bandwidth. M5 Ultra will most likely push past 1TB. maybe past the RTX 5090's 1,792 GB/s.

Presuming that the Ultra will be 2x Max. That may not turn out to be the case if the new Max is in aggregate bigger than the old Max.

 

[Superhai]

I just wish a Mac Studio in a 1U form factor.

 

[duervo]

As predicted by many. The end of an era. I’m a proud, yes I said proud owner of a trash can that still gets limited use.

As a trash can, right?

 

[hovscorpion12]

Presuming that the Ultra will be 2x Max. That may not turn out to be the case if the new Max is in aggregate bigger than the old Max.

The M5 Max is the first of its kind with two die's stacked together with Each of the three Thunderbolt 5 ports now has its own custom-designed controller on the chip, ensuring full bandwidth for all ports simultaneously.

Rather then traditional mirroring 2x max chips, Apple stacks 4x max chips with 160+ GPU cores on the same 18-core CPU.

 

[jonnysods]

I had a 2009 Mac Pro - she was a ripper, but holy crap the DVD drive was loud it sounded like I had a Cessna idling in my office.

 

[thebart]

There are two schools of thought concerning the Mac pro

A who is this even for?
B for REAL pros who need pci lanes (but not upgradable memory or eGPU, for reasons).

Turns out Apple is with school A

 

[visualseed]

Can someone PLEASE fire Timmy and the Executive Team? They’re all too old, too rich, and too shortsighted. They fail to understand that you supply workstations, servers, wireless access points, printers, and monitors to get EVERY customer into the ecosystem, paying for monthly services, which is where the REAL money is.

Why did Bill Gates grasp this in 1980, but Timmy hasn’t figured it out almost half a century later? Some genius.

It's Apple, Inc. not Apple Computer, Inc.

 

[Zwhaler]

Very proud former owner of the 2010 5,1 Mac Pro 12-core. That machine changed my life. Hard to argue with this logic of discontinuing the Mac Pro. I was setting up an M3 Ultra Mac Studio barely a day ago and the little thing is a real beast. PCIe can be had externally if needed, minus the eGPUs. Case closed (no pun intended). Long live the Mac Pro.

 

[StoneJack]

Can someone PLEASE fire Timmy and the Executive Team? They’re all too old, too rich, and too shortsighted. They fail to understand that you supply workstations, servers, wireless access points, printers, and monitors to get EVERY customer into the ecosystem, paying for monthly services, which is where the REAL money is.

Why did Bill Gates grasp this in 1980, but Timmy hasn’t figured it out almost half a century later? Some genius.

yeah a 3-4 trillion computer company is doing wrong, right? And you are worth how many trillions to teach them? no offense intended.

 

[hovscorpion12]

Can someone PLEASE fire Timmy and the Executive Team? They’re all too old, too rich, and too shortsighted. They fail to understand that you supply workstations, servers, wireless access points, printers, and monitors to get EVERY customer into the ecosystem, paying for monthly services, which is where the REAL money is.

Why did Bill Gates grasp this in 1980, but Timmy hasn’t figured it out almost half a century later? Some genius.

In a world where you're put on the stand and judged for having a monopoly. For world gov'ts that want to see you suffer the same fate as MSFT did.

While the Mac Pro consisted of less then 1% of the global population owners, Apple does not owe you to supply workstations, servers, wireless access points, printers, and monitors.

That's why you have choice's. Other companies to give your money to.

You want a workstation, Buy a MacBook pro, Buy a Mac Studio or go PC.

 

[apparatchik]

The Mac Pro was always a niche product for the less then 1% of the world population. Even from day 1. The Mac Studio showed that the Mac pro should not ever exist.

As far as PCIe, i don't see Apple expanding that on the studio. Folks need to get used to the Mac Studio or buy 4090/5090s

The Studio already has PCIe via Thunderbolt, does it not? I think TB5 has PCIe 4, so probably four PCIe 4 capable ports will be included in the upcoming M5 Ultra Studio.

 

[zephonic]

I just wish a Mac Studio in a 1U form factor.

Or even 2U.

 

[uczcret]

Historically, Apple have given windows for folks to get their order in before a change. (some corporate buying cycles take more than a month to finish the approvals on). 2013 Mac Pro 'sneak peak' in June but didn't supersede 2012 model until December. (well at leat not in EU) . 2012 model barred from EU sales in 2013, but 'warning flares' sent up before then. Mac Pro 2019 'sneak peak' six months before MP 2013 end. (and some like MacStadium were doing pallet buys of MP 2013 on last day).

I know what you mean but realistically how many companies were buying the M2 Mac Pro in 2026?

 

[EpicBro101]

I wonder why they even bothered after the trashcan?

There's so many things they could have done with the trashcan too, when it came out it was great, but then they just let the damn thing rot for YEARS until the fantastic 2019. They even gave the 2019 new MPX modules! I was really shocked when i saw those W6900Xs get released.

 

[EpicBro101]

It would be very un-Apple-like, but it would be amazing if they would just sell an ATX-form-factor Mac motherboard with PCIe and NVMe slots.

Hm so like a beefed up M chip on a PCB, but no upgradable GPU, storage or graphics, ah but PCIE slots! Sounds familiar…

 

[Flint Ironstag]

I'm sad about it as well but realistically how should they have gone about this? A tribute video on their homepage? Let's be real here.

Yes. Such an iconic product line absolutely deserves a proper sendoff. People are so callous. I'm not the only one here - when I think of Mac, I think of Mac Pro. The Best. For decades. It would be like Porsche killing off the 911 with no fanfare.

I do know of a local film studio that used these as they needed the PCIe for video/audio and storage.
So not completely useless, they do also use studios and thunderbolt but in some situations that’s not sufficient.

Got doctors, dentists, oil & gas attorneys, medical billing & coding, graphic design departments within massive corporations that all run Mac Pro. They are old school, like everything internal in a silent box under the desk. Receptionists get a mini or iMac.

Anyone who bought the Intel version in 2023 really got screwed.

How so? It's still fully supported, and I'm doing all kinds of stuff with mine that no other Mac can. I bought mine in 2025, still upgrading it, and it's still a beast. I'm going to snag a few more.

yeah a 3-4 trillion computer company is doing wrong, right? And you are worth how many trillions to teach them? no offense intended.

It's not all about money and shareholders. At least it shouldn't be.

The 6,1 wasn't a bad product. They just refused to update it. It should've been called the studio, and it should have received GPU bumps then AS. Nobody likes that uninspired loaf of bread looking mac studio.

They should have kept the 7,1 Intel + updated AMD GPUs for those workloads just too heavy for AS. I don't think anyone would have thought less of them for it. I would love to upgrade to a couple of IF linked W7800X duos right now.

They should have kept the Xserve & RAID, Server OS, and the Airport lineup. Small and medium sized businesses loved it, and the employees all wanted the same ease of use at home.

Has Wozniak made a statement? Doubt he's a fan...

 

[wyliej]

Hm so like a beefed up M chip on a PCB, but no upgradable GPU, storage or graphics, ah but PCIE slots! Sounds familiar…

No, the storage could be upgradable via NVMe. And it could be put in the case/enclosure and used with a power supply of your choosing, with a standards-compliant form factor.

 

[basehead617]

I'm so upset by this.

The Mac Studio has much worse performance with e.g. Avid or UAD PCI cards since you have to use a third party chassis which is NOT RELIABLE.

Also, there's no way the Mac Studio, especially the next Ultra is going to be a s silent as the Mac Pro with the same chip would have been. Mac Studio fans are loud.

The fan design of the Pro was a work of genius with the offset alternating speeds and it is almost entirely silent even at high loads, in my studio room.

The Studio does not replace it whatsoever.

 

[theorist9]

There's one way that Apple could have added sufficient value to the Mac Pro over the Mac Studio to enable a sufficiently high number of sales of the Mac Pro to justify keeping it in the line:

With the Mac Pro, the entire computing part (CPU, GPU, RAM, storage, I/O) is on a single slide-out board. Apple could have enabled Mac Pro customers to upgrade to the latest generation simply by swapping out the board, rather than having to get an entirely new box.

All the non-computing parts of the Mac Pro (fans, power supply, etc.) could easily have a lifetime of over a decade (and could easily be replaced if they failed). There's no reason a customer should need to replace an entire Mac Pro (or switch to a Mac Studio) just upgrade to the current generation of computing components.

Apple pays a lot of lip service to being green, but what matters isn't words, it's actions. By not allowing this with the Mac Pro, Apple showed that its "green" is more green-washing than anything else.