Apple Confirms Mac Pro Is Dead, No Future Models Planned

[David Hassholehoff]

Jonathan Ive probably met his design brief to make slick & futuristic hardware, the engineering side dragged their feet with hot & slow Intel. All of Ive’s designs are before their time.

...Intel's ****** thermals made Ive design an unusable keyboard? That's a new one. Anyone can design something that is "before its time" if they can disregard technical limitations.🤷🏼‍♂️ The problem is that Ive's "futuristic" design led to seriously defective products.

I have my 2015 15” MacBook Pro sitting next to my M4 16” MacBook Pro - it’s literally Beauty & The Beast.

Hard disagree.

The only thing I am absolutely missing is an iMac Pro. The current iMac is some cheap entry-level thing that I cannot even consider getting.

I've had a few iMacs over the decades, but it really frustrated me every time I had to toss a perfectly working display just to get a new computer.

 

[basslik]

I would update my MacPro every 2-3 years. My 2019 MacPro is now 6-7 years old now. I have been waiting for an updated MacPro, to buy 2 new ones ASAP. I was hoping the WWDC MIGHT be a window to get a new one. I guess not now. My last purchase was $35,000 for 2 loaded MacPro’s. 2 displays. 2 stands.
I create music heard on radio around the world with Avid Pro Tools, which NEEDS PCI cards on the motherboard. I tried an expansion chassis, and it was a nightmare.
I create videos seen on TV with the power of video cards. I run all 15 of my corporations business on my MacPros. Now I have to struggle to find the last model made, and hope I can get 4-5 years out of them. Then hopefully Tim Cook goes away, and someone with a brain makes this MacPro again for the community that creates the foundation of the Apple ecosystem.
I think one of Tim’s biggest failures, is that he only sees value on a SKU if it only sells billions of units. Sometimes it is important to have products that fulfill the need of the ecosystem. In this case, the MacPro is that product. (same with smaller sized phones)

CPU-intensive stuff, especially video work.

I truly understand where you are coming from.

I only deal with audio, and my decked-out 5,1 handles anything I throw at it, audio-wise.

If it ain't broke, no need to fix for me.

My buddy, Grammy nominee is still blowing out amazing tracks on his 2008 Mac Pro hitting the radio waves.

But I know video is way more demanding.

15 years, going strong on my 5,1 beast running the latest PT version.😛

 

[FilthyMuppetInnuendo]

I'm thinking it may be an April Fool's joke?

That’s what I would have said about the M2 model.

Really? Last I looked 3.5" internal HDDs come in sizes up to 28 TB (!) quite readily available for $600.
While SSDs have been stuck for years at 8 TB for $1,600 or more.

Where on earth are you getting 26 terabytes for $600? I’m kind of interested in that now. And you’re completely right about NVME being stuck at that size (price is only a function of the “AI” Tulip Bubble) for so long. I’m honestly looking to swap my local iTunes Media library from a spinner to a solid state to cut down on Apple TV load times, but I can’t justify these prices.

 

[FilthyMuppetInnuendo]

Sorry, didn’t mean to double.

 

[BSDnostalgia]

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.

I'm interested by how many audio people there are who are using the PCIe chassis slots for, e.g. Avid cards. Avid itself sells a single-slot TB-PCIe chassis with card.

First question: How many cards do you folks typically populate your tower chassis with? What is the purpose of having more than one card?

Second question: There are quite a few sources of third party chassis' (pl sp?) Akitio, Startech, OWC, Avid itself, ... Are they all unreliable, or, is it "just" driver problems? You would think that Avid, at least, could make it work since they have intimate knowledge of their own card and chassis. Avid claims to be current with MacOS support through 26.

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.

Interesting that (low) noise is a major requirement. Are the Studios really that bad under heavy load? Mac Pros could get very noisy under very heavy load, too.

 

[zephonic]

Interesting that (low) noise is a major requirement. Are the Studios really that bad under heavy load? Mac Pros could get very noisy under very heavy load, too.

Well, I don't know about the Mac Studio, butif you're doing music/audio ( or even video post), computer fans can be distracting, annoying and frustrating.

It was the one thing I hated about my cMP, it really interfered with critical listening. So I put it away behind a wall, but in our current home that was no longer an option.

Now I'm much happier with my near-silent M1Max MacBook Pro, which emanates a soft wheeze when under very heavy load, but is dead quiet 95% of the time.

 

[okkibs]

It doesn't really matter if you consider it old or not, the M3 Ultra will be prefectly fine for normal users for the next 10 years.

It's not a matter of what I consider, it's 2 generations old architecture that will be 3 generations old by the end of the year. It's neither current gen nor last gen. In this fast-paced tech space hardware is being obsoleted and superceded every year. The M3 Ultra is nothing to write home about and you even said yourself that much older tech can outperform the 80 GPU cores on the M3 Ultra. If it's not the GPU power where the M3 Ultra succeeds then what is it? 32 CPU cores? For the situations where considerably better performing 18 CPU cores of the M5 Max aren't enough?

And why would any "normal user" purchase a M3 Ultra in the first place? The only people who should buy a Mac with the M3 Ultra are those who can't get by with a M5 Max for specific workloads where the extra cores are needed (like "AI token" performance especially in a Mac Studio cluster) and the extra cost of the Ultra loadout is outweighed by these gains.

No normal user should consider buying a M3 Ultra that will last "the next 10 years", that's just absurd. Nobody knows how long Apple is going to support these chips with software updates in the first place and you certainly cannot predict what technology will look like in 7 or 8 years or even just 5 years down the road.

I still do not understand why Apple has this obsession with making things "efficient". Like sure, it makes sense on a battery powered MacBook, but I really don't care about efficiency or power usage on a 10,000$ desktop.

The M chip series originated from the mobile chips Apple puts in their iPhones and iPads. The M1 released in 2020 was actually still more of a mobile chip that was good enough to start the Apple silicon transition but Apple has yet to succeed in trying to turn these chips into high-end workstation chips that you'd find in something like a Threadripper workstation. The problem isn't with efficiency, Apple just can't give you more performance no matter the efficiency because their architecture wasn't developed with a clear path towards so much performance.

You can see that by ARM's own CPU's that were just announced for the datacenter space. ARM is seeking to put hundreds to thousands of CPU cores into each server rack meant to be run in clusters running datacenter code. But these performance gains don't scale for high-end workstations because the software we run on our computers (mostly) cannot make use of so many processors.

Apple already have so many issues bringing the Ultra chips to market as evident by the lackluster M3 Ultra that released after the M4 Max and is still sold for full MSRP now that the M5 Max is out. It takes them years to cobble together a new Ultra chip that is already using an outdated architecture by the time it releases. How exactly do you expect Apple to cast efficiency aside and give you power more? Raising clock speeds only does so much (and I think the Ultra has higher clock speeds already anyways).

You want a 50 CPU core Mac? 100 cores? What is that gonna do for you, or anyone?

 

[BSDnostalgia]

It's not a matter of what I consider, it's 2 generations old architecture that will be 3 generations old by the end of the year. It's neither current gen nor last gen. In this fast-paced tech space hardware is being obsoleted and superceded every year. The M3 Ultra is nothing to write home about and you even said yourself that much older tech can outperform the 80 GPU cores on the M3 Ultra.

Strangely, the M3 Ultra still appears near the top on benchmarks like
Passmark CPUmark: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/single-thread/
Geekbench 6: https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks

Graphics and compute benchmarks are more difficult to compare, but,

And why would any "normal user" purchase a M3 Ultra in the first place? The only people who should buy a Mac with the M3 Ultra are those who can't get by with a M5 Max for specific workloads where the extra cores are needed (like "AI token" performance especially in a Mac Studio cluster) and the extra cost of the Ultra loadout is outweighed by these gains.

I guess a "normal user" by your definition is disallowed from needing more "throughput" that the M3 Ultra provides? I don't need to do volume image processing, but, some people do...

 

[Filip454]

Sad news 🙁

Rest in peace, Dear Mac Pro.



In my opinion, this is very sad. I’m not surprised, but it is a bit sad. I cannot believe it. It is another sign of the times. Sad to see. This marks the end of the era of expandable Apple hardware—and more.

I see that the only desktop configuration left in the Pro segment is the Mac Studio. These days, almost everything is soldered. In reality, the era of the Mac Pro ended with the “cheese grater” model. I will never forget the first PowerMac G5 commercial. Those were beautiful times, and honestly, it was not that long ago... but everyone has a different perspective.

It is a very sad ending. It is just a message to companies like Apple that no Pro-segment devices should be soldered. It motivated me to dust off my cheaper Mac, which I have not touched in years... I have always dreamed of owning a high-end Mac, but the prices in my country are definitely not worth it, so today I use a PC for more advanced tasks.

It is a shame it ended so sadly with the M2. It left a bad taste in my mouth. In my opinion, it would have been better if the Mac Pro had ended in the years of Intel, when it would not have been such a mediocre departure.

 

[Bubble99]

Sad news 🙁

Rest in peace, Dear Mac Pro.

View attachment 2617822

In my opinion, this is very sad. I’m not surprised, but it is a bit sad. I cannot believe it. It is another sign of the times. Sad to see. This marks the end of the era of expandable Apple hardware—and more.

I see that the only desktop configuration left in the Pro segment is the Mac Studio. These days, almost everything is soldered. In reality, the era of the Mac Pro ended with the “cheese grater” model. I will never forget the first PowerMac G5 commercial. Those were beautiful times, and honestly, it was not that long ago... but everyone has a different perspective.

It is a very sad ending. It is just a message to companies like Apple that no Pro-segment devices should be soldered. It motivated me to dust off my cheaper Mac, which I have not touched in years... I have always dreamed of owning a high-end Mac, but the prices in my country are definitely not worth it, so today I use a PC for more advanced tasks.

It is a shame it ended so sadly with the M2. It left a bad taste in my mouth. In my opinion, it would have been better if the Mac Pro had ended in the years of Intel, when it would not have been such a mediocre departure.

So how do you upgrade the CPU or video now if the Mac Pro is discontinued?

And this not not make sense because Dell and HP still makes desktop computers. Why would Apple do this?

 

[ikramerica]

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.

So is there anything preventing the M5 Ultra Studio from having a proprietary connector that is x16 PCI that can be connected to authorized breakout boxes? Apple doesn’t need to make them, but they need to certify them. Sure, the cable would be $1000, but I am not the target customer.

 

[realLucaR]

This little bit of of huge computer news (apple no longer selling overpowered desktop computers) comes about a week after they released a laptop driven by a phone.

Apple no longer sells dedicated power computers, but their best selling new laptop is literally a phone.

It's enough to make you want to smoke marijuana.

Nothing to add here, agreed! But the MacBook Neo seems to sell incredibly well. It is sold out in Germany.

I'm not trying to be argumentative. Seriously. But, is it really that annoying to have one enclosure with 10-100 TB of storage and one TB4/5 cable? Or, how about 100 GbE NAS?

To be honest? Probably not. You get used to it I guess. I will probably go the NAS route, since I need to build one anyways, because guess what, even my Time Capsule is gone after Tahoe.

Or, just run the old stuff on some of the old, hot, x86 stuff we all have lying around. A bonus is that it warms your room in the winter, too. In the meantime, I like my cool, quiet, ARM-based stuff that is replacing the hot, noisy, inefficient x86 stuff. It didn't have to be ARM, it could have been some other of the RISCs, including PPC, but, ARM is what stuck.

Funny thing that you mention the heat. Thanks to my 2019 Intel Mac Pro, which is sitting right next to me, I can have the window opened even though it's cold outside, since the massive heat keeps the room warm anyways.

Those good ol' days when we had our 16-inch MacBook Pros heat out rooms and burn our thighs.

My MacBook Pro still feels weird. I never hear the fans, it is dead silent, and the battery charge lasts ages. Still wild. I used a 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro a few weeks ago while mine was in repair (dropped it on concrete, everything was replaced but the motherboard) with the Core i9, and oh boy that thing was hot. It already spun up the fans when I was just turning it on. And under load, it almost became unbearable.

 

[jimmy_john]

So is there anything preventing the M5 Ultra Studio from having a proprietary connector that is x16 PCI that can be connected to authorized breakout boxes? Apple doesn’t need to make them, but they need to certify them. Sure, the cable would be $1000, but I am not the target customer.

Just laziness.

 

[damchill]

If you have 5 , 5,000 , or 50,000 customers the number should not make any difference in doing "the right thing". Apple's standing corporate policy is that they generally strictly don't talk about future products. That makes being consistent in what you can talk about more important. If the 'right thing' when had 50,000 customers was to do a 'head up' then it is still the 'right thing' when you have 5.

Was Apple down to a couple of handful of companies and went to each individual one with an NDA and gave them a heads up months ago. Maybe. However, they still probably have shafted a handful of "smaller" players (e.g. sole proprietor LLC outfits that labeling as a 'company' is a bit of a misnomer. ) and hence just filled the "don't ever trust Apple" corp IT folks with more validation.

Rip van Winkle product management for a decade and then wonder why more folks don't buy the product. It is in part how you treated them. It isn't the "M2" technology being present that is the core problem.

This is probably what disappoints me most about the whole saga of the Mac Pro. As much as I've loved my Power Macs/Mac Pros I'm not sad that this model is being discontinued. If they produce another system that will handle my specific workload, I'll buy it. I'd love to be able to modify it as I see fit for my growing or shrinking needs, but I can adjust accordingly.

What gets me is that Apple knows that the Mac Pro was geared towards a specific part of their consumer base, so the need for all of the cloak and dagger stuff was uneccessary. I can understand not wanting to tip your hand with phones and the tablets and those kinds of things because of the competition in the marketplace for those items.

If Apple wanted to put all of their resources into phones, tablets and general consumer laptops because that boosts their bottom line, then just say so. The pros who love their desktops would be disappointed and maybe a little annoyed but we're grown-ups. We would have understood and found the systems we needed elsewhere. But to come out with a computer that you don't update, don't upgrade or even mention in any significant way over YEARS is inexcusable.

The vast majority of people who are willing to spend $7k+ on a computer aren't doing so just for status. They buy it because they actually need it. It just seems like a good business practice to keep consistent communication with that community. And most of us will buy the Mac Studio M5 or M6 or whatever if it's adept in handling our workflows. I may grumble and moan if i have a bunch of additional cables and boxes on or under my desk but if the computer does what I need it to do, ultimately I'll be happy.

Hopefully Apple will be better in this regard going forward.

 

[realLucaR]

If your Mac Pro under warranty requires replacement what will Apple replace it with? A Studio? Or are they keeping a hoard of 2023 models for warranty replacements? Or will offer a refund for your purchase only?

I know a lot of people that work for Apple, especially in the service department.

The 2019 Mac Pro was discontinued in 2023. After that, it gets 5 years of guaranteed support and repairs. After 5 years, they will still repair it if they have the parts. It is subject to availability, they will not produce new parts at this point. After 7 years, Apple themselves will not service it anymore. But many Apple certified service providers will still service it if they can manage to get the parts.

So the 2023 Mac Pro will get service until at least 2031 (so 5 years from now). After that, if you get lucky, still two more years until 2033. So plenty of time if you ask me. After that, only through certified SP if they can find the parts.

Once it becomes Obsolete after 7 years, that's when its over. No repairs, no fix, just junk. Toss in the trash and move on

That is not true, you only don't get repairs by Apple. There are lots of other professionals being able to fix it.

How loud is the current Max (as opposed to Ultra) Studio under normal operation? I recall the earlier versions were supposed to be quiet (except for the "coil whine", which I assume has been fixed), and specifically that they were quieter than the Pro Mini (which was one of reasons to spend a few hundred extra $ to get the base Max Studio rather than the upper-end Pro Mini)

Dead silent. You will not hear anything at all, at least with my M4 Max.

Now I have to struggle to find the last model made, and hope I can get 4-5 years out of them.

Get the Mac Pro M2 Ultra. I'm in the same boat as you. Look at the Apple Refurbished store. They come with the same warranty as if you bought it a week ago. And they're cheaper as well. Software updates with major macOS versions should still be there until 2030, potentially longer due to Apple silicon, since no AS Macs have been discontinued by now at all.

I would update my MacPro every 2-3 years. My 2019 MacPro is now 6-7 years old now. I have been waiting for an updated MacPro, to buy 2 new ones ASAP. I was hoping the WWDC MIGHT be a window to get a new one. I guess not now. My last purchase was $35,000 for 2 loaded MacPro’s. 2 displays. 2 stands.
I create music heard on radio around the world with Avid Pro Tools, which NEEDS PCI cards on the motherboard. I tried an expansion chassis, and it was a nightmare.

I am in the same exact boat as you. It is such a stupid decision. I really hope this guy retires very soon. I am not sure what I will do after the M2 Ultra support ends. I'm either gonna get a Mac Studio with a bunch of external BS or switch to Windows 11 for workstations.

I agree.. Tim Cook needs to GO! Like NOW!

Nothing to add here. 100%.

I'm thinking it may be an April Fool's joke?

Oh boy, I would have really hoped so.

...Intel's ****** thermals made Ive design an unusable keyboard? That's a new one. Anyone can design something that is "before its time" if they can disregard technical limitations.🤷🏼‍♂️ The problem is that Ive's "futuristic" design led to seriously defective products.

The 12" MacBook Pro for example. An absolute joke. No, Apple I do not give a rats you-know-what whether my MacBook is 0.2 pounds lighter in exchange for a completely dysfunctional keyboard.

On a side note, the fact that MR is censoring even the most basic language that every 5-year-old has heard before is kind of ridiculous. I totally get it that you are not supposed to call anyone names and insult others, but come on. We're not in grade school anymore. It jsut makes posts harder to read when everyone knows what they wrote anyways.

I've had a few iMacs over the decades, but it really frustrated me every time I had to toss a perfectly working display just to get a new computer.

That is true, yes. Although this would fix my distain for cables at least a little bit, since I would have two cables less.

My buddy, Grammy nominee is still blowing out amazing tracks on his 2008 Mac Pro hitting the radio waves.

I know a guy from my city who even has a lot of live appearances on TV and in politics. He is a musician andeven he is still blasting his 2012 Mac Pro. These were simply indestructible.

That’s what I would have said about the M2 model.

Unfortunately, yes.

Tim was like: "Want these PCIe ports? Haha! That will be three thousand buckaroos!" 😅

Where on earth are you getting 26 terabytes for $600? I’m kind of interested in that now. And you’re completely right about NVME being stuck at that size (price is only a function of the “AI” Tulip Bubble) for so long. I’m honestly looking to swap my local iTunes Media library from a spinner to a solid state to cut down on Apple TV load times, but I can’t justify these prices.

NVMEs are not even 1600$, where are you from? I can get 8TB for under 1,000$.

Strangely, the M3 Ultra still appears near the top on benchmarks like
Passmark CPUmark: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/single-thread/
Geekbench 6: https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks

Now check the Metal benchmarks.

Metal Benchmarks - Geekbench

browser.geekbench.com

An almost 6-year old GPU still outperforms the M3 Ultra. Which is probably why they didn't give us drivers for the newer Radeon series, because then they would probably lack behind until like 2030 LMAO

So is there anything preventing the M5 Ultra Studio from having a proprietary connector that is x16 PCI that can be connected to authorized breakout boxes? Apple doesn’t need to make them, but they need to certify them. Sure, the cable would be $1000, but I am not the target customer.

I would get that right away. A connector such as the one on the Nvidia DGX would be an absolute dream.

 

[realLucaR]

Just laziness.

... and Tim Cooks business plan of only chasing the biggest markets such as standard consumer laptops and so on.

 

[Abazigal]

... and Tim Cooks business plan of only chasing the biggest markets such as standard consumer laptops and so on.

Which makes sense.

You can develop the M5 chip, which goes into tens of millions of Mac computers, or for the same (or more) effort, develop some M5 extreme chip which will show up only in a few thousand Mac Pro units, and which may never make its money back.

Seems like Apple is simply being judicious in where it decides to allocate its time and engineering resources.

 

[JoeG4]

Then, in 2021 Apple released the Mac Studio. For me, it was immediately clear that this was Apple's way or resurrecting the trashcan Mac Pro from the dead, now that they have the efficient architecture that allows it to run cool, and be extremely powerful and compact thanks to ARM. It still didn't have expansion, but for a lot of Pros that was okay by 2021, since most professional gear was now running perfectly fine over Thunderbolt anyways.

I own both a Mac Studio and a trashcan Mac Pro and honestly? I wish the Mac Studio came in the Mac Pro's enclosure! It had more room for ports, looked cooler on the table, and YOU COULD UPGRADE THE STORAGE AND MEMORY!!!!!!!!!

I would love it if I could easily open the mac studio and stick extra and/or larger SSDs inside. But being able to upgrade memory would be nice, too.

 

[BSDnostalgia]

Now check the Metal benchmarks.

An almost 6-year old GPU still outperforms the M3 Ultra. Which is probably why they didn't give us drivers for the newer Radeon series, because then they would probably lack behind until like 2030 LMAO

Possibly true, although weren't there heat/power slot limitations in the Mac Pro? The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT was one of the very fastest GPUs in late 2020, but also, was 300+ Watts, right? It is still a fast card by today's standards. But, I'm not sure an M5 Ultra, if it exists, couldn't roughly double the M5 Max performance, which would put it in the top performance group with Nvidia's current cards, no? Just extrapolating. This is MR. But, e.g., the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 is, like, 450 Watts? Here's hoping that the M5 Ultra, should it succeed, would be rather cooler than the top Nvidia and AMD cards.

I would get that right away. A connector such as the one on the Nvidia DGX would be an absolute dream.

Interesting. I wonder what framing they use to communicate between Nvidia modules? I looked the cable one up, and it is QSFP56, the 200/400 Gbits/sec upgrade to the 100 Gbits/sec QSFP28 that was standardized 11-12 years ago for convergence at the physical layer of 100 Gbits/sec Ethernet, Infiniband, FibreChannel, etc. For a while, these different technologies had different physical standards including connectors. (The original IB connectors were awful.) Eventually, convergence took place. Routers use QSFP28/56 as some of the standard ports types. QSFP56 is a good, solid way to connect, but, is there a standardized extension method for PCIe? There should be. It would make sense for a "Mac Studio M5 Ultra" to have a couple of QSFP56 ports.

Regardless, it caught my eye because reading between the lines, it seems that folks here don't like using USB-C connectors on TB4/5 cables in the middle of their production systems? Is that due to scar tissue, or, does it just feel insecure?

 

[ikramerica]

Honestly I bet they discontinued it because Apple Silicon just isn’t suitable for Mac Pro. To top out the range it would require dual M5 Extreme chips AND expandable memory along with the ability to use graphics cards. With the demise of Mac Pro Apple is admitting their failure.

Admittedly a side issue, but, Apple has used both Nvidia and AMD over the years. In 2011-2013 or whatever it was, I fried one each of Nvidia and AMD in MBPs. Today's GPUs are 4x (?) as fast in mixed graphics and orders of magnitude faster for certain things than the AMD GPUs used in the "trash can" Pro. So, what is the big deal with Nvidia per se? It seems to me that the real problem with a Pro model with lots of PCIe slots is the drivers (&etc software) issue. It has been a problem with Windows since forever. Company X builds a card, a programmer writes drivers, moves on, moves elsewhere, the OS evolves, and eventually the card stops working right, and everyone looks to M$ or Apple to fix it. Anybody can build a card in their garage and write drivers. But, who is going to support that over ten years?

AI. Can AI create drivers?

Which makes sense.

You can develop the M5 chip, which goes into tens of millions of Mac computers, or for the same (or more) effort, develop some M5 extreme chip which will show up only in a few thousand Mac Pro units, and which may never make its money back.

Seems like Apple is simply being judicious in where it decides to allocate its time and engineering resources.

Jobs cared about bragging rights. Bragging rights create buzz, loyalty, news articles, free PR.

The Neo is their current buzz product. And the iPhone Air was a swing and a miss. It’s not enough to base the future on those kind of products.

 

[Dreamail]

Where on earth are you getting 26 terabytes for $600? I’m kind of interested in that now.

Here's a Seagate IronWolf Pro 28 TB for $610:

Seagate IronWolf Pro 28TB Enterprise NAS Internal HDD Hard Drive – CMR 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM 512MB Cache for RAID Network Attached Storage, Rescue Services (ST28000NT000)

IronWolf® Pro drives are engineered to deliver 24×7 performance, reliability, and dependability in multi-bay, multi-user commercial and enterprise RAID storage solutions. Built tough with conventional magnetic recording (CMR) technology, rotational vibration sensors, and AgileArray™ firmware for ...

www.amazon.com

Sure those are not high-end server grade drives, but if you do proper backups diligently, it should be sufficient for many.

28 TB in SSD, while admittedly a lot faster, will cost you an insane amount of money still. At least 8 times (!) as much. And those SSDs aren't really high-end server grade SSDs either.

 

[Dreamail]

I'm not trying to be argumentative. Seriously. But, is it really that annoying to have one enclosure with 10-100 TB of storage and one TB4/5 cable? Or, how about 100 GbE NAS?

I did the tower thing for a long time, but, one or two boxes seem pretty manageable. Granted, there is the Parallels/VM/Windows/Linux thing, but, when everything is ARM instead of x86, maybe we can have all that back again if we want it. Or, just run the old stuff on some of the old, hot, x86 stuff we all have lying around. A bonus is that it warms your room in the winter, too. In the meantime, I like my cool, quiet, ARM-based stuff that is replacing the hot, noisy, inefficient x86 stuff. It didn't have to be ARM, it could have been some other of the RISCs, including PPC, but, ARM is what stuck.

It depends on your personal level of "pain" that you are willing to endure, I suppose... 😅

1) Noise Pollution:

I have done both routes, Mac Pro with everything internal, and other Macs with external HDD boxes.
All the external boxes I ever had, were extremely noisy in comparison. The fans are like airjet engines almost as they typically spin full speed and are not temperature controlled - at least at night they sounded very loud.
Also these 3.5" HDDs are not really quiet either. The Mac Pro shielded the sound better, and as it had a mostly quiet, temperature controlled fan system, most of the time the whole system was a lot easier on the ears.

2) Design:

If you look today, how many external 3.5" HDD boxes can you find that are perfectly matching the Mac Studio? All in silver. No space gray. No black plastic bits. With a design perfectly matching the Mac Studio.
Some people may not care, but I really despise having a beautifully designed Mac Studio with an ugly black plastic box next to it. Or space gray design.
It seems the only external boxes I could find in silver are USB-C 3.1 speed only. Not Thunderbolt 4 or 5.

Also most of these external boxes do not have an internal power supply either. So you have maybe a lovely silver box - but with a terrible black plastic power brick lying next to it.
Ugh.

 

[BSDnostalgia]

Jobs cared about bragging rights. Bragging rights create buzz, loyalty, news articles, free PR.

You are not wrong about this.

The Neo is their current buzz product. And the iPhone Air was a swing and a miss. It’s not enough to base the future on those kind of products.

The Neo is getting a lot of buzz. Apple could base marketing on what the PC people are saying about it.

But, I agree with you that developing a next-generation Pro system makes sense in a way that a lot of MBAs and professional administrators, public or private, don't understand. It is like the last subway or bus of day. It has to run mostly empty. Because people working late or out for entertainment late have to know the last one will be there if they miss the one they are planning on riding. Sometimes you just have to spend money "wastefully" if it protects your other business. Business users of Macs need some of those high-end systems to be available as part of the ecosystem even if they don't need that many. (MBAs/professional administrators often don't get that. They want every product, or bus run, to make money.)

 

[Dreamail]

Dude, just buy a Dell (or any other PC)!

Have you tried to use Windows 11? Wrestle all its "enforced" AI copilot crap out of it? And you cannot even manage to do that 100% anymore. And with every "security update" it gets harder and harder. Windows 12 will be a nightmare if that trend continues...

So that makes Linux your only other choice. But many users are not comfortable with it and there is not a lot of software that supports Linux well.
If one wants to (or has to) use Microsoft Office then Linux is not a great choice either. Not every Word document really translates all that well into Libre Office...

So, for all those people a Mac is the last option. Not a Dell.

 

[Dreamail]

NVMEs are not even 1600$, where are you from? I can get 8TB for under 1,000$.

I prefer 2.5" SATA SSDs still.
NVMEs have a mount box and capacity issue as they are also seemingly stuck at 8TB.
To get to a 80-100 TB storage capacity you need 10-12 of them.

Show me an external extension box in aluminum silver that has room for 12 or 16 M.2 NVMEs!
All the ones I can find support only up to 8 NVMEs, are black and only for rack mount.
Not really what I am looking for.

It is not only about the price, it is also about the mount options. NVME is still too young.