Apple Confirms Mac Pro Is Dead, No Future Models Planned

[mode11]

Have you tried to use Windows 11?

Yes (see my signature).

Wrestle all its "enforced" AI copilot crap out of it?

My CPU doesn't support Copilot+. Other than that, I turned off the Copilot button on the Task Bar.

And you cannot even manage to do that 100% anymore. And with every "security update" it gets harder and harder.

I run O&O Shutup occasionally, to catch any telemetry setting that's been turned back on by an update. But I can't say I see any AI stuff in my Windows install. Btw, I'm not in the US, use Windows Pro, and built my own PC, so likely have a lot less pre-installed bloat than some might.

Windows 12 will be a nightmare if that trend continues...

I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Though it'll be a while.

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...

No disagreement there.

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

Well, depends if you want / need expandable hardware. If so, the Mac is not an option - your only choice is a PC. Hence my tongue in cheek comment ('Dude, you're getting a Dell!' was a famous series of adverts from 2000-2003).

At the end of the day, tweaking Windows to be nice is a lot easier (read: possible) than giving a Mac internal expansion of RAM, storage, GPUs etc.

 

[JungleNYC]

My 3,1 2008 MacPro was the best machine I've ever purchased. I maxed out everything on it, and it only became unusable in '22 after all the legacy iCloud changes.

I get why they're doing this. But wow, what a shame.

 

[danbuter]

New Mac Studio, got them sweet Apple rims on there.

View attachment 2617235

Now you can reach the power button!

 

[wazgilbert]

New Mac Studio, got them sweet Apple rims on there.

View attachment 2617235

AI SLOP!

 

[opeter]

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...

Well, there are more alternatives now (for Linux too), more ever before, not only LibreOffice/OpenOffice.
You have the choice: SoftMaker Office (and the limited version FreeOffice), WPS Office, OnlyOffice and its forks... In the comming year, there will be probably available the first public version of Euro-Office (OnlyOffice derivate) and more.

We are not in the 1990s anymore.

 

[opeter]

New Mac Studio, got them sweet Apple rims on there.

View attachment 2617235

This looks like it needs a remote controller, something like this:

 

[ikramerica]

You are not wrong about this.


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.)

Bizarre but just the other day after watching a bobs burgers where Linda was the only one riding a midday bus, I had to mansplain to my wife why it was necessary to run a limited schedule of near empty buses during off hours if you wanted customers to be able to rely on the bus system to meet their needs.

 

[gorbag42]

So I'm (still?) using a 2019 Pro, mainly because I need x86 for some tools I'm using that are maintained, but not moving to ARM (probably ever, sadly). However, the 2019 really is a beautiful machine, and the fact that one can use multiple GPU cards and load it up with bountiful amounts of RAM is a definite plus. New models aren't supported under MacOS, obviously, but can be used with Linux or Windows.

 

[deconstruct60]

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?

Pretty decent chance that the "Ultra" won't have any x16 lane provisioning at all. ( I have a suspicion that is one reason why the M3 Ultra never showed up in a Mac Pro. TSMC N3B was a 'pain' . So they snipped the PCI-e provision to keep the die size down a bit. That 'chunky' chiplet can way late after the regular M3 Max shipped substantially earlier. They could have only tried to cover just the Studio deployment. ) If there is no Mac Pro driving a 'backhaul' ( 2 x16 lane) provisioning demands, there are lots of other die area consumers on the SoC that could put that 'dead' die space to good use. For example Apple could add another memory controller ( also backing it with cache would mean additional die area demand. ). In previous iterations, the full core count "Ultra's" have tended to 'run out of bandwidth' for some benchmarks (and binned Ultra have more linear improvement) If path to even more memory was even wider , that could solve that issue.

Similarly more on die cache for the AI compute. Don't drive 'slots to nowhere' and turn in faster compute numbers. Probably would take that trade-off 'win'.

They don't need a proprietary connector here if some PCI-e left. OCuLink x4 or x8 would satisfy a wide variety of the 'princess and the pea' latency folks who complain about Thunderbolts conversion of PCI-e data into another format and back. It is gotten some traction so appearing on more Windows PCs now. the x8 variant is used inside of some server boxes to daughter-cards a bit distant across the enclosure. ( m.2 mount points. U.2 mount points. etc. )

If facing the back, there seems to be room for one more socket to the left of the Thunderbolt. [ haven't looked at a teardown recently to see if room inside. ] OCulink is bigger than Type-C but not 'huge'.


If there is a doubled CPU chiplet than probably an extra x4 lying around that is not driving discrete Ethernet, wi-fi , USB 3.0 controller. Also the second 'unused' Apple Drive PCI-e lanes. And if a bigger CPU chiplet have more edge area for something relatively small.

But x16 PCI-e lanes of dead silicon is a waste in a MBP 14/16". And a waste on current Studio.

If Apple stepped up x8 to PCI-e v5 then would claim that was as good as x16 PCI-e v4 and claim it as 'enough for most folks'. But even x4 stepped up to v5 is going to cover vast majority of A/V and simple storage cards once hooked to an external switch to mantach the "< v5" to v5 coversions. ( technically OCuLink only cover v4 lanes. the distance PCI-e can travel without issues gets shorter as they crank up the speed. There are workaround but makes the longer cables harder to implement. )

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.

OCulink cables are no where near $1,000. 🙂 [ not quite as wide, but also don't cost a fortune. ]


P.S. There is a standard "external cabling" for PCI-e

PCI_Express_External_Cabling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#PCI_Express_External_Cabling

OCuLink is a bit simpler because it dumps anything about power (needs to be power on both sides) It is just purely data and can use an optical cable.

 

[deconstruct60]

All we need are couple of nerds who would hack the new M5's to Mac Pro towers.

These chips are custom made by Apple. If the design of the chip dropped the Mac Pro ... there probably isn't much to 'hack'. If chop off the x8 and/or x16 PCI-e lane provisioning on the die itself, then you can't really "hack around" that lack of bandwidth.

The 'pins' on the chip package may not even be there.

 

[zephonic]

And not to mention the rather inconvenient fact that you can't buy the chips without a Mac soldered onto them.

 

[deconstruct60]

And not to mention the rather inconvenient fact that you can't buy the chips without a Mac soldered onto them.

That is part of the huge perspective gulf between Apple and some users. Some users pick the chip first ( e.g., a specific CPU chip or specific GPU chip) and then want to wrap some enclosure around that. Apple is a more a systems firrst view on things. It is a system that has a chip. The system is the priority, and the chip further down the priority list.

Apple was shipping Mac Pro's as they shipped from them as being primarily very good systems. Other folks have view that it is nice looking, capable container for the stuff they primarily interested in. The latter would ealier claim that Apple was catering to them , when primarily they were not. It is mostly just a side effect that happen to align at the time. ( a substantive number would buy a second hand which only really deepened that disconnect in viewpoint. )

 

[jlc1978]

Well, there are more alternatives now (for Linux too), more ever before, not only LibreOffice/OpenOffice.
You have the choice: SoftMaker Office (and the limited version FreeOffice), WPS Office, OnlyOffice and its forks... In the comming year, there will be probably available the first public version of Euro-Office (OnlyOffice derivate) and more.

We are not in the 1990s anymore.

The problem is the compatibility with MSOffice. Sort of compatible isn't good enough for business uses.

 

[zephonic]

That is part of the huge perspective gulf between Apple and some users. Some users pick the chip first ( e.g., a specific CPU chip or specific GPU chip) and then want to wrap some enclosure around that. Apple is a more a systems firrst view on things. It is a system that has a chip. The system is the priority, and the chip further down the priority list.

Sure.

But I just meant to point out the absurdity of this post:

All we need are couple of nerds who would hack the new M5's to Mac Pro towers.

Where are these nerds gonna get M5 chips? It’s not like Apple sells them. And you can’t really lift them from an existing machine, as they are soldered shut.

 

[zephonic]

The problem is the compatibility with MSOffice. Sort of compatible isn't good enough for business uses.

Yeah, as long as MS continues to serve their enterprise clientele adequately enough.

But I think it’s more fragile than it seems. In the consumer space, Google Docs has already dethroned them.

I don’t know if Google actively procures enterprise clients, but if these trends continue, MS might yet see their dominance in that space challenged as well.

 

[Joe The Dragon]

Mac sales might save the company, and a "Mac Pro" might help keep the Mac ecosystem healthy.

they want to go appstore only and get that nice 30% of adobe CC sub fees.

 

[Miltz]

No one will miss this. I doubt anyone bought one within the last two years. The Studio is the future. I think sometimes Apple makes stuff to make people happy without realizing they shouldn’t have made it in the first place.

 

[jimmy_john]

No one will miss this. I doubt anyone bought one within the last two years. The Studio is the future. I think sometimes Apple makes stuff to make people happy without realizing they shouldn’t have made it in the first place.

23 pages of people missing it

 

[deconstruct60]

But I just meant to point out the absurdity of this post:



Where are these nerds gonna get M5 chips? It’s not like Apple sells them. And you can’t really lift them from an existing machine, as they are soldered shut.

There is a small cottage industry of folks resoldering Apple SSD drive boards with bigger NAND. In terms of even moderate scale numbers, not particularly practical at scale but technically possible . But it would/will make for Youtube/social media fodder.

Probably a bigger problem is even if got chips off, (and the x16 PCI-e pins were there and active) , there is not a commodity board these can be transferred to. Few 3rd parties would do a quality , multiple layers motherboard as Apple's at absurdly low run rates.

 

[deconstruct60]

No one will miss this. I doubt anyone bought one within the last two years.

Basically not true. Many thousands of these probably got sold. But a run rate for Macs per year running around 20M a year. even 20K is 0.1% of Mac market. Even 100K is less than 1%. With the addition of the Neo that aggregate run rate is going to creep closer to 25-30M. If the Mac Pros unit numbers staid about constant then that percentage would shrink even further.

It is not so much the Mac Pro is shrinking from the MP 2019 numbers (although probably is down from there) , but the rest of ecosystem is growing at a faster rate.

The Studio is the future. I think sometimes Apple makes stuff to make people happy without realizing they shouldn’t have made it in the first place.

For Mac Pro probably closer to this quip by Steve Jobs.

"... "If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth—and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago...." - Steve Jobs.

Over time, Apple made the Mac Pro to rack up really fat profit margins and as a testbed for some more revolutionary approaches. Afterburner card --> on SoC die. MPX Thunderbolt --> on SoC die. Duo AMD GPU cards --> Ultra (with much better interconnect. ) . Metal on a 'embrace , extend , extinguish' replacement for the OpenCL/GL and Kronos open standards solutions.

Apple isn't using the Mac as a cash cow. But 1980's inspired form factors ... that is probably not being labeled as the "next great thing".

 

[Miltz]

23 pages of people missing it

Really? Why would anyone buy one of these in 2025-2026?

 

[deconstruct60]

Really? Why would anyone buy one of these in 2025-2026?

While post 140 is a Mac Pro 2019 ... the bulk of the cards there could be used in a Mac Pro 2023 also. (but there is no huge GPU card focus in that picture).

Apple Confirms Mac Pro Is Dead, No Future Models Planned

Not surprising. Once Apple went with the unified architecture of the M series the Mac Pro was dead. There are a few of us in the pro audio/video world that would have loved a modern M5 Extreme Mac Pro that could handle multiple PCI cards without resorting to an external chassis but the fact that...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[BSDnostalgia]

But x16 PCI-e lanes of dead silicon is a waste in a MBP 14/16". And a waste on current Studio.

If Apple stepped up x8 to PCI-e v5 then would claim that was as good as x16 PCI-e v4 and claim it as 'enough for most folks'. But even x4 stepped up to v5 is going to cover vast majority of A/V and simple storage cards

There is a description of the M5 building blocks in the Ars Technica article that I think was referred to in one of these threads. Ars_Technica . Not clear to me from that article was how I/O was configured, but, there might be some number (2-4?) Thunderbolt/PCIe blocks or controllers on the CPU module. In any case, it would be nice if someone could point to real information on how I/O works with this chiplet implementation.

 

[Dreamail]

Well, there are more alternatives now (for Linux too), more ever before, not only LibreOffice/OpenOffice.
You have the choice: SoftMaker Office (and the limited version FreeOffice), WPS Office, OnlyOffice and its forks... In the comming year, there will be probably available the first public version of Euro-Office (OnlyOffice derivate) and more.

We are not in the 1990s anymore.

I service a couple of legal firms and lawyers.

These clients are very picky when it comes to document layouts.
If someone or something refers to "the second paragraph on page 3" it needs to be the second paragraph on page 3 in all versions of that document, not the third paragraph, nor on page 2 or page 4, etc. Consistency is key.

I had tried Libre Office for some, as surprisingly a few government agencies now accept Libre Office documents too, but even with the very same fonts installed, the Word and Excel documents they imported looked very different in layout and even page brakes. This was not acceptable.

And since many of these documents are constantly worked on, they need to be fully editable.
PDFs are not a workable solution either.


Thank you for mentioning these other options. I shall try them at some point.

But unless the imported document layout stays exactly the same as with the original MS Word and Excel documents, assuming the same fonts are installed, they are not an option.
At least for these clients.

"Somehow the same" is definitely not good enough. It could cause misunderstandings and even confusion if "the second paragraph on page 3" suddenly in some versions of the document becomes "the first paragraph on page 4" - with lawyers any such misunderstandings can quickly cost a lot of money...
It is not a place where you want to go.

With Windows 11 now requiring Microsoft user logins, reportedly even sending screenshots back to Microsoft at regular intervals, and with the AI copilot constantly harvesting your data (and presumably also sending it back to Microsoft), a lot of my legal clients are very concerned. Concerned about security and secrecy. Which they swore an oath on to protect and uphold.

Yet Linux is not for them either, if they cannot retain their documents in exactly the original MS Office document format and layout.

So they are "stuck" with Macs.

 

[hansmueller]

If I were Apple: Immediately reinstate MacOS Server / unlimited licenses / free. Make a cheaper rackmount server / bring back networking devices and time capsule that just work. Eat everybody's lunch.

This right here. There's so much inertia with small to mid-sized organizations even. They don't want to switch. They don't want something new. The Mac Pros they had at every technician / architect / attorney / doctor desk for the past 20 years - yeah, they want the new version of that. Don't make any waves. Old money is like that.

I practice cable management at home and it's ALWAYS in the back of my mind that the damn TB3 cables are not secure. I hate it.

The powerhouse will be the Mac Studio. If that statement doesn't make you want to vomit, I don't know what will.

What is your workload to max 1.5TB RAM? 😮

We need the 1.5 TB RAM for scientific data processing and analysis