They have made a business decision not to cater to this segment of market, simple as that.
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Apple Executive Discusses New Mac Pro's Lack of Graphics Card Support
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In a way yes, but it goes deeper than that. It’s not just that they don’t think they will make enough money in this segment, it is that making a proper effort in this segment will impact their ability to be succesful in other segments. This is being highly underestimated by most, including Apple’s competitors. Look up “opportunity cost”, and consider that “cost” is not just about money. It’s abou which people Apple wojld need to assign to create the product, and what those people could have otherwise created.
This is also why Apple don’t just update all their lineup at the same time when they have a new chip. Case in point, iMac.
This might be a forest for the trees moment, but watching all the Mac Studio, and MS vs Mac Pro reviews.. , and the analysis of the Vision pro.. It crossed my mind that perhaps Apple's vision is that in 5-10 years ALL devices basically have the same performance, so that the experience moving from device to device.. AR googles to, desktop, to iPad is all very homogenous and the user is just picking the interaction model they want and is not limited by the processing.. Even if it caps the high end.
We're not even sure if Apple Silicon will scale to "pro workstation" levels. Bloomberg says they did create an M1-class SoC that bundled the equivalent of four M1 Max together, but that it did not prove to be a shippable product.
One of the reasons given was due to the manufacturing cost, but also considering the performance scaling issues of the M1 Ultra due to Translation Lookup Buffer starvation, it would only be worse on an SoC that was the equivalent of two Ultras.
So I presume Apple scrapped this "M1 Extreme" and started work on an "M2 Extreme" since the TLB issue was addressed with M2. But M2 is really just a tweaked (and pushed?) M1, so maybe the power and thermal loads were higher than Apple felt appropriate or some other issue resulted in Apple deciding it was also "not ready for Prime Time".
So maybe third-time (M3) will be the charm or maybe that too will prove to be a step too far for Apple Silicon and Ultra will remain the most-powerful SoC in the family.
One of the reasons given was due to the manufacturing cost, but also considering the performance scaling issues of the M1 Ultra due to Translation Lookup Buffer starvation, it would only be worse on an SoC that was the equivalent of two Ultras.
So I presume Apple scrapped this "M1 Extreme" and started work on an "M2 Extreme" since the TLB issue was addressed with M2. But M2 is really just a tweaked (and pushed?) M1, so maybe the power and thermal loads were higher than Apple felt appropriate or some other issue resulted in Apple deciding it was also "not ready for Prime Time".
So maybe third-time (M3) will be the charm or maybe that too will prove to be a step too far for Apple Silicon and Ultra will remain the most-powerful SoC in the family.
Velli, I never said the Mac Pro M2 Ultra was a “half-assed” attempt. I said based on their business strategy that is the product they delivered. And I argued that delivering the kind of workstation many were hoping for actually would impact their business (in terms of development costs and profitability), that’s why I said it would likely not be profitable enough (or at all) for Apple to pursue given their strategy.
And as for making products for me, how would that equate to making money off you? One could argue that iPhone subsidizes all their other efforts, but generally companies attempt to deliver products that pay for themselves in terms of R&D and production and marketing. Product teams conduct a number of analyses to determine ROI, NPV, IRR, breakeven, payback, lifetime value of customer. It’s unlikely whatever Apple delivered would impact iPhone or MacBook users. They’ll just pass the cost onto the end user of the product. That’s in part how Apple ended up with a 7,1 that could be built out to exceed $50k. They weren’t tacking on a $1.50 Mac Pro “tax” to your iPhone or MacBook. Now it could be argued that some workstation users were paying for things they didn’t need such as PCIe slots, but the launch of both an M2 Ultra Studio and a Mac Pro have solved that, as the segment of workstation users that Apple focuses on can choose to save money and forgo PCIe slots and additional connectivity if they don’t need it.
All of your other examples are not core to Apple (curved screens, gaming controllers, etc, you’re just being simple). A high performance workstation is about compute capability and that is core to their business. It’s why they designed their own silicon. Compute IS their business, and workstations are at the high end of that business.
And I never disparaged emojis or wallpapers. I was pointing out that it’s not difficult for Apple to focus on multiple facets/products from something as complex as Vision all the way down to emojis and widgets.
I don’t think you give Apple enough credit for being able to multitask and make solid investment decisions in multiple areas. You’re making it out as if Apple would need to “tax” your favorite products or exit an existing business or pull scarce product resources from one business unit in order to develop a worthy successor to the 7,1. It’s just not that heavy a lift.
And as for making products for me, how would that equate to making money off you? One could argue that iPhone subsidizes all their other efforts, but generally companies attempt to deliver products that pay for themselves in terms of R&D and production and marketing. Product teams conduct a number of analyses to determine ROI, NPV, IRR, breakeven, payback, lifetime value of customer. It’s unlikely whatever Apple delivered would impact iPhone or MacBook users. They’ll just pass the cost onto the end user of the product. That’s in part how Apple ended up with a 7,1 that could be built out to exceed $50k. They weren’t tacking on a $1.50 Mac Pro “tax” to your iPhone or MacBook. Now it could be argued that some workstation users were paying for things they didn’t need such as PCIe slots, but the launch of both an M2 Ultra Studio and a Mac Pro have solved that, as the segment of workstation users that Apple focuses on can choose to save money and forgo PCIe slots and additional connectivity if they don’t need it.
All of your other examples are not core to Apple (curved screens, gaming controllers, etc, you’re just being simple). A high performance workstation is about compute capability and that is core to their business. It’s why they designed their own silicon. Compute IS their business, and workstations are at the high end of that business.
And I never disparaged emojis or wallpapers. I was pointing out that it’s not difficult for Apple to focus on multiple facets/products from something as complex as Vision all the way down to emojis and widgets.
I don’t think you give Apple enough credit for being able to multitask and make solid investment decisions in multiple areas. You’re making it out as if Apple would need to “tax” your favorite products or exit an existing business or pull scarce product resources from one business unit in order to develop a worthy successor to the 7,1. It’s just not that heavy a lift.
It also might be the case that, the ASi Mac Pro will be updated on regular basis now.. I know it sounds insane.. but the ASi Mac Pro probably needs to be a profitable product line if they update it every 15 months with the Mac Studio.. so Apple won't have 5 yrs to recoup whatever R&D they have done.. also it needs to be updated often otherwise the Studio, maybe even the Max chips will blow it out of the water if it sits for more than 2 yrs and others get refreshes to m3,m4 etc.
I agree. It seems clear to me that Apple isn’t focused on the technical performance, but on what you can do with the device from a human interaction point of view. This is very evident in their approach to Vision Pro, but it has been clear at least the few decades I have followed them, and probably since the beginning. This is exactly why I like their products. It’s about what you can do with the device, not about benchmarks or specification sheets.
I honestly don't see how it could, considering Mac Pro is such a tiny portion of the Mac market even if they all left, it would not move the needle on overall Mac revenue.
The 2013 design was far worse in terms of overall functionality than the 2023 design and even bleeding 2008-2012 Mac Pro customers left and right for almost a decade didn't "hurt" Apple financially.
And the 2019 design was priced to cater to a very specific and very small part of the market where price was literally no object and even the money they spent on BTO options was a drop in the ocean compared to what the portables and the iMac 5K were bringing in.*
* - it was the markets the 2019 Mac Pro was not designed for who balked at the price being asked.
I would be very surprised if it from here on out isn’t simply considered a Studio with expansion option, and 1:1 follows the progression of the Studio.
Also, if you are an optimist.. instead of looking at the VisionPro as a huge distraction and resource suck the last 7? yrs.. it might actually be a key driver in iGpu performance continuing to improve, and the whole reason Apple Silicon even exists - they could not buy a chip with the performance to power consumption they needed.
Bloomberg also said that Chinese spies had infiltrated Apple’s (and 29 other companies’) technology supply chain.
Likely they were just using information provided by a now found and fired leaker. OR it appears that way as Apple Silicon roadmap leaks stopped right about then!
WindowsArm runs fine in Parallels for many applications, so while you may not have a native option there is still a way to run many Windows programs. having had many Intel Macs, I found Parallels a much better option than Bootcamp because it was easy to switch between Windows and OS X as well as access all the same files. YMMV.
I could do the opposite with macos, I could run it virtual on my PC, but the performance is just crap, my PC is a core i9 13 gen, 64 GB RAM, so the problem is not the computer, the problem is running it in emulation not natively.
So why isn’t Apple already selling with 256GB configurations right now? Lose-lose?
You still haven’t explained why Apple increased from 128 GB to 192 GB ram (50% uptick in just one generation)? Don’t have an answer?
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Apple Silicon seems to use the same LPDDR memory modules that smartphones and tablets use, and those have more limited capacities than "DIMM sticks".
I believe 24GB is the largest capacity available right now so the Max (which can address four modules) can have up to 96GB and the Ultra (which can address eight modules) can have up to 192GB.
Once module density reaches 32GB, then 128GB (Max) and 256GB (Ultra) options will be available.
I believe 24GB is the largest capacity available right now so the Max (which can address four modules) can have up to 96GB and the Ultra (which can address eight modules) can have up to 192GB.
Once module density reaches 32GB, then 128GB (Max) and 256GB (Ultra) options will be available.
Because the memory density to cost ratio has fallen enough to allow them to package that on-die. That’s the entire answer.
You asked why Apple is not offering a 256GB memory option for Apple Silicon Macs and I answered.
If you want to know why Apple raised the RAM limit from 128GB with the M1 Ultra to 192GB with the M2 Ultra, they did so because the available module density between the release of M1 Ultra and M2 Ultra rose from 16GB to 24GB. A 50% increase in module density allowed a 50% increase in maximum RAM capacity.
Your answers, correct as they are, is stating the obvious based on what we know.
Please read the thread to understand why I asked the question. Also the question wasn’t addressed to you, nor was technical/cost feasibility the point.
Tim Apple has a nephew in grad school who needs the additional memory, and as Tim is a benevolent and generous uncle, he decided to increase the RAM 50% for all, but he’s not running a charity so doubling the RAM was out of the question.