Apple Executive Discusses New Mac Pro's Lack of Graphics Card Support

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

If people make a big enough stink, we can change their minds. The 2019 happened because people complained.

Yeah good luck pal. Mac Pro users are a niche at this point, and a market Apple's made clear they have no interest in supporting much anymore since it's not as profitable. They were working on an M2 Extreme chip for the Mac Pro but scrapped it when they realized said chip was hardly gonna sell, so why waste the R&D on a SoC that few people are gonna buy? Graphics professionals who would need those GPUs have long moved on to Nvidia workstations, so they ain't around to make a stink anymore. Not to mention, they're selling boatloads of Mac Studios daily, and the Studio is making them a lot more money than the Mac Pro did.

For each person who complains about the Mac Pro, they sell 10 Mac Studios to make up for it. So I'm sorry to say man, but upgradable Mac Pros are on their way out. Even the usecase of putting BlackMagic cards into PCIE is on it's way out as there's new rack mounted BlackMagic solutions that perform better than the PCIE ones did.

Honestly it feels like this may be the last Mac Pro as we know it, and by M3 they're gonna push everyone to the Studio

 

[Tagbert]

It's pretty clear that Apple's main focus was getting that transition to Apple Silicon done, and they made some compromises with the new Mac Pro as a result. They did the same thing with the initial M1 Mac mini and 13" MacBook Pro – just slapped in the Apple Silicon and called it a day.

But here's what I think: when Apple is ready to launch the next generation, like the M3, they'll probably give the whole chassis a major overhaul. Right now, it feels like they were racing against time to ditch Intel and make good use of those leftover M2 chips that aren't selling well. So, this temporary solution totally makes sense. But you can see that Apple is leaning more towards a Mac Studio future, where the Mac Pro becomes a super niche product that they don't really expect to sell a ton of. Their main moneymaker in the future seems to be the Mac Studio, so that product line isn't going anywhere.

I’m not sure that I would say that the M1 Mini, M1 Air, and M1 MBP were slapped together. There are advantages to putting the new chips in the old cases. It highlights the performance impact of the processor when compared to the Intel versions and keeps the story focused on the performance of the new chips without everyone getting distracted by the design of the new boxes and whether they like the new form or prefer a wedge.

Now they have gone through their line and done the industrial redesigns - which brought it’s own controversies. We will probably have this basic look for several years now.

The mini and the Mac Pro didn’t get new designs because they didn’t really need them. The Mini is pretty much the ideal design for a small Mac and the case on the Mac Pro is a work of art that took a lot of time to design and there is no reason to through away that effort to redesign a case for such a low volume product.

 

[eifelbube]

I still think the new Mac Pro is still an overpriced machine.

Apple needs to come out with Mac Pro Mini.

View attachment 2216585

so, we would (have to) differentiate between the Mac Pro mini and the Mac mini Pro? 😊

 

[ksec]

In theory, if Apple support LPDDR5X , that could be 512GB on the M2 Ultra.

 

[genovelle]

I don't know if the above statement is technically correct because Intel chips have an iGPU component with shared memory but once you add a GPU and change some settings in the BIOS the PC will use the dedicated graphics card.

Intel chips do not use integrated memory that is shared with the gpu as needed. That’s why M-Series chips were a game changer that caught them off guard.

 

[buckwheet]

I suppose the integration of third-party (PCI) GPUs would have been a bit weird for graphics, though I don't see why it would be a problem for ML tasks. However, I guess it would be super weird to try to communicate to customers that graphics cards are okay for ML but not for gaming or other actual video tasks... heh...

 

[genovelle]

Good to see not everyone is eating up the PR from Apple

View attachment 2216624

If supporting these cards negates the benefits of the integration it makes no sense. It’s obvious he doesn’t understand what that M2 integration represents. If there is 384 GB of memory on the M2 Ultra, that memory bank is simultaneously available to be allocated to either the CPU or GPU cores as needed. It’s like a house on fire and the fire trucks show up. To fight the fire, would it be better to hook up hose across the street or have firemen carry buckets from a pond 6 blocks away?

 

[Muzzakus]

The Apple Silicone macs are essentially video game consoles

 

[-BigMac-]

"It's not clear how we would optimize another GPU for the system"

Maybe make amends with nVidia and work on a GPU together? Just like Alienware make their own 4090 versions.. Apple could do the same. Not rocket science.

 

[Velin]

The future of Apple "desktop" computing is now crystal clear. That future is (1) low-watt, energy-efficient ARM/SOC/SIP M-class chips with soldered unified RAM using the Mac Studio and Macbook form factor, and (2) soon we will have "spatial" computing with Vision Pro and R1 silicon in a unified goggle architecture, and visionOS.

As for PC boxes with user-upgradeable motherboard slots (like the Mac Pro of yesteryear), with hot-swappable hardware slots, third-party GPUs, user-upgradeable RAM? It's over Johnny. It's over.

And frankly, I think Apple's direction makes a lot of sense. No one on the planet is even close to the small size, low noise, extreme efficiency, and excellent benchmarks of M2 Studio/Mini, nor the pricepoint of the base Mini. Mobile computing -- Apple has a total, complete lock on efficient, long-lasting mobile laptops. Total. Lock.

If you don't play games (I don't), Apple has everything you need with the best hardware by far for desktop and mobile right now. I was in Best Buy yesterday. Looked at lots of Apple boxes as well as PCs. The engineering, the form factor, power, efficiency: it looks as though PC/Windows land is a decade behind Apple silicon at this point. Truth.

 

[dlopan]

Apple designers are still stuck in pretend land. Their cpu's are great but the lack of external Gpu's suck badly. Oh well no one can afford them anyway. No loss. If you need a pc workstation buy a dell or build one and put Vm on it and run Apple OSx and native windows. Something for everyone. Cheaper too.

 

[schmidticus]

I wonder if this decision has something to do with the M3 chip not being ready yet. I think Apple really needed to complete their transition to Apple Silicon, and they had hoped to put the M3 in the Mac Pro (isn't this what some rumors said a while back?) but the M3 wasn't ready so they had to do so on the M2 platform. But perhaps next year the Mac Pro will have an M3 option that does include more RAM options? But it's likely Apple wants to push people to their own graphics cards rather than third party, so maybe we'll never see that support. But we'll see.

 

[SFjohn]

The future of Apple "desktop" computing is now crystal clear. That future is (1) low-watt, energy-efficient ARM/SOC/SIP M-class chips with soldered unified RAM using the Mac Studio and Macbook form factor, and (2) soon we will have "spatial" computing with Vision Pro and R1 silicon in a unified goggle architecture, and visionOS.

As for PC boxes with user-upgradeable motherboard slots (like the Mac Pro of yesteryear), with hot-swappable hardware slots, third-party GPUs, user-upgradeable RAM? It's over Johnny. It's over.

And frankly, I think Apple's direction makes a lot of sense. No one on the planet is even close to the small size, low noise, extreme efficiency, and excellent benchmarks of M2 Studio/Mini, nor the pricepoint of the base Mini. Mobile computing -- Apple has a total, complete lock on efficient, long-lasting mobile laptops. Total. Lock.

If you don't play games (I don't), Apple has everything you need with the best hardware by far for desktop and mobile right now. I was in Best Buy yesterday. Looked at lots of Apple boxes as well as PCs. The engineering, the form factor, power, efficiency: it looks as though PC/Windows land is a decade behind Apple silicon at this point. Truth.

Apple is doing better with games than Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and Activision combined. Why does everyone repeat the mantra that Apple is bad for gaming? It’s just a disconnect with reality…

Apple earns more from gaming than Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Activision combined | AppleInsider

Apple's profits from gaming outweighed those of major game companies, according to a report, with Apple earning more from App Store games in its 2019 fiscal year than Nintendo, Microsoft, Activision Blizzard, and Sony combined.

appleinsider.com

 

[Kabeyun]

Have people posting here tried one and found it wanting?

 

[CWallace]

If you need a pc workstation buy a dell or build one and put Vm on it and run Apple OSx and native windows. Something for everyone. Cheaper too.

Apple does not consider the general purpose workstation market as something worth competing in, so they get it from both ends when they make a machine (the 2019 model) that fits in that market - people either bitch that it is too expensive compared to "rolling your own" PC parts picker beige box or they point to vastly more powerful (and expensive) systems from HPE, Dell and Lenovo and dismiss the machine as a "toy for YouTubers".

So instead, they work closely with their most important "pro" customers to build specialized workstations that meets their needs running macOS (now under Apple Silicon) and specific software packages (now optimized for Apple Silicon). They don't sell many in the grand scheme of things, but they sell enough to make it worth their while catering to those important "pro" customers.

 

[singhs.apps]

To be fair Apples two GPUs are iGPUs that share a die with the CPU. Both Apple GPUs die space together is probably a fraction of the size of the 4090 die and separated by the Fusion connector.

Irrelevant unless you want to create unnecessary cherry picked differentiation to justify ‘crazy’ when it’s crazy Apple hasn’t yet been able to match a 4 year old GPU with its own technological approach since both systems are supposed to perform same/similar functions.

I just pointed out the holes in your cherry picked claim.

 

[DanTheMan827]

Apple: let’s release a pro machine with PCIE slots that can’t use GPUs, maxes out at 192GB, and charge a base price of $6,999!

…

Apple: Why aren’t people buying our stuff? We should discontinue it!

This isn’t a pro product, it’s a prosumer product at a pro price

 

[SFjohn]

Fascinating how people complain about what 2 things you can’t add to the slots in the Mac Pro, when there are so many other cards for these slots and uses that will make this a perfect machine for them. Apple isn’t making this for everyone, just the few who can make good use of it. 👍🏻

 

[xbjllb]

I think everyone complaining about lack of ram needs to post how much they are using now.

 

[Gasu E.]

i believe the term for this in 2023 is "gaslighting"?

And the benefit to Apple of spending millions of dollars "gaslighting" is...?

 

[CookItOff]

I just pointed out the holes in your cherry picked claim.

Not really, not even close. Lol

 

[xbjllb]

A producer (you can check his video on youtube) said that he was using between 300 and 600 in RAM, so for him 192 is a no go.

Who? Links?

 

[singhs.apps]

Not really, not even close. Lol

Ok. ‘Lol’.

 

[singhs.apps]

I think everyone complaining about lack of ram needs to post how much they are using now.

256.

Though it’s unclear why they need to do so.

 

[CookItOff]

Ok. ‘Lol’.

Usain Bolt (Nvidia high powered large die GPU) lines up against a six year old (Apple’s underpowered Gen 2 iGPU that shares a die with CPU) at the Olympics. Gun goes off and Bolt sets a new world record, but right behind Bolt only a mere second or two is the six year old.
Now who do you think the stadium is going nuts over? And that’s where the “crazy” comment comes from. What Apple is doing with this early tech without even using RT cores is pretty “Crazy”