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Though it’s unclear why they need to do so.
This is one of my favourite things on Macrumors - people insisting you justify your statements of requirements, as they cannot comprehend that someone might actually need more power than them.

Yesterday I was maxing out my 64gb on the studio ultra I have. I honestly thought that would be enough but apparently not the way apple silicon operates. 96gb on the next computer when the M3 is out.
 
it's not entirely clear to me how you'd bring in another GPU and do so in a way that is optimized for our systems
That statement bothered me when he said it and I still can't see it as anything but a dodge. Isn't the answer "the same way you used to?" Sure unified memory is nice within the SoC, but if they wanted to push a block of memory across PCIe and process it remotely that doesn't seem like it would be any harder than it used to be.

The old MBPs had a choice between discrete and integrated graphics in one system. The integrated graphics used shared memory. There were some OpenCL workflows that were faster using the integrated graphics because it saved the memory transfer, and there were some that were faster on the discrete graphics chip because the additional resources were enough to overcome the cost of the memory transfer.

I'm chalking it up to needing an answer on the spot and having picked a bad one...
 
We use PCIe slots in our 2019 Mac Pro for Black Magic SDI cards and some audio interface cards. Apple alluded to these during the keynote briefly. While the use case is niche from a volume perspective many creative pro workflows still rely on these types of cards.
Thank you this is insightful. Is there no option for cards like these via thunderbolt?

On a related note I have a razer corex for my old MacBook Pro with Vega 64. It’s useless with my m2 MacBook Pro. Can a solution like that exist with Mac Studio? Can you theoretically use a razer core x with a sound mix card over thunderbolt?
 
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” ;)
A stadium of 1? Crazy.

Let’s not dig ourselves deeper into useless, juvenile fantasy, make believe analogies.
 
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My biggest surprise is that there is no expansion modules from Apple, like slots to add more SOC's with additional CPU/GPU/RAM.

As it stands now, it's just a Mac Studio with PCI-E slots and nothing more.
Yea and I wonder how long the concept of a desktop computer will last? 10 years from now do we see these selling new? What about 15-20 yrs? The whole concept of the desktop is based on expansion and cooling. With Apple silicon cooling doesn’t seem to be an issue
 
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Thank you this is insightful. Is there no option for cards like these via thunderbolt?

On a related note I have a razer corex for my old MacBook Pro with Vega 64. It’s useless with my m2 MacBook Pro. Can a solution like that exist with Mac Studio? Can you theoretically use a razer core x with a sound mix card over thunderbolt?
Nope, sorry… 🤷
 
My biggest surprise is that there is no expansion modules from Apple, like slots to add more SOC's with additional CPU/GPU/RAM.

As it stands now, it's just a Mac Studio with PCI-E slots and nothing more.
That IS the point. If you need the slots a Mac Pro is the answer. If not the Mac Studio will be better if you need all that power. And no, the slots aren’t for graphics cards or memory, but everything else goes. It’s not for everyone, but for the right people it will be exactly what they need. These are the two top machines Apple makes, if it doesn’t do what you need get a PC. 👍🏻
 
Their main moneymaker in the future seems to be the Mac Studio, so that product line isn't going anywhere.
Their main moneymaker in Macs will NEVER be any desktop Mac, though. Both the Studio and the Pro combined likely sell less than 100,000 units a year.
 
Ultimately it's not a machine that I was ever gonna buy so this decision doesn't impact me personally but I would be lying if I wasn't disappointed - it really makes it feel like for as much as Apple Silicon brings forth impressive performance and power efficiency it's meant to be at it's very core a locked down computing platform.

Does it actually matter? I guess as long as you can get your work done it really doesn't, but there's that lingering feeling that it could be much more flexible if it wasn't opposed to doing things "the old way".
Disappointed because it’s not a machine you feel you could comfortably recommend to others? Because if the decision doesn’t impact you as you weren’t going to buy it, where does the disappointment factor in?
 
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The solution does not require much pretzel twisting. Arm code for CUDA already exists. Just port it over to MacOS, then use it for computation only. There would be no need to tie it in to a display.
That’s almost entirely due to the fact that people would just use CUDA on Mac rather than the hardware that is there. As someone else said, if used as it’s designed to be used, the Apple Silicon Macs are impressive. And, with more coders every year learning how to use it as intended it’ll just keep getting better. It will never be able to outperform NVidia’s proprietary solution using NVidia purposed code, but the same can be said about Apple’s proprietary solution using Apple purposed code, there’s no surprises there.
 
Apple does get customer input on these sorts of things - and they know what their machines are being used for. I assume if they can show performance upgrades in the typical pro apps to the previous intel-based solutions those customers would be happy.
 
I still think the new Mac Pro is still an overpriced machine.

Apple needs to come out with Mac Pro Mini.

View attachment 2216585

👇👇👇👇👇

mac-studio-select-202306.jpeg
 
Is it just me?
I don't see the value of current Mac Pro at all.
I see Mac Pro being able to config RAM/Storage/GPU + others after purchase.
Honestly, I would just go for Mac Studio instead.
 
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Thank you this is insightful. Is there no option for cards like these via thunderbolt?

On a related note I have a razer corex for my old MacBook Pro with Vega 64. It’s useless with my m2 MacBook Pro. Can a solution like that exist with Mac Studio? Can you theoretically use a razer core x with a sound mix card over thunderbolt?
it works, m1 or m2 just won't detect the graphic card, but if you put something else in the pcie it should work, i use my egpu sometime on my 14inch as a hdd swap bay.
 
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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.
💯 This writing was on the wall when they killed the M-series Extreme. If you're transitioning to an ecosystem based entirely around a custom SoC, investing in a giant modular chassis from the last century makes little-to-no sense. Would have been interesting to see how the alleged Extreme chip performed; but perhaps Apple calculated that a segment of users would have complained about the lack of discrete cards no matter how impressive the base system. So why create a $12,000 computer that half of the already very limited target demo won't even buy? They're in that situation already and they didn't need to spent billions on R&D to get there. The Studio, on the other hand, carries no such expectations and seems much more in line with Apple's future plans.
 
A mac pro with a 4090 would be excellent, great for everything including gaming, but Apple hates having a discrete GPU on their Macs. on a laptop sure but on a desktop why not allow a discrete GPU from AMD or even Nvidia? Sure iGPU's are gaining power but are simply not ready enough for very intense tasks like gaming.
That attitude cost them big time during the 90s and 00s.
 
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