Apple Launched the Controversial 'Trashcan' Mac Pro 11 Years Ago Today

[DrJR]

I miss f’n Phil.

I remember watching the presentation like it was yesterday. Phil’s heart was in it. He took the “can’t innovate” criticism very personally it seemed. But sigh….. they gave us the literal intersection of form and function in a Mac pro that looked like a trash can. I always took it as some kind of deep existential statement. A cosmic “F you”. Not unlike the “compact car”, which itself comes pre-compacted.

 

[macduke]

Guys, take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask yourself: Do we really need to be celebrating the 11th birthday of the trash can mac?

 

[PhoenixAnhart]

Love the arbitrary nature of these articles, lol

 

[1madman1]

I had one - equipped with D700s and a self upgraded Xeon E5-2673 v2, 64GB RAM and a 2TB SSD.

Zero issues with it - just keep it clean and change the thermal paste when needed so they dont overheat.

 

[Berti10]

If they had called it the Mac Studio, it would have been a completely different story.

 

[fiatlux]

I had no shortage of issues with mine (12 cores and D500 GPU). Bent pins in a memory slot that created freezes and eventually rendered the slot (and the quad channel option) unusable. Frequent loss of all USB connections (although that might have been down to contemporary MacOS bugs) and eventually a fried motherboard. I moved on to a Mac Studio and haven’t looked back. Too bad as it looked gorgeous and was whisper quiet, but the fact is that my older Mac Pro 5,1 outlived it and could actually hold more and faster storage (as well as more RAM).

 

[wheelhot]

2013 Mac Pro is the predecessor of the Mac Studio.

Apple should've continued selling the Mac Pro with 2012 form factor.

Exactly! The new MacPro with Apple Silicon looks very empty since all the CPU and GPUs are all integrated on a single board

 

[con2apple]

What’s the difference to the Mac Pro today? Nothing. No hardware upgrades possible.
Still a failure and Apples knows it.
(It doesn’t even use it in commercials)

 

[MAC-BERT]

Still love the design. I have two Trashcans running as remote rendering and project server.

 

[cicalinarrot]

Whenever you hate something unique made by Apple, just be thankful they still experiment and try to be creative.
You don't know how many solutions on the inside were pioneered by unsuccessful models such as the 12" Macbook or this.

 

[throAU]

What’s the difference to the Mac Pro today? Nothing. No hardware upgrades possible.
Still a failure and Apples knows it.
(It doesn’t even use it in commercials)

The 2013 has user upgradable memory and CPU.

 

[kurtfoster]

I wish Apple still made products that looked interesting and different. As functional as the new product line is, the design is kind of blah, at least in my opinion.

 

[lovehateapple]

I also liked the design of the "trashcan." It's too bad the thermal performance wasn't where it needed to be, dooming it to a one and done iteration.

 

[The Phazer]

It was very pretty until you had to put it in a balsa wood box, as making a machine to take on film shoots that was quite good at rolling down hills was maybe one of the most dunderheaded design decisions in the history of computing.

 

[subjonas]

Tim Cook, being the greedy MBA degree holding corporate suit that he is, has since removed upgradable memory and upgradable storage from all Macs, both desktop and laptop

Not sure if anyone corrected you already, but if not then two things:
First, one desktop Mac—Mac Pro—still has upgradable storage.
Second, there is a legitimate reason why RAM is not upgradable anymore (not greed). In Apple Silicon, RAM is integrated on the chip which has major performance and efficiency benefits but means practically it cannot be upgraded. Most who are knowledgeable say it’s overall a very beneficial trade off to the user.

 

[H_D]

Loved it, absolutely a precursor of the Studio, only prettier. I should sell my old one.

 

[SebCohen]

Still the prettiest Mac ever made.

 

[Algr]

If they had called it the Mac Studio, it would have been a completely different story.

And priced it as such.
And offered an alternative that actually was usable as a pro machine.
And if Thunderbolt products existed at a reasonable price at that point.

 

[Pezimak]

One of the best 'desktop' designs ever. But at the cost of having very poor expandability. Still at least these days they are cheap and you can upgrade the cpu and add, and pray the GPU's don't pack up.

 

[sunapple]

It could have been a boring square in standard aluminium finish like Mac Studio but they went above and beyond. Exactly like the Cube. You could argue it’s unnecessary, I would also argue it makes computers more fun and unique.

Luckily we still have iMac as the last remaining quirky computer in the lineup. Special mention to the current Mac Pro cooling cutouts.

 

[Santabean2000]

The "trashcan" Mac Pro was an awful design, but at least it had upgradable memory and upgradable storage. Tim Cook, being the greedy MBA degree holding corporate suit that he is, has since removed upgradable memory and upgradable storage from all Macs, both desktop and laptop, to pressure customers to buy new Macs when they need more memory or more storage. That way, Cook can continue to increase profits for shareholders by giving less and less to customers.

It was actually a good design. They just bet wrong. The industry moved in a different direction and left them stranded.

 

[krakman]

What’s the difference to the Mac Pro today? Nothing. No hardware upgrades possible.
Still a failure and Apples knows it.
(It doesn’t even use it in commercials)

Agree! Unless you need a specialist PCIE card there is little point in buying a Mac Pro.

I used to ba a Mac Pro customer.

Now I'm a Mac Mini customer.

 

[wanha]

One of the most gorgeous computers Apple has ever shipped, but the functionality it had for its intended use case was hilariously ill-conceived.

That said, I wish Apple would bring back this type of design language to their newer Macs. Give us something epic and exciting rather than the understated industrial look we currently have.

 

[Manzanito]

I wondered who at apple thought performance per metric cube would be the feature every mac pro customer valued the most. The line “twice the performance of last generation at an eight of the volume” is wrong on so many levels, even more so if the previous generation had a single three years old midrange gpu.

 

[sifpilsen]

And Dune copied it as a deep space transport vessel