100% agree. They should have kept the cheesegrater design and updated the architecture as intel released new generations, and had the trashcan to fill the role the studio does now.
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Apple Launched the Controversial 'Trashcan' Mac Pro 11 Years Ago Today
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I upgraded to this model from a 2009 4,1 Mac Pro. I used the 6,1 everyday from 2014 until 2022 when I replaced it with an M2 MacBook Pro. I still have it, so much code, so much Diablo 3, training ML models, hobby photos/videos on that machine, it really served me well, except for the need to get the GPUs replaced in 2019 but Apple had it back in a few days.
I think this was the first time Apple used a dark landing page for their website, I still can remember scrolling on the Mac Pro page watching it break apart to show the components, it looks so nice, first time using a dark kb/mouse too if I recall properly.
The machine was beautiful i owend one for a short period and loved it.
The machine was beautiful i owend one for a short period and loved it.
What I meant was....
Keep the Mac Pro ATX-like tower and skip the "trash can" all together.
Rebrand the "trash can" as the Mac Studio rather than the 2021 model..
It’ll natively support Monterey. But throw opencore on it, and they run sequoia great.
When people clamor for wildly different laptops and phones from Apple and claim they lost “the magic” I reference this computer. Sure it was cool, but virtually none the people who bash Apple bought this specific Mac, and it’s become a punchline and a waste of materials.
My sister-in-law’s father put it best: life is like a roll of toilet paper. The faster you get to the end, the faster it rolls. lol
Sometime in 2018 I realized a MacMini was, for single-core use, faster than my then five-year-old Mac Pro ... I used Aperture, which really wanted that single-core speed. And that was disappointing, but I'm fortunate to have a cellar where I can move old tech, a kind of underground "island of misfit toys."
It is of course dated and slow, and Aperture long discontinued, but I've grown fond of it. Unlike older Mac Pros (5,1 and a 4,1) which consumed too much electricity or failed to boot or both, or the Mini, where the 10GBe port burned out, my cylinder Mac Pro has kept chugging on. It's terrific to keep on an older operating system, where I can run a few pieces of older software when needed, like for example an instance of SoftRAID where I'm now certifying two refurbished 20TB drives. I like that that machine can just work on it and not tie up my main computer. And the cellar is cool, and I put the fan control on max to keep the Mac Pro that way.
The cylinder Mac Pro was also interesting/frustrating from a peripheral standpoint: it signaled to me at the time that Apple was moving lots of former computer internals to external solutions; in my case, storage. Frustrating as the old Mac Pros were so neat with their internal sleds, but understandable as no matter how big or flexible a case you make someone will find it inadequate and still need peripherals anyway.
So I got on board with peripheral storage, which, going forward, has made machine migrations so much easier. For me, getting a new machine doesn't mean migrating crazy amounts of storage to some new machine, it just means migrating a much smaller data set and reattaching the old storage to the new.
It is of course dated and slow, and Aperture long discontinued, but I've grown fond of it. Unlike older Mac Pros (5,1 and a 4,1) which consumed too much electricity or failed to boot or both, or the Mini, where the 10GBe port burned out, my cylinder Mac Pro has kept chugging on. It's terrific to keep on an older operating system, where I can run a few pieces of older software when needed, like for example an instance of SoftRAID where I'm now certifying two refurbished 20TB drives. I like that that machine can just work on it and not tie up my main computer. And the cellar is cool, and I put the fan control on max to keep the Mac Pro that way.
The cylinder Mac Pro was also interesting/frustrating from a peripheral standpoint: it signaled to me at the time that Apple was moving lots of former computer internals to external solutions; in my case, storage. Frustrating as the old Mac Pros were so neat with their internal sleds, but understandable as no matter how big or flexible a case you make someone will find it inadequate and still need peripherals anyway.
So I got on board with peripheral storage, which, going forward, has made machine migrations so much easier. For me, getting a new machine doesn't mean migrating crazy amounts of storage to some new machine, it just means migrating a much smaller data set and reattaching the old storage to the new.
I still have my 12-core computer, and my wife has a 6-core computer as a secondary computer. They are both 11 years old. My computer was relegated to secondary status a year ago when I finally upgraded to an M2-Ultra Studio. I expect the Studio will have a shorter useful lifespan. My wife only upgraded to a Studio this year. They have been the longest-lasting and most reliable machines we’ve ever had. The only issues I’ve ever encountered with my old Pro were a third-party memory upgrade and an external RAID array that doesn’t work well with sleep mode (and still doesn’t when connected to the Studio).
I truly believe that the version of Steve Jobs that worked on his computer in a garage would hate modern day Apple.
Remember when the Mac Pro used to be the star of the show back in the mid 2000's. I miss those days. Yearly updated to their halo product.
No, the comma is correct, and is how I've always seen that phrase attached to the ends of statements.
This is a very real point, albeit with caveats.
We have maybe 50 computers at work currently, about half Macs and the slight majority laptops, ranging from midrange general-purpose machines to workstations. Currently no Mac Pros, but we had two in the past, including a trashcan.
And, realistically, we run them for 6-7 years then replace. Period. In the past I’d spend a bunch of time on optimization via drive swaps and add RAM periodically, but at this point even for the machines that support upgrades, we almost never do—I can only think of two special-purpose upgrade buys (couple sticks of RAM and a compute GPU for a project with specific needs) in the last couple years, probably longer.
The caveat is that with certain specific things at the high end you might add a bunch of RAM or new GPUs when more funding became available or a new project requires it. Mostly, though, if you’re in that range of computing you’ure probably buying most of what you need out of the gate anyway.
Long gone are the days of needing a bunch of drive bags for storage upgrades, that’s for sure—if you need more or faster space, it’s all external anyway.
I bought a used one and have it running in my office running some virtual machines. It's not the fastest thing, and there are some OS bugs that cause coreaudio to go high CPU which make me restart the computer every couple of weeks, but otherwise it is a fantastic little machine.
I honestly question the purpose of the M-based Mac Pro having all of the internal expansion. I may not be the intended user anymore, but exactly what kind of internal expansion are people putting into these things anymore that MacOS can really take advantage of? I can perhaps see PCI-e attached SSD, but you could connect that via Thunderbolt. The biggest use case for internal expansion was big graphics cards, but those are not supported anymore. I think even Apple's accelerator card that had been available for the previous Intel Mac Pro is no longer available or sold, and the Radeon MPX module isn't compatible...
I honestly question the purpose of the M-based Mac Pro having all of the internal expansion. I may not be the intended user anymore, but exactly what kind of internal expansion are people putting into these things anymore that MacOS can really take advantage of? I can perhaps see PCI-e attached SSD, but you could connect that via Thunderbolt. The biggest use case for internal expansion was big graphics cards, but those are not supported anymore. I think even Apple's accelerator card that had been available for the previous Intel Mac Pro is no longer available or sold, and the Radeon MPX module isn't compatible...