The cost of the empty rack is $549.99, quite a lot for just a rack.
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Apple May Not Launch Updated Mac Studio With M2 Ultra Chip Due to Similarity With Upcoming Mac Pro
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This sounds like a really bad idea. Lack of upgradability is not what Mac Pro users are looking for. You can get away with fixed RAM and thunderbolt as your only upgrade path in a prosumer device like the Studio, but I seriously doubt it's going to fly in a machine you're selling as pro.
No...California sales tax is collected and paid to California. And that amount is credited to your purchase using B&H's store card.
If that is all that they can do, why not give up and admit defeat on the Mac Pro? What more would it offer other than a significantly higher price? The Mac Pro needs to offer something to justify that high price.
If all they can do it give it the bigger chip, maybe they should launch the M3 series with an Ultra in the Mac Pro. Yes, I know that they usually start by launching a new core design on the iPhone, but it might shake things up a little to actually launch on the Mac Pro. The production volume would be pretty low so a low yield rate might be manageable. It would generate more interest than just Mac Studio but with a bigger box.
If all they can do it give it the bigger chip, maybe they should launch the M3 series with an Ultra in the Mac Pro. Yes, I know that they usually start by launching a new core design on the iPhone, but it might shake things up a little to actually launch on the Mac Pro. The production volume would be pretty low so a low yield rate might be manageable. It would generate more interest than just Mac Studio but with a bigger box.
Just musing about all this, it seems reasonable to me that if what has been rumored is true, anyone wanting a Studio Ultra should buy before the Mac Pro is announced because once it is announced Apple likely will cut off sales of any more Studio Ultras.
So that leads to this thought: but what if,,, Apple releases a Mac Pro that is base price cheaper? So I'm thinking about that this way: which would I prefer in my office, the 70-lb. case or the 6-lb. case? I am going to opt for the smaller one. I really don't care about the slots at this point.
So that leads to this thought: but what if,,, Apple releases a Mac Pro that is base price cheaper? So I'm thinking about that this way: which would I prefer in my office, the 70-lb. case or the 6-lb. case? I am going to opt for the smaller one. I really don't care about the slots at this point.
Exactly. Rumors. I don't pay much attention to them. At least from some sources. I rely on my own judgment.
I don’t know why anyone is paying attention to the prognostications of Goofman.
Maybe Apple should consider differentiating the Mac Pro by making it be something more complex and low-yield than even the M2 Ultra
Except you can't just cram more transistors on a chip and make it faster. There are practical limits to how many transistors you can put on a single chip/how big you can make chips, and the M1 Ultra (if you count it as a single chip) and M2 Max are already well ahead in the "how many transistors can you put on a chip" race (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count).
Maybe you can squeeze in more cores but then you're up against the limit of how efficient software is at parallel processing. Or you can add specialised "engines" for things like machine learning, encryption, media codecs - which is exactly what Apple have already done with the M1/M2 - but, again, that requires software to take advantage of it. Even supercomputers tend to be boring old PPC or ARM cores driving banks of specialised vector processing units (or consumer GPUs in economy class) that provide the "super" bit - for specially written software.
One problem with the Mac Pro customer base is that it includes a lot of customers who are only still using MacOS because it would be too expensive for them to make major changes in the applications they use. A courageous new massively parallel system that relies on software being re-written is not necessarily going to fit the bill.
Anyway, I think you're missing the point that the M1 Ultra already provides enough CPU power to drive a credible Mac Pro - the issue is that it can't provide the expansion possibilities which are all that distinguished the 2019 Mac Pro from the iMac and trashcan. it's designed from the ground up to use tech like unified RAM, integrated tile-based GPUs and Thunderbolt 4 for expansion, and if Apple wanted a new Mac Pro in the same mould as the 2019 MP they'd need a totally new chip.
Designing courageous new housings for Intel chips is small beer compared to the cost of developing a new Xeon/Threadripper-killing Apple Silicon CPU die just to serve Mac Pro customers (c.f. the M2 Pro/Max/Ultra which re-use the same M2 Max die design for everything from a 14" MBP upwards). The cost of making processor chips is hugely dependent on economies of scale. The 28 core 'M-suffix' Xeon W chip retails at about $7000, and that's paying 2x the price of the non-M-suffix version just to get support for an extra 1TB of RAM (those darn Safari tabs!). That's a product with a far bigger potential market than just a single, and relatively low-selling, Mac model.
Speed-bumping the 2010 Mac Pro for 10 years may seem like the better decision in hindsight - but it would have played to an ever-shrinking pool of customers as pro users gradually jumped ship to cheaper but equally capable Intel/AMD gear. The Trashcan was an attempt to offer something distinctive - mainly, they made the wrong call on the 1 CPU + 2xGPU configuration. The 2019 MP - well, YMMV, personally I think it was a hideously over-engineered parody of the 2010 Mac Pro designed-up to a ludicrous price, but OTOH it was a step forward for Mac in terms of the level of expandability and power available (at a price). OTOH that was mainly just because it was an early adopter for Intel's new Xeon-W chip which had the necessary PCIe and RAM capacity. More powerful PC workstations are available if you look beyond HP's consumer website.
Is anyone wondering just what the point of a Mac Pro would be now? I mean with everything on die with the new chips… graphics and cpu and memory…. The speeds they offer etc. it makes much less sense to make a Mac PRO with pci express slots that would be used for adding … what??? Am inferior AMD GPU? A raid card that can easily be attached via thunderbolt 4?
Honestly. I’m struggling to see what they would offer. Maybe if they offered a somewhat open platform that you could run Nvidia cards on then maybe. But even then. No other OS support except MacOS on Apple silicon.
Honestly a Mac Pro with Apple silicon just doesn’t make sense.
Transistor count limit would be the whole point of ditching the everything-on-a-SoC idea and going back to a full featured workstation with different processors for different tasks, AKA CPU + GPU on PCIe. It was the point of my previous post.
Sure, developing a workstation CPU would be costly, but should have been factored in the cost of the whole ASi transition. As of now, the platform is good for some use cases (mainly laptops) but not without its flaws.
You can't even plug in a GPU via Thunderbolt right now. It has been a major selling point of Thunderbolt in the past and now it's gone. Apple could do so much more if they put in more effort.
And the only solution would be to engineer a CPU die without the GPU/unified memory because, you know, if you want expandibility you have to ditch those. And cram in more CPU cores in the space previously reserved for the whole SoC. Your post sounds insightful enough to understand those concepts very well.
Would it be anti-economical? Maybe, who knows. Apple has planned a whole architecture transition so they surely have made those considerations. But then again, it's either this or make the Mac Pro name RIP at last, since I don't believe there is any other meaningful way to do it. The "workstation-on-a-SoC" concept has been pretty much saturated with the Studio, and they didn't call it the Mac Pro so the Pro has to be something more.
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A good move to uphype Mini. So keep M2 sales up while on secret isle of pommes, development on next thing is fostered with late night bonfire of the socs circle dance. Intel drones hover above.
A new version of the Mac Studio with the "M2 Ultra" chip is unlikely to arrive in the near future, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
In the latest edition of his "Power On" newsletter, Gurman explained that since the upcoming Apple silicon Mac Pro is "very similar in functionality to the Mac Studio," Apple may wait until the release of M3- or M4-series chips to update the machine, or simply never refresh the device at all:To date, little has been rumored about the next-generation Mac Studio, so Gurman's latest remarks are the firmest indication yet that a new version of the machine is unlikely to arrive any time soon.
Last month, it emerged that Apple reportedly scaled back its plans for the first Apple silicon Mac Pro, scrapping the "M2 Extreme" chip and falling back on non-user-upgradable memory and the same design as the 2019 model. The device is now expected to offer the M2 Ultra only – a chip that would also have logically come to the next-generation Mac Studio.
The M2 Ultra chip is almost certain to double-up the capabilities of the recently introduced M2 Max chip, which is currently only available in the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro. With reduced modularity and similar performance on the upcoming Mac Pro, Apple's move to hold off on updating the Mac Studio's hardware may make sense until it can work out a better strategy for the machine's positioning going forward.
Article Link: Apple May Not Launch Updated Mac Studio With M2 Ultra Chip Due to Similarity With Upcoming Mac Pro
Has “Pro” (as in tower ) vanished as a concept? Has Apple evolved itself out of big boxes branded “Pro”? Better or worse?
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In the 1990’s there’s NO WAY you didn’t use at least PCI or possibly AGP after 1997 for your graphics card on a PC. Fully integrated mother boards with video didn’t come into mainstream existence on the PC scene until the 2000’s. And the Power Mac G4 also had a video card installed in it. It was a custom ATI (now AMD) card.
I’m sorry but you don’t fundamentally understand how the systems you used worked.
But I get what you’re saying. You were happy with what you were given. And so be it. The pro systems aren’t made to be expandable they’re made with hardware that often offers expandability because of the nature of the design of the components they use.
Making a single piece of highly specialized high power equipment is very very expensive.
This is an example of why no vehicle or any kind is made entirely of parts from a single factory and single design house. Nope. They require many many components and so they mix and match and borrow and buy and as such they must also make compromises on the chassis in which is sits. Fabricating for a singular mold. I won’t event get into why that is expensive and time consuming when the market is flooded with components you can easily assemble.
I have to give a lot of credit to Apple for their fully integrated designs. They are much more challenging to make than just slapping together the best of the best components.
But when performance and versatility are not something you can compromise then a fully integrated system doesn’t always cut it. Hence the pro market.
It’s just that Apple’s legitimate pro market has shrank to barely nothing compared to what it was a couple of decades ago.
Their consumer products on the other hand have skyrocketed.
Only if you use their credit card. And if you pay it off immediately to avoid the exorbitant ~30% interest rate. And you purchase a high value item. And you make a lot of purchases. And your regular credit card doesn't offer as good (but maybe different) benefits. And ...
Looks like Cook royally messed up the entire product line now. Jobs simplified it and now it is back to suit cronies trying to milk every possible vessel of money making without a long term plan. It's to the point that people have no idea what to buy again. Shifty tactics to force upgrades by putting crippled speed storage in base models. They royally flubbed the M processor implementation into product strategy. Businesses running windows aren't going to even look at apple anymore as a cross-over alternative, they ruined that market. Sad. Keep raising prices and giving devices dumb names.
I had the 2011 mac pro! with 2 xeons.
What a Machine, I still have it! Love the case design
Indeed. I see a Mac Pro as a computer for a "big" company which might need one specifically powerful machine to be used as a server for the other Macs (Mac Books, Mac Mini, or Mac Studio), that might be working simultaneously. Like for instance, in the video industry or in the 3D design industry. The way computers are used and amortized nowadays has changed quite a lot in the last 10 years. You do not need a big stationary computer anymore to get professional results unless you are investing in a very demanding (many hours of massive calculation) team project.
I see Mac Studio M2 Ultra as the way to go for most of the not-so-big companies that are working on an everyday very demanding professional basis. And I see the Mac Pro as something that should only be considered by hard and fast duty teams.
One last thing I wanted to comment: Is there any "big" company working on 3D design with Macs (aviation, cars, motorcycles, engines in general)? Is Final Cut Pro allowing the editor, the colourist and the sound designer work all together at the same time with the same file without using third party software and hardware?
In other words: Mac Pro will have sense when Apple decides to put a Pro effort on its software, its operating system with server capabilities and pollinating with third party software developer companies that build high demanding calculations such as 3D designing software (for example, mechanical engineering), real-time audio-video-colour editing and rendering, blockchain, AR, VR, RPA, etc. But then again, this would require that Apple changes its politics concerning pollination: less aggressive, more trustful.
When was the last time that Apple launched a product that lasted only one generation? Was it the Apple Newton?
The Mac Studio and Studio Display was designed to be the heir to the iMac Pro.
It’s a new product line and it makes no sense what so ever to discontinue it because of the forthcoming Mac Pro.
Just read Matthew Panzarino’s article where he interview Apple executive at last year’s launch
techcrunch.com
It’s a new product line and it makes no sense what so ever to discontinue it because of the forthcoming Mac Pro.
Just read Matthew Panzarino’s article where he interview Apple executive at last year’s launch
Apple execs on developing Mac Studio and Studio Display for the other pros | TechCrunch
The seeds of the Mac Studio were planted 5 years ago next month when, in a rare candid admission of misstep, Apple said it was pushing the reset button on
techcrunch.com
Lol, of course the sales are slow it costs $20,000-50,000! plus the wheels for the case are extra! Lol. What a joke. Powermac's used to be around 4-5g for a decent mid-tier entry point. They ruined their product category. They had a chance to gain larger market share being compatible with Intel devices, and they blew it.
Failed and unpredictable Mac Pro launches and redesigns. No professional business could depend on Apple's unpredictable hardware releases. Hardware vendors aren't going to waste their time making an expansion card for trashcan that took 6 years to come out and people complained about. They forbid Nvidia devices on their pro machines. No hardware vendor it going to waste their time writing drivers that only apple can approve. They want people buying hubs and dongles to add more ports. It makes more money!
Now they are on a proprietary processor with no true compatibility with Intel and you think making a pro machine makes any sense when software developers are most likely going to start backing out supporting mac's again (just like the 90's)? They ripped out every standard for graphics and are pushing their own iOS centric metal platform. They provide no Nvidia compatibility for expanding GPU. It's a clear done deal on the pro market. They will ride the Final Cut Pro and Logic wave till the company eventually can't compete anymore. People will realize what a huge waste of money it is to buy their machines with the limited software and hardware support.
Certainly works for me.
You don't have to make a lot of purchases. Or purchase a high value item. Although that's where I purchase a lot of items - both high and low priced - cameras, computers, printers, photo inkjet paper, audio, etc.
I'll take 10% off any day. I've saved a lot of money over the last few years. And have never had any issues with B&H or their store card.
Kinda makes sense, especially since the pro won't have user-upgradable RAM. And if it doesn't have support for PCIe GPU's, then there's definitely no substantial difference between the two.
Behind what? An Nvidia based system? What are you doing, Nvidia workloads tuned for Nvidia GPU’s?
Nothing Apple produces will ever be better at Nvidia than Nvidia.