Apparently, Intel Xeon does EXACTLY this. So, if Apple really wanted, it wouldn't be rocket science to work with faster and non-removable builtin RAM, and also work with slower, user-upgradable RAM.
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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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Apparently, Intel Xeon does EXACTLY this. So, if Apple really wanted, it wouldn't be rocket science to work with faster and non-removable builtin RAM, and also work with slower, user-upgradable RAM.
That's my question as well.
Apple quantified how many Mac Pro users actually used PCIe expansion slots for the purpose of
- replace whatever was pre-configured on it
- add whatever functionality missing on it
Hence Apple released without any PCIe expansion slots
- 2013 the Mac Pro was released and discontinued in until 2017
- 2017 the iMac Pro was released and discontinued in until 2020
Apple then went back to its roots and released a model with PCIe expansion slots in 2019 but until now no refresh unless the 2022 Mac Studio is considered one a return to a more restrictive 2013 & 2017 Pro desktops.
Having one "pro" desktop helps with economies of scale to lower the cost. But with Apple splitting it into 2 distinct product lines then how much more expensive than the current $5999 will it be?
I'd be very surprised if it will not cost much higher as the worldwide userbase would be less than half of what it may be.
^One begins to wonder why the 2019 Mac Pro was even released if the plan was to introduce Apple Silicon the very next year. As others have said, Apple has "roadmaps" for products through the years, so they should've seen Apple Silicon changing the Mac Pro's utility coming (and maybe they have--I'm just saying that these rumors, if true, indicate the opposite, that Apple was surprised by all this and has no idea what to do with the Mac Pro at this point).
Well I really hope that Gurman is wrong on this, however I won’t be surprised if he is correct… I didn’t buy a MS when it came out, despite it being the right computer for me as I thought well if this MS is so good what will the the Silicon MP be like… well that was nearly 11 months ago… I was hoping for a M2 Ultra Mac Studio… but that felt like a long shot when the M2 Extreme was nixed… I may as well just wait for the MP to come out now and see if it’s worth the investment or not… that then leaves me with a tough choice, an M1 Ultra Mac Studio or a M2 Ultra Mac Pro… I suspect the price of the Mac Pro is going to make that decision easier… This news has bummed me out… I know of lots of folks that have bought Mac Studios, many have downsized from trash can Mac Pros or upgraded from top shelf 27” iMac… The Mac Studio definitely has a market…
I think you misunderstood what I said.
If we want to be pedantic then you are correct that by default the AGP slot was used for the 3D video card.
But what I meant was I and many Power Mac and Mac Pro buyers never replaced it nor added to any of the expansion slots.
That's the market of the Mac Studio and its direct/indirect predecessors like the 2013 Mac Pro & 2017 iMac Pro that all had no PCIe expansion slots.
We just wanted the fastest Mac to do work. When I purchased the 2002 Quicksilver Power Mac G4 dual 1GHz I was offered a Matrox break out box for analogue video ports. I failed to understand the need of such an accessory when all our cameras had FireWire 400 then 800. Install was via one of the PCI expansion slots. Thankfully I had a better head on me than to fall into "future-proofing" money pit.
If it wasn't for the CPU & GPU of the Power Macs our use case would have been better served with our 2000 iMac DV SE replacement the iMac G4 then iMac G5 and Intel iMacs than the Power Mac.
If in 2002 a Mac Studio equivalent at the time was released then I'd probably bought that rather than the Quicksilver.
When USB 2.0 came out we did not bother putting in an PCI card. We just bought FW peripherals as it was the superior tech. USB 2.0 came to us by buying a Mac built-in with it in year 2003-onward.
I waited for my 2012 iMac because I wanted USB 3.0 built-in. This was the year model without a SuperDrive built-in. Apple removed it because Apple saw no growth demand for an Optical Drive. It is the equivalent of the iPhone mini... no co
Naturally my workflow isn't for everyone but Apple saw that there was enough users for those specific use case to merit R&D efforts for a future with it.
It isn't as simple as that.
The KPI that measures the success of any Apple product was not meant specific to the Mac Studio.
Sales volume should be balanced by margins over the product life.
The Power Mac more than 2 decades ago was $3k without the display.
Prices went up as sales volume reduced and economies of scale was less effective.
Hence the 2019 Mac Pro base model at $6k nearly 2 decades later.
2022 Mac Studio starts at $2k without a display.
I think the drop of sales unrelated to Apple's mistakes and more to do with changing demographic use case behavior.
Like say the years prior to Apple switching to Intel in 2006.
Steve Jobs made the observation that their users were preferring laptops over desktops. Even when doing so pretty much guarantees no PCI/PCIe expansion slots.
That was the reason why Apple was forced to go with 65nm Intel chips as the PowerPC was stuck at 90nm and not moving any time soon to a 65nm. Hence his quip of bring the G5 chip to the Powerbook never becoming a reality. They stayed stuck on the G4 until 2005.
Which bring us to today... ~80% of users are laptops & ~20 of users are desktops whether it be Mac or PC.
As raw performance improves more users will go with convenient solutions.
Does not mean that there are a "minority" of users who will buy a Mac Pro.
Apple innovated the Pro desktop space by providing possible cheaper SKUs to address the majority of user use case.
It appears that the majority of Mac Pro users do not want to pay for PCIe expansion slots.
Minority do.
In the same sense that many here "love their iPhone mini" but the worldwide sales/shipping units says not enough demand for annual product refresh.
Very good to see this- pre M chips. I bought a massive G3 tower years ago and had it delivered to a Rancheria (Indian land) in Cal without sales tax but it still was a fortune. Cobbling stuff together was a thing. M series sort of obviates that and not many need all those slots. MEMORY and PCI though, are essential. I think M series will have better continuity.
You misrepresented what I said.
The creation of the 2022 Mac Studio indicates that more than 50% of Mac Pro users will not add to or replace any part on the PCIe expansion slot. We could even use the 2013 Mac Pro & 2017 iMac Pro as other indicators.
They just want the most powerful Pro desktop available and the current I/O setup is adequate enough.
90% agree. I do think though that the evolution to cloud, VMs, bandwidth leaps, have changed the paradigm.
It is all about percent of current users that uses those features. Do they number more than 50% of all Mac Pro users worldwide in all 195 countries on planet Earth?
That's the size of the user population I am speaking of.
Apple releasing the 2013 Mac Pro, 2017 iMac Pro and the 2022 Mac Studio that does not have any form of any internal PCIe expansion slot indicates that >50% of users have that use case.
2019 Mac Pro not being refreshed 3+ years after release is another indicator of tepid demand.
Why not USB 4 40Gbps or Thunderbolt 5 80Gbps and an external PCIe expansion slot enclosure?
It's about the current and projected majority's use case that Apple's doing.
It is like this email reply from Steve Jobs about the exclusion of FireWire in late 2008 Macs
- https://www.wired.com/2008/10/purported-jobs/
- http://www.edibleapple.com/2008/10/16/steve-jobs-email-response-re-lack-of-firewire-on-macbooks/
- https://appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/17/jobs_responds_to_outrage_over_macbooks_missing_firewire
Essentially... going forward FireWire port are not important to future peripherals that are being marketed.
I was part of the user group that got disappointed but years later I understood what Steve was saying because devices changed.
dSLRs with video recording capabilities were 1st put up for sale in late 2008. It could record 720p and 1080p onto a CompactFlash memory card. The dSLR did not have a Firewire port.
Material manufacturing cost would be lowered if they did not make it built-in anymore and cater to the minority of users needs via FireWire dongle instead.
Do not get me wrong Apple does **** up.
They ****ed up big when they abruptly switched to USB-C only port for the 2016-today MBP. When Steve was still alive transition from one physical port form factor to another was gradual over a few years.
USB-A form factor should have at most a 10 year transition from 2015 Retina MBP to 2025 MBP with Apple Silicon. Why? Because USB-A is so ubiquous. Apple corrected this with the Mac mini and Mac Studio swill having USB-A ports.
The G3, G4 and even G5 Power Macs all started at $1599.
While it's true more professionals were moving to portables, Apple also decided when the Mac Pro was introduced to reset the base price of the tower for margin reasons. They wanted to push their prosumer and professional customers over to the iMac (and later the Mac mini) for business reasons.
Margin was better on those units and they had a shorter life span. Apple could increase their economies of scale by using the same components across the entire Mac line.
This is pure Tim Cook all the way. That's why Apple doesn't make routers anymore and spent years without a matching display. It's all about the margins.
The current Mac Pro starts at $6000. I just toured a local television station that would have been filled with Macs with Final Cut Pro 10 years ago that uses Dell workstations now with Adobe Premiere.
We'll never know how badly the Mac Pro (6,1) cost them, but I bet they lost considerable professional marketshare particularly in graphics/video/film in the last 10 years.
They can blame portables and tablets all they want, but they made the conscious choice to neuter and then raise the price of the Mac Pro to astronomical levels. They only have themselves to blame.
30inch iMac with M2, come on Apple, we’ve been waiting too long
Towers are towers because the PCIe expansion slots and the 5.25", 3.5" and 2.5" drive expansion bays.
Mac Studio's that thick because half of its volume are very large & very heavy HSF and not empty air that comes with a typical 2019 Mac Pro.
Mac Studio will likely outsell the Mac Pro within the 1st 20 months of product refresh. >50% of worldwide users on planet Earth are satisfied with a Pro desktop without PCIe expansion slots.
How can I say this preposterous statement? Because of what Apple products bring out and the frequency of the product refresh.
A decade ago I bought hundreds of thousands of $ in lenses and bodies and as a photographer I did not find the 2012 iMac 27" I bought lacking in PCIe slots. My use case has not changed since 2015 when I bought my last body and I seek out a iMac 27" replacement with Apple Silicon.
Many point that the iMac 27" did not sell all that well. But I disagree it got refreshed on an annual basis. The iMac Pro did not get a refresh for 3 years though.
Apple's Mac Studio head person suggested that this product directly replaces it. I am holding out that Apple may just be trying to persuade people like me to buy a Mac Studio + Studio Display for more than $3k without keyboard or trackpad.
I was quoting my top-end 2002 Quicksilver Power Mac G4. Thank you for the clarification on the base model SKU price.
A few years ago Apple stopped publishing worldwide units shipped and preferred to show gross profit per product line.
Annually each head provides a $ figure on the projected profit of the Mac Pro. They notice falling demand for it so to balance the fewer units being sold they become creative. They attempt to edit out parts that are not popular to >50% of future buyers. Hence the Mac Studio being created. It dropped the price of a Pro desktop from $6k with keyboard and mouse to $2k without those peripherals. Alternatively they can just increase the profit margin to offset said lower demand and not offer a product refresh every ~1 or ~2 years. 2019 Mac Pro is 3+ years and counting.
Another consideration we may want to think about is the number of local TV stations. How many closed down due to shifting viewing habits?
Boomers are dying out... are people younger than them looking at content in smaller screens like smartphone, tablet & laptops rather than TVs?
Your use case makes sense and I agree with your point of view.
Prior to 2012 Apple's surveys showed that >50% of users did everything that you described.
I was the minority.
Come the last decade >50% of Pro desktop users in 195 countries switched to what I do. This can be supported by how many Pro desktops offered without PCIe expansion slots in the last decade.
Only the 2019 Mac Pro had them within 2013-today.
The only Pro desktop that was released after 2019 was the 2022 Mac Studio & 2023 Mac mini M1 Pro that both have no PCIe expansion slots.
Apple states that replacement of macOS devices is typically every 4 years. So by that metric a 2023 Mac Pro with PCIe expansion slots should be out before December.
With the Mac Studio catering to >50% of all users in 195 countries makes me wonder if Apple will not refresh this year and let stay unchanged in specs & price onto 2024 & beyond.
Like the iPhone mini... there may be enough demand to offer it but not so to refresh it.
I think the Mac Pro should stay away from “Pro, Max, Ultra” etc. eventually, even if it’s not the first ASi, it just needs to start with X CPU cores and Y GPU cores and offer tons of options climbing the ladder. Start above an Ultra and go to something that is insanely unseen this far (like 50-100 CPU cores and 256-512 GPU cores and up to 2TB RAM with the right config).
There are rumors of an "Extreme" chip that is made up of four M2 Max chip or two M2 Ulta chips.
Some pointed out that the Extreme cannot physically fir a Mac Studio enclosure in its present form but would have all the space and >400W PSU it wants in a 2019 Mac Studio form factor.
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
Apple will sell a lot more update Mac Studios than Mac Pro's. Apple's new chip tech doesn't lend itself to Workstation class machines so they would be better off just discontinuing the Mac Pro and maybe in the when their chips evolve or how people use Workstations change then rerelease Mac Pro.
The Mac Studio fits right into the Apple large pro creator market so be stupid to abandon it.
I totally forgot about sound cards, but whoa I had no idea all those different cards existed!