TLDNR: my prediction - M2 Max and M2 Pro "Mac Studios/Fat Mac Minis" get launched as "new Mac Pro" at $2000/$4000 + inflation. Maybe with a "proper" rackmount option.
The 2019 Mac Pro's distinguishing features were really:
- Support for multiple high-end workstation-class AMD GPUs or other 8/16x PCIe cards
- Lots of PCIe expansion space for specialist interface cards with 1x-4x PCIe
- Capacity for >> 512GB RAM
- ECC RAM support (even if it's only a tick-list feature with LPDDR).
- Space for internal storage expansion via proprietary flash, PCIe-to-M.2 and even a couple of SATA rust spinners
If you didn't need any of those features then the $6000 model was, even at launch, thrashed by the iMac Pro and high-end iMac, and even the 28 core CPU option is now thrashed by the Studio Ultra on CPU benchmarks. If you
did need those features then the upgrades and extra cards pushed the cost
way beyond $6000. In short, I very much doubt that many people bought the $6000 Mac Pro over an iMac
unless they were going to buy (or already had) thousands of $ worth of expansion.
So, if Apple
can come up with an Apple Silicon Mac Pro with comparable features to the 2019 MP they ought to be able to sell a $6000 "base for expansion" alongside a non-expandable $4000 Studio Ultra, just as they sold the 2019 MP alongside iMacs and iMac Pros that outperformed the base MP. In that case, it seems dumb not to upgrade the Mac Studio.
If, however, they
can't get close to those 2019 MP features with Apple Silicon - and the problems with doing that have been extensively discussed here - then its going to be hard justifying selling
a base version at $6000. In that case, Apple may as well fess up that Apple Silicon is for "appliance computing", drop the "cheesegrater/big box'o'slots" concept and just re-badge the M2 Max/Ultra versions of the Mac Studio as "Mac Pro".
...after all, they tried to do that with the Trashcan and the only flaw of the trashcan that they've really fessed up too was the too-clever thermal design which blocked any CPU or GPU updates. The Mac Studio is already, pretty much, "the trashcan, done better".
If you can't add high-end AMD GPUs on 16x PCIe then that leaves other specialist PCIe cards and storage which will probably be OK in a thunderbolt 4-to-PCIe enclosure. You can already get 3rd party mounting kits that will put the Studio and a PCIe enclosure together in a 3U rack unit - or Apple
could make a custom proper-rackmount version of the Studio. If they could make a 1U Mac Studio that would fit in the sort of lighter-weight, shallower racks that are used in, well,
studios (rather than the big, heavy, expensive data centre type of rack) that might go down well.
There do seem to be rumours of a M2 Ultra in a 2019-style case circulating - but without Xeon W-level expandability that sounds like the biggest box of fresh air ever. If that was some clever system with multiple M2 Max/Ultra compute units slotting into a MPX-like bus then maybe - otherwise my guess is that people have seen lash-up systems for CPU evaluation using PCIe as a temporary solution for things like ethernet and WiFi.
