Apple Silicon Mac Pro Reportedly Not Coming at WWDC, Mac Studio Refresh Likely Delayed Until M3

[Aston441]

Seems the best path to the future is to broaden what a AS platform device can be used for. These first examples are toasters if one wants to think in the terms of future variance. Thats not to say the way Apple has approached this AS platform transistion is wrong. The SoC w/Unified memory's has been very successful meeting most types of usage. What we need to see is if Apple can show that some of their better products have some methods of improving upon its operation afterwards. Here's hoping WWDC surprises the heck out of us with some new product category introductions.

Apple Desktop Supercomputer with optional Quantum module!!!!!

The Apple DSQtop!!!!!


😂

 

[InuNacho]

Disney, LucasFilm, Pixar, these are the customers that Apple has a special relationship with and listens to with regard to the Mac Pro. So, it is not a stretch to ask what does Apple need to do to satisfy these core customers. Apple was distracted with ski goggles and missed the boat on generative AI. We will not see Apple's design changes as a result of this mistake until M6 at the earliest assuming they maintain a yearly cadence. That water is long gone under the bridge. This unfortunate circumstance will not scuttle the imminent MP. Release is targeted to those customers Apple has a special relationship with.

Who at those 3 companies are using Mac Pros? I'm genuinely curious as I figured everyone in VFX or higher-end production had switched to farms of Linux computers.

 

[Velin]

Because no one uses M.2 RAID cards, or 8K video I/O cards, or assorted networking/fiber channel cards, or anything that goes beyond the bandwidth that TB3/TB4 can support...

If you need RAID cards, 8k video cards, fiber, you've got way, way more options with PC, at lower prices. There are tons of prosumer motherboard choices that can support these slots for PCIe 3, 4 and now gen 5. And a lot of card choices too. Plus all the GPU choices, power supply options, multiple nvme 2.0 slots for tons of SSD storage, just a lot more flexibility than we'll ever see with a Mac Pro.

Compare this to the cheesegrater Mac Pros; it was a pain in the ass trying to do something even as simple as flash a new or replacement GPU in those things. You hoped and prayed the EFI ROMs would work with the Mac Pro mobo and then-current version of OSX. Also, there was a time the "Mac Pro compatible" GPUs with the right ROM were more expensive; also, no one wanted to waste time trying to flash sketchy firmware "patches" to get unapproved PC GPUs to work in Mac motherboards. And that's just the GPU, i.e. one of the simplest things to install. Imagine the headaches with more esoteric gear.

Just don't see a Mac Pro coming out that would offer lanes/support for all these cards and peripherals, let alone the firmware and software to work with M2 silicon. Sounds like a herculean task to develop an entire ecosystem where one simply does not exist.

 

[falkon-engine]

IMO those would be bad moves for Apple:

1) In putting the Macs on Apple Silicon, Apple is pursuing both horizontal and vertical integration. Adding the Macs to AS integrates the Macs horiztonally with the rest of their products. And it gives them vertical control over most of the Mac hardware stack. Putting the MacPro on x86 would be a step backwards.

2) Going back to x86 is inconsistent with their push towards greater efficiency.

3) Going back to x86 would require them to continue to support two separate platforms for a very small slice of the market.

4) While the MacPro's market is small, its visibility is high—it's their HALO product. It would be a marketing disaster to have their HALO product be based on a tech they are competing against everywhere else. It would be like GM manufacturing the Corvette using the engine from the Ford Mustang.

I'd rather wait and see what they are able to do with AS for the Mac Pro. That's far more interesting than just using someone else's processor.

I’d argue that a non-expandable Mac Pro is not a Halo product. It has to be expandable, and if not, then what is the point, regardless of whether it is Apple Silicon? Think on the target market for a Mac Pro, professionals with lots of money, with all sorts of peripherals and storage needs. These people can buy an x86 server or workstation platform for their needs. Why spend thousands on a non-expandable Mac Pro when they could just use a PC with more cores and expandability, or use a cheaper Mac for their macOS needs?

Besides, you make it sound as if it is impossible for Apple to develop both ARM and x86 builds of its kernel. But apple is currently doing exactly that. If you examine the code of the kernel in a decompiler you will see that many of the kexts have ARM and x86 code paths. Unified code. It’s not hard for Apple to continue to develop an x86 build of its kernel.

Apple should seriously consider supporting Granite Rapids/Sierra Forest and/or Zen5. And Radeon RDNA3. Apple could couple its Mac Pro with a custom Apple Silicon-based accelerator running off of the PCIe5.0 bus.

Or. Go all the way and develop an expandable Apple Silicon platform with PCIe slots, upgradable RAM and storage and so on.

 

[steve123]

You you really need to, you can add a 4090 eGPU to an Apple Silicon mac with a TB port.

 

[Serqetry]

Nope, you didn't explain why it made sense to assert pros will need to abandon Apple just because they need PCIe slots:

....particularly since there's no reason the MP won't have them.

Yes, if someone needs more GPU power or RAM than the new Mac Pro offers, then they'd need to buy a different machine (or alter their workflow to run those particular calculations on, say, a cluster).

By contrast, if (as is expected) the Mac Pro has PCIe slots, the idea of not buying the new Mac Pro because you need PCIe slots simply defies logic. It's like saying "If you like to drive red cars, it's time to ditch Ferrari".

Well since you're confused about what I said, I'll explain. I was saying if you need a PCIe slots in your current workflow... and Apple doesn't release a new Mac Pro and instead just focuses on the Mac Studio, you need to figure out an alternative... either the Studio without relying on PCIe cards, or a PC.

This conversation has been about whether Apple will/won't/should/shouldn't put out a weak Mac Pro with PCIe slots that can't utilize GPUs and doesn't have expandable RAM. The rumors of a new Mac Pro with PCIe slots are irrelevant because the details don't make any sense, and we still don't know what Apple will actually do. Just because a while back they said a Mac Pro is coming, doesn't mean they will stick to that plan. It seems fairly obvious that they have been having trouble figuring out how to utilize Apple Silicon SOCs in a new Mac Pro.

 

[Mr Rib]

They have nothing to show for

Nonsense. Apple is bringing more advanced tech, a very good thing. UMA RAM baked on the chip is indeed a one-time purchase, but hella faster architecture. And my Mac life cycle has extended over the years to 5-6 years now from 3-5 previously.

Paying $400 to add 32 GB of UMA RAM feels like a bargain when in the past I paid $400 for 2 MB of third-party RAM...

hella faster than what? Remember that your unified bargain deal RAM also happens to be your GPU VRAM. And newest, top of the line M2 Max unified memory RAM has a bandwidth of 200 Gb/s, while Geforce 4090 VRAM has a bandwidth of 1.15 Tb/s... FIVE times faster. And yes, it matters very much. That's one of the reasons why M silicon is unusable in 3D apps.

 

[vladi]

Who at those 3 companies are using Mac Pros? I'm genuinely curious as I figured everyone in VFX or higher-end production had switched to farms of Linux computers.

There are both Mac and Windows PCs in pretty much every VFX studio. Besides the need to run After Effects for light compositing and things like motion graphics and puppet pin animation, they also need some NLE such as Premier, FCX, Vegas

 

[txscott]

I don't understand why the Mac Pro matters. I can't even imagine they make money on it. 99.875% (or more) of posters here will never own one. Why do you care? So you can brag to Windows users about how fast a computer you don't own is? Who cares.

 

[Realityck]

I don't understand why the Mac Pro matters. I can't even imagine they make money on it. 99.875% (or more) of posters here will never own one. Why do you care? So you can brag to Windows users about how fast a computer you don't own is? Who cares.

Before the 2013 model you could get one for 1/2 the price of the gaudy $6000 art example. This line actually started with the 2005 dual G5 water cooled tower (PowerMac) and then switch to intel (renamed Mac Pro). For a Number of years it was updated and then that small 2013 Power Mac was where it all went wrong. Update there was an air cooled G5 before this one sold in 2003. thanks theorist9

 

[dogstar]

The Apple silicon Mac Pro will not be among the new hardware announcements at WWDC 2023, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman believes.

Speaking on the latest episode of The MacRumors Show, Gurman explained that while he still expects the new Mac Pro to launch this year, it is unlikely to emerge at WWDC in June. This is a significant delay over when the machine was originally expected to launch.

He added that the next-generation Mac Studio will likely not contain M2-series chips, with Apple postponing a refresh of the device until the M3 generation to avoid cannibalizing the new Mac Pro.

Gurman also said that the new 15-inch MacBook Air, which will contain an M2 chip, was originally supposed to launch last year. This apparently means that the 13-inch MacBook Air could run on a separate chip upgrade cycle to the 15-inch model, with the smaller device potentially set to receive the M3 chip well before it comes to the larger model. How Apple plans to align the chip upgrade cycle of the two devices in the long term remains to be seen.

Following up on an earlier report, Gurman said that he now expects the "in-air typing" text input method to be present on Apple's mixed-reality headset when it launches, despite its "finicky" experience. He added that the device's two-hour battery life may be likely to remain through successive generations of the mixed-reality headset, much like how the two standard Apple Watch model sizes have had no battery life improvements since their announcement in 2014.

For more of Gurman's latest thoughts on Apple's upcoming hardware announcements, listen to the latest episode of The MacRumors Show on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast player.

Article Link: Apple Silicon Mac Pro Reportedly Not Coming at WWDC, Mac Studio Refresh Likely Delayed Until M3

This is because Apple doesn’t build computers any more, only appliances.

 

[dogstar]

I mean we were all talking about this a couple years ago when the writing was on the wall. I suggested they just keep some Intel compatible macs and release a hot new Intel or Amd server chip for the mac pro. Still don’t see why this isn’t feasible. Keep Intel or Amd or both as a partner. I don’t see why that hurts.

 

[257Loner]

If Apple made a new class of ARM chip more like what that machine is using, I have no doubt it would destroy x86. But as long as they keep chasing the energy effiicient integrated GPU mobile type chips like the M series, they will be handicapped. That's another reason an M2 Mac Pro is insanely dumb and I just don't believe Apple will actually do that.

I'm still convinced Apple is facing a dilemma of whether an arm64 Mac Pro will be profitable or competitive.

The Competitive Mac Pro's Profitability Problem
Apple invents an arm64 processor with an Ampere-number of cores, even 96, without packaging integrated GPU cores into an SoC so that the CPU is competitive in the workstation marketplace and is compatible with top-shelf GPUs.
The profitability problem Apple faces in this scenario is when they have expended resources to design a single CPU or family of CPUs which are different from all their other SoC designs for a single product. This Mac Pro's bottom line wouldn't benefit from economies of scale due to sharing CPU designs with other computers or due to a large volume of sales. A Mac Pro with its own custom silicon would need to be profitable on its own, which is a very hard feat to accomplish.

The Profitable Mac Pro's Competitiveness Problem
Apple scales up their M-series SoCs and installs them in the next Mac Pro. Due to sharing a CPU design with Apple's other computers, it would be much easier for this Mac Pro to be profitable.
The competitiveness problem Apple faces in this scenario is that even when an M2 or M3 is fused into an Ultra or Extreme, it still won't be close to being as fast as the fastest x86 workstation processors from Intel or AMD.

 

[dogstar]

I don't understand why the Mac Pro matters. I can't even imagine they make money on it. 99.875% (or more) of posters here will never own one. Why do you care? So you can brag to Windows users about how fast a computer you don't own is? Who cares.

It’s sad man. This is the company that gave us the Apple II and now this isn’t a computer company any more apparently. You can’t even add ram to their appliances. They should change their name to Maytag. But then at least Maytags are repairable.

 

[Boil]

M2 Max unified memory RAM has a bandwidth of 200 Gb/s

M2 = 100GB/s UMA bandwidth
M2 Pro = 200GB/s UMA bandwidth
M2 Max = 400GB/s UMA bandwidth
M1 Ultra = 800GB/s UMA bandwidth

 

[Joe The Dragon]

I'm still convinced Apple is facing a dilemma of whether an arm64 Mac Pro will be profitable or competitive.

The Competitive Mac Pro's Profitability Problem
Apple invents an arm64 processor with an Ampere-number of cores, even 96, without packaging integrated GPU cores into an SoC so that the CPU is competitive in the workstation marketplace and is compatible with top-shelf GPUs.
The profitability problem Apple faces in this scenario is when they have expended resources to design a single CPU or family of CPUs which are different from all their other SoC designs for a single product. This Mac Pro's bottom line wouldn't benefit from economies of scale due to sharing CPU designs with other computers or due to a large volume of sales. A Mac Pro with its own custom silicon would need to be profitable on its own, which is very hard feat to accomplish.

The Profitable Mac Pro's Competitiveness Problem
Apple scales up their M-series SoCs and installs them in the next Mac Pro. Due to sharing a CPU design with Apple's other computers, it would be much easier for this Mac Pro to be profitable.
The competitiveness problem Apple faces in this scenario is that even when an M2 or M3 is fused into an Ultra or Extreme, it still won't be close to being as fast as the fastest x86 workstation processors from Intel or AMD.

well if they had an way to have say dual socket then they can share CPU design and don't really need to make an 1 chip monster chip.

 

[DavidSchaub]

M2 = 100GB/s UMA bandwidth
M2 Pro = 200GB/s UMA bandwidth
M2 Max = 400GB/s UMA bandwidth
M1 Ultra = 800GB/s UMA bandwidth

And an M3 Quadra would be at least 1600 GBps (if unevenly distributed), which would be fine

 

[txscott]

"This is the company that gave us the Apple II and now this isn’t a computer company any more apparently."

Do you upgrade your car, put different exhaust on it, change out the ignition system, pull out and replace the entire engine, increase the size of the gas tank? Do you even change your own oil or replace the batteries/windshield wipers? What about if you own an EV? Will you be able to change or upgrade that? Why should you do any of the equivalent stuff with your computer?

How about your TV? Do you harbor any notions it can be upgraded or repaired if it breaks, because you should abandon them if you do.

I just replaced a washer and dryer because it was cheaper to replace than to repair, not to mention that the parts would have been backordered for 5 months.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I don’t think it matters if it’s delayed more. The current model is probably a lot better than the first gen AS version, so you probably wouldn’t want to buy one until the 2nd or 3rd gen. But if it can never match up to new AMD and Nvidia GPUs then you might never want one. At least you can put those in the current one and keep using it, even if it needs Windows or Linux.

 

[steve123]

That's one of the reasons why M silicon is unusable in 3D apps.

Unusable? That is a bit of exaggeration. Works great for my 3D apps. Perhaps you should be more specific about what apps you are talking about? Moreover, is your concern misplaced? Could the software vendor that publishes the software be responsible for adding support? The advantage for the software vendor is there is only one type of GPU to support.

 

[theorist9]

I'm still convinced Apple is facing a dilemma of whether an arm64 Mac Pro will be profitable or competitive.

The Competitive Mac Pro's Profitability Problem
Apple invents an arm64 processor with an Ampere-number of cores, even 96, without packaging integrated GPU cores into an SoC so that the CPU is competitive in the workstation marketplace and is compatible with top-shelf GPUs.
The profitability problem Apple faces in this scenario is when they have expended resources to design a single CPU or family of CPUs which are different from all their other SoC designs for a single product. This Mac Pro's bottom line wouldn't benefit from economies of scale due to sharing CPU designs with other computers or due to a large volume of sales. A Mac Pro with its own custom silicon would need to be profitable on its own, which is very hard feat to accomplish.

I don't think the Mac Pro needs to be profitable. It just needs to break even or not cause too much of a loss for Apple. It's in Apple's interest to keep that small but important group of professionals in the Apple ecosystem, in part because of the influence they exert with the creative community generally. A small loss on the Mac Pro would essentially be a part of Apple's advertising budget. Plus having an AS Mac Pro helps morale among the engineers in the company itself.

The Profitable Mac Pro's Competitiveness Problem
Apple scales up their M-series SoCs and installs them in the next Mac Pro. Due to sharing a CPU design with Apple's other computers, it would be much easier for this Mac Pro to be profitable.
The competitiveness problem Apple faces in this scenario is that even when an M2 or M3 is fused into an Ultra or Extreme, it still won't be close to being as fast as the fastest x86 workstation processors from Intel or AMD.

That's been the case with every Mac Pro Apple has ever made. You've always been able to spec out an x86 worstation that is more performant. The MP does need be highly performant, but history indicates it doesn't need to win the bleeding edge.

Besides, Apple themselves said the most popular config. on the current Mac Pro is the 16-core Xeon (3rd from bottom out five) with a W5700X (3rd from bottom out of nine). So most of the Mac Pro customers aren't looking for the bleeding edge either. Credit to @Colstan for the impressive detective work in finding this info.!

Source: 41:53 at:

"For CPU performance, Mac Studio with M1 Max is up to 2.5 times faster than the fastest 27-inch iMac, and it's up to 50% faster than Mac Pro with a 16-core Xeon processor, our most popular configuration."

Graphics performance on Mac Studio with M1 Max is also tremendous. It's up to 3.4 times faster than the fastest graphics on the 27-inch iMac. And it even outperforms Mac Pro with its most popular graphics card. [The W5700X.] Mac Studio is over 3 times faster."

 

[Boil]

And an M3 Quadra would’ve at least 1600 GBps (if unevenly distributed), which would be fine

With LPDDR5X, a 4-way SoC would have a 2.16TB/s UMA bandwidth & an (eventual) maximum of 1TB RAM...

Don't know if that would be ECC or not, but the Nvidia SuperChip is spec'ed with 960GB LPDDR5X ECC RAM, so I would think Apple could source ECC RAM as well...?

 

[PineappleCake]

Why aren't Macs more popular?

gaming. People want to game as well.

 

[genovelle]

I believe the current economic conditions has a lot to do with the delay. The Mac Pro market may be feeling enough uncertainty they may not be ready to spend what is required to upgrade in the immediate future. I think this may have effected the AR/VR headset development timing as well. It just they need working commercial models in the Wild to move forward. The Mac Pro, not so much.

 

[Twigg90]

At this point, after waiting so long for a "pro" desktop, I kinda agree. Seeing how AI whether we want it or not is becoming a part of creative process, its hard to imagine a "pro" machine that doesn't meet the standards needed by AI applications - for instance some of them need a lot of graphic card memory (I'm not speaking strictly about image generation but AI in general - it uses graphic cards for its computations). Some of the new AI tech NEEDS nvidia chip - they don't run on anything else. And let's not forget how all of market is developing - nvidia is more and more connected to AI and declared their commitment to keep this route for foreseeable future. Soon pro apps will have a huge support of AI stuff like generative image up-res'ing, denoising and all that midjourney bs (which I hate ). So to sum up - if apple doesn't figure out a way to have a PCI port for a peripheral graphic card in their Mac Pro and make their M-whatever chips work efficiently with external graphic cards, it's no longer a Pro machine just because of this. It's already obsolete. From a perspective of a "Pro" machine, this was a stupid, narrow minded choice on their behalf - making an all-in-one chip, with dedicated graphic cores, completely ignoring what nvidia is doing. It's apparent they totally missed the AI revolution that is unfolding right before us - just like few other compenies did, including Alphabet (Google). THAT is the visionary aspect of a CEO that Tim Cook lacks. He's good with numbers, but Jobs would have seen it coming and would direct Apple development accordingly.
Considering the path they chose, maybe it's just better to leave the pro market than be a subject of ridicule. It's a niche market anyway. M chip machines are awesome for your everyday applications, including video editing. But it's not a future-proof machine and that's what one should expect from a "pro", expensive workstation. They committed to a certain architecture of M chips which is not suitable for cutting edge and future applications, unless they find a way to open the M chip ecosystem (I'm not a chip architect, I have no idea if that's even doable).
I wonder why noone is talking about this aspect of pro machines - maybe because youtube apple rumor bloggers don't know sh*t and just copy/paste stuff they read at twitter regarding next rumors, creating moronic content that contests their videos from just a few days earlier...
AI-powered processes in all our Creative Suites, color postproduction software, music production, video production, 3d / game dev is the future for a next decade. You NEED swappable graphic cards because thats their resource. Apple has to either pivot and create some open platform with a custom M chip or just abandon the true "pro" market and focus on nice web browsing laptops - which they have been doing for past several years.

Underrated Comment!

I hate to knock on Tim, he’s lead Apple to be the most successful they’ve ever been but he certainly doesn’t seem to be any type of “visionary.”
I agree, Jobs would have seen the AI revolution coming and Siri would be better… to say the least.


As a separate thought of mine it feels like MacOS is being lead by a team with no vision also besides “it’s like an iPhone”. It feels like they are racing to complete the big convergence of MacOS and iOS which I don’t know if anyone wants. I wish they would fix the actual issues with MacOS which do exist.


Window management is so poor compared to Windows. With macOS it takes too many steps to arrange or split multiple windows. Clicking and holding on the green circle makes it a little better but just isn’t elegant. Why is there no way to “merge” 4 full screen apps onto one “desktop”. In a world of 4K, 5K monitors it would be awesome to be able to quickly split apps, finder windows, safari tabs in quarters. On a 5K monitors that’s still over 1080p resolution on each window. Windows 11 makes this fantastic.

Launchpad hasn’t been updated in ever. There’s still no way to move more than one app at a time or quickly arrange by type or alphabetically. It’s a 10 minute process or playing drag and drop.

And all the question!
Are you sure?
Would you like to?
I heard you wanted to?
Now there’s files?…

I understand they want to sell “privacy” but being asked every time I want to download something in safari from a different domain is annoying, being asked 3 or 4 things when installing a app is also annoying. Yes the installer can install files, yes the app I just installed can write to my documents.

The worst is…go to the obscure spot in the terribly redesigned “System Settings” and allow the extension for the program you just installed to run, oh then go to the other obscure spot and check the box so it can write files or like do stuff. Granular “access” like this is annoying. They are ruining the experience of using MacOS for the sake of “security”.

Now I’m a power user so any question or extra click annoys me, but users who don’t know anything get confused also when they’re asked to answer so many questions to “make things work”. It’s like they’re taking everything advanced about the worlds most advanced operating system and making you answer a question for it to do stuff or work.


I worry about the future of MacOS and I haven’t even gotten started on how disappointing it is to see the Mac Pro apparently delayed again!