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

[rumz]

Yeah, I do not buy the “ohhh they aren’t going to update the Studio because they don’t want to cannibalize Mac Pro sales” idea. I mean, I get not updating it before the Mac Pro if they need a new chip to really market and promote a new Mac Pro and that chip is now going to only be the Ultra. I just can’t imagine someone that wants whatever advantages the Mac Pro has over the Studio is going to then go ahead and just get the Studio.

I suppose the whole pool of potential Studio + Mac Pro customers is incredibly small (relative to their best sellers in the laptop line). And maybe once the Mac Pro is transitioned to Apple Silicon, those might be product lines that only get an update every other chip cycle if it’s not feasible to get an Ultra out every generation given limited sales. But having them alternate cycles (where Pro is on even M series models and Studio is on odd M series models or something) just to avoid cannibalization doesn’t make any sense to me.

(I’m reminded of the AX series chips that iPad Pros used to get— they were every other generation, more or less. I could see the Ultra being in that category).

 

[neuropsychguy]

The ram and gpu requirements that come with using a Mac Pro

What do you mean by this?

Couldn't Apple engineer an Apple Silicon Mac Pro to have 1.5TB or more RAM?
Couldn't Apple engineer an Apple Silicon Mac Pro to have modular GPUs?

 

[sdf]

I keep wondering if Apple is waiting on user-upgradable RAM that's still fast for the Mac Pro. I can't really think of another reason for it to be delayed so long relative to the rest of their line.

 

[CWallace]

I wonder if they figured out if they loose the top end pros, it trickles down? Could be wrong, but if let's say a movie studios started using windows machines because the m2ultra Mac Pro wasnt up to snuff, that could start affecting Mac purchases for entire company/ its workers?

I believe that is a reasonable extrapolation. Even if they are a small(ish) part of the Mac ecosystem, Mac Pro customers are still very important considering they would also be users of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro and therefore driving the use of both applications across their entire company, even if most of those installs would be on MacBook Pros or iMacs. And as good as the margins are on Apple hardware, think of how incredible they are on Apple software. 🤑

 

[Joe The Dragon]

Why? What would that accomplish?

to have an real workstation with video cards that get GPU + CPU power you can't get with just one chip. Also room for big ram pools

 

[blazerunner]

Nah, threadripper or Epyc, so you can have up to 64 cores and heaps of PCIe lanes, all while not requiring an upgraded fuse panel to your house. Intel is way behind on efficiency these days, and many core Xeons are even worse, up to 700W!

13900k is waaaaay better than what Intel used to offer. Yeah it's not as power efficient as AMD, buuut.. AMD doesnt have all the instruction sets for Adobe apps... Hackintoshes using AMD processors have a lot of issues with this. Regardless, a 13900k CPU would be a huge improvement over everything Apple has now and it'd serve them well to just release as a stop gap between the gimped Mac Studio and a proper Apple Silicon Mac Pro.

They won't, Apple is spineless.

 

[blazerunner]

Why? What would that accomplish?

Faster CPUs, better GPUs, multi-boot with Windows / Linux... people have wanted a headless iMac for decades. Apple doesn't do it because they're intentionally forcing their consumers to be stuck in their limited ecosystem. It's disrespectful and most Apple fanboys just deny it.

 

[InuNacho]

Just release an Intel 13900k Mac Pro and call it a day. That CPU runs circles around anything and everything Apple has to offer. Jesus christ, it's NOT that hard. A company worth 3 trillion dollars cant sell a good computer? That's embarrassing.

I recently sold my Base M2 Mini because the price to performance was not the leaps and bounds that Apple was advertising over my older i7 Dell tower.

I bought my Dell used for $300 with an i7-8700, 32 GB of RAM, and a GTX 1070.
I realized for my creative uses the Mini while certainly smaller and more fine tuned required alot more hoops to jump through just to get it to interface with my imaging equipment and printers. The fact that there are only a few USB ports doesn't help either.

I understand the M2 Pro would have been a better buy but it costs so much more than just tossing in a new GPU or upgrade some other aspect of the machine.
Also a USB 3 PCIe card is $20 vs buying docks and hubs that ultimately use as much power as my Dell tower and do not introduce general buginess associated with external hardware.

Apple needs a cMP like device for the consumers that require expandability that doesn't cost $7k out the gate.

 

[SactoGuy18]

It's likely that Apple may not show off the next Mac Pro until the M3-based SoC designed for the Mac Pro becomes available. M3 will have a new CPU core, new GPU core and new memory controller specifically to speed up performance and handle possibly as much as 256 GB of RAM (in my opinion).

 

[patent10021]

That's ok because pros will have a 15" display on their sun-MBA workstations to connect to the MBP's that connect to the old Mac Pros.

 

[octopi]

I don't work for Apple, I don't work for chip manufacturers, I don't work for computer distribution companies, I don't develop hardware, I don't make 3rd party peripherals, I don't write for the computer industry, I don't read futures..................... but I think.......... there might be a Mac Pro.

 

[lysingur]

Apple f*cked up. Apple Silicon Mac Pro is going to be another AirPower.

There is no middle ground between the rigidity of an SoC design and the flexibility and power of a modular architecture. It's either or. Professional desktops simply magnify the advantages that Wintel machines still enjoy.

Apple either has to swallow its pride and be content with keeping Intel on Mac Pro or forge ahead with the transition and risk a massive backlash. Cook is really fortunate that Mac Pro is such a niche product that Apple's bottom line won't be significantly impacted even if it were to vanish from the face of the Earth tomorrow.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

13900k is waaaaay better than what Intel used to offer. Yeah it's not as power efficient as AMD, buuut.. AMD doesnt have all the instruction sets for Adobe apps... Hackintoshes using AMD processors have a lot of issues with this. Regardless, a 13900k CPU would be a huge improvement over everything Apple has now and it'd serve them well to just release as a stop gap between the gimped Mac Studio and a proper Apple Silicon Mac Pro.

They won't, Apple is spineless.

It has to be a Xeon if they want to call it a workstation. And if Adobe can make their stuff work on AMD Windows, they could make it on AMD Mac, especially if Apple would be officially supporting it. Hackintoshes don’t count when it comes to native support. You’re often using third party kexts and custom plists to even get it to install. Heck, AMD could have custom made chips for Apple like they have for consoles. Apple could have still differentiated themselves via custom silicon.

I know it’s armchair CEOing, and I do wonder if Apple thought about this option.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

A hybrid backplane to access the PCIe 5.0/6.0 bus will be required to have a proper workstation class Mac Pro.

Apple becoming a principle player here must happen: https://www.computeexpresslink.org/

Our Members - Compute Express Link

Keyword Search: Board of Directors Contributors Adopters Adopters 6Harmonics Inc. Accelerated Tech, Inc Accipiter Systems Inc Achronix Semiconductor Corporation ADTEC Corporation Aeponyx Inc. AIC Inc. AMI US Holdings Inc. Anritsu Corporation Apacer Technology Inc. ASRock Rack Inc. ASUSTek...

www.computeexpresslink.org

Only one name is missing: Apple.

PCIe 6.0 fully embraces CXL 3.0 spec and explained here.

PCIe 6.1 - All you need to know about PCI Express Gen6

The PCI Express® 6.0 (PCIe® 6.0) specification was released by PCI-SIG® in January 2022. This new generation of the ubiquitous PCIe standard brought with

www.rambus.com

What is CXL? Explained:

Compute Express Link (CXL): All you need to know

In this blog post, we take an in-depth look at Compute Express Link®™ (CXL®™), an open standard cache-coherent interconnect between processors and

www.rambus.com

 

[DavidSchaub]

If these figures are to be believed, the Mac Pro is quite popular still.

Most popular Mac: Here's Apple's best selling computer - 9to5Mac

A new study from CIRP looks at the mix of Apple's Mac sales and gives interesting insight into the most popular Mac and more.

9to5mac.com

I wonder if they figured out if they loose the top end pros, it trickles down? Could be wrong, but if let's say a movie studios started using windows machines because the m2ultra Mac Pro wasnt up to snuff, that could start affecting Mac purchases for entire company/ its workers? I could be wrong and most likely am!

I just don't buy the numbers... They come up on here occasionally... I would just need to see them collaborated somehow.

 

[bice]

Or... Apple doesn't feel any need to rush its product development cycle..

Why would Apple bother to release a new Mac Studio right away? Unless it bumps sales enough to cover the RoI on cycling the product, why do it?

...

What are the actual costs of swapping one Apple designed for another? It's not like they are dependent on anything else than their own development process. Are you saying they made M2 so different from M1 so they need to redesign the motherboard of the Studio?

 

[macsplusmacs]

A very interesting "what if" video for the mac pro:

 

[richinaus]

I think Apple has let the mac pro die a little to let every other product thrive, and this was probably the right decision.

 

[cdsapplefan]

I bet the delay is because they are trying to get the extreme chip version working that they had problems for the Mac Pro. Apple would differentiate the Mac Pro from the Mac Studio with a Extreme chip for the Mac Pro

 

[MowgliWolf]

A little bit slower and surer won’t go amiss. I’d rather have a slower roll out of superior hardware than the rush we’ve had recently

 

[Mr. Dee]

MKBHD recently said in his Waveform podcast that he doesn't think its ever coming. I thought maybe he is just making this stuff up or he knows something we don't. For someone as powerful and influential as him, I think he knows the truth. And its likely that the Mac Pro is dead, again.

For Apple though I don't think its a big deal. Of course, there is the mindshare factor and how much this can have a domino affect across all product lines. But, Apple probably only sell like 30,000 Mac Pro's a year at most. Not a lot of people are buying tower workstations and its usually for specialized environments. Even in my work environment, I rarely see tower PC's and those who have tower workstations, they are a tiny group.

 

[Kierkegaarden]

So he’s saying the 15” Air was supposed to be released earlier, that the 13” and 15” Air will now be on separate upgrade cycles, the XR headset air typing is “finicky”, and battery life for this product will be 2 hours. None of these statements will be confirmed or denied. He has got to have the easiest job on the planet — just make up stuff and nobody will refute it. When the products do come out and he turns out to be wrong, he can just say Apple changed their strategy.

 

[DavidSchaub]

What are the actual costs of swapping one Apple designed for another? It's not like they are dependent on anything else than their own development process. Are you saying they made M2 so different from M1 so they need to redesign the motherboard of the Studio?

I imagine that there are multiple different costs:

- It likely costs Apple quite a bit of overhead to ship ANY "new" product. Apple is a big company, it has processes and supply chains, and verification, and the list goes on. Making a new product costs Apple money, period.

- I have yet to see a break down of the pins going into the M2 Package vs the M1 package, but I have no reason to assume that they are the same, especially for the Ultra case. I would be shocked if the M2 Mac Studio had the same motherboard than the M1 Mac Studio. Sometimes the changes are small, but Apple almost always revs the motherboards these days, and any change means they need to treat verify it again.

- There are tons of things we don't know. It is possible that if the M2 Ultra package is being built for the Mac Pro, that it simply using the engineers (because Apple refuses to hire enough engineers around the world) to build that package and there is nobody to make the M2 Ultra for the Mac Studio (those are probably VERY different packages).

- Apple may have already contracted all the M1 Ultras they need until the M3 Ultra comes out, and changing that would cost money.

But the kicker is: if moving the Mac Studio to M2 has no notable bump is sales... ANY money invested into making it happen is a waste.

 

[blazerunner]

I recently sold my Base M2 Mini because the price to performance was not the leaps and bounds that Apple was advertising over my older i7 Dell tower.

I bought my Dell used for $300 with an i7-8700, 32 GB of RAM, and a GTX 1070.
I realized for my creative uses the Mini while certainly smaller and more fine tuned required alot more hoops to jump through just to get it to interface with my imaging equipment and printers. The fact that there are only a few USB ports doesn't help either.

I understand the M2 Pro would have been a better buy but it costs so much more than just tossing in a new GPU or upgrade some other aspect of the machine.
Also a USB 3 PCIe card is $20 vs buying docks and hubs that ultimately use as much power as my Dell tower and do not introduce general buginess associated with external hardware.

Apple needs a cMP like device for the consumers that require expandability that doesn't cost $7k out the gate.

I just said screw it and built a new Hackintosh last year knowing all about the M powered Macs. Got a 12700k with 32GB of RAM, Gigabyte Motherboard, AMD 6800 GPU, a 750w Corsair PSU (silent!), a Noctua NH-D15 Chromax Black Cooler (silent!), and a bunch of internal drives (NVME, 2.5" and 3.5") all inside an awesome Fractal Design Meshify 2 Compact case... all for under 3k. And it runs amazing. Absolutely no way Apple could compete with that kind of value, NO WAY.

And before I hear all this crap from fanboys 'Well, it's not a real Mac! You need to be careful with upkeep! You don't get support! Wah wah wah....'...... Yah, I know.. and it doesn't matter, because it still works 100% like a real Mac and I paid less than $3,000 instead of $10,000+ that Apple would actually charge... with no upgrade path.

 

[bice]

This is so true!!!! Facts 👇

View attachment 2191786

It's been over 400 days since Apple SVP John Ternus said 'Mac Pro' is 'for another day' - 9to5Mac

Turns out John Ternus wasn’t kidding when he said “that leaves just one more product to go: Mac Pro, but...

9to5mac.com

I'm just thinking back to before the current Mac Pro was released. Didn't they say "we haven't forgotten you, we have something up our sleeve" then too?

And what hinted at was the Imac Pro.

So already back then they firmly believed that the pro segment does not need a modular desktop, and a beefed up imac would satisfy the pro segment.
I guess the imac pro didn't turn out like they thought, because 2 years later the mac pro arrived.

I get a sense that we are looking at a repeat performance. "Mac Pro is for another day" is a reference to "We will soon-ish release a new class of Mac, called the Studio, and we really think this will satisfy the pro segment. ".

So we got the Studio in march 2022 and Apple is/was hoping that would be pro enough. And if it isn't, well do we look at a similar lead time for a pro? Then Q1 2024 sounds about right for that pro to arrive.