They won't release a pure intel machine, it would mean going back on their commitment to moving everything over. What I'm hoping, and I know it's a longshot but it's not completely unprecedented, is that they release a MP with an M3 Ultra *and* a Xeon as a coprocessor. It's been a long time since Apple's done something like that, like in the Apple II, (things like the T1/2 chips aside), but they have done it before. I doubt it'll happen, but it would definitely be interesting if it did.
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Apple Silicon Mac Pro Said to Feature Same Design as 2019 Model, No User-Upgradable RAM
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The reason folks hoped for another Intel Mac Pro is because of expandability, mainly RAM and dGPU. A Xeon co-processor does not allow that, so it's basically a non-starter IMHO, so I don't think it's going to happen.
A theoretical M3 Extreme will have a lot more horsepower than any Xeon available right now, so IMHO, a Mac Pro with Intel CPU in the future is no longer a possibility.
It is such a horrible thought, but the timing of the W-3400 makes it so amazingly plausible
I still would massively bet against an updated Intel motherboard, but that 2% chance is still dangling in the back of my mind.
The Mac Pro chassis will almost certainly be built for the power and thermals of double the M1 Ultra + the power and heat from the PCIe cards.
The Mac Pro will be build on the assumption that eventually Apple will ship an M* Quadra with twice the SoC as the M* Ultra. We're definitely not going to see an M3 chip with more cores than an M3 Max (as the M3 Ultra is just 2x M3 Max, and the potential M* Quadra could just be 4x M* Max)
Apple Silicon version of Mac Pro is still in question because Apple Silicon's design is far from being able to upgrade and expand while GPU performance sucks. Dont tell me it's not. The fact is, most of Mac software are 2D optimized OR software which does NOT take advantage of GPU power. Nvidia is dominating external GPU market because it has high performance for 3D markets such as game, graphic, machine learning, and more. Yes, I still see a lot of loyal Mac users denying the fact that Apple Silicon's performance sucks but this is the truth. M1 Ultra is 2~4 times slower than RTX 3090 depends on the software. Power by Watt? Who cares if you are using on desktop especially if you need to finish the task asap? Beside, Apple Silicon's power limit is TOO low for desktop.
We are entering 3rd year of migration and yet most of 3D based software are not interested to support Apple Silicon at all or poorly optimized. Blender is a great example. Apple funded Blender directly with their developers and resources and yet the performance is still poorer than RTX 30 series. M1 Ultra is barely better than RTX 3050 according to the benchmark testing.
I'm sick and tire of hearing that Mac is optimized for specific fields, Power by Watt matters, and Apple Silicon's GPU performance is good. Apple seriously need to invest more for 3D fields for better performance.
We are entering 3rd year of migration and yet most of 3D based software are not interested to support Apple Silicon at all or poorly optimized. Blender is a great example. Apple funded Blender directly with their developers and resources and yet the performance is still poorer than RTX 30 series. M1 Ultra is barely better than RTX 3050 according to the benchmark testing.
I'm sick and tire of hearing that Mac is optimized for specific fields, Power by Watt matters, and Apple Silicon's GPU performance is good. Apple seriously need to invest more for 3D fields for better performance.
Can you cite some of those accounts? I'm genuinely interested to see where Apple Silicon fails to surpass Intel performance. Perhaps against the latest Intel Mac Pro (with up to 28 CPU cores)? Perhaps with software that hasn't been compiled to run natively for ARM? What are the comparisons?
I get the direction Apple want things to go with Apple Silicon. But I thought the whole crux of learning from the trash can debacle and reverting to the tower form factor for the high end workstation pro market was internal upgradability.
And bad reports coming in for M1 machines and pro audio. See my post above.
I get there are growing pains. But if paired with non-upgradability, that's too much Apple hubris for me - no sale.
The wording of the headline and especially the first sentence made it sound like the 2019 model also didn't have user-upgradable RAM, so I was really confused at first! It made it sound like both points (design and non-upgradable RAM) were comparisons, not one a comparison and the other a contrast. One small word ("but") could've made all the difference 😉
I would warn against equating “crux of learning” and “marketing”.
All the stuff Apple said about the Mac Pro wasn’t a “mea culpa, Tim Cook and all the execs realize our mistakes and our pro computers will be expandable forever”, it was “marketing material to try and sell more Mac Pros”.
The problem with the Trash Can was that Apple couldn’t even source parts to make new ones that would work well in newer versions of the chassis. Had Apple been able to easily ship faster versions, Apple might have stuck with it…
That and the customer base didn’t see much value in putting all they PCIe cards in external chassis?
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Very likely, some perfectly valid, AND accurate, edge cases. For example, I can configure a $5K 16 inch MacBook Pro with 32 gigs of ram (because I need 8 terabytes of storage). And, for Stradivari Violin, 32 gigs won’t get you far, regardless of if you’re using Intel or ARM (and trying to use other instruments as well).
So, accurate, but remove that particular sound library from the equation and most users (that are using plugins and apps that have been coded for ARM) are seeing a larger number of both tracks and effects supported simultaneously. There’s always going to be 1 or 2 people in the WORLD that don’t like a certain thing.
I don’t understand why it is so difficult to believe that the whole world shakeup has caused Apple to simply put Mac Pro on the back burner for a while because it is their least important product in business terms. Now everything is more stabilized, so they can go back to Mac Pro and do with M3 what they intended to do with M1 all along: put a “double Ultra” chip in the existing chassis.
still needs an price cut or an bump still on intel.
Time will tell if/when the M* Quadra ships?
Given the rumours have been pretty clear that we're just going to get an M2 Ultra Mac Pro, I suspect that the Mac Studio will go M3, and we won't see a 2nd ARM Mac Pro until the M4 Ultra/Quadra comes out.
It would also run Windows, Linux, Chrome, etc. natively, which would appeal to the Pro and Enterprise markets.
(I know I’m replying to my own post; I want to keep them associated.)
Unless Apple is still bound by some agreement with Intel not to use processors made by AMD (e.g. Ryzen), Apple could certainly make an X86-based Mac Pro with support for standard RAM and storage modules and GPU cards from AMD and (wince!) Nvidia (I winced because there was some longstanding acrimony between Apple and Nvidia, and I don’t know if they’re cool with one another yet) that could be on par in performance to Apple’s in-house silicon.
There remain a significant number of Pro users and Enterprise users who value “Intel” X86-based Macs for their inherent versatility. An X86-based Mac Pro would likely do well in high end markets.
HOWEVER, the newest versions of macOS have certain desirable features that require Apple Silicon, and those same features are unavailable to X86 Macs (and in turn, unavailable to all old and new X86 Mac software products that run on macOS versions that retain X86 compatibility).
This means Apple should want to modify macOS to bring all such exclusive features to X86-based Macs and bring 100% feature parity between X86 and Apple Silicon-based Macs. Same experience.
But in doing so, Apple would have to swallow its pride and bend a knee.
It’s probably not something Apple is willing to do. Pride. The overarching Marketing Communications message coming from Apple is that Apple Silicon is superior in every way to everything else out there, that Apple is ditching X86 and leaving it behind, and all Macs are modern, post “Intel” X86 products. (Apple Silicon is the future and that’s that.)
An “Intel” X86-based Mac Pro would undercut such a Marketing message, and Apple is unlikely to do something that could be perceived as a “tacit” admission that “Intel” X86 is still relevant, is not a technology relegated to the past — as instantiated in Apple’s severing all ties with X86 technology.
This, however, deprives Mac Pro users of the choices of using standard RAM modules and GPU cards that can be combined to run in parallel to run graphics instructions as well as GPGPU instructions that have become standard in recent A.I. computing models — especially Nvidia cards with their proprietary CUDA technology and proprietary CUDA APIs that have become imperative for OpenAI-spawned projects including MidJourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, LLMs, LLaMA ai, ChatGPT, GPT-4, and many others.
All recent A.I. models have become critically dependent on Nvidia brand graphics cards. A recent news piece discussed how generative A.I. and large language models can run at efficient speeds locally (no cloud computing) on PCs with an inexpensive, consumer-grade Nvidia GPU card(!)
Apple’s Marketing-driven policies might in the “pretty-near-term” deprive its users from A.I. technologies available on other platforms, unless they’re all performed on Apple devices through cloud computing. This could prove catastrophic for the company.
Even Google of all companies was caught “flat-footed” by Microsoft’s recent, rapid A.I. announcements including its purchase of (the once free and open) GPT-3 and its underlying code, and its OpenAI and ChatGPT integration into its Bing search engine.
If even Google was unprepared for these rapid Microsoft announcements and is playing “catch-up” to Microsoft, where does that leave Apple?!
Apple had better go on a spending spree, buying A.I. startups — particularly ones that have proprietary technology, not just technology on par with what‘s out there now.
It’s too late for Apple to sink its teeth into Venture Capital-funded, A.I.-acceleration startup, d-Matrix — Microsoft’s already all over that with funding that will make d-Matrix beholden to Microsoft.
Along with Bing, Microsoft has announced its plans to integrate generative A.I. into every service and software product it makes, including its Microsoft Office suite of apps.
Microsoft is being its vicious, ruthless old self, where “open source” is its mortal enemy.
There is a revolution going on, and I’m used to Apple being the one behind most all technological revolutions.
Apple had better step up its game — and FAST!
I didn’t trust Microsoft when they tried to pollute open, FREE, international standardized Internet protocols; I didn’t trust Microsoft when they bought GitHub, and I don’t trust them now that they’ve bought ChatGPT-3.
Boy, did Jeff Wilcox and Gerard Williams really leave Apple high and dry. Apple’s widely reported “two-year lead” over its competitors in Silicon has more than completely evaporated; Apple has fallen behind.
A devastating March 12 Bloomberg article by Mark Gurman reveals the extent of not only Apple’s crippling “brain drain,” but the epidemic of key executive-level employees and VPs leaving Apple at a rapid clip — and in droves.
What is it that is making so many Apple employees feel unfulfilled enough to leave such a company as Apple for such “exciting” companies as Intel?
Does working at Apple no longer feel like being part of somewhat of a “cause.” Is working at Apple no longer being part of a team with its sights set on changing the world? Is the legendary “Apple loyalty” still a thing at Apple? How about Apple’s “enigmatic” tint? The pride of saying you work at Apple? The everlasting ”small startup” ethos? Gone?
Are Senior VPs in charge of teams behaving like tyrants? (Like Steve Jobs but with none of the charisma, leadership and inspiration qualities?)
It’s always been the case (at least until now) that many of Apple’s most effective employees were driven by factors other than just money…salary… It was dedication to an organization and a cause bigger than themselves.
Is “Apple Culture” all but gone and has Apple has become purely Corporative with its most important consideration being AAPL?
Tim Cook really needs to undertake a massive company audit to get a sense of what factors are retaining employees and what factors are not.
With figures like Jony Ive (and others) gone, Cook needs to get to the bottom of company culture, or lack thereof, and this apparent trend of Apple employees not feeling inspired enough to remain loyal. (“Meh…”)
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Yes, this is what Apple SHOULD do and would best serve customers.
But don't count on it because Apple hubris now reigns supreme.
Yeah, I think, like I wrote, Apple’s decisions appear to be “Marketing-Message Driven,” and from at least since November 10, 2020, when the first Apple Silicon based Mac was unveiled, the Marketing Message was that Apple Silicon (CPU and GPU) was the future and Intel or X86 was the past. And Apple’s M1 did “beat the pants off” anything Intel or AMD had out there in terms of performance, thermals and energy use. I think at the time there were PCs that beat M1 Macs, but these PCs were large, power hungry desktops with thermal issues that caused fans to spin up in no time, resulting in loud fan noise from CPU cooling as well as the fans onboard AMD and Nvidia graphics cards.
Then, Gerard Williams, head of Apple’s Silicon, left Apple and took a lot of senior Apple employees with him to found Nuvia (which is not an artificial sugar substitute but an ARM silicon design startup using a lot of IP that belongs to Apple).
Then Williams sold Nuvia to Qualcomm and took the cash, perhaps feeling that Qualcomm had the deep pockets needed to defend against a lawsuit from Apple — which Apple did file. And a motion to dismiss was denied by the judge in the case, so the case against Nuvia/Qualcomm goes on.
IMHO, Gerard Williams really screwed Apple, and by also ”gutting” Apple’s Silicon department and leaving it in (reportedly) disarray, he caused Apple’s reported “two year lead” over anyone in the ARM space to evaporate — or more than evaporate, if you believe press reports that Apple is now behind.
So Apple’s longstanding Marketing Message that Intel/X86 represents the past and Apple Silicon represents the future is at a crossroads: as Ryzen and even some Nvidia and Qualcomm AMD designs appear to be giving Apple Silicon a run for its money, Apple must decide if it’s best to swallow its pride, design and release a Mac Pro that might use an Intel or AMD Ryzen processor, PLUS accept standard RAM memory modules, PLUS non-Apple SSD modules, PLUS AMD and/or Nvidia graphics cards which would completely countermand Apple’s Marketing Message that Intel/X86 designs represent the past and Apple Silicon represents the future — and AMD and Nvidia graphics cards represent the past as well, in light of Apple Silicon’s integrated GPU cores. It would be a major admission on Apple’s part and a dramatic about-face the financial and tech press would certainly sink their teeth into.
So, coming full circle, I agree with you that Apple won’t do what’s best for its high end users, but will design a Mac Pro that’s consistent with its Marketing Message about Apple Silicon.
I’m not very religious, but the Bible does say, “Pride cometh before a fall.”
Very suddenly, Nvidia and its proprietary CUDA technology and CUDA API has been the go-to technology undergirding most if not all of the rapidly advancing A.I. models that seem to be making major news on a practically daily basis.
Does Apple want to yield to Nvidia or stick with Apple M[#] GPU cores for graphics, GPGPU and A.I.?
I think (as I think you do) that Apple will stick with Apple Silicon for high end Macs (Mac Pro) no matter what.
There have never been a lack of well written posts indicating how Apple’s on the way to obscurity. And, as long as Apple continues to see success, there will never be a lack of posts indicating Apple’s on the way to obscurity. Because, I mean, eventually ONE of them have to be right, Right?
Who wrote that Apple was on the way to obscurity? Should commenters who care about Apple and its future refrain from or be censored from expressing what they feel are true challenges and concerns that are confronting or may confront the company? Or is unalloyed cheerleading the only acceptable form of loyalty? Should Mark Gurman not have written his March 12 article in Bloomberg? (It was very “well written.”)
Apple doesn’t need loyalty? OK… Purchasers committed to the Apple brand and ecosystem is also known as…loyalty.Apple doesn’t NEED loyalty. What they need is people buying goods and services.
Anyone is free to type anything they want to type. As a result, anyone “else” is also free to type what THEY want to type. MacRumors gets ad views, continues to post stories I want to read, later rinse repeat!
What’s the difference between someone loyal and buying products and services and someone that’s just loyal. Once a person figures out the difference between the two, they’ll understand which is more important. Loyalty or someone actually spending money.