Apple's Last M4 Mac: What's Rumored for the Mac Pro

[deconstruct60]

I skimmed though this thread and did not immediately notice anyone mentioning that Apple are producing, for their own use, a server focused Apple chip that is not currently sold to their customers. This was mentioned in the annoucement of their $500B investment in the US.

Apple is making the server logic boards in the USA. That doesn't mean the SoCs are different. It just means they are different size/shape logic boards from the Mac enclosure form factors.

The sever boards don't need Wi-Fi/Bluetooth at all. Probably do not need more than 1-2 USB-C style ports. (in normal mode: no end users sitting with keyboard ,mouse, and/or USB flash drive in front of computer) Probably do need more general Ethernet (more Ethernet ports and/or faster Ethernet).
[ Even if using Thunderbolt for very short range peer-to-peer cluster connections the ports don't need to be arrange the same way as the desktops enclosures. ]

Private Cloud Compute Operation System doesn't keep persistent files ( any data associated with the user is dumped after the 'task' is done. ). So primary the 'user data file storage' is all network based. SSD storage may not be arranged the same way as the desktops.

Is it not possible that this, as yet, unannounced chip is a possible candidate for a Mac Pro? A thought that may have no merit and is based on pure assumptions at this point.

If the primary compete target is Google Tensor ( Apple reportedly is using substantive time on Google's cloud) , AMD MIxxx , Celebras , Tentorrent, top end Nvidia datacenter modules ( not the PCI-e card products ) silicon tends not to have Display Engines ( video out producers ) in order to allocate more space to 'computing'.
A server only deployment chip from Apple easily could dump Display engines ( and Thunderbolt ) also . At that point it wouldn't be a candidate for a mac Pro.

If Apple/Broadcom bring the server networking inside the SoC package. Similar impacts. die space that would be used for mundane I/O like Wi-Fi Bluetooth communication could be reassigned to doing more wired communications. That diverges from Apple's mac do great wireless mindset.

 

[MacHeritage]

I'm one of those few people who have a 2019 Mac Pro with maxed out MPX modules...

Quick question, do you have the 28-core Xeon in the Mac Pro 2019? You didn't say, so I wasn't sure CPU comparison wise.

 

[smckenzie]

Quick question, do you have the 28-core Xeon in the Mac Pro 2019? You didn't say, so I wasn't sure CPU comparison wise.

Ah - I did miss that off. I have the 16 core 3.2Ghz. The 28-core would get you to just over 1500 in Cinenbench.

 

[maikerukun]

Across 2024 and the early months of 2025, Apple refreshed all of its Macs with next-generation M4 chips, with the exception of the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is still waiting for an update, but it is supposed to get an overhaul later this year.

M-Series Chip

The current version of the Mac Pro can be purchased with Apple's M2 Ultra chip, which came out in June 2023. It might seem logical for the Mac Pro to get the equivalent M4 chip, the M4 Ultra, but it turns out Apple might not have an M4 Ultra in the works.

When the Mac Studio was updated earlier this month, Apple announced a version with the M4 Max chip, and a version with an M3 Ultra chip, with no M4 Ultra unveiled. Apple told Mac Studio reviewers that not every generation of M-series chips will include a higher-end "Ultra" tier, so there may simply be no M4 Ultra that exists for the Mac Pro.

There's now a question over what chip Apple will use in the Mac Pro, and there are a few possibilities.

1. Apple does have an M4 Ultra chip coming, and it's not ready yet.
   
2. There's some version of a high-end M4 chip that is not technically an "Ultra" chip and is instead called something else like "M4 Extreme."
   
3. The Mac Pro will use the M3 Ultra chip.
   
4. The Mac Pro will get an M5 Ultra chip.

The M1 Ultra, M2 Ultra, and M3 Ultra chips that Apple has released have essentially been two Max chips linked together through an "UltraFusion" connector. The M4 Max does not have the UltraFusion connector available, so the first possibility seems unlikely.

Apple could be making an M4 Ultra or Extreme chip that is standalone and not a doubled up variant of the M4 Max, but Bloomberg's Mark Gurman recently claimed that Apple doesn't want to create an M4 Ultra chip from scratch because of costs, production challenges, and low sales of high-end and expensive machines.

Apple could refresh the Mac Pro with the same M3 Ultra chip that it put in the Mac Studio, but if that's Apple's plan, it's likely the company would have just refreshed the Mac Pro alongside the Mac Studio. The Mac Pro could be held back for other development reasons, but there aren't really rumors of notable new features coming.

We might be getting the first Macs with M5 chips later this year, but there's also a chance M5 Macs won't come until early 2026. Even if Macs with M5 chips do launch in late 2025, there's no guarantee that an Ultra version of the chip will be ready to go.

As of right now, there's no clear indication of what's in store for the 2025 Mac Pro's Apple silicon chip.

Design

There aren't rumors of design updates for the next Mac Pro, so it's not likely that Apple has anything planned.

Ports

Apple added Thunderbolt 5 to the Mac Studio and MacBook Pro, so the Mac Pro will likely get Thunderbolt 5 ports too. Thunderbolt 5 will allow for more high-resolution displays to be connected to the Mac Pro.

RAM and SSD

The M3 Ultra chip supports up to 512GB RAM, so if the Mac Pro gets the M3 Ultra or something similar, it will support a lot more RAM. The current model is limited to 192GB.

Storage maximums will also double, as the M3 Ultra supports up to a 16TB SSD, while the Mac Pro is limited to 8TB.

Launch Date

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said last year that the Mac Pro will see a refresh toward the end of 2025, but given the chip uncertainty, Apple could be planning to hold it until 2026.

Article Link: Apple's Last M4 Mac: What's Rumored for the Mac Pro

I continue to stand by my theory that they're about to introduce GPU cards to ramp up the power of the Mac Pro. I also wouldn't be shocked at all if they've been quietly developing an entirely brand new category of chip specifically for the Mac Pro that flat out quadruples the power of the M4 Max and consumes power like a monster as it has far more space, heatsink, fans, and ability to compete in that way with Nvidia setups.

 

[Pezimak]

That literally is the Mac Studio - and it doesn't seem to have flopped.

The current Mac Pro is for people who need more PCIe slots. lanes & bandwidth than you can sensibly get using Thunderbolt enclosures (which are 4 lane only and usually a generation of PCIe behind the MP). For internal storage & specialist I/O cards - probably a lot of legacy audio & video cards that could theoretically be replaced with Thunderbolt-specific stuff by people who would completely re-tool if they had the time and money. If that's not you, then you can stop worrying about the Mac Pro.



6 full length PCIe slots sharing 16 lanes of PCIe 4 (versus 2-3 slots sharing 4 lanes of PCIe 3 per external Thunderbolt PCIe enclosure - PCIe 4 maybe soon with TB5). That's it. That's the point. I don't need that, but apparently others do.

I'd quite like a Mac mini-tower in the ~$2k price range lie the good old days - mainly so I could fill it with USB 3 cards - but it isn't going to happen with Apple Silcon since you need the second die of a Mx Ultra chip with its unused SSD interface to provide those PCIe lanes.



Says who? It's a specialist model for a niche who need the slots, and has been the last in line for updates since about 2012. It will go away as soon as that "niche" has moved on to a Thunderbolt-based workflow.

If anything, the MacBook Pro is the "flagship" - laptops have been Apple's strongest point since the 1990s, and its the laptop market where chips like the M4 Pro and Max really give the MBP a power-consumption/performance edge over x86. - and a the syetem that "everybody wants" (the latest NVIDIA and AMD discrete GPUs) would throw away that advantage and never be any better than those GPUs (which are also available in PCs). Apple Silicon is terrific for laptops and small-form-factor workstations, which is where Apple will make their money, but if you want a big box'o'slots it just isn't the best tool for the job.

Upgrading the MP to the M3 Ultra might just happen - the motivation would be that 512GB RAM option (maybe for people who needed a 100 piece orchestra worth of samples permanently loaded into RAM) but you'd really have to be committed to a Mac workflow to pay that cash.

Firstly what exactly can you plug into those PCI slots, which I am all too aware of and you really didn’t need to spell it out, and secondly the price tag dictates the Mac Pro is Apples flagship computer, and the power it has too, way more then any MacBook has ever had. A flagship device is not dictated by how popular it is.

 

[x86dude]

They should offer a path to replace just the "main board" on this computer without replacing the case, power supply, ports, fans and everything else that didn't change one bit.

Perfectly said. I have money ready to spend ; have had for years. But Apple are too asleep to make a computer I want.
Not going to pay thousands for a tiny mini.

This upgrade path catches a market currently going to waste.

 

[deconstruct60]

They should offer a path to replace just the "main board" on this computer without replacing the case, power supply, ports, fans and everything else that didn't change one bit.

Apple didn't offer than in the Intel era ( or PowerPC one .... or Moto 68000-series era ) ... so why would they start now? Apple isn't a motherboard vendor in the retail market. Never wanted to be one either.

 

[Clearmystic]

As long as Hollywood and video/music production studios exist, there's a market for the Mac Pro.

I disagree.
The argument of "expandability" for specialist cards decreases as thunderbolt 5 (120 Gb/s) enables those cards to be run from an enclosure on a maxed out Mac studio for cheaper than a mac pro.

 

[mdhaus72]

As long as Hollywood and video/music production studios exist, there's a market for the Mac Pro.

Wouldn't it be cheaper for them to simply use fully maxed out M3 Ultra Mac Studios that are connected to network storage when necessary?

 

[chucker23n1]

Wouldn't it be cheaper for them to simply use fully maxed out M3 Ultra Mac Studios that are connected to network storage when necessary?

Not when you need specialized internal PCIe cards.

 

[chucker23n1]

Apple didn't offer than in the Intel era ( or PowerPC one .... or Moto 68000-series era ) ... so why would they start now? Apple isn't a motherboard vendor in the retail market. Never wanted to be one either.

They kind of did pre-Jobs when they offered, for example, PowerPC upgrades for 68k Macs. Heck, they even offered x86 daughter cards at the time…

(Our LC was also upgraded to an LC II simply by replacing the entire logic board.)

But yeah, no way is that coming back. It's not an attractive market segment for Apple.

 

[theluggage]

A flagship device is not dictated by how popular it is.

Nor is it dictated by how expensive it is.

You're not going to find a precise definition of "flagship" (unless you're literally referring to a naval vessel) but I'd say that it would be "the product that you'd choose to represent your company, if you had to choose one". From Apple's perspective, that's... well, right now it's probably Severance (on more than one level ) , but if you limit that to Mac then it would be something like the M4 Max MacBook Pro which shows off Apple Silicon (their flagship technology) at its best. Or the M3 Ultra Studio with 512GB of unified RAM which is going to excel at workflows that benefit from lots of cores and shared CPU/GPU RAM (but be beaten by the M4 Max on tasks that don't...)

You can call the Mac Pro a "flagship" if you want, but If Apple regarded the Mac Pro as their "flagship" it would have received a lot more love from them over the past 5 years.

Firstly what exactly can you plug into those PCI slots

Ask the people who bought the 2023 Mac Pro, since that's about the only rational reason for buying it over a Studio. There was clearly just enough interest for Apple to make the 2023 Mac Pro, but not so much that they didn't make a M1 Ultra one fiest or re-design the case for the new, cooler CPUs. We'll see if there's still enough interest for them to update it.

Reality check - the whole Apple Silicon concept is built around integrated GPUs, unified LPDDR RAM and on-CPU SSD controllers linked to proprietary "naked flash" modules, and external expansion with Thunderbolt. That's the path Apple chose in 2019 That's great for ultrabooks and SFF workstations but it's not ideal for expandable towers. Apple may want to keep a PCIe tower on the books for the handful who will pay top dollar for it, but it's not going to be their "flagship" going forward.

The argument of "expandability" for specialist cards decreases as thunderbolt 5 (120 Gb/s) enables those cards to be run from an enclosure on a maxed out Mac studio for cheaper than a mac pro.

Yes - to a point (presumably TB5 enclosures with PCIe4 will be forthcoming).

But it's still only 4 lanes of PCIe4 per enclosure (even if you can physically insert a x8 x16 card it won't get the full bandwidth) vs. 16 lanes in the Mac Pro.

Then you have to wonder how many of the PCIe cards that people want to plug into their Mac Pros are actually PCIe4 - I suspect that a lot of them are "legacy" devices which won't see any improvement with TB5.

 

[Pezimak]

Nor is it dictated by how expensive it is.

You're not going to find a precise definition of "flagship" (unless you're literally referring to a naval vessel) but I'd say that it would be "the product that you'd choose to represent your company, if you had to choose one". From Apple's perspective, that's... well, right now it's probably Severance (on more than one level ) , but if you limit that to Mac then it would be something like the M4 Max MacBook Pro which shows off Apple Silicon (their flagship technology) at its best. Or the M3 Ultra Studio with 512GB of unified RAM which is going to excel at workflows that benefit from lots of cores and shared CPU/GPU RAM (but be beaten by the M4 Max on tasks that don't...)

You can call the Mac Pro a "flagship" if you want, but If Apple regarded the Mac Pro as their "flagship" it would have received a lot more love from them over the past 5 years.



Ask the people who bought the 2023 Mac Pro, since that's about the only rational reason for buying it over a Studio. There was clearly just enough interest for Apple to make the 2023 Mac Pro, but not so much that they didn't make a M1 Ultra one fiest or re-design the case for the new, cooler CPUs. We'll see if there's still enough interest for them to update it.

Reality check - the whole Apple Silicon concept is built around integrated GPUs, unified LPDDR RAM and on-CPU SSD controllers linked to proprietary "naked flash" modules, and external expansion with Thunderbolt. That's the path Apple chose in 2019 That's great for ultrabooks and SFF workstations but it's not ideal for expandable towers. Apple may want to keep a PCIe tower on the books for the handful who will pay top dollar for it, but it's not going to be their "flagship" going forward.


Yes - to a point (presumably TB5 enclosures with PCIe4 will be forthcoming).

But it's still only 4 lanes of PCIe4 per enclosure (even if you can physically insert a x8 x16 card it won't get the full bandwidth) vs. 16 lanes in the Mac Pro.

Then you have to wonder how many of the PCIe cards that people want to plug into their Mac Pros are actually PCIe4 - I suspect that a lot of them are "legacy" devices which won't see any improvement with TB5.

I’m not sure what the point if your post is? Firstly you are wrong, flagship products are usually the most expensive too so you’re wrong on that opinion. Ferrari halo flagship cars as an example are always their most expensive models.
As for the rest of your post????? You do not know what cards will work with the Mac Pro and then go on some tangent about the specs of PCIE which personally I am already aware of. No idea what your point is?

 

[theluggage]

Firstly you are wrong, flagship products are usually the most expensive too

“the best or most important product, idea, building, etc. that an organization owns or produces:”
- https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/flagship

Doesn’t depend on price. It may be the most expensive, maybe not.

You do not know what cards will work with the Mac Pro

You keep on saying that you don’t need to be told. Make up your mind.

and then go on some tangent about the specs of PCIE which personally I am already aware of.

In response to another post that was talking about the specs of PCIe…

No idea what your point is?

The current Mac Pro is not Apple’s “best or most important product”. It’s a legacy product for a niche of users who need more PCIe slots, lanes and/or bandwidth than is easily available via Thunderbolt. The M4 Max MBP or M3 Ultra Studio are better showcases for the strengths of Apple Silicon (which is anrguably Apple’s flagship technology).

 

[thefrost]

Or they might just not make another one.

 

[chucker23n1]

if you limit that to Mac then it would be something like the M4 Max MacBook Pro which shows off Apple Silicon (their flagship technology) at its best. Or the M3 Ultra Studio with 512GB of unified RAM

Yup. The MBP is probably the flagship Mac. The MBA is the mainstream Mac. The desktops are already specialized, and critically and very much unlike the 1990s, the Mac Pro only exists to cater to niches.

Siracusa argues that the Pro should be the supercar Mac, but it currently isn’t. You could argue the M3 Ultra Studio is.

 

[Antony Newman]

Kill or Keep the Mac Pro

The loyal (captive) users that have been on M2 Ultra with their Audio Cards, and high speed PCIe4 cards (like the $11,000 OWC 64TB cards that can peak at 26GB/s) - can't switch to a Mac Studio.

If (when) Apple release a PCIe5 / TB5 / M5 Ultra, users could upgrade to a machine that performs 2 to 3 times faster; enough to keep up with existing working needs for years to come.

Apple's 30-40% gross profit margin is substantially higher on the higher configurations of Mac Pro.
Apples (highly) robotised tooling and packaging arm in Austin creates (assembles) the Mac Pro (and Mac Pro Rack). Their reuse should keep Apple's beans counters happy. (And if Apple was looking to demonstrate US investment in manufacturing .. this could certainly help - at least on paper!).

If Apple doesn't offer a PCIe Apple System to upgrade to - It will bleed part of it high end customer base that are looking to evergreen their systems.

Indications of a (MacPro) Kill

Each month Apple's top of the line Mac Pro is stuck on M2 at $7,000 when the Studio was upgraded to M4 (and the M2 Studio was discontinued) is a mis-step from Apple. The optics look bad.

If Apple chose to discontinue the MacPro when, or after, the M5 Max comes out (with similar performance to the M3 Ultra) - my guess is Mac Pro users would wait until an M5 Mac Studio came out; Apple would lose sales (and user base) that it could have made today (a year earlier).

If Apple had started discounting the M2 Ultra Mac Pro (eg by $1500), it would indicate that there was No replacement planned, and allow Apple to slowly rid themselves of old stock. People buying it now would understand that it is no longer the State of the Art - and that it might be the last Mac Pro produced.

However, as Apple are maintaining the $7,000 Mac Pro on their site - they fully intend to replace it with something that compete with a $3,000 M5 Max.

TLDR

Apple are intending to keep the Mac Pro workstation in their line up - and will do so while PCIe cards are considered a necessity in their target Pro workflows.

The Mac Pro will ship with an M5 Ultra.

If OWC are finding market for $11,000 64TB PCIe4 internal drives for the MacPro that are 5 x faster than Apple's internal SSD (or even external third party TB5 solutions) - there is a market for high capacity PCIe5 drives that only a future Mac Pro can support.

 

[Acidsplat]

I disagree.
The argument of "expandability" for specialist cards decreases as thunderbolt 5 (120 Gb/s) enables those cards to be run from an enclosure on a maxed out Mac studio for cheaper than a mac pro.

The 2013 trash can Mac Pro tried to go along with what you're saying, and the studios hated needing multiple Thunderbolt boxes and cables all over the desks and workspaces just for the old PCI functionality they're used to.

Studios don't populate just 1 or 2 PCI slots, they fill all that they can and needing a bunch of boxes getting in their way isn't what they want.

 

[theluggage]

However, as Apple are maintaining the $7,000 Mac Pro on their site - they fully intend to replace it with something that compete with a $3,000 M5 Max.

Apple aren't great at cutting base prices on outdated, but still available, product lines. I think the closest they've come is keeping the price points and shuffling the CPU spec up a notch on the iMac Pro and Trashcan - and they were 3-4 years old before that happened.

The Mac Pro has a track record of being "abandoned" for years at a time - the Trashcan languished from 2013 to 2019, the 2019 Mac Pro for 3 years, the iMac Pro for 3 years... The MP already skipped the M1 generation (despite there being a M1 Ultra Studio). These are just low priority products from Apple - waiting until 2026 for a M5 Ultra MP wouldn't be a shock, but nor would a M3 Ultra MP this summer - or, frankly, no new MP ever...

If Apple doesn't offer a PCIe Apple System to upgrade to - It will bleed part of it high end customer base that are looking to evergreen their systems.

That might be a price Apple are prepared to pay...

The 2013 trash can Mac Pro tried to go along with what you're saying, and the studios hated needing multiple Thunderbolt boxes and cables all over the desks and workspaces just for the old PCI functionality they're used to.

All true... but Apple thought it was the way forward at the time, and even in their famous U-turn press conference in 2017 they didn't really concede that, concentrating on the way the Trashcan design had painted them into a thermal corner & prevented updates (also true... but not the only gripe with the Trashcan).

Apart from the shape, the Mac Studio is the same non-upgradeable, all-TB external expansion concept from the Trashcan, minus the problematic 1CPU+2GPU triangular design. I think that's still the way Apple really want to go. Even if there's another iteration of the Mac Pro for the must-have-16-lanes-of-PCIe market I doubt they'll do anything interesting with it. Unless they put their rumoured AI-server-class CPU into a released product - but I think that will be a completely different class of product to the Mac Pro.

 

[vladi]

I highly doubt any Hollywood studios that buy macs are buying them with a view to upgrading them. They’ll just buy maxed out versions and then replace them. Indie musicians and film makers, maybe you’re right. But really it’s tinkerers that upgrade. These days people buy what they need and use it until it’s not good enough anymore, sell it or repurpose it, and buy again.

I for a fact know no Hollywood studios are buying new Macs. They got old ones still up and running. Before you shot me dead sure there are some offices with new Mac Studios for like new After Effects or Premiere but at the same time and in the same quantities, they also have some Windows workstations with multiple GPUs for previz etc. Hollywood runs on Linux and GPU farming.

 

[deconstruct60]

I disagree.
The argument of "expandability" for specialist cards decreases as thunderbolt 5 (120 Gb/s) enables those cards to be run from an enclosure on a maxed out Mac studio for cheaper than a mac pro.

In the context about talking about PCI-e devices' data traveling over Thunderbolt , the 102Gb/s bandwith rate is not true. TBv5 only gets to 102 Gb/s by going into a special asymmetric mode that isn't compatible with PCI-e (PCI-e is pretty symmetric).

Thunderbolt v5 consists of four 40 Gb/s lanes (wire pairs). With two going outbound and two going inbound you get 80Gb/s in both directions. TBv5 has a 'rob Peter to pay Paul mode" which switches direction of an inbound (relative to the host system) lane to outbound. So three 40Gb/s (120 Gb/s) outbound and one inbound ( 40Gb/s ). In this state , the inbound lane regresses back to TBv3 speeds. [ NOTE: this 'robbing of lane' occurs on both ends. While the host system has a inbound reduced, the remote peripheral has an outbound (relative to itself) reduced also. ]

Given that the PCI-e provisioning to TBv5 is stepped up to x4 PCI-e v4 this is regression from TBv4 which finally got to basically requiring provision out the whole x3 PCI-e v3 bandwidth. This is backslide to the v1,2,3 days where the can't even cover provisioning what is being deliver to the TB controller in many systems.

That is going backwards from the notion "don't need slots anymore." That 120 mode basically puts the PCI-e data deliver back in the TBv3 era. If TBv3 didn't replace slots, that isn't either.

120G/bs is primarily oriented to solving the video out problem ( similar to the priority skew that TB v1 and v2 did ).

In symmetry data transfer mode, it is a step forward. However, it is a 80Gb/s step forward.


P.S.
x4 PCI-e v3 32Gb/s
x4 PCI-e v4 64Gb/s
x4 PCI_e v5 128Gb/s

The '80' is meant to cover the '64' this generation ( if don't get bogged down with video congestion).

i wouldn't hold my breath on the on some future Thunderbolt covering the PCI-e v5 anytime in next 3-4 years. USB-IF would have to move forward on speeds and that is a broad group of whom most don't want more expensive solutions. Secondly, Intel (controller of the Thunderbolt brand ) has far more bigger forest fires to try to put out at the moment.

TBv6 is likely going to be oriented toward more USB-IF loop closing and compliance uplift with what is already out there rather than some speed uplift.

 

[Abazigal]

I for a fact know no Hollywood studios are buying new Macs. They got old ones still up and running. Before you shot me dead sure there are some offices with new Mac Studios for like new After Effects or Premiere but at the same time and in the same quantities, they also have some Windows workstations with multiple GPUs for previz etc. Hollywood runs on Linux and GPU farming.

Which raises the question - what happens to these Windows rigs when they start getting long in the tooth? Do these companies actually pay someone to come and upgrade the innards with more ram, or swap out the processor and GPU, or do they just replace them with whatever the best option in the market is?

 

[chucker23n1]

Which raises the question - what happens to these Windows rigs when they start getting long in the tooth? Do these companies actually pay someone to come and upgrade the innards with more ram, or swap out the processor and GPU, or do they just replace them with whatever the best option in the market is?

Swapping the CPU wouldn't work in that scenario (long in the tooth), as you'd almost certainly have a different socket at that point. New socket means new motherboard. You're also at that point probably benefitting from a new RAM standard. Oh, and is the PSU still beefy enough? At this point, you might as well get a new computer.

Upgrading the RAM and/or SSD, sure, you can do that. (Even then, you might run into liability/certification issues.) Almost anything else is foolish. Businesses by and large just buy (or lease), write off over several years, then buy new; they do not upgrade.

 

[deconstruct60]

Apple isn't a motherboard vendor in the retail market. Never wanted to be one either. ...

They kind of did pre-Jobs when they offered, for example, PowerPC upgrades for 68k Macs. Heck, they even offered x86 daughter cards at the time…

More so 'in between Jobs" than 'pre-Jobs' . When Apple was in the phase were trying to product a myriad of overlapping boxes with slots ... pretty much fail in part because Apple wasn't doing what Apple does well. "Didn't want". There was lost of internal (and external ) folks trying to drive them into doing a "monkey see, monkey do" of the Dell/Compaq/IBM clone market ( copy most of their business model and we'll get bigger) .

But yeah I had forgotten about those. In part because they failed (in business sense) so badly.

[ I suppose someone will point out pre-Mac , super early Apple I days when barely an identifiable, mature company and was selling parts , ( partially a Woz driven show). That too wasn't a fully formed Apple. ]

(Our LC was also upgraded to an LC II simply by replacing the entire logic board.)

But yeah, no way is that coming back. It's not an attractive market segment for Apple.

There is a corner case if repair parts get forced sales for any reason. Apple could make it attractive to themselves by making it more profitable.

I suspect folks was talking about stuff most wouldn't buy. A very expensive motherboard isn't going to sell in huge quantites. Strip away a Mac Pro expensive case, the fans , and power supply and still let if a large sum that greatly excess the bulk of the generic PC space motherboard. As long as most people as price anchored to the market's average/median prices , it isn't going to work. (e.g., if buying a new M-series motherboard you'd likely be buy all the RAM had bought before again. )

 

[Regulus67]

The Mac Pro allow users to purchase and install a larger SSD kit. Run DFU mode to download the firmware, and install macOS. Not a problem. But you can not do that on the Mac Studio, only replace the kit with same spec.
It is strange that Apple chose to limit the Mac Studio in this way