I can't believe I just read that whole article, and completely missed that it was a year old. There has been zero progress. What is the point of this machine if it will just be a Mac Studio with hard drive bays?
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Apple's Mac Pro Refresh: What We Know So Far
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The main Apple Problem is a political Problem that they can not overcome. The AS Mac Pro Project Team might as well self-destruct because of this obstacle. Apple new direction of Beancounters set in stone that no Apple device shall ever be meaningful upgradable. Apple wants to control the product live cycle and wants to dictate how long you will be allowed to use your product. Modularity, Upgradability and product live cycle extensions is exactly what Apple wants to eliminate. You can see this over the past 10 years on MacBooks and all other devices. This Politics can't be pushed when it comes to the Mac Pro. So at Apple Cupertino, there are two different camps. The arrogant crowd that thinks they can ******** their Pro Customers with a Trashcan and the good willed enthusiastic crowd that wants to develop something that the Pro Markes actually can use and upgrade, modify and that works with THIRDPARTY CARDS !!!!
So one can only imagine how much pain it will cause the arrogant dictatorship crowd at apple, that the product requirements states that an AS Mac Pro will have to be an open system like a PC. The 2019 edition was that, however carefully made hyper expensive not to cannibalise the iMac -Throw-Away- Products Market. If the Environmental Organisations of the United States really would have any Power, they would sue Apple to the MOON. Because an artificial shortened live cycle policy is a crime on humanity, that underaged African children have to suffer between piles of electronic trash that otherwise could have been used for decades to come, such as an Mac Pro 5,1 in the year 2023 with a AMD 6800XT. Eat that Apple. I hope some law graduate reads this and starts acting.
The "trash can" got vented b/c pros hated it and b/c Apple locked itself into a dual-GPU architecture and then the industry veered towards more powerful single-GPUs. It also has heat issues that cause GPU errors (copious personal experience). It was a bad design and a difficult purchase to justify b/c it was basically un-upgradeable, but still too expensive to be a use-for-a-while-and-then-throw-away machine, so when the 5k iMac came along with better specs, edit houses and what not just started buying those at the lower price points. Thus there wasn't enough sales/business for the trashcan to justify offering speed bumps on a machine with low sale and highly bespoke custom parts. So Apple just ignored it and twiddled its thumbs until realizing there was a gaping hole in the marketplace for an ACTUAL pro machine (a gaping maw filled with people like me screaming for them to return to pro machines, and other fleeing for PCs), so they publicly apologized for the neglect in 2017 and then started work on what became the current Mac Pro (years after they should have, but better late than sorry). The 2019 Mac Pro was a dream come true for people like me - couldn't believe it was happening when it finally came out. But now I'm really concerned that Silicone is going to make it hard to make a machine with meaningful post-market upgrade options, so it's gonna be back to the issue of being powerful but too expensive of an investment to not be upgradeable, and may result in further neglect of the Pro line down the road.
How did Apple not notice that Apple Silicon was inherently incapable of powering a pro machine? They did a great job designing laptop CPUs, did no one even think about what would go into the existing pro? If Apple just doesn't want to make pro-level machines, that's fine. But they need to say so, and stop stringing customers along for years until they give up and resent Apple.
did they plan on multi socket at some point? and then was not able to get the link speed up to where it needs to be?
Need to redo the mac pro case to have 2 cpu coolers?
I was pondering the fact they may have designed the UltraFusion interface to be exposed as a port?
unlikely I know, but at least you could buy a Big Mac Pro and keep adding M SOCs as you see fit.
But how many channels? and bus type?
the old HyperTransport bus had max of 3 and was able to go up to quad socket.
I wonder if they could redesign the M2 max/ultra in such a way that the ram became L3 cache? Then you could add terabytes of ordinary ram like the "current" mac pro can have. As for graphics cards, that is really all on Apple. No third party is going to put much effort into a card aimed at such a niche product.
Unless Apple creates a pro-specific Apple silicon chip, we are not going to get much beyond a Mac Studio with SSD drive bays - so honestly that is what I think they should do.
Unless Apple creates a pro-specific Apple silicon chip, we are not going to get much beyond a Mac Studio with SSD drive bays - so honestly that is what I think they should do.
IMO most potential MP upgraders have a similar concern. How/if Apple addresses it is what we all are waiting to see.
You mean like the one they already make?
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Call this response as my downvote of the rant because it is based on too many flawed assumptions to count.
Last year I chose a new PC with 12900K (last week now: 13900KS) which after 3+ years already beats out the '19 MP 28 core W3275 in many areas. Considering performance to price for upgradeability....is it too much to ask the new Mac Pro to accept socketed M processors? Or daughterboarded or something? So when you want to keep your '23 MP using the fastest processor in '27, you can use the new M7 (or whatever) for a 30+% performance increase by then? Because if not....the value proposition just does not look as good.
Apple may have conceded that the space for HEDT isn't something for them.
The reliance on creative professionals at that level on GPUs is huge - remember having multiple GPUs can have a multiply effect on how fast certain things run. I know of many who have been forced to move to a PC environment to get things done.
Found myself even encouraging high level creatives not to bother with Apple - just get a PC. And now I feel comfortable guiding creative I know how to do it.
Yes, they'll keep a Mac laptop around, but the big lifting is no longer done on Apple hardware.
I think that this is a huge problem for Apple.
The very people who kept Apple from bankruptcy were creative professionals who loved the speed and usability of the hardware and software.
The fact that these people are moving away feels like the foundations of Apple's computer dept are eroding.
The reliance on creative professionals at that level on GPUs is huge - remember having multiple GPUs can have a multiply effect on how fast certain things run. I know of many who have been forced to move to a PC environment to get things done.
Found myself even encouraging high level creatives not to bother with Apple - just get a PC. And now I feel comfortable guiding creative I know how to do it.
Yes, they'll keep a Mac laptop around, but the big lifting is no longer done on Apple hardware.
I think that this is a huge problem for Apple.
The very people who kept Apple from bankruptcy were creative professionals who loved the speed and usability of the hardware and software.
The fact that these people are moving away feels like the foundations of Apple's computer dept are eroding.
Clearly old-style hot boxes will continue to own the very top end of HEDT for the short term because apps have evolved to run under those powerful, inefficient boxes. However Apple's superb Unified Memory Architecture (UMA) in the M series chips changes things. IMO the UMA approach to improve computing competence is a smart one.
I am one of those creative professionals that long supported Apple (who arguably snagged creatives by being first to allow color management) and who always craved more power, paying extra for boxes like the IIfx and PPC 8500. Today most creative professionals needing power are well served by the M2 Max chips with lots of RAM (my MBP has 96 GB) under UMA; and that is before we see what H2 Studios and MPs will be.
Apple's choice to diverge from old-style hot boxes for HEDT and to commit instead to UMA does not mean that Apple will not service HEDT. I would argue that we should wait and see where Apple goes, because IMO in the long term inefficient old-style hot boxes are dinosaurs. The physics of UMA make sense.
Just my $0.02.
You describe my studio.
Made the decision to shift to desktop pc for grunt work when Apple switched to M chips, as it was quite obvious what the direction was.
I have no regrets for doing this. Still use macs for creative work though, but some apps simply fly on the pc compared to mac (basically GPU related tasks).
You summarized the current situation well. I am very interested to see (hopefully at WWDC) how Apple chooses to address the highest end to do the work that currently is performed by hot add-on graphics cards. There are many different approaches that they could take.