No kidding. There's no reason for the Mac Pro to be small. It could be twice the size of the cheese grater, that would be fine, if it gave optimum performance. Low noise is nice, and the 2013 model did a great job of that, but even that is probably not the highest-priority slider on the set of things to trade-off. It needs to be the fastest machine you can make with the highest-performance Xeon available at the time, with the fastest drives and memory. And....although I don't care about it (software developer), it certainly needs to be able to host a high-performance GPU, and be upgradeable. Ideally that would come about via off-the-shelf graphics cards, but....that might be asking too much of Apple. As long as there is an upgrade path that's competitive with the top-shelf graphics hardware out there.
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Concept Imagines What a Modular Mac Pro Might Look Like
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No kidding. There's no reason for the Mac Pro to be small. It could be twice the size of the cheese grater, that would be fine, if it gave optimum performance. Low noise is nice, and the 2013 model did a great job of that, but even that is probably not the highest-priority slider on the set of things to trade-off. It needs to be the fastest machine you can make with the highest-performance Xeon available at the time, with the fastest drives and memory. And....although I don't care about it (software developer), it certainly needs to be able to host a high-performance GPU, and be upgradeable. Ideally that would come about via off-the-shelf graphics cards, but....that might be asking too much of Apple. As long as there is an upgrade path that's competitive with the top-shelf graphics hardware out there.
I remember seeing a design for a modular Macintosh a while back. It was clever - the case was large enough to accommodate masses of internal storage and expansion cards with sufficient space for airflow, there was a full-length air intake on the front, and it even looked good.
After a bit of Googling I found this image:
![2012macpro.jpg]()
I'm not sure what the two rectangular panels at the top of the case are for - perhaps they're some kind of touch interface - and I don't recognise the two ports at the bottom. The other two ports appear to be some kind of boxy USB interface but perhaps it was a low-poly render.
The handles don't look very comfortable and the scale seems a bit oversized, but on the whole it's a surprisingly plausible design. It has a neat, minimalist look. I can only imagine what the interior looks like but you could built a very impressive computer into that space. Furthermore the aluminium could act as a heatsink.
It's a fantasy, I admit, but a compelling one.
After a bit of Googling I found this image:
I'm not sure what the two rectangular panels at the top of the case are for - perhaps they're some kind of touch interface - and I don't recognise the two ports at the bottom. The other two ports appear to be some kind of boxy USB interface but perhaps it was a low-poly render.
The handles don't look very comfortable and the scale seems a bit oversized, but on the whole it's a surprisingly plausible design. It has a neat, minimalist look. I can only imagine what the interior looks like but you could built a very impressive computer into that space. Furthermore the aluminium could act as a heatsink.
It's a fantasy, I admit, but a compelling one.
I remember seeing a design for a modular Macintosh a while back. It was clever - the case was large enough to accommodate masses of internal storage and expansion cards with sufficient space for airflow, there was a full-length air intake on the front, and it even looked good.
After a bit of Googling I found this image:
![2012macpro.jpg]()
I'm not sure what the two rectangular panels at the top of the case are for - perhaps they're some kind of touch interface - and I don't recognise the two ports at the bottom. The other two ports appear to be some kind of boxy USB interface but perhaps it was a low-poly render.
The handles don't look very comfortable and the scale seems a bit oversized, but on the whole it's a surprisingly plausible design. It has a neat, minimalist look. I can only imagine what the interior looks like but you could built a very impressive computer into that space. Furthermore the aluminium could act as a heatsink.
It's a fantasy, I admit, but a compelling one.
It always weighs as a small fridge and spends electricity of a small convection oven.
Mac Pro tower was nice, but it was a Mac for another time.
i turn the case inside-out so i have no opinion ... thunderbolt 4 and 7nm cpu with hbm3 ... or xcode on ipad
That is really a good one!
I would laugh if it wasn't so sad.
The greedy bookkeepers together with the marketing guys won long ago
and Apple is inventing again some b$ nobody wants or needs.
No, it is a Tower. It is for highend performance needs.
Its a standard and you use it with standard components.
There is no alternative to this design.
Everything else is again a proprietary solution which will be extremely expensive
and therefore will die off in 2-3 years. We already had this story.
Apple PLEASE STOP inventing new standards!!!
(i know, it is senseless, we're doomed.
i'll buy a windows pc as soon as my expectation comes true)
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It's... um... I mean, it had standard PCI slots and mounting, yes. And a standard CPU socket. So yeah, more standard than the trash-can, no doubt, but uh... you ever worked inside one of those things? They're even less "standard" than your average OEM workstation from HP or Dell, which is a trick to be sure. Custom power, custom fans, custom CPU cooling, custom (stacked depending on which year of pro Mac you're talking about) motherboard, custom rear I/O layout, custom front I/O pinout...
I mean, yeah, it was a tower with space for a standard graphics card and a few other PCI expansion cards, and I get that's the biggest sticking point with the trash-can and the thing about the tower that most people miss, but Apple has always been the worst at making standard machines, and the cheese-grater was barely any better than their standard fair.
i still work with a mac pro 2012
i added 64gb of standard non-apple memory
i have 4 standard harddrives and 2 standard ssds in it (unplugged the dvd drive)
i upgraded to the best xeons available 2 yrs ago (cost me $500)
i run an nvidia GTX 1080Ti in it (next to the original amd gpu)
there are a lot of replaceable and upgradeable standard components in these macs!
the mac pro 2013 obliterated all of that and it was not worth a single update for apple.
the problem is that apple wants to make $$ with these machines
instead of seeing that they keep the creatives on the platform.
Die off in 2-3 years?
Which mac exactly died off in 2-3 years?
quadcore Mac Minis from 2012 were selling like hotcakes up until 2018 model was released. You could get more money for it (considering its components) than any other PC tower from 2012.
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that's nonsense.
They don't make squat on the top-end pro machines compared to the iOS and MacBook market... It wouldn't make a dent in their economy if they simply dropped all desktops sans iMac right now.
I added 32GB standard non apple memory to my mini, added a Samsung EVO SSD that has more throughput through a single port than all 4 SATA3 slots on a tower combined, and i dont even use HDDs for anything else than archiving since they're slow and unreliable.
I'll get an eGPU when necessary, but right now i'm happy with it. It takes 800% less space and less electricity. (I had a 2008 2x quad Mac Pro)
Rendering something in high resolution takes more than a single box can handle, so a single powerful tower is a very niche market segment, apple won't be losing much if it ditches it completely.
@Ploki,
it not nonsense. you're just an imac/mac mini type of user.
i need a workstation with 2 xeons and a lot of cores for rendering
and i need standard PCI slots compatible with nvidia GPUs.
the mac pro 2013 had no option for 2 processors, it used non-standard custom made gpus.
you could not upgrade them and apple also never upgraded them.
it was ridiculously overpriced and not usable at all for my profession.
it was basically an imac in another body.
"Rendering something in high resolution takes more than a single box can handle"
i can buy a windows machine with 48x2 cores, out of the box, delivered in less than 7 days.
"so a single powerful tower is a very niche market segment, apple won't be losing much if it ditches it completely."
you're right, so why do they make it complicated and invent some overpriced b$ nobody wants.
if they release a new pro, it should be a workstation and fullfill the needs of workstation users.
for medium and low performance apple already has imacs and minis.
it not nonsense. you're just an imac/mac mini type of user.
i need a workstation with 2 xeons and a lot of cores for rendering
and i need standard PCI slots compatible with nvidia GPUs.
the mac pro 2013 had no option for 2 processors, it used non-standard custom made gpus.
you could not upgrade them and apple also never upgraded them.
it was ridiculously overpriced and not usable at all for my profession.
it was basically an imac in another body.
"Rendering something in high resolution takes more than a single box can handle"
i can buy a windows machine with 48x2 cores, out of the box, delivered in less than 7 days.
"so a single powerful tower is a very niche market segment, apple won't be losing much if it ditches it completely."
you're right, so why do they make it complicated and invent some overpriced b$ nobody wants.
if they release a new pro, it should be a workstation and fullfill the needs of workstation users.
for medium and low performance apple already has imacs and minis.
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Yes yes, like I said, GPU/CPU. RAM and storage are also standard replaceable parts (with fewer internal ports, obviously) in the trash-can so I kinda just left them out. Like I said, I get that the ability to have multiple standard PCI expansion cards is the biggest sticking point, I'm just saying that considering the enormous level of customization present even in Apple's most "standard" Mac (the cheese-grater Pros), it's best to just assume absolutely nothing coming from Apple will be standard and then be pleasantly surprised when something happens to be cross-compatible with regular PC hardware. It's an attitude that's served me well for years as an Apple customer.
? in the trashcan nothing is replaceable. (ok, the ram maybe)
its basically the most expensive throw away computer in the market
but beautyful i admit .-)
before that, apple always had workstations.
they were slower and more expensive than windows pcs, but they were usable.
since 2013 we didnt have a workstation anymore, we had a this imac sold as "pro".
the question is where do they go now...
do they stay on their path of useless non-standard inventions?
do we get a real workstation again? at what price?
we're talking of an investition of 20k in 10-15yrs,
without standard components it is double the price.
quo vadis, apple?
its basically the most expensive throw away computer in the market
but beautyful i admit .-)
before that, apple always had workstations.
they were slower and more expensive than windows pcs, but they were usable.
since 2013 we didnt have a workstation anymore, we had a this imac sold as "pro".
the question is where do they go now...
do they stay on their path of useless non-standard inventions?
do we get a real workstation again? at what price?
we're talking of an investition of 20k in 10-15yrs,
without standard components it is double the price.
quo vadis, apple?
I guess I'm not 100% on this, but I'm about 95% sure that the trash-can used one of the standard nvm-e PCI based SSD solutions for storage, so yeah, that's upgradeable. And I did just check, the CPU used a standard LGA socket and is in fact replaceable. Just a lot more difficult to get to.
So really the only non-standard component in the 2013 Mac Pro that WAS standard in the earlier pro desktops was the PCI interfaces and mounting/space for expansion cards. That's it. Otherwise it's not any more non-standard than the generations of pro Mac desktops that led up to it.
Which is to say it was very non-standard, don't get me wrong, I'm just saying it's not like the cheese-grater was some kind of holy grail of cross-platform hardware compatibility. Any PC user will tell you that Apple has always been horribly segregated in this regard.
sorry, if you're defending the mac pro 2013 to be upgradeable ...
:-D
this is the worst "workstation" you can buy
a faster chip would probably bring it to the melting point
and no pci slots / no options for gpus...
extra costs for external storage and a lot of ugly cables
a total no go.
for the same price you get a pc workstation which is 4 times faster
and by replacing parts you can live with it for 10yrs
the urn was a born dead concept and apple confirmed it last yr.
as said, it is an imac in disguise
:-D
this is the worst "workstation" you can buy
a faster chip would probably bring it to the melting point
and no pci slots / no options for gpus...
extra costs for external storage and a lot of ugly cables
a total no go.
for the same price you get a pc workstation which is 4 times faster
and by replacing parts you can live with it for 10yrs
the urn was a born dead concept and apple confirmed it last yr.
as said, it is an imac in disguise
I'm not defending the thing, I'm just expressing skepticism at your defense of the cheese-grater which was, in terms of standard part replacement or repairability, barely any better. PCI expansion I've already covered. You can also put more drives physically inside the case. 2 points better than the trash-can doesn't account for the dozen strikes against the design. People keep calling for a return to the cheese-grater, but personally I'd hope for a MUCH more standard design than that. Because you're right on all your criticisms of the trash-can.
The problem is they almost all apply to the cheese-grater as well.
Because it takes a lot of money in R&D to cater an extremely smallish market.
Back in 2012, at least you had also audio. in 2019, buying something as crazy as 2x48 cores is ridiculous for audio. even a 12-core is more than most audio needs ever use. So the target market is extremely small. Specific rendering tasks that cannot be done on multiple machines.
i'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but using 2008 cheesegrater for 5 years I don't miss it at all.
On the other hand, it makes much more sense to consolidate the peripheral market. (eGPUs, super high speed external drives...)
@GeneralChang
sorry, the cheesegrater is (with a few limitations) a standard pc workstation
and in terms of replacement or repairability not at all "almost" the same as the ash tray.
point is: apple shut down professional mac workstations in 2012,
put an imac concept into a new body and named it 2013 mac "pro".
a standard workstation would be easy to maintain, cheap to produce,
would be scalable from 1 xeon low performance to 2 xeon high performance,
all the technology is here and available.
such macs would sell widely while the overpriced imac pros would stay in the shelves
thats why we're going to see a new typical apple invention which is very expensive,
solving problems nobody knew he had before (sold with a lot of marketing
and defended by people in the forums who have no clue about workstations)
;-)
sorry, the cheesegrater is (with a few limitations) a standard pc workstation
and in terms of replacement or repairability not at all "almost" the same as the ash tray.
point is: apple shut down professional mac workstations in 2012,
put an imac concept into a new body and named it 2013 mac "pro".
a standard workstation would be easy to maintain, cheap to produce,
would be scalable from 1 xeon low performance to 2 xeon high performance,
all the technology is here and available.
such macs would sell widely while the overpriced imac pros would stay in the shelves
thats why we're going to see a new typical apple invention which is very expensive,
solving problems nobody knew he had before (sold with a lot of marketing
and defended by people in the forums who have no clue about workstations)
;-)
Have you ever tried to replace or upgrade anything in your cheesegrater aside from the RAM and CPU?? And disk drives, I guess. It's easy to service and replace the stuff Apple wants you to be able to service and replace, absolutely everything else is so heavily customized you can't do diddly with it. Connecting drives to daughter boards? Rolling a custom power supply with a non-standard shape and port placement? Front I/O that's also on a daughter board instead of cabled? Sorry dude, but that is just about as bad as the trash can.
And yeah, most other OEM's will have, for instance, a custom mobo in their workstation desktops, but even they have the decency to sometimes throw you a bone by using an ATX standard mounting, or sticking with SuperMicro's standard pinnouts. Apple? No such luck. Doesn't matter if it's the trashcan or the giant aluminum box.
LOL, again: i have replaced the GPU with an non-apple standard nvidia 1080Ti 11gb card
i have replaced memory, drives and the cpu, so how is that not better than the trashcan?
mac pro 2012: memory, 6 x internal storage, 4 x pcie (2 x gpu), 2 x cpu
mac pro 2013: memory (?), 1 x storage (special form factor?),
no pcie/gpu change possible at all, most likely no 1 x cpu change possible
what are you talking about the power supply, nobody wants to switch a power supply.
my gpu is powered by an extra powersupply, no problem at all.
of course it is a hack, but it is working. on a trashcan you cant do anything.
the cpu/gpu change made my pro 2012 a lot faster and gave it another 2-3 yrs of lifetime, that is saved cash.
i'm pretty sure you cant put in a more demanding cpu into the urn because of heat problems
i have replaced memory, drives and the cpu, so how is that not better than the trashcan?
mac pro 2012: memory, 6 x internal storage, 4 x pcie (2 x gpu), 2 x cpu
mac pro 2013: memory (?), 1 x storage (special form factor?),
no pcie/gpu change possible at all, most likely no 1 x cpu change possible
what are you talking about the power supply, nobody wants to switch a power supply.
my gpu is powered by an extra powersupply, no problem at all.
of course it is a hack, but it is working. on a trashcan you cant do anything.
the cpu/gpu change made my pro 2012 a lot faster and gave it another 2-3 yrs of lifetime, that is saved cash.
i'm pretty sure you cant put in a more demanding cpu into the urn because of heat problems
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Uh, okay, you haven't been comprehending what I'm saying. The cheesegrater is slightly better than the trashcan, in which you can replace the memory, drives, and CPU. The 2013 MP used standard DIMMs for RAM, standard NVM-e SSDs for storage, and a standard Intel LGA2011 CPU socket. Literally the only thing you've replaced in your cheesegrater that can't be replaced inside the trashcan is the GPU.
Also, your rig upgrade requires an external power supply for your GPU and is limited to the speed of a PCI-e gen 2 connection. An eGPU plugged into a thunderbolt 2 connection on a trashcan would have an integrated power supply and very nearly the same speed as your PCI-e gen 2 interface. So you'd have the same "external box plugged into your machine" thing going on and it would perform pretty much the same. Just some food for thought.
Not slower than yours. Same speed as yours. Because you can't upgrade the mobo in the cheesegrater. Because it's almost as bad as the trashcan in terms of upgradeability.
Huh. I've just been accused of being a fanboy for broadly criticizing all of Apple computers. Today is, indeed, a strange day.