Mac Pro Discontinued: Reflecting on 20 Years of Apple's Desktop Tower

[eric89074]

Had a feeling this was coming, but was hoping they'd update it to the M5 Ultra before discontinuing 🙁.

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

apple silicon, integrated gpu, soldered ram, tiny storage, thunderbolt and low heat output simply make a tower pointless for all but the most extreme edge cases

 

[Mike_Trivisonno]

The thing I hate most about my Mac Pro is the fact that to get inside to do anything, you have to unplug every single device before you can slide the case up and off. Such a poorly thought out design. The removable side panel was a much better design.

My fully loaded MacPro is doing just fine but I still want a new Studio with Apple Silicon.

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

The Mac Pro desktops never got off the ground because the pricing was out of reach for well over 90% of consumers. Only people like music/movie studios had the need and the money for them. Apple should have known that kind of price will only get the kind of hitech professionals who hit the jackpot on their RSU/options and don't know what else to do with their money. Normal compensation hitech pros (myself included) will only drool. We don't wanna sell our houses to buy a computer.

even movie and music studios don't really need them anymore . Mac studio is more than sufficient now

last recording studio I was in was actually just Mac minis

 

[WarmWinterHat]

Only person I've known with a Mac Pro was my cousin, who works at the Spaceship in Cupertino.. I wonder what he is using now?

Seen them in other situations, usually audio recording and theater setups.

 

[Joe The Dragon]

Apple is now 100% firmly into all options are soldered in for every device. Zero chance to upgrade an existing device, just buy a a new model is the only choice.

Great for Apple's bottom line while customers get to grab their socks.

storage is on an card

 

[skeptech]

Thus dies the last reliable Mac, because it has an ECC RAM subsystem - if you don't check, you can't know.

Why is this important? See

DRAM Errors in the Wild: A Large-Scale Field Study (Google Research)​

 

[DJC631]

Still rocking my 2012 5,1.

 

[whitby]

I often wonder why Apple suddenly announce the demise of a product and immediately remove it from the store, rather than announce that on such and such a date the product will be discontinued. This would give people time to buy one if they wanted one and, maybe, clear inventory. It seems a rather customer unfriendly behavior to me. Harsh and almost violent cutting of a product. Atypical behavior for a company that is supposedly so customer focused.

 

[mBox]

I still use a few "tubes" (work and home) and have a slew of 2019 to 2023 still spitting out frames here (VFX, NLE and Finishing).
Hoping to retire with these 🙂

 

[ChrisA]

Apple is now 100% firmly into all options are soldered in for every device. Zero chance to upgrade an existing device, just buy a a new model is the only choice.

Great for Apple's bottom line while customers get to grab their socks.

The technology changed. Today in 2026, sockets are slow. As it turns out, a card slot or a socket has to be physically large and have pins large enough to see with just your eyes. This physical size pretty much means the parts being connected are relatively far away, far enough that the designer has to treat the wires as transmission lines. Placing everything in one tiny package makes it faster, and there is no going back.

 

[boswald]

The 2019 Mac Pro was a dream of mine I could never attain. The high price simply put it in a whole other galaxy for me, but I dreamt of the power it had. I loved the design (I love aluminum), I love the matching XDR display, and nothing to this day looks as clean and premium than that (to me).

 

[jgleigh]

So many Mac Pros over the years. Power Mac G4 (with the mirrored doors), Power Mac G5 Quad Core (sounds like a jet engine), 2008/2010 Mac Pro (still got one running), and finally a 2022 Mac Studio.

 

[MacsRgr8]

Yes, the Mac Pro’s predecessor is mentioned in the original post…
But to me it’s the end of an era which started in 1998: the introduction of the PowerMac G3 B&W:

• First really, really easy to upgrade Mac ever
  • HDD
  • RAM
  • GPU

I loved my original B&W 400 Mhz… and I still have it. Running Mac OS 9.2.2 with 768 MB RAM, 40 GB HDD and Voodoo 5 5500 Mac grfx card 😄
Also still have my PowerMac G4 MDD… with Radeon 9800 card 1 GB RAM, SuperDrive and Comb-drive and even a 5.1 sound card in it….
Also I still have my Quad G5… but TBH not sure if that one still works…
And my Mac Pro 3.33 Ghz with Radeon HD 7950 Mac edition (the white whale), 24 GB RAM soundblaster PCIe card, running Mac OS 10.14 and Windows (wait for it…) 8.1

My main Mac is now a Mac Studio M4 Max, which I adore.
But the flexibility and easy upgrade-ness of the “professional tower Macs” will be missed.
The recent Mac Pro’s were way out of my budget though. Would love to get the latest Intel one….

 

[switz]

Got a trash can Mac Pro on day one. Over the years I was able to install a larger capacity SSD and increase the memory. It worked just fine for me.

Now every option must be selected at purchase time and it is soldered in resulting in zero upgrades by the customer on every Apple product now.

The only choice one has if the specs are not as expected is to return the device in the 14 day return window. After that window expires, the only two choices are live with it or buy a new device.

Ever since solder world became the environment for all Apple devices, I have ordered the max memory and in most cases largest SSD to future proof for a few years.

I ordered my M1 Ultra Mac Studio on day one with 128GB of ram and a 8TB SSD. It still runs just fine.

I also had a M1 Max 14" MacBook Pro with similar specs. When the M4 processors came out, I gave the M1 laptop to one of my adult children and ordered my M4 Max 16" MacBook Pro with 129GB of ram and 8TB SSD. It's performance now matches or slightly exceeds the Mac Studio numbers.

No need to dispose of the M1 Studio as it still does the work and runs the latest software. There might be the chance that Apple would allow the same trade in value of $1,500 for the M1 Studio that was offered less than a year after the M1 was at my home. Apple was reselling used M1 Studios for $6,000.

Apple really only caress about the customer's wallet and how much cash they can extract from it.

 

[poematik13]

RIP

I remember dropping $4650 on a trashcan mac pro in 2015 only for it to constantly overheat and cause kernel panics due to its weird dual gpu configuration. Was a beautiful machine tho and ran whisper quiet.

mac studio is very much the spiritual successor to it, but also, the rackmount mac pros were something special and I hope they bring that back as an XServe 2

 

[Bodhitree]

The end of an era. The Mac Pro was iconic, although ever since the “trash can” model Apple has been moving towards “smaller is better.”

 

[The Cockney Rebel]

I still remember when the Trash Can was announced.

It's scary how time flies.

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

I often wonder why Apple suddenly announce the demise of a product and immediately remove it from the store, rather than announce that on such and such a date the product will be discontinued. This would give people time to buy one if they wanted one and, maybe, clear inventory. It seems a rather customer unfriendly behavior to me. Harsh and almost violent cutting of a product. Atypical behavior for a company that is supposedly so customer focused.

at this point it would be more customer unfriendly to keep selling M2 Ultra Mac pros for $7000 when an m4 Max studio for $3000 can out perform them at virtually any task

 

[Charles50]

I'm using a Mac Studio M2 Ultra 64GB and it is still an excellent machine. But I wish I had a Mac Pro M2U with full 192GB of RAM, and it has one unique feature: PCIe slots so I can install high speed networking cards like 100GB ethernet.

 

[257Loner]

Thus completes the slow transition Apple has been making for over 15 years now: What was once a great computer company that also makes consumer electronics is now a consumer electronics company that also makes computers.

And don’t forget Apple’s services now make more money than their traditional computers.

 

[bradman83]

The thing I hate most about my Mac Pro is the fact that to get inside to do anything, you have to unplug every single device before you can slide the case up and off. Such a poorly thought out design. The removable side panel was a much better design.

My fully loaded MacPro is doing just fine but I still want a new Studio with Apple Silicon.

The hinged design of the B&W G3 and G4 towers was still my favorite.

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

my last Mac tower was the mdd "wind tunnel"

 

[TheBeverage]

Thus completes the slow transition Apple has been making for over 15 years now: What was once a great computer company that also makes consumer electronics is now a consumer electronics company that also makes computers.

So dramatic... the Mac Studio of today is a better computer in almost every way than the Mac Pro of 2012. Not even considering that it's a fully unique architecture rather than just a nicely built Intel box with MacOS, the performance per dollar relative to the market blows away what they used to deliver. The powerful desktop without a giant box is something they've been chasing for decades.

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

I'm using a Mac Studio M2 Ultra 64GB and it is still an excellent machine. But I wish I had a Mac Pro M2U with full 192GB of RAM, and it has one unique feature: PCIe slots so I can install high speed networking cards like 100GB ethernet.

what do you use 100GB ethernet for?