That’s because they went mobile first and scaled up. Mobile doesn’t need virtualisation. My M1 Max is great but I can’t help thinking the architecture is a dead-end for desktop. The Studio is essentially a headless MacBook Pro.
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Mac Pro Enthusiasts Raise Concerns Over Upgrade Limitations of Apple Silicon
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I'm gonna make a bold prediction here and say Apple will do Intel in Pro machine once Diamond Rapids rolls out two years from now. There you go.
Luckily, as computers get faster and faster, fewer and fewer people need something faster than a MBP. At least the M1 Ultra Mac Studio is about TWO MBPs worth of performance.
Is that because the chip runs so hot you need a diamond substrate for high thermal conductivity?
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They will likely be faced with the decision to acknowledge the impracticality and lack of competitiveness of ASi in the pro-market segment or to relinquish it altogether.
It is highly unusual for them to have missed their own self-imposed deadline by more than two months, especially considering that ASi is said to be significantly ahead of its competition.
They should have done a minor refresh on the Intel Mac Pro before the deadline.
Exactly. While their OS ecosystem is convenient and mostly efficient (software quality control somewhat deteriorating as of late), it does lock you in as there is no hardware competition.
A “further exodus”? Are there any folks left at that tier that doesn’t NEED a Mac? For anyone that’s not using Apple software, it hasn’t made sense to be on a Mac for quite some time, so I don’t know what the FURTHER exodus would be…
Nah, Apple’s been going downhill ever since the IIGS.
One would even assume by this point that “paying more for it” is table stakes in understanding Apple.
BTW, so why is water ALWAYS wet? Like, for as long as I can remember water has been wet. But, for some reason it seems to me that, right now, water shouldn’t be expected to be wet anymore. Let me check…
Yup. Still wet. Surprises me every time, though.
Will it though? I mean, we’ve been this long without an Apple Silicon Mac Pro and according to Apple’s sales figures, that doesn’t appear to be putting a damper on their laptop sales.
Of course, it COULD be that the group that it will cast a whole new light on for are already people that don’t intend to buy a Mac. Which, in that case, that’s not a sale Apple was going to get anyway.
The minor upgrade should have put in an EPYC dual socket board, support for 6TB of LPDDR5 RAM with up to Genoa CPUs. They wouldn't have had to change squat other than a Motherboard and certify their Power Supply requirements.
For my particular use case, music composing, the GPU thing isn't too big a deal. And the M2 Ultra will be plenty fast. But the RAM thing is a letdown. I currently use about 256GB of virtual instrument samples loaded all the time. Was looking forward to loading the new Mac Pro up with like 384-512GB of RAM. So the 192GB is not really enough. Even though it's faster, the samples need to stay loaded all the time. I wish Apple would make a special version of the M2Ultra with the same amount of CPU, but double the RAM so we can go to 384GB.
i know it won’t happen, but i wish apple would keep one more gen of mac pro on x86
i’m not just saying that for hackintosh support
i’m not just saying that for hackintosh support
A lot use the Mac because of Photoshop. It’s probably the one piece of software that keeps the Mac relevant in that space. It’s also strange considering Windows already fully supports Adobe CC. But I assume these are users who likely started out on Mac and prefer to use it if there is a critical piece not available for Linux.
Apple is getting incredible performance on the M series by having massive bandwidth between CPU/GPU and RAM.
That just can't be done with PCI GPU cards and/or RAM sitting in some kind of upgradeable slot, so just forget those two options.
Our company owns many high performance DELL PC workstations - they very rarely if ever get RAM upgraded or PCI cards added. And RAM upgrades, if they happen, are sometimes problematic causing machine instability.
It's like losing the DVD drive - people realize they never used it anyway.
That just can't be done with PCI GPU cards and/or RAM sitting in some kind of upgradeable slot, so just forget those two options.
Our company owns many high performance DELL PC workstations - they very rarely if ever get RAM upgraded or PCI cards added. And RAM upgrades, if they happen, are sometimes problematic causing machine instability.
It's like losing the DVD drive - people realize they never used it anyway.
I'll be shocked if it isn't by fall 2024. They could almost pull it off this year now that every other system is Apple silicon. The first Intel Macs shipped in January 06 and Snow Leopard killed PPC support in August of 09. Granted the Intel transition was completed faster than x86 to AS, but still, we're already more than 2 years removed from the M1 debut.
But, they weren’t leaving the printer or wireless access point arena… right up until they did. While I kinda think it’s one of the least likely outcomes, I AM still holding a card for “a fine machine, but definitely NOT for those with needs only the Intel system can fulfill)”.
Rather than any criticism I'll just comment that I will not be buying one.
Not really, though. Everyone that NEEDS a MacPro currently, has one. Anyone that has one and needs parts are able to get them and will able to be get them for awhile. It could have been “Go all out on this one so we don’t have to redo it in 5 years or so.
They recognized the needs of the pro market a few years ago. And, for folks they invite to their campus to discuss their workflows, they know the needs of the pro market NOW. If those folks with 1TB of memory and all slots loaded down with all kinds of goodies are like, “Nah, thanks, we’re good. We don’t need another one for awhile,” Then if Apple made a system for THOSE folks, well, it wouldn’t sell because they’re good with what they have.
I’m willing to accept that the pro’s Apple are inviting to their campus who want a new powerful system today MAY have different wants than those that bought the 2019 systems. So much so that this latest version will be for them (not for folks that bought the 2019 and not for folks on this forum
, will sell about as well as Apple expects and they’ll continue inviting pros to their campus in upcoming years to design whatever the next thing will be. If this upcoming Mac Pro doesn’t look either like the trash can OR the cheese grater, then that tells me that each Mac Pro going forward may be a low selling one-off designed for THAT year for THOSE pros.Hey, gotta do what’s good for your bottom line AND your pocket. No one can fault you for that.
I see no reason why Apple couldn’t offer Ram upgrades on an AppleSilicon Mac Pro (if they really want to, that is):
Simply add a couple of Ram slots to the machine - problem solved. On-chip memory would be fastest and exhausted first. Ram needs beyond on-chip memory could be relegated to those „external“ Ram chips, which could offer way more capacity than available on-chip.
Sure, the „external“ Ram would be slower, but for certain Workflows requiring lots of Ram that’d be a perfectly acceptable tradeoff. Kind of how multi-level caches work. Or - for the older readers - akin to the Amiga’s concept of Chipmem and Fastmem … ;-)
Simply add a couple of Ram slots to the machine - problem solved. On-chip memory would be fastest and exhausted first. Ram needs beyond on-chip memory could be relegated to those „external“ Ram chips, which could offer way more capacity than available on-chip.
Sure, the „external“ Ram would be slower, but for certain Workflows requiring lots of Ram that’d be a perfectly acceptable tradeoff. Kind of how multi-level caches work. Or - for the older readers - akin to the Amiga’s concept of Chipmem and Fastmem … ;-)
Any GPU not directly attached to the shared memory pool is going to have dreadful performance, comparatively. I don’t even know if they can even do their brand of TBDR, which is the core of their GPU, without it having direct memory access.