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There's a massive thread here on MacRumors that discusses this.


TLDR: Apple Silicon GPU's are very good, but even the fastest M1x M2x GPU's get utterly destroyed humiliated by nVidia's best GPUs... for a number of reasons.
Thanks! When people bring up "I can build the same specs for cheaper," they always bring up the consumer model GPUs, but never the workstation-class.
 
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I have Studio Ultra paired with a Dell 40" 5K 2K ultra-wide monitor. Love it. It looks as good as the former iMac 27" screen it replaced but has a whole lot more screen RE. If you time the purchase well, you can get that extra screen RE for less than Studio monitor and it comes with many additional benefits. If it conked today, I'd immediately buy another.

Apple is not the only shop in town for monitors. There's PLENTY of fish in that sea.
Me too.
1674753193047.png

(a Trashcan and a HP Z4 on Dell U4021QW side by side)

I have for some time now thought that Apple is painting themselves into a corner again with Mac Pro.
ps. but not so with the lighter/consumer products though, obviously, in these segments they conquere.

The not so funny part of all this for me would be, that they are not doing this not knowing they are doing this. They just don't care. Because there's no money in it, so why bother.

It seems the AI power to be in control is more important in every aspect, for everyone and every big company it seems. Time will tell what big firm of today, or tomorrow, would be the Genisys of the world. The most rich, or the most genius, or maybe the most unpredictable one. Maybe a combination of those. I hope I won't live that long to learn.
 
So far the Apple M Series chips have exceeded expectations. The Mac Pro really needs to be a climax, because if it is not it will cast a whole new light on this chip migration. Due to that, I doubt that these rumors are true, or at least hope that they are not. The hope was that the roadmap included a Mac Pro that would wow people and then maybe we would start to see some new form factors instead of just iterative Mac and iPad updates like we have seen this year.
 
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Something has changed with apple, nothing is exciting anymore no keynotes or products even wwdc has been dissatisfied, what has happened, maybe they have hired people that don’t know the best stuff and let people go that did, something is very odd it’s just catch up now with small changes which can be even worse, the Mac Pro was a con
You just got old (like me) and it's hard to get excited over hardware anymore ;-)
 
I have been saying here on MacRumors that the New Mac Pro would not be upgradable in any way. I have been making this comment for the entire time that Apple has been developing Apple Silicon. I still think that it is true.
 
Something like the current Mac Pro is probably impossible with Apple Silicon. The whole Apple Silicon architecture is based on shared memory; I doubt they'll rebuild it just for one machine class.
But they knew that before considering the transition. Let’s trust apple, the current mac pro wouldn’t exist if they were leaving the pro arena.
 
I've had no interest in Mac pros since the days of the powermac G4/G5. they priced them selves out of reach after that. iMacs became a much better value. now they screwed up the iMac and I don't even know what to buy.
I agree with the part about the iMac being screwed up. We bought a bunch of them, and it has been the worst experience. Like for instance, what is up with the power brick? Where the cable plugs in from the wall to the brick, the end of the cable and the brick are both shiny smooth plastic, so smooth in fact, it likes to pop out at random times just to amuse the end user by shutting off power in the middle of their work. Greaaaat design whomever designed that turd of a brick. Also, the whole LAN port being built into the power brick is a cluster. Please put it back on the machine where it belongs ... if we had wanted to buy laptops, we would have bought laptops. We purchased a desktop which does not need to be an ultraportable device ...
 
Something has changed with apple, nothing is exciting anymore no keynotes or products even wwdc has been dissatisfied, what has happened, maybe they have hired people that don’t know the best stuff and let people go that did, something is very odd it’s just catch up now with small changes which can be even worse, the Mac Pro was a con
Apple management lives in their own world of maximizing profit at the expense of brand, user satisfaction, and quality. Unlike Jobs who lived in the world we all wanted to see and visit, not that it was perfect, but it was visionary.
 
Me too.
View attachment 2148690
(a Trashcan and a HP Z4 on Dell U4021QW side by side)

I have for some time now thought that Apple is painting themselves into a corner again with Mac Pro.
ps. but not so with the lighter/consumer products though, obviously, in these segments they conquere.

The not so funny part of all this for me would be, that they are not doing this not knowing they are doing this. They just don't care. Because there's no money in it, so why bother.

It seems the AI power to be in control is more important in every aspect, for everyone and every big company it seems. Time will tell what big firm of today, or tomorrow, would be the Genisys of the world. The most rich, or the most genius, or maybe the most unpredictable one. Maybe a combination of those. I hope I won't live that long to learn.

Looks like you've done what I've done with "old fashioned" bootcamp (separate PC). And it looks like you are showing some split screen there for both macOS and Windows on the same screen. NICE!

I really like that very flexible hub built in instead of getting that kind of flexibility in another box. One personal gripe with Studio Monitor is that there is only one video input and only one type of jack. So in a situation like ours where we want/need a PC too (or gamebox or anything else needing a screen), it's a game of switching cables. I believe we have FOUR video inputs on this monitor if we wanted to use all of them.
 
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Ok I,ll bite , first I have no intention of buying a Mac Pro ( I do have the cheapest sudio

what if apple continued to use intel and Nvidia gpu in the current case but with on exception do not supply a OS so the user can install what the want . best of both worlds they get a posh Mac expandable with the Os of their choice

o there's a taxi waiting outside

strictly tongue in cheek
 
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Something like the current Mac Pro is probably impossible with Apple Silicon. The whole Apple Silicon architecture is based on shared memory; I doubt they'll rebuild it just for one machine class.

I doubt a whole rebuild would be necessary. PCI-e lanes to make slots in a case work could make separate RAM and/or separate storage in those slots work too.

I suspect its simply a choice to Apple to allow third party RAM and third party SSD directly connected to a silicon-based board in those PCI-e slots or in dedicated RAM slots function.

I see no technological reason or big hurdle why there could not be three speeds of RAM inside:
  1. FASTEST RAM (silicon RAM)
  2. FAST RAM (traditional slotted RAM)
  3. LAST RESORT "RAM" (swaps using SSD)
#1 could be maxed out for those believing they need fastest RAM interactions.

#2 could deliver the up to 1.5TB (or whatever additional RAM Apple would like to offer) and this would still be at least as fast as traditional slotted RAM is now in the existing Mac Pro... so no Mac Pro upgrader could feel any difference in RAM speed other than a positive difference when #1 RAM is used for some of their applications.

#3 would work as it does now as last resort backup when RAM demands exceed supply.

If new Mac Pro ULTRA (or whatever it will be) will support PCI-e slots, it will already be engineered differently than existing M1 ULTRA to accommodate those slots. In those adaptations, some slots for #2 RAM seems towards trivial. Up to all SSD beyond 8TB could be added as cards in those PCI-e slots or via some internal Thunderbolt 4 (or perhaps 5 if ready) jacks... though full PCI-e would be best.
 
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One point to regarding this rumor that seems to have been missed in all of the replies thus far is that Apple had to have know when it released the 2019 Mac Pro that they were on the way to transitioning their entire lineup to Apple Silicon. As such, one would have to fathom that by releasing such an expandable/upgradeable device right before transitioning the lineup to Apple Silicon that the expectation of Mac Pro users is that this would need to continue to be the case. Given this, the logical deduction would be Apple recognizes the needs of the Pro market, and if releasing a Pro machine, would continue to incorporate as many of these improvements as possible. Regressing where not absolutely necessary and not being able to provide clear explanation to their target audience as to why it has to be done would result in them accepting the fact that the Apple Silicon Mac Pro is not going to be as well received or sell as well as its predecessor. I don't think Apple would do that, if for no other reason than that they are not in the business of trying to lose money.
 
I’ve personally not been in the Mac Pro market for a while but the entire point of the Mac Pro line is power + expandability. Pretty interested to see how Apple plays it with their everything-on-one-chip approach. Hopefully there’s good reason the Mac Pro will be the last to switch from Intel to AS. Saving the best for last? “One more thing” time? We shall see.
 
Trash can Mac Pro is one of the worst Mac in Apple's history and yet they learned nothing. If they really make non upgradable Mac Pro, it will be dead in the water.
Mac Pro has always been super duper niche. How much deader in the water can it be?
 
Aside from the astronomical price, the Mac Pro has always sounded like the absolute computer, to me. Runs official MacOS natively but also can run any Windows software you'd like including games. Truly it was the best of both worlds.

I really think Apple needs to swallow its pride and at worst switch to AMD and keep one x64 Mac. Maybe this will sound quaint in a few years but for now I still think there's a place for it in the world. Especially for the people who can afford it in the first place. These are not the ones to trifle with.
 
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Am I the only one that is confused by the Apple Silicon naming strategy? It's hard to know instinctively which would be better; Pro, Ultra, or Extreme. Although is fairly obvious that Max is the top tier chip, as its the Maximum... oh wait.
 
Apple had to whip up the iMac Pro as a hold-over because they were busy scrapping and redesigning the Mac Pro after it became clear the trashcan was a design mistake.

I bet we replay the whole scenario in 3 years.
 
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Likely it will be the only Mac that is expandable (vs upgradable) with new MPX modules and have some method of using multiple GPUs. AI modules, Media modules, storage, GPU etc.

Also Mark doesn’t know ****, likely just speculation based on everything we all already see. Typical
 
The real problem with the Apple chips is that they do not do virtualization. On my Studio, I had hoped to be able to run Parallels with Windows subsystem for android, but that is impossible.
I think this is the central problem for me. I have to develop for Windows, Linux, etc. All X86 based, plus iOS and macOS, Android, and Raspberry Pi. I don't want to have to have separate hardware for all that. But recently it seems to me that dropping iOS and macOS is going to be the best option financially.
 
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