Mac Pro Enthusiasts Raise Concerns Over Upgrade Limitations of Apple Silicon

[HobeSoundDarryl]

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 generally agree with you.

However, step back in time to the cheese grater pro being followed (replaced) by the "can't innovate my ass" trashcan pro to find a recent Apple precedent of flipping from a very flexible/upgradable Mac Pro tower to a fairly locked down Trashcan. At the trashcan launch, Apple proudly spun it as the new Mac Pro and touted its great power, blah-blah-blah.

Will history repeat? Personally, I doubt it. I think they learned a lesson with the Trashcan. And frankly, Mac Studio is the Trashcan in a rounded rectangle case. Since Mac Pro wasn't retired on launch of Studio, I suspect new Mac Pro will not be a return to a locked-down trashcan/studio-like Mac either.

If nothing else, all rumors point to a traditional Mac tower, which probably has slots. If there are slots, there is traditional Mac Pro expandability & flexibility. If those slots can't offer more RAM, more SSD and graphics card support, I'm confused about why there will be traditional slots. Yes, there are PLENTY of PCI cards that are not focused on only those 3 things but why rule out some obvious things for slots if a Mac is going to offer slots?

Any concept about protecting profits of Apple RAM and Apple SSD can be made up for by simply charging a crazy Mac Pro price with all of that profit and then some.

The ONE way I can imagine a new Mac Pro without supporting third party RAM and SSD would be slots for Ultra Silicon too. Thus to get more RAM or SSD, you add another ULTRA motherboard to have more than 1 in there. Dual ULTRA Mac Pro? Quad Ultra Mac Pro? Software would then make those separate ULTRA boards work together.

 

[CarAnalogy]

there's no reason to believe it won't have PCIe expandability, even if the ram and GPU are limited by the unified memory setup. why do all the rumormongers keep conflating the two? the reason pros like the mac pro is that you can put weird little pci cards in it.

Well I think people say that because the one PCIe card most people care about is the graphics card. And it's looking increasingly like there won't be one. I'm thinking there may be an Apple designed graphics card. But at this point there's no telling what they'll do. Their product strategies have been inconsistent lately.

 

[Stormz]

Until the Fans quit buying them, Apple will continue this trend. They will never allow users to have the option to upgrade certain components over a 5-10 year span, when they can force them to buy every 3-5 years to keep up with what’s needed.

I get the impression Apple would willingly kill off the Mac Pro if sales dried up.

 

[Klapper.cz]

It's again just a linear assumption - I don't like Apple in general for many things, but I have no doubt they are capable to come up with a solution and many non-linear surprises. Just because previous Apple silicon macs are not upgradable, doesn't mean that there won't be a possibility to add GPU, there's no way they can't manage that IF THEY WANT TO.
Of course it might not be a straightforward solution, apps may have to be optimized, the integrated GPU can be wasted, the connection may be internally as eGPU etc, but making such huge "logical assumption" based on what we know (the think that changes the moment stuff is announced) is just completely unnecessary.
Btw one of the reasons M2 Extreme might not be coming could also be that it would be too expensive and also wasted when people just can add 4090 etc.

 

[DailySlow]

This isn’t really news is it? We all know the GPU wasn’t going to be upgradable unless Apple start making their own stand alone Apple silicon GPU’s. That won’t be hmething"air"OC?it

Who knows? An Apple silicon GPU/mem/bus chip that "pairs"with SOC could be in the works and it would be modular and fast meeting diverse price/productivity price points. Perfect for rack installations.

 

[DailySlow]

I generally agree with you.

However, step back in time to the cheese grater pro being followed (replaced) by the "can't innovate my ass" trashcan pro to find a recent Apple precedent of flipping from a very flexible/upgradable Mac Pro tower to a fairly locked down Trashcan. At the trashcan launch, Apple proudly spun it as the new Mac Pro and touted its great power, blah-blah-blah.

Will history repeat? Personally, I doubt it. I think they learned a lesson with the Trashcan. And frankly, Mac Studio is the Trashcan in a rounded rectangle case. Since Mac Pro wasn't retired on launch of Studio, I suspect new Mac Pro will not be a return to a locked-down trashcan/studio-like Mac either.

If nothing else, all rumors point to a traditional Mac tower, which probably has slots. If there are slots, there is traditional Mac Pro expandability & flexibility. If those slots can't offer more RAM, more SSD and graphics card support, I'm confused about why there will be traditional slots. Yes, there are PLENTY of PCI cards that are not focused on only those 3 things but why rule out some obvious things for slots if a Mac is going to offer slots?

Any concept about protecting profits of Apple RAM and Apple SSD can be made up for by simply charging a crazy Mac Pro price with all of that profit and then some.

The ONE way I can imagine a new Mac Pro without supporting third party RAM and SSD would be slots for Ultra Silicon too. Thus to get more RAM or SSD, you add another ULTRA motherboard to have more than 1 in there. Dual ULTRA Mac Pro? Quad Ultra Mac Pro? Software would then make those separate ULTRA boards work together.

I agree. It's logical.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Honest question: who uses a Mac with 1.5 Tb of RAM, and what for? Also: how many of you are there? I doubt it’s a number that impresses the Apple accountants😉

I don't think it's a coincidence that Steve Jobs got into computer generated movies with Pixar and then sold that to Disney. I know Disney has loads of these, just for one example. And at the margins they make on them, I think the accountants are satisfied.

How many people buy Lamborghinis? In absolute numbers not many, but enough at the prices they're selling them for. And way more people need a Mac Pro than a Lamborghini.

 

[sir1963nz]

Just fitted a 1TB SSD into my 27" 2009 iMac and increased the RAM 16GB

 

[marcuzt]

Hasn't it been studies showing that peo0ple seldom upgrade RAM. So buy the amount that is a bit above your current maximum need.

I can understand the graphic card, if those change a lot. But my experience with the m-series is that they seem to compete very well with any other card. So maybe it is not needed to change your GPU every six months?

What I really hope and wait for is storage. I want local storage and a nice case-design, so I can use it for daily use now and then later retire it as a server just as I did for my mac pro 2010.

 

[trusso]

So on the 59th second of the 23rd hour — enthusiasts are starting to squirm — based on rumors. Ha!

Nah, we’ve been saying this for a while now. You just haven’t been listening.

here come the pages of people who never even planned on purchasing the thing complaining…

It’s a catch-22, isn’t it? Plenty of consumers will buy this thing if it’s affordable and expandable. But Apple insists on making locked-down systems at outrageous prices, and blowhards keep spouting off. Such is the way of the world these days.

 

[cookedart]

I'm a Mac Pro (2019) user, not an enthusiast and I've been wondering about Apple Silicon for a while.

I work in 2D and 3D animation. I was about to transition over to PC in 2019, I even had a Nvidia card in an eGPU attached to my MacBook Pro so I could learn some new 3D software using Boot Camp, but the Mac Pro kept me on the Mac. Just.

It's a lot of money, but I've been using Mac OS for 20 years. I would really rather keep going with it if I can, but Apple is going to have to have to deliver a user upgradeable Mac Pro or there really is no point. I want to be able to throw new GPU's in there for years to come, because that's really something that changes a lot in my industry.

I think they'd have to do something fundamentally different to what they've done so far with Apple Silicon to enable a Mac Pro with user upgradeable parts. Currently the SoC integrates the CPU, GPU and RAM, which is great for other devices, but not the Mac Pro.

I'm surprised that you were able to hold on this long! For 3D animation especially Apple hasn't really served the market in ages - lack of nVidia options in the Mac Pro since the trash can have made it a less viable choice for a while.

Now with Apple Silicon, they would presumably be removing AMD as an option as well. Having faith that Apple will keep up with the rest of the market in high-end gpu performance is not where I'd want to place my bets. Compound that with most of the industry standard 3D applications are still under Rosetta this long into the transition, I'm not sure what the "Pro" list is for sticking with a Mac Pro.

 

[goodcow]

But they are doing it now, so what is the big deal? For all but the most performant code it probably amounts to checking the right box in Xcode. And since OS X supports multiple binary Apps, it is isn't really that big of a deal for devs either.

I'm not a developer, so maybe it is as simple as checking the right box in Xcode, but aren't things like security patches going to be CPU specific (x86 vs. ARM)? There must be some measurable cost to maintaining active OS support on multiple CPU platforms.

 

[urib2]

This does not sound promising for the future of the Mac Pro but all we have at this point are rumors. Every single new Apple Silicon device that replaced an Intel device has been a huge step up in every way.

Step forward to where exactly? Have you recently seen Intel's 12th and 13th generation laptops, they are less battery efficient but the performance is light years away from Apple Silicon.

 

[MikeZTM]

Who knows? An Apple silicon GPU/mem/bus chip that "pairs"with SOC could be in the works and it would be modular and fast meeting diverse price/productivity price points. Perfect for rack installations.

Apple isn't part of CXL groups.
So I don't think they are working on such things.
I think they will just kill the 1.5TB Mac Pro as it's really rare and niche anyway.
Most Mac Pro users are video editor not scientist. 512GB ram is way enough for that workflow.
They just need to enable ECC and it will sell.

 

[zorinlynx]

Who says the Apple Silicon architecture can't do memory expansion or discrete GPUs? They can rework things any way they want. And for discrete GPUs, all you need are drivers. Thunderbolt is basically PCIe over a different PHY; you can ALREADY connect discrete GPUs to Apple Silicon Macs using external enclosures; you just can't use them due to lack of drivers.

 

[sunny5]

Mac Pro has always been super duper niche. How much deader in the water can it be?

Mac Pro 2013 is a great example. No hardware updates for 6 years and destroyed high end market. There is a huge difference between can do and can not do.

 

[AF_APPLETALK]

I'm not in the market for one of these machines, but this doesn't sound good.

I'm kind of at a point where I'm thinking, "Does it actually matter that these stay on Intel?"

The software translation layers and everything work so well, it seems like that's not a bad option. AS is perfect for 90% of their lineup, would it really be that bad to just update the intel chips or drop some AMD ryzen epics in there?

Mac Studio seems like it's a really good desktop for probably most all of their power users as it is. Why try to shoehorn AS into a use case that just doesn't fit?

 

[AF_APPLETALK]

Who says the Apple Silicon architecture can't do memory expansion or discrete GPUs? They can rework things any way they want. And for discrete GPUs, all you need are drivers. Thunderbolt is basically PCIe over a different PHY; you can ALREADY connect discrete GPUs to Apple Silicon Macs using external enclosures; you just can't use them due to lack of drivers.

They could, but then they lose out on the advantages that make AS feel so fast - the memory being on the chip and not having to travel through a bus.

 

[TheOldChevy]

Part of the advantages of the new silicon is the very fast, very wide bus that connects the CPU to the RAM and other peripherals. This reduces the modularity of the Mac, but maybe we'll get another way to build the modular machine with more advanced modules that will include CPU and RAM. This will not be cheap but it may be very efficient.

 

[MikeZTM]

Who says the Apple Silicon architecture can't do memory expansion or discrete GPUs? They can rework things any way they want. And for discrete GPUs, all you need are drivers. Thunderbolt is basically PCIe over a different PHY; you can ALREADY connect discrete GPUs to Apple Silicon Macs using external enclosures; you just can't use them due to lack of drivers.

PCIe attached devices are fine. But RAM expansions are not. Apple isn't part of CXL group and that shows they have no interest in RAM expansion via PCIe.

GPU support will land in Asahi Linux but I doubt it will ever land in macOS--Apple is all in this shared RAM advantage and marketing a dedicated step back most-likely AMD GPU will be really hard for them.

 

[MikeZTM]

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.

Apple Silicon do virtualization and do it well better than any x64 chip. Modern ARM natively supports virtualization by it's multi-layer security model not like IA32's Frankenstein hack and it's used widely for security in Android.
Windows does not support nested virtualization on ARM is a problem for Microsoft as Linux support it.

And since WSA is just a HyperV running android I guess you should just bypass Windows and install Android emulator on macOS directly.

 

[mikas]

Hasn't it been studies showing that peo0ple seldom upgrade RAM. So buy the amount that is a bit above your current maximum need.

I can understand the graphic card, if those change a lot. But my experience with the m-series is that they seem to compete very well with any other card. So maybe it is not needed to change your GPU every six months?

What I really hope and wait for is storage. I want local storage and a nice case-design, so I can use it for daily use now and then later retire it as a server just as I did for my mac pro 2010.

Allmost every other or probably more, of a Mac is upgraded to a max RAM. Just not by people who bought them originally. And probably not by people who would answer a queostion like "would you upgrade you Mac RAM?"

I have done upgrades for people a lot. After a couple of years they don't even know what's been upgraded. Upgrading has just been happened, magically.

ps. in my opinion upgarading ram and storage is still a must have option. At least still.

 

[ackmondual]

It's a straw man that doesn't even exist yet. Let's all panic!

"Based on nothing other than some past mistakes, and because I have no real information, let's consider the worst thing that could happen."
"Did you hear that? Apple might do the worst possible thing."
"They're almost certainly going to do the worst possible thing. They did it before!"
"I can't believe it. Apple did the worst possible thing AGAIN?"
"I know, right? They're doomed.

Rinse and repeat.

CASM
More ads
Price increases
Polishing cloth not included

 

[techfreak23]

It's going to be a step back again, just like with the Mac mini. They went from non-upgradeable RAM to upgradeable RAM back to non-upgradeable with this unified memory thing. It's making people spend so much more upfront due to the Apple tax. It's always been much cheaper to upgrade with 3rd party RAM with no issues. I'm at 32GB of RAM on my 2018 intel mac mini and I can't go back. My next mini is going to be stupidly expensive because Apple went back to the previous configurations.

That being said, a lot of those performance improvements come from the unified memory structure, but I would gladly give the slight performance increase to upgrade my memory when I need to.

 

[SanderEvers]

If the RAM and GPU are bound to the M2 chip, they could make THAT changeable. Want more memory, a better GPU or upgrade to an M3 chip? Buy a new "M3 Ultra chipboard" for the Mac Pro. This board just has just the SoC and RAM and is plugged in to a main board containing the storage and PCI-e cards etc.

It could work, and would make upgrades somewhat affordable.