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What would be awesome, like an unused blast from the past, would be to have the system board replaceable. So you get it with the M2 Ultra or whatever and when a newer version comes out you only get the new system board and don’t have to replace everything. It would be more environmentally friendly, encourage updates, and probably be a better overall approach to a modular system. Certainly after time there would be some issues with peripheral support so perhaps commit to 2 generations of compatibility and after that you’re on your own if you update.
It would be environmentally friendly ONLY if an environmentally friendly person owns it. Or, if Apple forces folks to return the old one upon purchase. It’d essentially be for folks that have a strong desire to always own the fastest Mac but really don’t have the funds to support that desire, because anyone in enterprise would be working with their vendor to always ensure they’re working with warranty covered systems.
 
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I think half the price is a stretching it a little bit, a new Mac Pro will most likely destroy the PC market.
I really wish this was true. But it won’t be. I moved some workflow (3D) to PC because of GPU power. I can go to 7 x RTX 4090s in a single rig - that firepower is something Apple will never get near.
 
And I am not saying that the Mac Pro should not exist, just makes me wonder how many users could get by with a Mac Studio or even the new Mac mini M2 Pro.
Number of users that really need it is low, but it is a halo device that gives bragging rights and kudos to the entire lineup.

That said, it is apparent the current Apple management don’t, and never have liked it (probably can’t get the margins they dictate) and thus over engineer and price it into uselessness. Thus allowing them to say no one wants it. Jobs era Mac Pros they are not.

The state of CAD, let alone Video promotion is dying on the Mac because of this attitude, right down to lower spec machines.
 
I would really like to know how many people actually need the power of the Mac Pro. If they do, is it worth the cost. I know that some people say that time is money and the Mac Pro will eventually pay for itself with time saved but since Apple has not given any significant update to the current Mac Pro, it tells me that it is not that important in the lineup. I can imagine that a lot of users with more money than me just buy it for the bragging rights.
Two third of the people complaining about the Mac Pro here are not a Mac Pro target customer
 
Calling it now since nobody will come back to this post 3-6 months from now.

Apple is never going to make another Mac Pro.

Who is their target market in 2023? I bet they sell a small handful of the 20 core Mac Studios and the market for a Pro above that would be an even tinier percent. Apple doesn't care about integrating a AMD/Nvidia GPU any more and not having upgradable RAM or SSD storage isn't a drawback for Apple.

I just don't see it.
 
I dont think the Mini is gonna replace the studio since the studio can support far more than 32GB RAM.
Perhaps but consumers will be more than happy with a M2 Pro 16/512GB desktop for $1299, versus the cheapest Studio at $1999. At least Apple rectified the Mac mini lineup so it a lot more practical for consumers. Now just need that Samsung 5K Viewfinty S9 display to be cheaper then the Studio Monitor.
 
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Hoping for the Jet Black or Matte Black (Stealth) Edition.
If they had announced a Jet Black 16" M2 Max today, it would have been an instant order from me. I'm happy with my M1 Max and will wait and see what comes in the next generation.

EDIT: Wait!!! I take that back after learning that the M2 Max is missing the doubled encode/decode engines. That is something that is crucial for my daily working needs. Doesn't make any sense to me as to why they would nerf the M2 Max like that.
 
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If they had announced a Jet Black 16" M2 Max today, it would have been an instant order from me. I'm happy with my M1 Max and will wait and see what comes in the next generation.
Yes sir! I'm in the same boat. Since Midnight or Jet Black 16," M2 was not announced. I have shifted my interest to MacBook Air 15" (Midnight). Hopefully, Apple announces it by this Spring/Fall.
 
Apple needs to ditch nomenclature and just give this thing a 3nm chip with TONS of options for CPU and GPU cores and big RAM support. Just configure your Mac Pro. It starts with something like 12 core CPU and 24 core GPU and goes up from there (hopefully WAY up from there).
 
I would really like to know how many people actually need the power of the Mac Pro. If they do, is it worth the cost. I know that some people say that time is money and the Mac Pro will eventually pay for itself with time saved but since Apple has not given any significant update to the current Mac Pro, it tells me that it is not that important in the lineup. I can imagine that a lot of users with more money than me just buy it for the bragging rights.

I was doing 3d art on Power Macs & Mac Pros for nearly 14 years. It was worth the cost from the Power Mac era to the 5,1, because they were priced within a couple hundred dollars of their windows workstation counterparts.

The trashcan was a TCO (total cost of ownership) fail from day 1. Not only did the price of the systems nearly double, but it was over $2,000 to replace the functionality that Sir Idiot Boy stripped out. The idea of having a rat's nest of cabling wasn't the selling point he seemed to think it was.

BTW, we went over 2,000 days between the trashcan and the 7,1.

Then there was the 7,1. Every single subsystem in that computer was obsolete from the moment it was launched.

This is why I am no longer using Mac computers. The base 7,1 is outperformed by a consumer grade Ryzen system at a quarter of the price.

And I am not saying that the Mac Pro should not exist, just makes me wonder how many users could get by with a Mac Studio or even the new Mac mini M2 Pro.

If you aren't pegging the CPU, need a massive amount of memory, need a modern GPU - then no, you don't need it.

But those folks were never the target audience for the Mac Pro.

The Mac Pro audience are the folks that need horsepower - we don't care about looks.
 
I really wish this was true. But it won’t be. I moved some workflow (3D) to PC because of GPU power. I can go to 7 x RTX 4090s in a single rig - that firepower is something Apple will never get near.
Hah. What power supply are you going to use in that rig???

I mean... I could build such a thing. But it would be a ridiculous monstrosity with multiple PSes. And I'd never trust it in a professional environment. nVidia make boxes just for that purpose, and probably so do a couple of the smaller pro-focussed shops. Prices make even the big Apple Mac Pros look cheap, though.
 
EDIT: Wait!!! I take that back after learning that the M2 Max is missing the doubled encode/decode engines. That is something that is crucial for my daily working needs. Doesn't make any sense to me as to why they would nerf the M2 Max like that.
What are you talking about? Why do you think it doesn't have the dual engines? I think they even mention that specifically in their video.
 
Number of users that really need it is low, but it is a halo device that gives bragging rights and kudos to the entire lineup.
What bragging rights? “Fastest Mac in the world?” The more impressive bragging rights are “Most power efficient laptops in the world” especially since that’s what most folks are buying.
 
I wouldn’t be surprised if a Mac Studio, with M2 Ultra , announced in spring or WWDC 2023, replaced the Mac Pro in the line up.

I know the studio is not upgradable but this is the Apple way and I just don’t think Apple silicon is built in the way that makes it work in an upgradable tower (integrated graphics and RAM). The selling point will probably be “it’s so flipping fast just don’t worry about it”.
 
Perhaps but consumers will be more than happy with a M2 Pro 16/512GB desktop for $1299, versus the cheapest Studio at $1999. At least Apple rectified the Mac mini lineup so it a lot more practical for consumers. Now just need that Samsung 5K Viewfinty S9 display to be cheaper then the Studio Monitor.
Yes and I also can’t afford the very expensive MacBook Pro models and prefer the cheaper touchbar model.
 
I know the studio is not upgradable but this is the Apple way and I just don’t think Apple silicon is built in the way that makes it work in an upgradable tower (integrated graphics and RAM). The selling point will probably be “it’s so flipping fast just don’t worry about it”.
Go here.


Ignore anything about GPU, and you’ll have a list of PCI cards which could be supported in a future Apple Silicon Mac Pro, which could definitely be supported.
 
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The head scratcher with the next Mac Pro is : what will the RAM situation be?
I'm also wondering what the GPU situation will be. It will be safe to assume it will be more powerful than the Mac Studio but how will it compare with, say, an nVidia Quadro RTX A6000? Since this is what comparable workstations can run, but also, this will define the ceiling for what an Arm-based Mac is capable of doing in 3D applications.

It's delays are only making software developers less confident in the platform (and remember, the Mac Pro has been a challenging proposition for quite a few years now, having lost ground with the trash can and not supporting nVidia options in the subsequent cheese grater).

Its possible this machine will be exactly what everyone needs from a high end workstation but its easy to be skeptical. If ram or gpus are not upgradable, it may be a dead end.
I would really like to know how many people actually need the power of the Mac Pro. If they do, is it worth the cost. I know that some people say that time is money and the Mac Pro will eventually pay for itself with time saved but since Apple has not given any significant update to the current Mac Pro, it tells me that it is not that important in the lineup. I can imagine that a lot of users with more money than me just buy it for the bragging rights.
I would argue the market for a high end workstation is probably fairly level if not slowly increasing. Contrast that with the overall consumer computing market which is notably shrinking, even for Apple. More and more "normal people" are covered with a phone or tablet as their main computing device, which leaves full fledged desktops increasingly to the realm of needing horsepower for specific use cases, such as gaming, machine learning, or content creation. The Mac Pro is specifically there for those who need the horsepower and expansion possibilities to get actual work done on a computer.

You are correct that Apple has not given it significant updates, but that may be explained as neglect or not having significant upgrades from their partners (such as Intel or amd). I'd say its more in the realm that Apple abandoned their focus on this segment to focus on consumer electronics overall, which is a larger potential user base.

Whether or not is is important is a good question. Like I mentioned above, the Mac Pro defines the ceiling of what is possible on the platform. If Apple abandons the Mac Pro entirely, then certain applications may no longer exist - think high end 3d applications like Cad, SolidWorks, or Maya - all of which still only work on ArmMacs via Rosetta. If these apps go away then suddenly there's a creative brain drain from Mac OS, which cannot be good for the platform at large. While the Mac Studio exists, it's GPU performance is not at the same level of what high-end windows workstations are capable of doing.
 
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I went there, unregistered 4U. (PCIe cards you an install on your Mac Pro)

There is no list of PCIe cards, other than GPUs.
 
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Go here.


Ignore anything about GPU, and you’ll have a list of PCI cards which could be supported in a future Apple Silicon Mac Pro, which could definitely be supported.
I don't think it's fully safe to assume third party PCI graphics cards will be supported on an Apple Silicon Mac Pro. The list of supported cards was tiny even on the Intel-based Macs, with driver support being notably lacking (especially non existent with nVidia gpus).

With Apple Silicon integrating the GPU into the actually SOC, it's still a huge question on how Apple plans to scale it up to a full desktop. They could just keep increasing the number of cores like you see on the Mac Studio, but allow even more cores. Or they could strip out the gpu cores and have them live entirely on a separate card, but this solution has its issues too (the potential m2 chip would then then be entirely different than all others in the lineup, plus the gpu cores no longer being in the SOC itself would perform quite a bit differently where potentially a Mac Studio might perform faster gpu wise than the hypothetical PCI-based Mac Pro).
 
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I don't think it's fully safe to assume third party PCI graphics cards will be support on an Apple Silicon Mac Pro. The list of supported cards was tiny even on the Intel-based Macs, with driver support being notably lacking (especially non existent with nVidia gpus).

With Apple Silicon integrating the GPU into the actually SOC, it's still a huge question on how Apple plans to scale it up to a full desktop. They could just keep increasing the number of cores like you see on the Mac Studio, but allow even more cores. Or they could strip out the gpu cores and have them live entirely on a separate card, but this solution has its issues too (the potential m2 chip would then then be entirely different than all others in the lineup, plus the gpu cores no longer being in the SOC itself would perform quite a bit differently where potentially a Mac Studio might perform faster gpu wise than the hypothetical PCI-based Mac Pro).

It isn't safe to assume that ANY Pcie card will work with any Mac Pro. If you doubt it, go visit the Mac Pro forums.

This is why I am no longer using a Mac Pro - too many cards aren't getting driver updates.

Good news is that I can move my Pcie cards from my Mac Pro to my PC.
 
How long has it been since they teased an Apple silicon Mac Pro? I'm pretty sure there is drama behind the scenes, it should have been out a long time ago.
 
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