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The struggle is real against the Mac Pro Wheels. At least the shipping container will be FREE.

Does anyone know how many Intel-Based Mac Pros I would have to order to put them to use?

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I wonder how much longer we’ll have to wait for this? I also wonder what the selling point will be over the Mac Studio?
More than likely, PCIe internal expansion. Of all the folks using Macs that Apple could hope to provide a system for, those that still need PCIe slots may be all that’s left. Those needing huge amounts of RAM will just keep the not-very-old machine they’ve been using.
 
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.
It's mostly about the heat and thermal throttling concerns. If your workload does not cause thermal throttling on a smaller machine, you may not need the Mac Pro. It used to also be about maximum RAM, but this is really weird question with the Apple Silicon's integrated RAM: WTF will it have??
 
Only difference is that those machines are not upgradable post purchase. The MP affords the ability to upgrade GPU, SSD, RAM, etc and the pool of enthusiasts are decreasing over the years. Most business’ purchase according to budget and requirements and are usually done with it. Cannot take the risk to upgrade a hardware component later on to potentially mess up valuable content created or downtime and most people here don’t understand that.
Well, the Mac Pro used to offer that. We don't know what the Apple Silicon version will offer, when RAM and GPU are integrated into Apple Silicon SoCs, and the storage not-user-upgradeable...
 
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Avid is notorious for being way behind on compatibility. I dumped Pro Tools many years ago as there are numerous options that are far better for music production from companies that don't hold user's hostage with forced upgrades and charge for every little thing like Avid does.
I'm still pissed at that company for the M-Audio disaster. I have a couple thousand dollars of "pro-level", Avid designed audio interfaces they put under the M-Audio brand which they abandoned driver development on and then sold the company to that sucko Brand Zombie corporation inMusic. SO SO SO PISSED.
 
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It makes me a little sad that in this day and age of computing, I no longer care about this as much as I used to.
It makes me sad that I no longer care as much, too... but it might not be for the same reason.

I started as a tech enthusiast. Today I am a tech hater. Things changed for me because they failed to improve beyond "confusing pile of broken stuff". There was a brief golden age between Mac OS Snow Leopard and... uh... before 2013's new releases, but Apple burned it all down to feed the Wall Street pathology.

Computers are still a massive pile of broken garbage, and most people are conditioned to think this is not a problem. Apple is only less bad than the competition. I hate computers, and I hate the tech industry. Unfortunately, every skill I have is based around computers.
 
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The Intel Mac Pro? No. The first M1 in the MBA was faster than the Mac Pro at some things and the “things faster than the last Intel Mac Pro” list has increased with each chip Apple’s put out. There might be some edge cases on specific Intel related code bases that are more performant, but not very many.
This is only in terms of short-time-span benchmarks. The MacBook Air can NEVER EVER compete in terms of length of time the processors can run without thermal throttling.
 
This is only in terms of short-time-span benchmarks. The MacBook Air can NEVER EVER compete in terms of length of time the processors can run without thermal throttling.
Right, that’s what I said. :) The MacBook Air was faster at some things than a Mac Pro (web browsing being one of them as it doesn’t usually require hours to load a web page!) and slower at a lot of other things. BUT each processor and form factor Apple has released is more performant than the last. So, to answer the OP’s question
is a fully spec'd out mac pro faster than a fully spec'd out mac ultra?
more clearly, I wouldn’t expect that there’s too much at this point that an Intel Mac Pro could do that a Mac Studio couldn’t do better.
 
Well, the Mac Pro used to offer that. We don't know what the Apple Silicon version will offer, when RAM and GPU are integrated into Apple Silicon SoCs, and the storage not-user-upgradeable...
Only way we will know for sure is when it’s introduced.
 
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The post-purchase upgrades for the Mac Pro are also cheap compared to Apple's options on the SoC Macs. So the only thing expensive about the Mac Pro is the initial purchase. After that it becomes cheaper to own than the other Macs, especially after it pays for itself doing work. Every time an upgrade is needed for an SoC Mac a whole new Mac needs to be purchased. So instead of a few hundred dollars for a memory upgrade you have to spend another $5k on a new Mac and wait weeks for it to arrive.

And throw the previous $5000 Mac that’s now worth absolutely nothing to anyone in a landfill, right?

Why do people talk like this? Upgrading to a new $5K Mac doesn’t cost $5K. It costs $1K because the existing Mac is still worth $4K to someone else so you sell it to them. (Give or take. Please don’t challenge these example numbers and miss the point.)

And the new Mac that cost $1K not $5K comes with a whole lot of other things the previous one didn’t have.

I don’t get what the big deal is about RAM. It makes a machine go faster? So does better CPU, GPU, bus, even WiFi version, and other things. It’s a package. What is so special about upgrading ONLY ram and none of the other things in a Mac that make this whole “I need to upgrade my RAM a year later” a thing?

(Not to diss your entire post. You’ve made some other good points about the differences. But I just had to call out these two points, and in particular ask about the second one - it’s a genuine question: why RAM and nothing else?)
 
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And throw the previous $5000 Mac that’s now worth absolutely nothing to anyone in a landfill, right?

Why do people talk like this? Upgrading to a new $5K Mac doesn’t cost $5K. It costs $1K because the existing Mac is still worth $4K to someone else so you sell it to them. (Give or take. Please don’t challenge these example numbers and miss the point.)

And the new Mac that cost $1K not $5K comes with a whole lot of other things the previous one didn’t have.

I don’t get what the big deal is about RAM. It makes a machine go faster? So does better CPU, GPU, bus, even WiFi version, and other things. It’s a package. What is so special about upgrading ONLY ram and none of the other things in a Mac that make this whole “I need to upgrade my RAM a year later” a thing?

(Not to diss your entire post. You’ve made some other good points about the differences. But I just had to call out these two points, and in particular ask about the second one - it’s a genuine question: why RAM and nothing else?)

I think that's a stretch assuming the old Mac lost only 20% of its value after the new one is available. It's an unknown what the old one could be sold for, if the person was willing to sell it. Lots of people will give an old Mac away instead of trying to sell it, such as to a relative or friend. The only thing truly known is what the new one costs.

There are lots of reasons to purchase a 2019 Mac Pro over any of the current Apple Silicon Macs besides RAM. Graphics and storage options are also superior. For example, I have 5 additional SSDs installed in my Mac Pro. It would be a pain having a rats nest of external storage with a Studio or mini. It can also be put into a RAID setup for incredible speed.

Graphics performance of the top AMD GPUs is about twice that of M1 Ultra. You also don't take much of a hit with CPU performance. Multicore performance is about the same between the 28 core Xeon and M1 Ultra. So for many workloads, the Mac Pro will be faster due to much more RAM, faster storage, and faster graphics.
 
I think that's a stretch assuming the old Mac lost only 20% of its value after the new one is available. It's an unknown what the old one could be sold for, if the person was willing to sell it. Lots of people will give an old Mac away instead of trying to sell it, such as to a relative or friend. The only thing truly known is what the new one costs.

I have seen plenty of old Macs shuffled off to friends & family, but not a lot of $6K machines; 2019 Mac Pro is a "sell" item for most

There are lots of reasons to purchase a 2019 Mac Pro over any of the current Apple Silicon Macs besides RAM. Graphics and storage options are also superior. For example, I have 5 additional SSDs installed in my Mac Pro. It would be a pain having a rats nest of external storage with a Studio or mini. It can also be put into a RAID setup for incredible speed.

Why a rats nest...? Why not an external RAID box with HDDs or SSDs...? Why not an external TB enclosure with a multi-M.2 RAID card...?

External drives does not have to mean a bunch of individual drives with a rats nest of wires...

Graphics performance of the top AMD GPUs is about twice that of M1 Ultra. You also don't take much of a hit with CPU performance. Multicore performance is about the same between the 28 core Xeon and M1 Ultra. So for many workloads, the Mac Pro will be faster due to much more RAM, faster storage, and faster graphics.

ASi Mac Pro would not be using a M1 Ultra SoC; it will most likely use a M2 Ultra SoC, or maybe even a M3 Ultra SoC; and if it does "hold out" for a M3 Ultra SoC, then a M3 Extreme SoC would most likely also be available...
 
Apple Silicon has quite a bit to go before being on par overall with AMD W6800x or W6900x; and that bridge will widen even more if AMD 7000 series cards ever make an appearance as MPX options.

The only reason Apple Silicon is even competitive at all with the 2019 Mac Pro in regards to video editing is the fact that they have dedicated silicon for video encode/decode. Take those away and Apple Silicon would get trounced easily.

3D Modelling and Texturing is good on Apple Silicon because of the ability to address tons of RAM by the GPU. Rendering is a moot point since by today's standards rendering even on a 28 core Mac Pro is slow.
 
Honestly I do not get the appeal to the wheels. Seems like a very very narrow use case to me.
I have a number of towers that are under desks, or behind other equipment, etc. Wheels let me easily move a computer when the need arises.

BTW, you can get a wheeled dolly type cpu stand for $20 or so.

The Mac Studio changes that though. It's on my desktop... although I rather it wasn't.
 
The struggle is real against the Mac Pro Wheels. At least the shipping container will be FREE.

Does anyone know how many Intel-Based Mac Pros I would have to order to put them to use?

View attachment 2144535

Well, you ordered 99 sets of wheels, so one would assume you need 99 Mac Pros to mount them on; ordering wheels as a BTO option with a 2019 Mac Pro will save you $300 over ordering stand-alone wheels; but sure, throw away $30K... ;^p
 
It makes me sad that I no longer care as much, too... but it might not be for the same reason.

I started as a tech enthusiast. Today I am a tech hater. Things changed for me because they failed to improve beyond "confusing pile of broken stuff". There was a brief golden age between Mac OS Snow Leopard and... uh... before 2013's new releases, but Apple burned it all down to feed the Wall Street pathology.

Computers are still a massive pile of broken garbage, and most people are conditioned to think this is not a problem. Apple is only less bad than the competition. I hate computers, and I hate the tech industry. Unfortunately, every skill I have is based around computers.
So have you given up on using SABnzbd and going on the Usenet?
 
So have you given up on using SABnzbd and going on the Usenet?
I’ve given up on passionately believing in tech, but I keep using the crap I’m handed, like the rest of us do, because there’s little choice.
 
I think that's a stretch assuming the old Mac lost only 20% of its value after the new one is available. It's an unknown what the old one could be sold for, if the person was willing to sell it. Lots of people will give an old Mac away instead of trying to sell it, such as to a relative or friend. The only thing truly known is what the new one costs.

There are lots of reasons to purchase a 2019 Mac Pro over any of the current Apple Silicon Macs besides RAM. Graphics and storage options are also superior. For example, I have 5 additional SSDs installed in my Mac Pro. It would be a pain having a rats nest of external storage with a Studio or mini. It can also be put into a RAID setup for incredible speed.

Graphics performance of the top AMD GPUs is about twice that of M1 Ultra. You also don't take much of a hit with CPU performance. Multicore performance is about the same between the 28 core Xeon and M1 Ultra. So for many workloads, the Mac Pro will be faster due to much more RAM, faster storage, and faster graphics.
I agree with all your points about the Mac Pro. I have a need that requires much of that — especially the drives. If Apple releases a new ASi Mac Pro with PCIe for SSDs and whatever else but the RAM and GPU aren’t upgradeable because those are all in the SoC then it can still have everything else you said. So, all good points.

But on the other point… akin to what Boil said, who gives away a $5K+ Mac and then complains they can’t afford another $5K one to replace it? Seems a stretch to me. Still at any price if someone chooses to give away their old Mac instead of sell it then they’re not upgrading it for themselves are they?

So comparing apples to apples, Apple has been removing the ability to upgrade RAM in an “old” machine. That doesn’t mean you can’t upgrade it for a LOT less than the price of a new one. As I said, sell the old one and buy a new one. That’s the upgrade. Your assertion that it’s $5K every time doesn’t add up.
 
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