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Mac Pro Reportedly on 'Back Burner' and 'Largely Written Off' at Apple

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Apple's high-end Mac Pro desktop computer is currently "on the back burner," according to the latest word from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

Mac-Pro-Feature-Blue.jpg

In his Power On newsletter today, Gurman said he heard that Apple has "largely written off" the Mac Pro, with the sentiment inside the company being that the Mac Studio represents the present and future of Apple's pro desktop computing.

Apple is working on a high-end M5 Ultra chip, but Gurman said the company is currently "only" focused on a new Mac Studio with that chip, which leads him to believe that the Mac Pro "won't be updated in 2026 in a significant way."

It sounds like Gurman has not heard anything about a Mac Pro with an M5 Ultra chip being in the works, but he has not entirely ruled out the possibility.

In recent years, the Mac Pro has become redundant for many customers, as it is essentially a larger and more expensive Mac Studio with PCIe expansion slots. Apple last updated the Mac Pro with the M2 Ultra chip in June 2023, and Gurman's wording suggests that the future of the computer may be in jeopardy.

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Article Link: Mac Pro Reportedly on 'Back Burner' and 'Largely Written Off' at Apple
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/11/16/mac-pro-on-back-burner-largely-written-off/
I have a hard time believing that they wont update the MP with the next Ultra chip, if for no other reason than producing M2 Ultras at that point seems like it would cost more than just using the same M5 Ultras that’ll be in the studio
 
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It makes no sense for a “pro”, say scientific researcher, to waste dollars on that kind of hardware. Just go to the cloud. I’m literally running my stuff on AWS from MacBook Air because I don’t need to pay for the hardware in hand. I get movie studios and other use cases may have certain needs. I don’t personally have any experience in that space.
 
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I am admin at a 60-seat ProAudio facility. 12 years ago, we had cheese graters everywhere. Today we do everything with MacStudios or even MacMinis. The need for powerful PCI expansion has gone down dramatically. (Not needed anymore, or moved to Thunderbolt connectivity.)
We mostly use a decent hub to connect peripherals, but thats basically it.
 
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The Mac Pro has been made to be useless and redundant more times than I can count since around the G5 era. They tried to revive it with the trash can in 2013 but the same thing happened again. So they tried again in 2019 with the cheese grater design. Then Jony Ive left and now with Apple silicon its this big empty box overengineered for a job that doesnt exist anymore (cooling really hot components, extreme expandability, etc). The Mac Studio in many ways is a much more practical and sensible alternative. It’s time to let the days of the big tower Mac Pro go. The amount of people still using that has shrunk and continues to shrink after they switched over to the Mac Studio.
 
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EugW said:
Maybe they can sell a Mac Studio with external expansion box instead.
Click to expand...
A quick search showed me that there are such boxes out there that will let you connect conventional PCI cards to thunderbolt. Not sure what the performance is but it sounds like Apple doesn't need to make one because others do.
 
At the end of the day, computing has changed. There's no need to build a new Mac Pro if there's no market for it. Not a big deal. If the Mac Studio does what the Pro previously did, then that's where they should put the focus. It's really that simple.
 
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EugW said:
True but I was thinking an Apple branded one, with top tier bandwidth. I don’t expect it, but that’s essentially what a Mac Pro is now.
Click to expand...
there’s such a missed opportunity there for the studio to have been called the “Apple Seed” and a breakout box the “Apple Branch” with each PCIE slot a “leaf” :)
 
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Mazda 3s said:
Once the Mac Studio was released, I never really understood the point of the Mac Pro anyway.
Click to expand...
It's a kind of Mac Studio which you can stuff with fast directly-attached, fast, not easily yankable PCIe storage up to its gills.
 
seek3r said:
I have a hard time believing that they wont update the MP with the next Ultra chip, if for no other reason than producing M2 Ultras at that point seems like it would cost more than just using the same M5 Ultras that’ll be in the studio
Click to expand...
Maybe they have enough backstock that they don't have to continue producing it.
 
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The Mac pro is dead, not sure why people are still holding out hope. I mean back in the day, it was a professional level desktop computer with expansion cability to add ram, storage, GPU and other professional level expansion cards. Today in 2025, Macs are not expandable. The studio is the heir apparent to the mac pro
 
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