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

[chucker23n1]

The folks I was talking about specifically do QA work, they do a lot of large scale local testing and write a lot of automated tests

There are plenty of other folks in the company that use MPs too though, lots of design etc folks, some devs, etc.

I imagine the question was more: what do they do where the MP adds something the other Macs don’t offer.

 

[buckwheet]

Yeah, it's really a shame they decided to make the Mac Pro so absurdly expensive. They could still have made a beautiful machine without making absolutely every detail so insanely over-designed and basically "luxurious", in the sense of it being a kind of Mercedes E Class tower. It just wasn't necessary, and it shovelled cost into features that really just didn't matter to customers. It's beautiful and impressive as a machine, but outrageously impractical, for the most part. A customizable tower in a Mac design language is entirely possible without breaking the bank. Such a waste.

 

[basehead617]

Can anyone on this thread give some examples of modern day PCIe cards use cases? What specific cards are used by the pros in what fields? And why would you need them in the same box as your main CPU?

There are still pro audio post production workflows using Pro Tools HDX PCIe cards. Some features of the software are *still* HDX only, like PEC/DIR monitoring.. Avid still sells the cards and they are still used widely.

Using them in Thunderbolt enclosures is common, but the best performances is still in Mac Pro slots.

 

[basehead617]

I’m loathe to move from a Pro to a Studio because as someone who works on sound all day, I love that the Pro makes zero sound - the fan design is amazing.

I’ve heard Studios at full tilt and they are not quiet enough for my taste.

 

[jonnysods]

Apple are more into disposable computing, you buy a computer with a certain spec, that's what you get for life. There is no ability to add ram or change a processor with the MP, so you may as well get a MS. Also they don't do desktop/laptop variations of their processors, so its not like you can get tons more out of a processor that is identical to the others across their lineup.

I had a 2009 MP, it was good, but even then the DVD player sounded like a Cessna trying to take off in my office.

 

[keksikuningas]

Apple are more into disposable computing, you buy a computer with a certain spec, that's what you get for life. There is no ability to add ram or change a processor with the MP, so you may as well get a MS. Also they don't do desktop/laptop variations of their processors, so its not like you can get tons more out of a processor that is identical to the others across their lineup.

I had a 2009 MP, it was good, but even then the DVD player sounded like a Cessna trying to take off in my office.

i mean throttling on max chips is a thing. I remember there being tests between 14in and 16in M3 Max macbooks and latter was scoring higher in benchmarks due to 14in thermal throttling during longer tests.

I know mine is always warm even when not doing intensive work. Never tried gaming seriously on it but it for sure screamed when compiling a giant codebase. I am sure a Studio would fare much better due to a bigger fan and heatsink.

 

[jonnysods]

i mean throttling on max chips is a thing. I remember there being tests between 14in and 16in M3 Max macbooks and latter was scoring higher in benchmarks due to 14in thermal throttling during longer tests.

I know mine is always warm even when not doing intensive work. Never tried gaming seriously on it but it for sure screamed when compiling a giant codebase. I am sure a Studio would fare much better due to a bigger fan and heatsink.

Do you remember when some guy on YouTube put an i9 MBP in a freezer when rendering to see how it would perrform? Oh, the memories...

 

[chucker23n1]

i mean throttling on max chips is a thing. I remember there being tests between 14in and 16in M3 Max macbooks and latter was scoring higher in benchmarks due to 14in thermal throttling during longer tests.

I hope Geekbench 7 gives us some kind of "thermal drop-off" number after a ten-minute test.

For short tests, the difference is around 0.1% on the M3 Max. It's more interesting if you take the M4 Max on the MBP vs. on the Mac Studio; there, we get a whole 3.6%/2.0% ST/MT more, despite the clock purportedly being the same. So it seems to almost immediately throttle a little

 

[quadra605]

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.

Would love to know how your hub works, I have such a mix of HDD's, SSD's & NVMe in my Mac Pro's, I'm just not looking forward to the jungle of external boxes & cables needed to accommodate them all by switching to the Studio--along with having to replace my two Digi 003 racks since firewire is no more!

 

[tonmischa]

I'm just not looking forward to the jungle of external boxes & cables needed

I admit that I sugarcoated my description a little: We dont have one hub that has all the peripherals built in. There are Thunderbolt hubs, HDMI splitters, USB Extenders/Extensions and small Ethernet switches. We have a 19" rack, we hide all the cables in it, and we do decent cable management.

 

[quadra605]

Apple are more into disposable computing, you buy a computer with a certain spec, that's what you get for life. There is no ability to add ram or change a processor with the MP, so you may as well get a MS. Also they don't do desktop/laptop variations of their processors, so its not like you can get tons more out of a processor that is identical to the others across their lineup.

I had a 2009 MP, it was good, but even then the DVD player sounded like a Cessna trying to take off in my office.

In a way, they've come full circle to the 1984 Mac concept of a self-contained, sealed appliance-like computer with no user-serviceable parts and no expansion slots. I worked in VFX in the late 1980s we built PC's from scratch for motion-control, etc., but messing around with those early Macs was always more problematic. I remember being fascinated seeing all the engraved names on the inside of the case the first time I took one apart.

 

[Frixo Cool]

I might even agree to abandon the Mac Pro tower, even though they are the only Macs I've used for over two decades and I think they are fantastic, regardless of the price, but only if Apple puts slots for normal NVMe storage in the Mac Studio. That would finally end the discrimination against Mac users on this issue and we could buy storage at normal market prices.

This now has no justification and shows only greed, there is no technical justification for such an approach, ultimately it shows disrespect and patronizing of one's own customers.