Mac Pro Turns 20 Today, Five Months After Apple Killed It

[theluggage]

The one use case that require massive compute is genai and there we are still talking about the need for something like a 4xultra for anything approaching what you get from frontier model providers.

Nevertheless, Mac Studios and Minis have found a niche in local AI where the Apple Silicon unified RAM architecture - with the same RAM being shared by the CPU, GPU and NPU actually has an advantage over PCIe systems that separate system memory and VRAM. Meanwhile, NVIDIA and AMD are both making AI workstations that are more like the Mac Studio/Mini than a conventional tower.

NVIDIA DGX Spark: AI Supercomputer on Your Desk

Run autonomous AI agents from your desktop.

www.nvidia.com

Mac Studio has to be the most boring looking product they have produced. I mean seriously, the 2013 mac pro with AS components would have been quite sick

Have to disagree there.

Form should follow function. In the case of the 2013 Mini Apple had a thermal design consisting of three heat sources on vertical PCBs arranged around a roughly triangular central "chimney" heatsink, which justified the cylindrical shape.

Apple Silicon has a single primary heat source (and probably doesn't generate as much heat) so there's no good reason to make it circular - which would just add cost, complication (with things like port placement) and probably enlarge the footprint. Cuboid may be boring but it's easy to stack and mount, and its low eough to sit in the "dead space" under the display screen.

...and added to that, the 2013 thermal design was a disaster which didn't work too well to start with and tied the design to a particular chipset and helped make it a one-and-done product. One wonders whether it was "form-follows-function" or "cool form justifies dodgy function decisions".

Maybe they could find a less boring design for the Studio - the 'classic Mac Mini' footprint was initially determined by the need to hold an optical drive - but please don't copy the trashcan. I'd rather they looked at real issues like easily cleanable filters and more easily user-replaceable SSDs...

 

[vantelimus]

With RAM prices, $60,000 with 512GB or $120,000 with 1TB. Haha probably not far off.

It won't be that bad. But I'm bracing myself for sticker shock. On the refurb units, it costs $8,840 to go from 96GB to 512GB. So, I'm guesstimating $10k will be the additional price to go from 96GB to 512GB. And the base price will probably increase to boot. It's gonna feel bad.

 

[AgentPotato]

Still very sad they left the high-end workstation space. For the good of the platform's health there should be a diversity of offerings across most of the needs that people and companies have for computers.

 

[JungleNYC]

I still have my 2008 MacPro tower and it still runs great. It was my main machine until 2022, believe it or not.

Best computer ever. Hands down.

And IMHO I think it's a mistake for Apple to abandon it. The ability to have multiple internal HDs, tons of IO ports, and owner-upgraded RAM etc, is still very desirable.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Problem is that Apple mismanaged the Mac Pro. There was a lot of room in the market for it, but Apple didn't give it enough love and attention.

The 2019 model especially was so close to perfect in so many ways. I guess it was always too PC-like for their tastes. That model was such a tease because after so many years of messing around with it, it seemed they finally understood.

And then they did what they did to it, and it was just...gone...

 

[O.N.Y.X]

Very powerful Mac. Mac Studio will definitely become more powerful with future versions. Cannot imagine how much more expensive it will become.

It is way more powerful already. My Mini M2 Pro essentially retired the fully upgraded 12-core Mac Pro. That M2 is so much faster in single core processing, it’s crazy.

 

[HiVolt]

The Cheesegraters were the best workstation Macs. We had many of them in a printing shop over the years. Easy to upgrade, easy to fix. Never touched the Trashcan MP, and not the 2019 because it was insanely expensive, and the 2022 because it just never made any sense.

 

[HiVolt]

The 2019 model especially was so close to perfect in so many ways. I guess it was always too PC-like for their tastes. That model was such a tease because after so many years of messing around with it, it seemed they finally understood.

And then they did what they did to it, and it was just...gone...

The Apple Silicon MP could have been modular, like using the size of the chassis to add extra Apple Silicon CPU/GPU modules, and having the ability to upgrade to newer generation modules.

The way they designed it was completely stupid with just pci-e slots that could accept a limited number of compatible cards.

 

[Mike_Trivisonno]

I liked my Trashcan Mac: so quiet and unobtrusive.

I like my current Mac Pro (2019) but in can be very loud at times. I also do not enjoy having to unplug every single cable to get to the inside. The old case design where the side panel just popped off was much better.

 

[vantelimus]

Nevertheless, Mac Studios and Minis have found a niche in local AI where the Apple Silicon unified RAM architecture - with the same RAM being shared by the CPU, GPU and NPU actually has an advantage over PCIe systems that separate system memory and VRAM. Meanwhile, NVIDIA and AMD are both making AI workstations that are more like the Mac Studio/Mini than a conventional tower.

NVIDIA DGX Spark: AI Supercomputer on Your Desk

Run autonomous AI agents from your desktop.

www.nvidia.com

Have to disagree there.

Form should follow function. In the case of the 2013 Mini Apple had a thermal design consisting of three heat sources on vertical PCBs arranged around a roughly triangular central "chimney" heatsink, which justified the cylindrical shape.

Apple Silicon has a single primary heat source (and probably doesn't generate as much heat) so there's no good reason to make it circular - which would just add cost, complication (with things like port placement) and probably enlarge the footprint. Cuboid may be boring but it's easy to stack and mount, and its low eough to sit in the "dead space" under the display screen.

...and added to that, the 2013 thermal design was a disaster which didn't work too well to start with and tied the design to a particular chipset and helped make it a one-and-done product. One wonders whether it was "form-follows-function" or "cool form justifies dodgy function decisions".

Maybe they could find a less boring design for the Studio - the 'classic Mac Mini' footprint was initially determined by the need to hold an optical drive - but please don't copy the trashcan. I'd rather they looked at real issues like easily cleanable filters and more easily user-replaceable SSDs...

The caveats with the DGX Spark are the following:

• memory size: only 128GB vs. up to 512GB on Mac. That is, that Mac will run bigger models
• memory bandwidth: one-third that of an M3-Ultra. The Mac will be faster if you are streaming weights from memory constantly. Those fast NVIDIA GPUs don't give an advantage when they are sitting waiting for weights.
• I/O: 4xUSB-C (10Gb/s) vs. 6xTB5 (80Gb/s) on Mac.
• NVIDIA's version of Linux vs. Mac OS.

The high-level comparison of the two machines is this: An M3 Ultra is a high-end general-purpose desktop and wins on model capacity and, depending on what you are doing, speed. A DGX Spark wins on price and it gives you a first-class AI research/development environment (CUDA compatibility, NVIDIA AI software, etc.). You have to look at specs and your computing requirements to figure which is best for you.

Still, that <$5k price makes them quite attractive. I may wind up with one just for the development environment and CUDA compatibility.

 

[mlayer]

I may turn on my iMacPro1,1 this weekend and pour one out in honor/remembrance. I'll have to pull it out of storage first.

 

[theluggage]

The caveats with the DGX Spark are the following:

Sure - but rather than get into "which one would win in a fight" my point was really that NVIDIA are producing systems that have more in common with Apple Silicon Max/Ultra and the Mac Studio than they do with traditional x86/PCIe towers.

(I think one difference is that NVIDIA fuse a CPU die with a GPU die rather than two identical SOC dies - but we'll see what happens with the next Mx Ultra chip...)

 

[CarAnalogy]

The Apple Silicon MP could have been modular, like using the size of the chassis to add extra Apple Silicon CPU/GPU modules, and having the ability to upgrade to newer generation modules.

The way they designed it was completely stupid with just pci-e slots that could accept a limited number of compatible cards.

Yep. Especially after the 2019 model, that really seemed like they were overtly trying to kill it.

I don’t believe that Apple didn’t realize exactly what they were doing. It was literally the trash can Mac all over again, except this time it had TOO MUCH cooling.

They can’t possibly have missed that irony.

 

[skitidetdu]

My 2008 Mac Pro is still up and running but consumes power like a nuclear power plant