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At least this isn’t their most expensive Mac, that would be embarrassing!

On a serious note, any reason why they can’t release an M2 Ultra module for people with existing Mac Pros to upgrade to? Being modular and all that.

Just a thought.
That’s not how computers work.

You’d need to replace every component other than maybe the case.
 
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Oh. Well, if you’re spending that much to get that much speed and performance, I don’t see why you wouldn’t use SSD.
Although I like where your mind is going with this, it's also much more economical, considering the price of the Mac Pro, to utilize some of those very large HDD's that still have many years left in them. Internal Time Machine drives are great. And who cares how slow those go. Even using an automated CCC process to clone your drive completely. All that works in the background.

Although, yeah, for performance, I put two large SSD's in my old G5 PPC Mac Pro, using one as a Time Machine drive with a built in bootable Installer.
 
*laughs in Mac Pro 3,1 with 2 SATA HDDs & 2 SATA SDDs working fine*

Anyway, I've got a feeling that the issue is the drives being used might have slower RPMs than the system expects (ie it expects at least 5,400 at all times, which is impossible).
 


In a support document published today, Apple said certain SATA hard drives might unexpectedly disconnect from the 2023 Mac Pro after the computer wakes from sleep. Apple said it is "aware of this issue" and will fix it in a "future macOS update."

Mac-Pro-Feature-Red.jpg

While the Mac Pro is configured with SSD storage, it has SATA ports for connecting internal hard drives, and some can disconnect due to a bug.

"Certain models of internal SATA drives might unexpectedly disconnect from your computer after your Mac wakes from sleep," said Apple. "This can occur if your Mac automatically goes to sleep or if you manually put your Mac to sleep. If you see a message that your disk was not ejected properly, you can restart your Mac to reconnect to the drive."

As a temporary workaround, users can prevent their Mac Pro from automatically going to sleep by opening the System Settings app, clicking on Displays → Advanced…, and turning on "Prevent automatic sleeping when the display is off."

Released on Tuesday, the new Mac Pro features Apple's M2 Ultra chip. The desktop tower has the same design as the Intel-based model from 2019, but lacks graphics card support and user-upgradeable RAM due to Apple silicon's unified architecture. Customers who do not need PCIe expansion should consider the Mac Studio instead.

Article Link: New Mac Pro Has Hard Drive Issue, Apple Planning Fix in macOS Update
Sooo Apple charging double the Studio for expansion slots.
Try to expand internal storage. Disconnects.


hahahahahahaha
 
Wondering if the Studio had this problem when an external ssd is plugged in. :rolleyes:
 
I, too, am annoyed by the incessant "steering" towards the Studio on this site and others and the associated dismissive attitude towards the Pro. For all the criticism over the years about Apple forgetting about professional users, it seems that few understand the workflows the PCI slots enable.

Could it do better at $5999? Probably, but most of these are bought by a purchasing department on a company account, not by the average consumer, or even the typical power user with their own funds. Same chip as the Studio? Less RAM than the old Pro? Yes, but weren't the ASi evangelists so quick to tout the benefits of Unified Memory? Having the same chip is less of an issue seeing as it will still outperform x86 in most tasks.

IMO the PCI slots are actually a huge deal, since this enables Apple Silicon to finally get a foothold in the AV/live events/production world, where tuners, capture cards, audio cards, and more are critical. The expandable storage and options for expanded networking are going to give this thing a fighting shot to be a better replacement for the Xserve than anything since it's discontinuation. I'm sure IT departments with existing Pros will be relieved at now only having to support ASi. The Studio is a great machine for editors and certain pro workflows, but the Pro is a great option for industrial applications, which is why the overarching dismissive attitudes over it get me just a little annoyed.
 
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Hallelujah! At last!

"Unexpected Ejections" of SATA drives has been a problem for many Macs since Big Sur. There are many threads about this topic here and all over the web... even Apple's own support forums. While some SATA drives work just fine, others seem to unexpectedly eject even when sleep has nothing to do with it... such as when actively transferring files to/from them.

In general, take the same enclosure + cable to a Mac running macOS BEFORE Big Sur and it will likely work exactly as expected. This is not a brand issue (I have 2 enclosures from a well known brand: one is perfectly stable and the other unexpectedly ejects). The cheerleaders will try to redirect blame to anything & everything other than Apple but there are simply too many instances of this issue, involving too many different enclosures and cables for it to be "bad cable" or firmware or dying drive or <all other "but it's not Apple" excuses>.

The ultimate tell-tale is the posts where someone upgrades a Mac from pre-Big Sur to a newer version, discovers this problem and- because the use of the now problematic drive is important to them- opts to downgrade macOS to pre-Big Sur again. All of the "not Apple" variables like cable/firmware/etc remain the same. When they go to all that trouble, the drive is fine again. That seems to SCREAM where this problem lies.

Again, there are some hardware combinations that do NOT have this problem. It seems quite hit or miss. Many are quick to jump into any such threads saying they have no problems at all. But of course, their good fortune does NOTHING for those dealing with this issue.

Hopefully, this "new" problem with Mac Pro will involve Apple finally debugging this part of macOS and thus fixing not just this problem for Mac Pro but fully making the U in USB mean what it is supposed to mean again. I look forward to putting a trusty enclosure back to work with my Silicon Ultra. Hopefully, this issue moves Apple to fully fix this problem for ALL Macs.

I miss "just works" Apple.
 
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Oh. Well, if you’re spending that much to get that much speed and performance, I don’t see why you wouldn’t use SSD.
Because not everyone wants to pay the price of a used card for a larger capacity storage. Because hard drives are still 100% viable methods of data storage. It’s not that they are running their OS off a HDD, but that assets or information they use ARE stored on them.
When you can get ten 4TB 7200rpm HDD for the price of one top tier 4TB NVME drive…. It’s on sensible to use a HDD. And they are abundant.
 
The Mac Pro is the dumbest machine. Just buy a Mac Studio.

PCIe slots are nice and all, if you need a ProTools card or a Blackmagic capture card. But you can get external PCIe card enclosures with Thunderbolt.

And in the film and TV world, trust me, you don’t need BOTH of those cards installed… because the same person who MIXES the movie or TV show isn’t also capturing/editing it. Two different fields. I don’t need a ProTools card AND a capture card in the same machine.

The lack of GPU support means that cards like the ones I mentioned (or extra internal hard drives) is the only real use for the PCIe slots. (And internal third party drives clearly have a temporary problem, as illustrated by this MacRumors article.)

And speaking of storage… Don’t go for internal storage. Just get either a NAS with 10 gig Ethernet or a DAS with Thunderbolt.

The Mac Pro costs about $4000 more than the Mac Studio, which has the exact same specs. (And you should do anything I described above with a Mac Studio.)

Apple couldn’t figure out what the purpose of a modular Mac Pro was with their (excellent) chip architecture, so they just said: “Screw it, let’s throw a Mac Studio in our leftover Intel towers and call it a day.”

Just buy a Mac Studio, if you need that kind of power. It does the same job for $4,000 less.
This seems like a good enough place to butt in and ask this question: I totally get that the PCIe slots don't support GPU's, as in for video output, but is does that necessarily mean that you couldn't put a GPU in and use it for non-video applications like ML or even rendering (technically "video" but not realtime video output)?
 
So one of the very few Pro-exclusive features doesn't even work properly. And it took less than 48 hours from release for someone to find that problem instead of Apple figuring that out in the time leading up to the launch during all the testing they surely must have done...

Again and again I keep asking myself, does Apple even use their own products? Properly working standby is one of the actual Mac-exclusive features. On Windows standby has issues and amongst other things precisely this one with disconnecting drives. Instead of promising a hotfix customers are told that their brand new Mac has to wait for some future update that might or might not solve the problem. Even if they manage to add the fix to Ventura 13.5 that could still be over a month away. By that time the return window has expired and if the problem persists we're looking at 13.6 somewhere around September, or even MacOS Sonoma.

I want to see customers try to return the device when the problem still isn't resolved then. Because as @HobeSoundDarryl mentioned this isn't a new issue, it's been going on for years now and forums are full of complaints. I honestly doubt Apple can even fix this anytime soon or they would already have done it.

All the certifications about how modern devices need to draw this little power, carbon offsetting and whatnot... and then Apple tells customers not to use standby on a brand new device to avoid the issue.

does that necessarily mean that you couldn't put a GPU in and use it for non-video applications like ML or even rendering (technically "video" but not realtime video output)?
Doesn't work: You need a way to "talk" to the hardware, which is what drivers are for. Apple is removing all such graphics cards drivers and graphics cards manufacturers don't release any directly to customers. Even if they did, modern MacOS no longer loads these, they have to come bundled with MacOS to be allowed to run. The application can't directly address the GPU because the OS doesn't even see it in the first place and an application does not have such permissions to talk to the GPU directly, it needs to go through the OS to do it.

You could possibly disable all security functionality in MacOS and bundle a driver with your application so that just this particular app can talk to the GPU. But where do you get that driver from? Not like an app developer can suddenly write a driver like that. It would come from the GPU manufacturer, but they don't release drivers for MacOS, so you're back at the beginning.
 
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That's ok Apple. It's not like you've just taken over $7k of people's hard earned money, right... Oh yeah...
 
They had four years to come out with another Mac Pro, and the new one can’t do something as basic as making sure internal drives stay connected.

Can’t innovate, my ass!
That's because in all likely hood this release M2 is last few weeks choice rather than the M3 mid-year 2024. (Just a guess).
 
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True. But no idea when sleeping a computer became a thing, but I thought it was much later, like 90s...Hmm, I just dont remember and I was using SCSI drives in the late 90's too, haha.
I know the powebooks could sleep, and they came out early 90s.
 
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The chip was never designed to be modular and Apple has backed themselves into a corner.

Just having hundreds of GB of memory soldered to the chip means Apple is going to have some angry customers and expensive warranty repairs down the line.

All because SoC works so well in an iPhone they thought it would work all the way up to pro machines, which is nonsense.
maybe they should of had an bit bigger studio with one pci-e X16 slot (full speed) and the storage cards.
and sell storage upgrades like they do with the mac pro 2019 / 2023

or put an EXT pci-e port on it and sell an pci-e box with more slots that is not capped by the slow TB bus speeds.
 
That’s not how computers work.

You’d need to replace every component other than maybe the case.
The previous intel Mac pro had a socketed cpu and then expandability for GPU, RAM, storage and Apples expansion modules like the afterburner cards. They could absolutely have an afterburner style card with an M2 Ultra for the Mac pro, is that how computers work?
 
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