MP All Models So long, old friend.

[Lounge vibes 05]

💯

If you look at the entire arc of Apple’s product history, the Power Macs and Mac Pro’s are outliers rather than the norm.

Absolutely.
The MacPro is the computer that Steve Wozniak would love, and Steve Jobs likely found hideous, a necessary evil at the time.
Notice the MacPro was introduced in 2006, right around the time of Steve’s peak, and he handed it off to his marketing guy to introduce it. And then other than a 10 second slide at MacWorld 2008, the MP wasn’t even mentioned at another Apple Keynote until… 2013.
Steve gave 18 more keynotes after WWDC 2006 and didn’t even think to mention it but once.

 

[apparatchik]

This is pretty disgusting if you ask me, but perhaps not surprising. This company has never believed in making a desktop workstation accessible to many people. Shameful

The Mac Mini is a workstation in its own right and outperforms the outgoing Mac Pro.

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

Apple Silicon isn’t as capable as Intel. And now Intel has matched it for performance per watt. PCs run circles around MacBooks for battery life and have better performance to boot. Steve Jobs would never have abandoned Intel or the Mac Pro. But at least Apple has a $600 toy with 8GB RAM for professionals.

I like this person.

My new favourite comedian

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

Apple Silicon isn’t as capable as Intel. And now Intel has matched it for performance per watt. PCs run circles around MacBooks for battery life and have better performance to boot. Steve Jobs would never have abandoned Intel or the Mac Pro. But at least Apple has a $600 toy with 8GB RAM for professionals.

Having gone from a giant 14900k intel box with a ton of fans and a 1000 watt power supply (which was 90% of the time booted in to macOS) to a Mac Studio i can tell that in my experience intel is the joke

I was the first person to lament moving away from x86 and discrete gpu’s etc etc

I was proven wrong

Even all my games are fine in crossover

I hate being wrong as much as anyone but have to admit when I am

 

[avro707]

The Mac Mini is a workstation in its own right and outperforms the outgoing Mac Pro.

But would the Mac mini of 2023 do that?

Let’s compare them by years instead of something newly released.

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

But would the Mac mini of 2023 do that?

Let’s compare them by years instead of something newly released.

The 2023 Mac Pro is/was still the current one

So…

But yes. any m4 chip outperforms any same class m2 chip at almost anything

an m4 max chip even outperforms M2 Ultra in most multi core workflows

 

[avro707]

The 2023 Mac Pro is/was still the current one

So…

Yet at the time of introduction everyone was praising how fast the M2 Mac Pro was and showing the special benchmarketing to prove it. Anything that showed otherwise wasn’t a valid “professional” use case and was the domain of cashed up hobbyists.

What a fickle crowd.

At the time the 2023 was fast, we cannot argue with that, if the studio also went without updates it also would have been in the same situation. Can’t blame the computer, blame Apple.

Interesting Apple Sydney were trying to advertise their 2023 Mac Pro to me when they learned I had two high spec 2019 models. I declined and said it was too old and probably soon to be dropped. Sadly I was right even though many here reckoned I was mad.

The time must be ticking for Mac Studio to meet the same fate. A laptop does similar, is portable and sells far more.

 

[zephonic]

Truth is, even in 2023 the Mac Pro offered no performance advantage over the Mac Studio with the same processor.

That was the writing on the wall. It made the Mac Pro look clunky, cumbersome and redundant.

 

[JoeG4]

Yet at the time of introduction everyone was praising how fast the M2 Mac Pro was and showing the special benchmarketing to prove it. Anything that showed otherwise wasn’t a valid “professional” use case and was the domain of cashed up hobbyists.

A rather popular request was a "not quite as pro" mac pro. Looking at the mac studio on my desk, if they offered a unit that cost $500-1k more and offered extra (preferably 4) m.2 nvme slots for changing out storage, I would've happily bought it. Even better if it offered better audio connectivity and more USB ports.

Beyond that, I think it would've been cool if they figured out how to offer 2nd class "RAM" like the ability to use DDR4/5 sticks as a hardware swap cache or something.

It does feel like Apple's product managers put on the horse blinders and only seemed to care about people who professionally edit video while giving everyone else the middle finger. I'm still not sure why.

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

Yet at the time of introduction everyone was praising how fast the M2 Mac Pro was and showing the special benchmarketing to prove it. Anything that showed otherwise wasn’t a valid “professional” use case and was the domain of cashed up hobbyists.

What a fickle crowd.

At the time the 2023 was fast, we cannot argue with that, if the studio also went without updates it also would have been in the same situation. Can’t blame the computer, blame Apple.

Interesting Apple Sydney were trying to advertise their 2023 Mac Pro to me when they learned I had two high spec 2019 models. I declined and said it was too old and probably soon to be dropped. Sadly I was right even though many here reckoned I was mad.

The time must be ticking for Mac Studio to meet the same fate. A laptop does similar, is portable and sells far more.

I started typing a whole thing

But I’m sure you know the difference between “desktop” and “laptop” computers

And you have some axe or another to grind…,

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

Truth is, even in 2023 the Mac Pro offered no performance advantage over the Mac Studio with the same processor.

That was the writing on the wall. It made the Mac Pro look clunky, cumbersome and redundant.

Exactly

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

A rather popular request was a "not quite as pro" mac pro. Looking at the mac studio on my desk, if they offered a unit that cost $500-1k more and offered extra (preferably 4) m.2 nvme slots for changing out storage, I would've happily bought it. Even better if it offered better audio connectivity and more USB ports.

Beyond that, I think it would've been cool if they figured out how to offer 2nd class "RAM" like the ability to use DDR4/5 sticks as a hardware swap cache or something.

It does feel like Apple's product managers put on the horse blinders and only seemed to care about people who professionally edit video while giving everyone else the middle finger. I'm still not sure why.

I get what you are saying,

But also to what end?

Is there something your studio isn’t able to do for you?

usb hubs are cheap? Anyone that needs/uses audio has external interfaces anyway. Even if you are relying on old FireWire boxes the Mac Pro didn’t have that anyway


A couple m.2 slots would be nice. But thunderbolt is so fast now it doesn’t really matter. And if you want to swap them all the time I’ve found now it’s actually way easier to plug in and out then to open up a case and fiddle with the little screws in the slots

 

[mattspace]

Oh hey look at that, once again a thread about the Mac Pro flooded by people who don't own, use, or participate in the Mac Pro forum, but who have opinions about it.

 

[teh_hunterer]

Is there something your studio isn’t able to do for you?

usb hubs are cheap? Anyone that needs/uses audio has external interfaces anyway. Even if you are relying on old FireWire boxes the Mac Pro didn’t have that anyway


A couple m.2 slots would be nice. But thunderbolt is so fast now it doesn’t really matter. And if you want to swap them all the time I’ve found now it’s actually way easier to plug in and out then to open up a case and fiddle with the little screws in the slots

People are just really really sentimentally attached to the idea of a desktop tower. I do understand how it happened - for the longest time the desktop tower represented the thing that people in the know did to get a good computer, and anything else was a compromise.

It's only recently that things have gotten so powerful and efficient, mainly Apple silicon, that people who previously were only happy with desktop performance are finding a laptop now performs adequately while remaining cooler and quieter than any desktop they had ever did.

It seems to be the techiest people who are finding it hardest to adjust. I saw on the WAN show both Luke and Linus were at the point where they just use desktops purely because they "feel" more powerful and "feel" better. The penny has still only half dropped for them.

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

People are just really really sentimentally attached to the idea of a desktop tower. I do understand how it happened - for the longest time the desktop tower represented the thing that people in the know did to get a good computer, and anything else was a compromise.

It's only recently that things have gotten so powerful and efficient, mainly Apple silicon, that people who previously were only happy with desktop performance are finding a laptop now performs adequately while remaining cooler and quieter than any desktop they had ever did.

It seems to be the techiest people who are finding it hardest to adjust I saw on the WAN show both Luke and Linus were at the point where they just use desktops purely because they "feel" more powerful and "feel" better. The penny has still only half dropped for them.

Yeah I totally get that

I was certainly one of those people

I thought not being able to use a “real” gpu in macOS was the end of the world

Then I started playing the same games in my downtime in crossover on my studio (that I used to reboot in to windows to play on my previous “hackintosh” tower) and eventually forgot about it

 

[zephonic]

Oh hey look at that, once again a thread about the Mac Pro flooded by people who don't own, use, or participate in the Mac Pro forum, but who have opinions about it.

And the problem is what?

This thread is about saying goodbye to a machine we all once loved. Does not using my cMP anymore disqualify me from posting here?

 

[avro707]

Then I started playing the same games in my downtime in crossover on my studio

How does that manage with VR headsets? Let's say you wanted to run Flight Sim 2020 in VR mode?

Edit: Just checked on the Crossover website, not listed, so most likely doesn't work.

 

[mattspace]

And the problem is what?

This thread is about saying goodbye to a machine we all once loved. Does not using my cMP anymore disqualify me from posting here?

If your goal is to use remembrance to also say "but no one needs this any more (because I don't) and you should move on" etc, yeah, maybe it should.

Or, the thread should be in the news area, rather than the Mac Pro forum.

 

[zephonic]

If your goal is to use remembrance to also say "but no one needs this any more (because I don't) and you should move on" etc, yeah, maybe it should.

Or, the thread should be in the news area, rather than the Mac Pro forum.

Yeah, that’s not how the internet works.

This is the right forum for this thread and it is okay for people to give their opinions, even if you don’t agree with them.

I used my cMP for 10+ years and still have it sitting in the basement. I loved that machine and feel a little sad about Apple abandoning it, but such is life.

It is okay for me to opine that the last iteration of the Mac Pro was a lame duck, even if it is a valuable workhorse for you.

 

[mode11]

Windows 11 requires a debloat script to be remotely useable otherwise it’s just a hog on the system. The amount of bloatware is rather staggering and the background telemetry not exactly opaque. Co-pilot can also do one.

I've often heard that, and never really understood it - it seems that US users are getting 'special' treatment here. I'm in the UK, and I believe due to using International English, Windows 11 installs a lot less bloat (no Candy Crush etc.). Windows 11 Pro might also be better in this regard than the standard version. This is also a self-built PC (using a cheap grey-market key), so no manufacturer bloat.

I also skipped creating a Microsoft account during install using a simple workaround (that I Googled on my iPad at the time - I assumed there would be a way).

I did use an app called MSEdgeRedirect to launch a browser of my choice (Brave) instead of Edge, when returning system web searches etc. This only needed running once, a few years ago.

My CPU doesn't support Copilot+, so can't speak to that. I've generally turned off any default buttons and widgets on my Task Bar, login screen etc. anyway.

 

[mectojic]

Time to upgrade to a Neo!

 

[teh_hunterer]

If your goal is to use remembrance to also say "but no one needs this any more (because I don't) and you should move on" etc, yeah, maybe it should.

I don't think anyone here, including me, is dancing on its grave. I didn't come in here to say haha good riddance - everything I've said has been in response to substantive points people are making about the necessity for the desktop tower form factor.

 

[mode11]

How upgradeable have they ever been? Even a self built desktop computer, by the time you're ready to upgrade, the CPU you want is on a different platform so you need a new motherboard. And then you need new RAM. Sure you can throw in a new GPU but aren't you going to need a new CPU to utilise it fully?

I'm not saying it's completely pointless, but it's not what everyone makes it out to be either.

But I do agree that Apple probably should be more forthcoming when it comes to stuff they no longer support.

Component prices tend to fall dramatically over time (current AI related craziness excepted). If your machine has top of the line everything when new, there's probably limited upgrade potential. But if you start mid-range and upgrade occasionally as parts get cheap, selling off old ones, you can avoid the premium pricing of the latest shiny. Ditto with storage - you might start with a modest SSD, then pack out your M.2 slots later. Plus, expansion cards can provide additional interfaces, without needing to wait until it's time for a whole new machine.

 

[mattspace]

Yeah, that’s not how the internet works.

There's plenty of forums that restrict posting to subforums to certain sections of their membership.

This is the right forum for this thread and it is okay for people to give their opinions, even if you don’t agree with them.

Yup, and my opinion is that people who don't own, or use Mac Pros should not be posting opinions on whether Apple should have cancelled the product, and whether it other products can do everything it did, or whether a Mac Studio or Mac Mini is "good enough" to cover it.

I used my cMP for 10+ years and still have it sitting in the basement. I loved that machine and feel a little sad about Apple abandoning it, but such is life.

It is okay for me to opine that the last iteration of the Mac Pro was a lame duck, even if it is a valuable workhorse for you.

Most people here wouldn't disagree with you. Where I feel it crosses a line, is when the conversation then becomes "A Mac Studio can do everything better, you don't need pci slots, you don't need GPUs, get with the future" etc.

Kinda like going to a memorial service for someone who died, and spending all your time talking about how the person's surviving (former) partner is better off with their new partner.

 

[mode11]

my Mac Studio plays most games better than my previous giant 14900k tower with big amd gpu

Your Mac can't play most games, full stop. And your AMD GPU might have a big heatsink, but if it's outperformed by a Studio, it doesn't sound like a recent model.