MP All Models The end of Mac Pro

[Mac3Duser]

Hate to break it to you but the Next Cube was neither the first or last computer to let you add cards or storage, and the cards it used were a completely different form factor to the PCIe cards that people want today and ISTR that the storage was a brick-sized Magneto-Optical drive which was about as unlike a SSD as you could get. As for the Trashcan: the only upgradeable thing about that was the RAM - it had a single, proprietary SSD card and - just like the Studio - you were expected to use external Thunderbolt devices for all expansion.

If by "adapt" you mean make something a different size with different cooling requirements and taking radically different-sized components and then wonder why it's now a totally different shape - have fun.

I think we just talk about design. A beautiful design.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

Sharp X68000

That is a beautiful design. Would love one. I'm actually surprised nobody has hacked a Studio into a 6,1 case.

 

[SDAVE]

MacPro is dead but hackintosh is the New Mac Pro )

Next years macOS kills the Hackintosh haha

 

[theluggage]

I think we just talk about design. A beautiful design.

...totally subjective. For a tool like a computer, I think form-follows-function is "beautiful". The original G5 Tower/Mac Pro was beautiful and functional, but it needed to be that size and shape because of the components it had to house.

The works of an Apple Silicon Mac fits on a logic board the size of your hand. The SSD, RAM and (lack of) PCIe bus are part of the design of the processor - not the case. The space needed for ports is tiny compared to the honking great D-connectors on the NeXT. If it did have PCIe then PCIe cards are long and thin so a NeXT-style cube case wouldn't make any sense. If Apple did add M.2 slots they'd maybe need to add 10mm to the height of the Studio, not make it a cube. Turning it into a cylinder like the trashcan would just waste space when you don't have 3 logic boards arranged in a triangle.

I think the Mac Studio would be a beautiful (minimalist) design if it didn't have those ugly ports on the front. Would look even better in space grey. On the other hand, having those ugly ports on the front is jolly useful & I didn't buy a Mac Studio to look at.

 

[theluggage]

Out of interest:

 

[srminton]

It seems that Apple is mostly interested in creating devices designed for shopping, social media navel-gazing, and lifestyle-oriented computation. This means that I will eventually simply airgap my main computer (a brute force Pro Tools machine). I've already experienced this path a couple times over the last 15 years, but I've finally learned the lesson. Have fun.

https://c4sif.org/2012/01/cory-doctorow-the-coming-war-on-general-computation/

https://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html

There's no doubt that for a fairly small number of people, a Mac Studio does not meet their needs. Whether Apple should continue to play in that market is a business decision, I would argue they should, but it's a business decision; and then of course those customers may choose to shop elsewhere.

But computers are used by lots of people for lots of different kinds of work, and for many of those users, a Mac Studio is a great choice for their work. That doesn't mean it's right for everyone. The idea that the Mac Studio is designed for Facebook is laughable. If you were tasked with designing a lifestyle computer for people to do shopping and social media, and you came back with the Mac Studio, you would be fired.

 

[mattspace]

If you were tasked with designing a lifestyle computer for people to do shopping and social media, and you came back with the Mac Studio, you would be fired.

If they continue buy it to do those things, regardless that it's an expensive, sealed, ticking obsolescence clock, you'd be given managerial control of a whole division.

It ain't supposed to be good, it's suposed to be bought.

 

[Schismz]

Hate to break it to you but the Next Cube was neither the first or last computer to let you add cards or storage, and the cards it used were a completely different form factor to the PCIe cards that people want today and ISTR that the storage was a brick-sized Magneto-Optical drive which was about as unlike a SSD as you could get. As for the Trashcan: the only upgradeable thing about that was the RAM - it had a single, proprietary SSD card and - just like the Studio - you were expected to use external Thunderbolt devices for all expansion.

If by "adapt" you mean make something a different size with different cooling requirements and taking radically different-sized components and then wonder why it's now a totally different shape - have fun.

OMFG NooOoOOZ! The NeXTdimension was the greatest graphics card that ever existed. The only reason NeXT had to drop everything and do a reverse takeover of Apple instead, was due to their slight delay in releasing the NeXT Sphere! It was floaty and would've only cost $125K 1980s dollars - that totally would've saved them.

OTOH it's entertaining seeing Apple's everythingOS APIs are still full of NX_ and NS ... it's roughly 40 years later at this point. And... every OS variant Apple is running across all their devices, is essentially NeXTSTEP but with 999 layers of crap wedged on top of it, because it's better that way!

The Mac Pro, I guess it's dead now? But it goes to sleep for a decade and then the Cheesegrater tends to wake back up. Who knows, It's been a good 6 year long run with 7,1 - still use it, have 768GB RAM in it ... in single core it's ancient tech, it eats power, but the 28 core variant is hitting 22K multicore on Geekbench 6, vs. roughly 27K for a Mac Studio M4 Max. Not bad for 6 year old tech, which was an old CPU at the time Apple released it. On the third hand, the price of a loaded Mac Studio is significantly cheaper. I'm unclear on the purpose of the current "Mac Pro" since they've kept the nice Heavy Metal sculpture case, but... it's just a PCIe slotbox which obviously is not helping Nvidia cards do anything useful.

Also, I'm watching people on this site and in reviews posting how exciting Thunderbolt 5 SSD RAID0 is! OMG. But... 6 year old tech using PCIe 3.0 and RAID0 Sonnet cards is going a whole lot faster. The bleeding-edge blazing fast speed enabled by RAID0 over TB5 is kinda ... meh, seriously? A lot of steps sideways but extremely underwhelming. I guess this is the only remaining upside of AS Mac Pro since it can't use graphics cards. 😐

IDK, Been on PowerMac, Mac Pro since the dawn of time ... but at this point daily driver is a Mac Studio, actual workstation is an HP, and Mac Pro gets repurposed a lot and runs a boatload of software which will never be updated for Apple Silicon. It's a beautiful artifact, and I guess within another 6 months or so if the current RAM prices keep increasing, even with DDR4 RAM it'll be worth about as much as I paid for it brand new in Dec 2019 🤷‍♂️

Strange days

 

[SDAVE]