The 'Trashcan' Mac Pro: Remembering One of Apple's Most Controversial Designs Nine Years Later

[Klaasj]

The Mac Pro 2013 always has a 'special place in my heart'. May sound strange, but as an Apple Mac user since 1993 (Performa 475) I still think that the 2013 Power Mac was a fantastic design.
Just bought one a few weeks ago, just for having it in my collection 😜
Currently I work on a Mac Studio Max which also has that special design that I love.
Wonder what the future designs of Apple bring ...

 

[J.J. Sefton]

Still have mine and I use it every day. 🫡

 

[chama98]

I used to like mine but with the constant GPUs crashing and 3 machines later I had enough. I would have kept it but it was too expensive to upgrade

 

[switz]

For my 2013 MacPro, there was at ordering time the choice of three dual video card sets labeled as AMD FirePro D300, D500 and D700 series. Easily swapped out by lifting the shell and removing one screw and putting the better series in. Same with the choice of four CPUs. Several choices of memory with a max of 64GB. There was a choice of several SSDs with the largest at 1TB. There were four choices that increased the number of processors but the clock speed went down as the processor count increased. Bottom choice was four and I had a six core version. There was an 8 and a 12 core model

I added a OWC 128GB memory card and their 2TB SSD. When Monterey came out, I had to reinstall the OEM 1TB SSD so Apple could flash the unit so it could never be upgraded again. Then I could put the 2TB SSD back in and installed Monterey.

There were two ethernet ports, 4 USB ports, six thunderbolt 2 ports, audio out socket and an HDMI 1.4 port.

So there really was an upgrade path if one had the money as contrasted to the Mac Studio where everything is soldered in place after being built.

 

[1madman1]

Could the video cards be upgraded?

Internally, no unless you're replacing with boards out of another higher end 2013. Unofficially via eGPU I expect would work, though given how much trouble my Blackmagic eGPU is even on an officially supported Mac I haven't bothered even trying.

 

[1madman1]

The T.A.M. Twentieth Anniversary Mac (Ive)
- first desktop PC to have LCD screen,
- first to have a CD Player (I think?),
- first to have a trackpad vs a mouse and it extended,
- first to include hI-End speakers and subwoofer from the PC manufacturer (Apple learned a whole lot here from Bose).
Extremely expensive and those that bought it had it delivered by limousine and personal tech install and setup in the USA. Nice premium customer touch.

Not even close on the CD Player - the Commodore Amiga CD came out in '91 I think? And I expect there were others with integrated CD-ROMs before that. My household had both a Macintosh LC520 and IBM PS/1 with CD drives as of 1993. I remember Macintosh Quadras in the school library with CD-ROMs which must've been in that era as well.

I recall several generic beige PC brands in this period shipped with 3 piece (subwoofer and 2 satellites) Altec Lancing branded speakers in as well - Patriot Computers (of Hotwheels / Barbie PC fame) for example. I know IBM PCs frequently shipped with Infinity branded, and Compaq with Polk Audio branded speakers, though I'm not sure if they had bass modules yet.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Not even close on the CD Player - the Commodore Amiga CD came out in '91 I think? And I expect there were others with integrated CD-ROMs before that. My household had both a Macintosh LC520 and IBM PS/1 with CD drives as of 1993. I remember Macintosh Quadras in the school library with CD-ROMs which must've been in that era as well.

I recall several generic beige PC brands in this period shipped with 3 piece (subwoofer and 2 satellites) Altec Lancing branded speakers in as well - Patriot Computers (of Hotwheels / Barbie PC fame) for example. I know IBM PCs frequently shipped with Infinity branded, and Compaq with Polk Audio branded speakers, though I'm not sure if they had bass modules yet.

Thank you for the insight, including the other posts above. I stand sorely corrected.

Ok so the TAM was the precursor to the flat screen iMac then

 

[gevalt]

the trash can goes with the cube as being 2 of apple's most magnificent looking yet miserable failures.

 

[unrigestered]

Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder

as far as i'm concerned, i'd rather put some of the wedged MBAs, some iMacs and some other Macs above both the cube and the trashcan as some of Apple's “best looking“ designs

 

[CosmoCopus]

Is it worth buying a used one today?

 

[emmab2006]

@CosmoCopus i'd say so if you can pick one up and do some upgrades to it , i got mine for £450, and upgraded it for around £100

 

[scottrngr]

This was as much of a dead end as the PowerMac G4 Cube and the iMac with the nodding head.

Those are the two Macs I wish I would've kept. I'm keeping my trash can even if I don't use it.

 

[switz]

I gave the grandkids the 2013 Mac Pro so it is still in the family. The G4 Cube with softball sized and shaped speakers is out on display

 

[apostolosdt]

For my 2013 MacPro, there was at ordering time the choice of three dual video card sets labeled as AMD FirePro D300, D500 and D700 series. Easily swapped out by lifting the shell and removing one screw and putting the better series in. Same with the choice of four CPUs. Several choices of memory with a max of 64GB. There was a choice of several SSDs with the largest at 1TB. There were four choices that increased the number of processors but the clock speed went down as the processor count increased. Bottom choice was four and I had a six core version. There was an 8 and a 12 core model

I added a OWC 128GB memory card and their 2TB SSD. When Monterey came out, I had to reinstall the OEM 1TB SSD so Apple could flash the unit so it could never be upgraded again. Then I could put the 2TB SSD back in and installed Monterey.

There were two ethernet ports, 4 USB ports, six thunderbolt 2 ports, audio out socket and an HDMI 1.4 port.

So there really was an upgrade path if one had the money as contrasted to the Mac Studio where everything is soldered in place after being built.

Thanks a lot for this positive and constructive comment among so many pessimistic ones!

 

[apostolosdt]

I use mine as a day-to-day Mac; no video editing but lots of image processing. My only complaint is that the video cards can both run with only very few apps.

 

[switz]

BTW. OWC has been selling the various boards I mentioned above for the 2013 Mac Pro so it still lives and there are upgrades available for yet awhile. Not everyone needs to recalculate the space ship's reentry in real time or does does dozens of threads movie work. For an average Joe or Jill, it will still do the job with aplomb.

 

[JamesHolden]

I agree about the look.

I didn't wrote, that the design of these machines were bad etc., but that they simply didn't have any ideas, how to go forward with these. That's why these were a dead end (or one-trick pony if that means something).

I don't see why they couldn't have stuck with the Cube design. Ultimately what's the difference between the Cube and Mac Mini? I wish they had taken inspiration from the Cube for the Mac Studio instead of just giving us a chunky Mac Mini.

I think what really sunk the Cube was the fact that you could not put anything on top of it. It was easy to block the cooling vents. There were temperature sensor issues that caused the machine to randomly put itself to sleep. There were also problems with the lucite developing micro cracks. And, of course, it was expensive. I think all of the issues could have been easily fixed. I wish they hadn't abandoned the design. It remains the best looking desktop Mac in my opinion.

 

[purplerainpurplerain]

Is it worth buying a used one today?

Only for novelty. CPU is like three times less performance per core than an M1 and GPU is slower than latest Intel integrated graphics in most cases. It can’t run a 4K monitor unless you use dual DP cables which most monitors don’t support.

 

[Scubaman]

 

[Scubaman]

Very true; for practical purposes the Mac Studio basically is a resurrection of the old concept.

By pure coincidence, I was just tonight putting one of these old-school Mac Pros in service as a low-end shared workstation, and was marveling at just how nice the thing is physically. Leaving aside any performance or upgradability issues, it's an absolute marvel of industrial design--how it looks, how it feels, how it fits together, even the subtle animation of the LED-backlit labeling on the back when you power it on. And hey, it runs macOS 12 and has a ton of RAM, so it's still pretty capable.

Not that the Mac Studio's design has anything wrong with it in, but if it had been something descended from this form factor, it would have been pretty awesome.

I’m running Monterey on my 2010 Mac Pro Cheese Grater just fine with OpenCore! Unfortunately it seems Ventura might be a step too far for OpenCore…

 

[jdb8167]

Only for novelty. CPU is like three times less performance per core than an M1 and GPU is slower than latest Intel integrated graphics in most cases. It can’t run a 4K monitor unless you use dual DP cables which most monitors don’t support.

It can but only at 30 Hz.

 

[conmee]

...GPU is slower than latest Intel integrated graphics in most cases. It can’t run a 4K monitor unless you use dual DP cables which most monitors don’t support.

The HDMI port is limited to 4K@30Hz, but a single Mini DisplayPort (TB) to DisplayPort cable will run 4K@60Hz, no dual DP cable necessary.

Regarding the D700 GPU's performance, I think they are still capable for modest workloads and certainly as a daily driver (p.s. I get 119fps at 4K in Doom 3, yes, an 18yo game on a 10yo computer with 12yo GPU tech, I know lol). I ran Unigine Heaven 4.0 (OpenGL/1600x900 8xAA, Ultra Quality, Extreme Tessellation) on all my Intel Macs over the years since 2012 just to get a ballpark idea of year over year improvements. My MacBook Pro 2019 (Vega 20) posts a score of 1024/40.7FPS, my Mac Pro 2013 (FirePro D700) posts a score of 668/26.5FPS, and my MacBook Pro 2015 (R9 M370X) posts a score of 343/13.6FPS - this places the Mac Pro's D700 about 15% faster in this benchmark than a 2017 MBP Radeon Pro 560 (and depending on benchmarks, some of the numbers I've seen for Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics put it right in the Pro 560 neighborhood plus or minus 5%, which I think says more about the advances in integrated graphics than it does about the performance of a 10yo workstation class GPU).

Many people still use the Mac Pro 6,1 as a daily driver, and it can still be a productive computer depending on workflow. But if you don't already have a newer primary computer, then money is probably better spent on newer tech. I bought my Mac Pro to add to my collection, and as part novelty item (it looks great on my desk even when my MacBook Pro is running the show), but I was surprised to find that it would fit the bill as my daily driver with few compromises (granted my work doesn't tax the system to begin with).

Long live the Trash Can Pro!

 

[cmichaelb]

In other words: The best Pro device Apple had to offer at that time had the same ability as any run-of-the-mill desktop PC? Even worse, unless you have that adapter you can't switch out the SSD (I still have that original Sintech adapter but it isn't readily and cheaply available anymore) and the whooping SIX ports were always limited in terms of what the graphics cards from 2013 could do (in a desktop PC at least I can throw in any regular or low profile card and get 4k 120Hz easily) and barely any peripherals were ever released for TB2.


Only with the same processors that Apple sold. They were standard Intel CPUs. So you can buy the 12 core E5-2697 v2 on Ebay and it will work just fine, but you can never upgrade beyond that old Ivy Bridge generation.


They could have offered at least a single graphics card upgrade module in one of the years after to enable use of all standard 4k screens at 60Hz (or better 120Hz at least), and even a slightly reduced clockspeed gpu from 2015, 2016 or 2017 would have outperformed the old chips easily. It's not just about the raw speeds, you can make use of more VRAM without impact to thermals, instead of those measily 3GiB per card a WX 5100 would have offered 8GiB on a single card, and it would probably have been possible to take a higher end model with even more VRAM and adapt the clocks to suit the Mac.

The iMac Pro had those horrible and very hot running Vegas, and the Vega 64 came with 16GiB of RAM in 2017. So it is perfectly doable to have such power hungry cards in smaller form factors.

Apple must have certainly given the trashPro some headroom for upgrade modules (which I really think is the case since the fan stays quiet most of the time even under more intense loads, so it's not like the fan was already running at max speed all the time). They just chose not to bother. Just buy the new Pro.


No. Apple never bothered with any upgrades.


And how are you supposed to use them in the Pro from 2013? That is entirely incompatible.

Thank you!

 

[ponzicoinbro]

Why does the title say trashcan? We called it an ashtray. Specifically it looked like an airport and hotel lounge ashtray.

 

[Martyimac]

Why does the title say trashcan? We called it an ashtray. Specifically it looked like an airport and hotel lounge ashtray.

It's been called the trashcan since almost the day it was released. Your calling it the ashtray is the first reference I have seen calling it that. Just FYI.