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

[glockenSquish]

I love mine!

Still use it professionally everyday for intensive music production, frequently involving hundreds of sample instruments and tracks — up to +400 once. Occasionally when orchestration is thick I get overloads but I freeze tracks and keep going. It’s whisper quiet and not at all noticeable in my acoustically treated, super quiet studio. Small and easily portable when I’ve needed to bring it on the road. Ample TB outs for my sample library RAID drives. I’ve been wanting to upgrade once the next gen Mac Pro hits, but this little thing has been a workhorse and has lasted surprisingly long and I’ll really miss it (and will repurpose it) when I move on.

 

[peryhypen]

Still use my 8 core d700 to run legacy hardware. It gets hot, but still running without problems. Looks a lot nicer than the Mac Studio and at idle runs quieter as well.

 

[JamesHolden]

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

My favorite Mac design of all has been the G4 Cube, probably because I loved my NeXTcube back in the day. Of course the NeXTcube was larger and actually expandable. From an aesthetic standpoint, though, I think the G4 Cube was a great design. The way it floated, encased in lucite, was very sexy.

 

[JamesHolden]

Why isn't the Mac Studio more controversial though? It's quite ugly, not very upgradable and even loud for a Mac.

I agree. I wish Apple had brought the Cube aesthetic back for the Mac Studio. I find the Studio rather lumpy and ugly. The proportions don't work. It's an unattractive box and quite lazy industrial design.

 

[LeeW]

Still got mine although I don't use it much anymore. Loved it to be honest. Very much a talking point for everyone that seen it.

 

[steve09090]

You're either lying or haven't seen a PC in decades. Beige machines haven't been a thing in like 20 years.

Jesus christ, some of you are insufferable.

Seriously dude.. it was just a comment about how boring other pc's can be. The point was that they tried to make it look nice. I think they succeeded. I didn’t make a comment about a specific brand, I’m just talking about a boring black box. It doesn’t mean they don’t perform well. The only thing I have seen to spruce up a PC is give it transparent sides and LED's.

Feel free to post a picture of a PC you think doesn’t look same same.

It's a work machine first and a fashion statement second.
I'd prefer the former if I needed to get a a job done. By a long shot. Seriously, who cares how good it looks if it fails prematurely and can't get the job done?

Apple? I think you’ll find the Trashcan Mac was a pretty decent work machine. Why not have both? And when did the Trashcan Mac Pro fail?

I get people can be super defensive of their preferred system. I don’t drive a Ferrari, but I can appreciate how nice they look and perform at the same time.

 

[NT1440]

I know people hate on these things, but I remember delivering quite a few at ESPN and never once heard complaints about performance.
Now obviously they have a render farm in one of the buildings (think it was DC-2) but all the editing bays and rooms had them chugging along with no complaints (unless they died which is where I came in).

It was more the stagnation of the form factor that seems to have convinced everyone here that they were terrible from day one, but that wasn’t the case here when they were current.

 

[steve09090]

You know full well that's exactly what he DID NOT mean. You're being just as insufferable, come on man. Be better than that.

I absolutely meant bog standard as the poster understood. I guess if I were to use another term, I would say standard generic black box. But hey, I’m glad some people can see past the commonly used term of beige as being "average and common and uninspired".

A definition I heard was. "Beige is accepted as a synonym for dull, run-of-the-mill or safe". I certainly don’t think there are actually beige coloured computers out there.

So instead of assuming you know what I meant, maybe you could ask instead of just calling people insufferable, because you failed to understand. Now that type of elitism is actually insufferable.

As I said, feel free to post a photo of a mass produced machine by a major company that isn’t beige.

 

[atomic.flip]

Still have mine mostly just runs my home automation and ip camera encoding / streaming. It was top of the line (once). Graphics cards were such a waste on it. Couldn't even use dual graphics cards unless you custom coded apps for them. 😔

 

[TechNutt]

Bought one cheap and upgraded it to 12 core this year, comparable to the base iMac Pro for music production for a fraction of the price. Love the design. Perfection.

As someone who wishes to get into music production, a machine of that design with current specs of today is PERFECT for my needs and personality. Now I’m deciding between a Mac Studio or MBP M2 but not loving the choices. I’m not certain what I’ll purchase yet. But I will say this, Apple definitely lost some design innovation with the departure of Jony. That aspect paired with “it just works” is why I heavily gravitate towards Apple products. I still like them; I just don’t love them like I used to 😕

 

[richmlow]

I love mine!

Still use it professionally everyday for intensive music production, frequently involving hundreds of sample instruments and tracks — up to +400 once. Occasionally when orchestration is thick I get overloads but I freeze tracks and keep going. It’s whisper quiet and not at all noticeable in my acoustically treated, super quiet studio. Small and easily portable when I’ve needed to bring it on the road. Ample TB outs for my sample library RAID drives. I’ve been wanting to upgrade once the next gen Mac Pro hits, but this little thing has been a workhorse and has lasted surprisingly long and I’ll really miss it (and will repurpose it) when I move on.

Yep, I love mine also!

It's been a reliable workhorse and is my main computer. It's even more reliable than my newer Macs (2018 13" Macbook Pro, 2018 Mac mini).

At the time, Apple took a big chance on its design....gutsy move. Although it didn't meet the needs of many people, I commend Apple for taking the risk. It's always easy to play "armchair quarterback" and criticize after the fact....hindsight is clearer than foresight.


richmlow

 

[mielie]

Always wanted one of these, by the time I could justify the expense the performance was not good enough and I always hoped Apple would update it. I do think it is a really innovative product and was definitely ahead of its time. Oddly the thermal limitations of this design probably lend itself quite nicely with the M1/2 series processors but Apple decided on going with a boring slab of aluminium in the Mac Studio. What a shame!!

 

[Candlelight]

We bought 10 of them. Soon found they were woefully under cooled. We currently have 4" server fans strapped to the top of them.

 

[jdb8167]

Always wanted one of these, by the time I could justify the expense the performance was not good enough and I always hoped Apple would update it. I do think it is a really innovative product and was definitely ahead of its time. Oddly the thermal limitations of this design probably lend itself quite nicely with the M1/2 series processors but Apple decided on going with a boring slab of aluminium in the Mac Studio. What a shame!!

Performance on my 6-core is still decent. The problem is that you can’t officially update to Ventura. GB 5 multi-core about 4900. About 1/2 my M2 MacBook Air but no throttling. Compute (D500s) is 22000 vs 30500 (M2 10-core GPU) metal 3 compute.

 

[CarAnalogy]

We all joked about it, but secretly we all felt the design was pretty cool 😎.

It came during a time that Apple was perceived as being out of touch with what its users wanted, and Schiller’s delivery did not help.

Today people accept the exact same thing in the form of the Mac Studio, but at least that has the excuse of being Apple Silicon as to why it’s not upgradeable.

It does kind of look cool, but it always had thermal problems and it’s not what people wanted, it was a perfect example of Apple trying to force people to accept a product instead of taking into account what they were asking for.

 

[Mity]

I still love the design. It may have overheated with the Intel chips but they should think about bringing it back now that we have Apple Silicon.

 

[anthogag]

Next time they make a trash can Mac it could be see-through.

 

[mBox]

Still running 8 of these for motion, graphics, and video.
All have been updated to 64GB.
Nothing fried, had Apple LCD/Thunderbolt displays die since.
I personally have a D700 and cut/finished a few full-length indie features on it.

Wonder if I can get one retrofitted with M1

 

[mBox]

There were actual people who bought that. Oh well.

Yes, actual real working experienced users have had these for years.
Anyone that claims to know better, stick with Alienware

 

[seek3r]

Still have mine mostly just runs my home automation and ip camera encoding / streaming. It was top of the line (once). Graphics cards were such a waste on it. Couldn't even use dual graphics cards unless you custom coded apps for them. 😔

FWIW it does seem like booted into windows AMD Crossfire works, but they arent the cards I would choose to game with even with crossfire

 

[seek3r]

It came during a time that Apple was perceived as being out of touch with what its users wanted, and Schiller’s delivery did not help.

Today people accept the exact same thing in the form of the Mac Studio, but at least that has the excuse of being Apple Silicon as to why it’s not upgradeable.

It does kind of look cool, but it always had thermal problems and it’s not what people wanted, it was a perfect example of Apple trying to force people to accept a product instead of taking into account what they were asking for.

I mean 1) the studio has its power allocated where people using it want it. Apple bet hard on the multi-GPU arch in 2013 and skimped on CPU, turned out to be a bad bet and they couldnt easily engineer their way out of the hole they created because their whole thermal design was built around the multi-gpu config and 2) people wanted an expandable mac pro, folks who still want that are waiting to see what apple introduces in that space as the MP 8,1, slotted in (pun intended ) above the studio

It also didnt help that on the higher end GPU side the D500s and D700s have a tendency to fry themselves

 

[plunger]

I bought a second hand one around 18 months ago which I'm very happy with. I think of it as the "Classic" Mac Studio.
Ironically, it's far more upgradeable than the new Mac Studio.

 

[california_kid]

Nine years later you're telling me this expensive trashcan I bought is really a computer?

 

[drlamb]

This is my favorite computer of all time (born in the mid 90s) and I'm not even a "mac guy."

I love it so much that I bought a factory-sealed unit this year and modded an m1 mac mini's logic board into it, shown here partially disassembled as I'm still working on the replacement IO panel that the IO extensions mount to and a video to document it all. I sold salvagable parts from the computer(s) used to recoup costs.

This mod:

• has ZERO external modifications other than the IO panel to reflect the mini's IO.
• uses an internal PSU capable of powering the Mini's SoC + peripherals @ full load (75W)
• Reuses the Mac Pro's original fan, wireless antennas, EMC filter (AC power inlet) and thermal core.
  • The mac mini's heatsink is mounted into the copper heatsink with a 1mm thermal pad between the top of the fins and the copper surface
  • The power supply is mounted into the copper heatsink with a 3mm thermal pad
  • Fan is wired using an in-line "PC" noctua 4-pin PWM fan controller wired into the Mini's 6-pin fan connector (the mac pro's fan didn't work directly wired to 4/6). PWM signals from the Mac Mini are relayed into the noctua controller with manual adjustment possible via a potentiometer.

I have plans to update this mod as newer SoCs and power supplies that'll fit get released (m2 mac mini when??) but for now I've been enjoying Asahi Linux on my m1 - 16GB - 512GB - 10GBe "trashcan."

Oh, and this wasn't the only Mac Pro I bought this year. In my quest for a pristine unit I took a gamble on an "A+ condition" listing on eBay that was anything but and I've turned that into an actual trashcan. It's nowhere near the most expensive trash can in the world for what I paid but it's got to be the most expensive in terms of R&D.

 

[SeaFox]

At least they were trying and didn’t produce a beige machine like the other mob do.

*Yawn* The 20th Century called. They want their joke back.