This is certainly more like a prototype than a mass market product. The tech is still in development and we are still a few years away from the scifi ideal of lightweight, all-day glasses. This is more like laptops in the 90’s and early 2000’s where they were possible and useful for some purposes but expensive and not really practical or priced for a general market. It may seem early to launch such a product but Apple needs to get a first version out there so that they can get experience building this kind of thing and finding out what people want to use it for.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Three Products We Might See at WWDC 2023
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
And have a battery that only lasts two hours to top it off.
TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️
Suspended
This AR/VR headset starting to seem like a rip off or a complete scam. 😑🤥
And just like that, fanny packs were cool again.
By the day the usefulness of this device appears to be vaporising away.
I don't get what they're hoping to achieve with it anymore?
Remember when Mac Pros were affordable?
also, pretty sure macOS 14 will not be called "Ventura" again. Editors on holiday?
g\
That's why the rumors can't be true. If they were, I'm sure Apple would realize the best move is to discontinue the Mac Pro and just update the Studio. The idea that they can't make a Mac Pro more powerful than a Mac Studio so they will discontinue the Studio and put the same thing in a mostly empty old cheesegrater case is simply absurd.
The smaller tower design for a AS Mac Pro could have multiple processor choices, no longer that cheese grater (expensive machining), versus Mac Studio looking like a larger Mac Mini with more ports. Originally I suggested that Apple would put the SoC on a separate removable board with some kind of slot to make the model have a much larger configuration variance to build from. Studio kinda limits you from maybe having even a second one installed.
The dumb rumors do not say anything about a smaller tower. If we're going off the dumb rumors, it's basically a Mac Studio motherboard inside the previous cheesegrater case alongside a lot of air. As I said, they are DUMB rumors.
Right. If that’s the way that the AS Mac Pro would be, Apple just needs to save face and cancel it. The backlash they receive from the cancellation would be far milder than the financial hit of putting that machine out there only for it to flop.
For some time the AS Mac Pro was supposed to have some customization or expandability even if the SoC/SSD/RAM is soldered. Hense the processor cards allowing swap, as well as storage customization that could be installed. The big old towers were never that useful, just Apple's take on a pretty art workstation.
The Mac Studio is the most exciting Mac for decades. A high-performance desktop that could match a high-end PC, at a similar cost, and without a built-in display.
It’s like if I took the latest Intel/AMD CPU, the latest Nvidia GPU, and built a custom PC. It would cost maybe $3-4k and offer a level of performance that we just didn’t have on the Mac. The Studio finally gave us an answer to that.
The Mac Pro was always a weird machine. It had enterprise and workstation-class components, and so it targeted a market where machines cost double (or more) than what I described above. Many people who need a high-performance Mac would still struggle to justify that kind of purchase.
I’d rather see the Mac Pro disappear and Apple focus on the Studio. If you need more computational power than a Studio can deliver, you’ll probably be better-served by a cluster or cloud service than by a single super-beefy desktop.
It’s like if I took the latest Intel/AMD CPU, the latest Nvidia GPU, and built a custom PC. It would cost maybe $3-4k and offer a level of performance that we just didn’t have on the Mac. The Studio finally gave us an answer to that.
The Mac Pro was always a weird machine. It had enterprise and workstation-class components, and so it targeted a market where machines cost double (or more) than what I described above. Many people who need a high-performance Mac would still struggle to justify that kind of purchase.
I’d rather see the Mac Pro disappear and Apple focus on the Studio. If you need more computational power than a Studio can deliver, you’ll probably be better-served by a cluster or cloud service than by a single super-beefy desktop.
ONLY “IF” Apple skips a year and continues to work on MacOS Ventura. But the industry makes money with each year’s “New” OS and upgrades, so I highly doubt it.
Apple has worked in the retirement of hardware to the OS, so “if” they extend another year of an OS, it means another year of working hardware, meaning loosing Tim’s revenue, so we have to start again with working out new bugs etc. in the “new” macOS (whatever) in June..
Let Apple make their money on new hardware, give us a working and stable OS. I do not think customers care as much for newer emojis or eye candy etc. anymore, but a working OS. “yes” macOS Ventura works…but the little bugs are irritating and kills the great hardware that is coming out…
Windows finally got Window 10 and it looks like Windows 11 “working”, let get macOS to “just work” before moving on..
I sounds more like two trains trying to go down the same tracks. You can argue both ways as why each might happen and what happens to the other. But as everyone know the Mac Studio while functional is a marvel, the design doesn't really permit much design variance compared to a tower, it's like a Big Mac mini. Hopeful one drops so a business/creative types can know which will win out.
Last edited:
While this would be super cool, what percentage of Apple's customer's would benefit from such a feature? Most of Apple's customers don't need all of the processing power they already have. Maintaining a (rather complex) feature/technology like Xgrid for a very small percentage of their users doesn't seem worth it to me.
Q1 was nearly $8B in Mac sales, so they most definitely are making money. Apple sold over 26M Macs in 2022. While nowhere near iPhone volume, I'd hardly call 26M "low volume".
I agree that the product line doesn't need so many machines. It feels like the Mini, Studio, and Pro could be merged into some sort of modular product. At it's most basic, it's a Mini. Maxed out, it's a Pro. That leaves two desktop options, the all-in-one iMac and a modular desktop Mac. I do think Apple's product line has gotten too bloated over the years. Tim should seek inspiration/clarity in Steve's old product matrix from shortly after Steve returned to Apple.
The Mac Pro is overdue. Apple has passed their own deadline for a complete transition. So they better either announce an actual Apple Silicon Mac Pro, or announce an actual death of the product (replaced by a souped up Mac Studio, for example). The worst thing they could do is not saying anything leaving developers and many pro customers wondering.
I don’t buy the Mac pro for the specific reason we are always left wondering. For workstation needs I got a pc instead as the roadmap is transparent.
Can't see how user upgradeable RAM or GPU in the Pro can't fail to be a thing. Otherwise you just have a MacStudio in an oversized case.