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What's Happening With the Mac Pro?
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I'm one of those people waiting for a new Mac Pro. I have the M2 Ultra now and while it's still fine, my M4 MacBook Air and M4 Max Mac Studio can render audio from my particular mastering DAW faster than the Mac Pro so based on that, I'd be ready to upgrade to a new Mac Pro if they make one. Time is money.
I have 4 RME PCIe sound cards and two OWC PCIe SSDs as part of my audio mastering setup. Yes, I could get a couple Thunderbolt PCIe chassises from Sonnet for all that stuff but aside from being a bit messy, I feel like it's an invitation for performance loss running all that through a few Thunderbolt cables vs. directly in the machine.
For me, stability and absolutely zero audio dropouts is paramount.
Here's to hoping for an M5 Mac Pro before summer. Otherwise, it's a Mac Studio and a mess of other peripherals to get back to what I have now.
I have 4 RME PCIe sound cards and two OWC PCIe SSDs as part of my audio mastering setup. Yes, I could get a couple Thunderbolt PCIe chassises from Sonnet for all that stuff but aside from being a bit messy, I feel like it's an invitation for performance loss running all that through a few Thunderbolt cables vs. directly in the machine.
For me, stability and absolutely zero audio dropouts is paramount.
Here's to hoping for an M5 Mac Pro before summer. Otherwise, it's a Mac Studio and a mess of other peripherals to get back to what I have now.
Not only that, but the Studios should be able to stack together like that WITHOUT that crude stand. And should even come with a way that stacking them also CONNECTS them for a plug and play way to connect them to each other.Not only that, the cluster functionality of Thunderbolt 5 seals the deal. https://appleinsider.com/articles/2...-boost-from-new-rdma-support-on-thunderbolt-5
I do no think too may folks will care about the demise of the overpriced Mac Pro.
I appreciate you digging that up. However, I'm perplexed by that report, as are many others in this thread:
It's difficult to tell if the numbers represent total sales or revenue, and, of course, that chart changes every quarter. Even more perplexing is that CIRP's data varies widely even within the same year: (both charts are from 2023)
Don't forget Airtags!
Apple has a habit of over-ordering for niche products, and then making consumers wait years to get a new version. It's annoying is what it is, because it implies that anything that isn't a blockbuster hit is almost guaranteed to languish and be replaced, rather than iterated on and become great.
They might end up upgrading only this one partially for compute tasks.Apple's rack mount MacPro with PCI slots is still a good choice for music-creation/commercial/industrial/defense-aerospace applications.
SSD cards, networking cards, port cards, audio I/O cards, etc.
Do we have a source for this? I thought Apple operated primarily by a just in time manufacturing model, allowing for lean inventory. In fact, I believe Cook implemented this long ago as COO.
Apple still needs to place a minimum number of orders with their suppliers to justify setting up a production line and then continue placing a minimum number of orders to keep that production line operating.
I can't argue with that. I have a 2010 Mac Pro for fooling around (Linux/Mohave/Windows). All four drive bays are full and I have an NVME in a PCI slot. Another PCI slot has a USB 3 card. It has the DVD drive as well of course.
My server is a 2014 Mac mini with two internal drives and an external drive for media. The Linux box has three drives and room for two more without using a PCI slot which I could do. Even the stereo cabinet mini has an external drive. I know Apple is convinced everything should be on their servers for "a low monthly fee," but that is so not going to happen.
If you look at the Mini's competition in the mini-PC category most of them have slots for two NVME cards. Apple doesn't.
I haven't sampled the PCIe market in awhile, but this would be interesting for me:
Signal processing cards. Ditto with FPGA cards. High clock rate A/D and D/A cards (assuming the shielding is excellent).
That may be applicable to the Mac Pro. But I have a hard time believing that’s a constraint for HomePods or AirTags.
I don’t think it’s true. Apple prides itself on its supply chain efficiency. They delay releasing new versions of products because of the cost of developing new ones, and the cost efficiency that comes with using older components. Their profit margins are higher on older models than on just updated models. And Apple tends not to lower prices even as the cost to manufacture goes down. (With some exceptions like older iPhones and MacBook Airs) Keeping the supply chain lean is part of how Apple maximizes profits.
My New Years wish would be for Apple to re-introduce the Mac Pro using an Intel cpu, as in the i-series, not a server cpu, and you choice of AMD or Nvidia gpu, keep the current case with all the Pci slots and the 12 RAM slots.
Actually, I would be just really happy if they would release AMD drivers for the 2019 Mac Pro so I could move beyond the AMD 6900
Actually, I would be just really happy if they would release AMD drivers for the 2019 Mac Pro so I could move beyond the AMD 6900
Lots of things: SDI cards, SMPTE-2110 dual 100Gb Ethernet cards, 100Gb/200Gb/400Gb, audio interfaces, NVMe RAID cards, among other things.
Thunderbolt 5 is no where near fast enough to support even a single 100Gb/s ethernet card, let alone multiple needed for SMPTE-2110 deployment.
Business users do not upgrade components mid-cycle. They do add cards for uses other than RAM (like 100Gb/s Ethernet, SDI, etc.), most of those vendors already have macOS drivers for their cards.