Where Does Mac Pro Go Next After M4 Ultra?

[Neil J. Squillante]

Apple has four desktop computer lines. With Thunderbolt 5, does it need the Mac Pro? Apple could sell a Thunderbolt 5 expansion enclosure that looks like the Mac Studio for adding storage and whatever else people add to Mac Pros.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Why do people act like graphics cards are the ONLY thing one can use PCIe slots for? They're not.

I expect this sort of rhetoric from an angry MacRumors poster that never actually used their other PCIe slots for anything else and, therefore, didn't understand why anyone else would either. But, from the writing staff? Really? Have we all just become THAT consumer-ized here?

It's not just about graphics cards. The thing still needs slots. And no, video card expansion is not coming back. Get over it.

Serious question, can you give me some examples besides SSDs? Audio cards I guess?

Genuinely don't know and, yeah, not the market for it. But I am curious.

 

[Naraxus]

I’d like to see an M4 stable. One that doesn’t crash if you throw some work at it.

What are you doing so that the M4 chip crashes? I have an M4-MBP that I repeatedly throw heavy work at it and it keeps on going no problem.

 

[sigmasirrus]

I don't know!

The only Mac Pro I ever saw in actual use was a recording booth for a full orchestra that my ex played in. It had x4 PCIe cards with 8 analog inputs per card, and they would record all 32 channels at every performance, then mix. Is there anything else than can do that?

Honestly that’s a good use case.

 

[ddtmm]

Two thirds of the price is in the over-built case.

 

[Spunk Bubble]

It's mostly just a Mac Studio with PCIe slots. (Which can be good for storage and media production still)

No upgradable CPU nor RAM. This way Apple is forcing you to buy higher RAM models, because you will not be able to upgrade along the way. I don't like this at all.

 

[ZipoBibrok5x10^8]

Nice! This was 12 years ago or so and audio/video isn't my field. I had no idea analog audio bandwidth was so low, comparatively-speaking.

How about latency, though, with USB?

USB isn't great... RME makes some stuff that's "fine" over USB, but I much prefer the super low latency and reliability of the RME MADI and Focusrite Dante PCIe cards.

 

[ddtmm]

I don't know!

The only Mac Pro I ever saw in actual use was a recording booth for a full orchestra that my ex played in. It had x4 PCIe cards with 8 analog inputs per card, and they would record all 32 channels at every performance, then mix. Is there anything else than can do that?

A stock MacBook Air can record 32 channels of audio without hitting 10-20% CPU. If the cards are Avid HDX then they're perhaps using a lof of the DSP on the cards, in which case there is even less need for the CPU capabilities of the Mac Pro. Over spec'd.

 

[letsGoOn2]

Technical/necessity arguments aside, does anyone else think it's weird that the picture for this story has a little rubbish can in front of the Mac Pros? 🤪

 

[WarmWinterHat]

A stock MacBook Air can record 32 channels of audio without hitting 10-20% CPU. If the cards are Avid HDX then they're perhaps using a lof of the DSP on the cards, in which case there is even less need for the CPU capabilities of the Mac Pro. Over spec'd.

I was thinking more about the availability of PCIe slots, rather than CPU capabilities.

 

[kingtj1971]

I was a Mac Pro guy for two decades. Apple made the Mac Mini better than it. Now, it seems like an afterthought for at least the last decade, but especially since the Mac Studio. There is no purpose for it other than legacy, at least insofar as Apple’s current offerings.

Same, but the target audience for a Mac Pro changed/evolved too.

I'm really pretty firmly in the "power user" category, who always buys high-spec machines, whether to run Windows or MacOS on. I work in I.T. and have several hobby interests from 3D printing and design to working with music and digital recording on occasion. The original Mac Pro towers were right up my alley as machines I could spend the big $s on up front, but count on them to serve me well for many years before I felt like I needed to upgrade them.

Today's Mac Pro is far more niche. Nobody can really cost-justify one without some specific use-case, such as high-end recording needs where they're going to fill the card slots with PCIe audio recording interfaces. Some potential use-cases probably aren't even a reality right now, just because nobody bothered to design the expansion cards needed for them? (EG. I know I've seen older Mac Pros used to run giant video display walls made of 12 or so display screens. You can't really pull that off without a machine that lets you drop multiple video cards in it, just to have all the video ports to plug them into.)

 

[Unregistered 4U]

I don't know!

The only Mac Pro I ever saw in actual use was a recording booth for a full orchestra that my ex played in. It had x4 PCIe cards with 8 analog inputs per card, and they would record all 32 channels at every performance, then mix. Is there anything else than can do that?

While there was a strong case for extensive PCIe expansion with the Intel-based Mac Pro in 2019, because it supported MPX modules and third-party graphics cards, that is no longer the case since the transition to Apple silicon.

You may not have been aware, but those were most certainly third-party graphic cards OR MPX cards as the article says there’s no other strong case for PCIe expansion.

That means this page

PCIe cards you can install in your Mac Pro (2023) - Apple Support

Learn about some of the PCIe cards you can install in your Mac Pro.

support.apple.com

You can install many different PCIe cards in your Mac Pro, such as fibre channel cards, fiber networking cards, video and audio I/O cards, storage cards, and ethernet cards.

is a lie 🙂 /s

 

[RMo]

Apple last updated the Mac Pro in June 2023

Checks out, but:

It is also noticeable that by the summer of 2025, the current Mac Pro will be three years old.

Someone tell me what I'm missing that this isn't only two years rather than three? (Still a while, of course, but not really that long with the way Apple has[n't] been refreshing the Pro lately...)

 

[guzhogi]

Before apple silicon Mac Pros were know for dual CPUs, perhaps they can have compatibility for dual CPUs again, the option to support 3rd party GPUs would also make it a more appealing workhorse.

Isn't the M2 Ultra just 2 M2 Maxes stuck together?

I'd also like the option of adding dedicated GPUs again. Not a s a replacement, but a supplement to the builtin GPU. Partially for compatibility, partially for the added power. Haven't there been benchmarks that show that the Nvidia GPUs still blow bast the Apple Silicon GPUs?

However, I'd still like to see more things take advantage of the Apple Silicon GPUs & the Metal language. Better, AAA-level game engines, scientific apps, whatever. When I'm not using my Macs, I like to run Folding@Home on them, but they can't take advantage of the GPUs. Wish it did.

 

[ZipoBibrok5x10^8]

Two thirds of the price is in the over-built case.

More like one third. If you spec a Mac Studio and Pro the same, the price difference is $3K.

Studio M2u-24-76-32-128GB-2TB $6200
Pro M2u-24-76-32-128GB-2TB $9200

The price difference is less than the TB/PCIe expansion chassis (severely bottlenecked to TB) that I would need for all of my cards.

 

[Bug-Creator]

Isn't the M2 Ultra just 2 M2 Maxes stuck together?

Yes and no.

Calling the M1/2Max a broken in half M1/2Ultra might be little bit closer to the truth,

 

[ruka21]

A PCIe Apple GPU add on card.

 

[ZipoBibrok5x10^8]

Apple has four desktop computer lines. With Thunderbolt 5, does it need the Mac Pro? Apple could sell a Thunderbolt 5 expansion enclosure that looks like the Mac Studio for adding storage and whatever else people add to Mac Pros.

Fair, but TB is a tiny pipe compared to PCIe. I would never have enough bandwidth for multiple uncompressed 4K streams and 128x128 audio streams through TB. Also, PCIe is a solid connection, USB-C is an awful connector with no built in cable captivity.

 

[Cirillo Gherardo]

Beyond M4 Ultra? How about just releasing an M4 Ultra. Today. And then upgrading the product in a year when the next chipset is ready.

Give people an actual roadmap for upgrades so that product lines are not constantly on the verge of being discontinued. Who wants to invest in that?

 

[Cirillo Gherardo]

Lots of developers looking at machines with huge memories because of LLM (AI large language model) work. The tiniest models can fit in 16GB of memory but the largest ones need terabytes, and lots of bandwidth to the GPU to process it.

And that's just for inference (using models). For training (creating models), companies like OpenAI use thousands of these machines together in a large cluster as a virtual supercomputer.

Powerful machines aren't just for Hollywood.

Macrumors posters never fail to lack imagination or understanding when it comes to comprehending who uses Macs. They seem to think that if they themselves don't have a use case for a particular machine, no one does.

 

[Dr.Buzz]

That won't do anything for Apple. It won't magically drive more software support as we'd seen when they were still on x86.

Thank you for this. I never ever hear clear references to use cases for machines such as this. Now it makes sense. Because they do sell a lot of Mac Pros even relative to iMacs. There is clearly a creative audience that finds the price reasonable for the function. I don't think the chips really are the reason they buy them, and Apple knows this.

Because they have wisely gone to monolithic dies, and are just adding more cores, I think anything more complicated isn't necessary in the markets it serves. My prediction is always basic - same tower, looks nice, allows all that expansion, doesn't need to be more powerful than an ultra, just offers the build outs certain artists need that are not CPU or GPU restricted.

We don't know how important AI will be, but if the hype makes them commit more, I could see the tower having some unique monolithic silicon that emphasizes more AI cores for that price. Possibly adapt software to included artist specific functions. So you'd buy it for music or for special effects that they say are helped by AI but also a server rack version that uses that same chip, making it distinct from the Ultra Studio. I think this guess is the least dramatic.

 

[9081094]

What is the market for a MacPro?
Does Apple want to continue playing in that market, “bragging” the performance of its chips?
time will tell

If you neglect the pro market for years and then suddenly come up with the argument there is no market for that product… are you surprised?

I rather Apple has the courage to say they quit if they don’t want to invest into a certain segment. But they always say that they’re very committed. Just words, no action.

At least Jobs showed courage. Spineless Timmy only cares about profits.

 

[ZipoBibrok5x10^8]

Serious question, can you give me some examples besides SSDs? Audio cards I guess?

Genuinely don't know and, yeah, not the market for it. But I am curious.

Super high channel count audio cards and/or video cards that would instantly bottleneck Thunderbolt, like uncompressed 4K or 8K over SDI or ST2110

RedNet PCIeNX

Perfect for Dolby Atmos or any high-channel-count Dante workflow, the Focusrite RedNet PCIeNX delivers 128x128 channels of 24-bit/192 kHz audio with ultra-low latency.

focusrite.com

https://archiv.rme-audio.de/en/products/hdspe_madi_fx.php

DeckLink – Models | Blackmagic Design

DeckLink are high performance capture cards for Mac, Windows and Linux with support for 12G-SDI and 8K.

www.blackmagicdesign.com

64.0TB OWC Accelsior 8M2: Fastest PCIe SSD for Mac Pro

Upgrade your 2019-current Mac Pro with the 64.0TB OWC Accelsior 8M2. Experience blazing 12,000MB/s speeds, max capacity, and unmatched reliability.

eshop.macsales.com

DeckLink IP | Blackmagic Design

 

[sherwinzadeh]

Everybody says you don't need the Mac Pro anymore but in reality, the Mac has been behind whenever it came to cutting-edge tech. VR comes to mind a few years ago where Macs weren't powerful enough. Today NVIDIA dominates AI training. Maybe they should rebrand it from Mac Pro to Mac Ultra because it's really should be designed for cutting edge computing. And if you say that Apple is a consumer brand and doesn't care about this, I'd say you're wrong because this stuff always trickles down to consumer and the Apple ecosystem is often in catchup mode.

 

[Rychiar]

they should definitely merge the pro and studio. small and with some internal space for SSDs(not like they need much)