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.
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Where Does Mac Pro Go Next After M4 Ultra?
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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? 🤪
I was thinking more about the availability of PCIe slots, rather than CPU capabilities.
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.)
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.
is a lie
/s
Checks out, but:
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...)
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.
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.
Yes and no.
Calling the M1/2Max a broken in half M1/2Ultra might be little bit closer to the truth,
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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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.
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
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
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.
they should definitely merge the pro and studio. small and with some internal space for SSDs(not like they need much)