With M2 Ultra Mac Pro, Apple Completes Apple Silicon Transition and No Longer Sells Intel-Based Macs

[pearvsapple]

And now the Mac Pro has officially become an expensive toy. RIP Mac Pro. No real Pro would want it now.

 

[Serqetry]

So it’s probably safe to assume macOS Sonoma will be the last to support Intel.

With as many Intel Macs as they are dumping support for... yes I think it's safe to assume that. And it really sucks, but I fully expected it.

 

[Will Co]

What apps do you need to run? Windows 11 ARM is good for productivity apps. Gaming not so much. ARM is making investments in notebook class processors, and Microsoft seems committed to Windows ARM this time around.

Visual Studio is my main workflow

 

[opeter]

iMac event later this year? It's the only Mac stuck on M1 chip. Everything else is on M2

Maybe in October/November. But it can happen, that they will just silently update the 24" iMac to the basic M2.

 

[Bustycat]

Wow, when did macrumors comments become a cesspool of Apple haters?

Possibly almost 22 years ago.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-thing-ipod.500/?post=5272#post-5272

 

[SFjohn]

I was shocked to hear that the 13” MacBook Pro is Apple’s best selling laptop. I bought one when the M2 came out because it had the TouchBar, and I like the form factor better. Even though it’s slightly heavier than the Air, it feels lighter and it looks like Jonny Ive designed it. I find it to be the sleekest of Apple’s laptops. The Airs are fine, but design wise they are merely thin. Square pancake shaped and heavy in hand. However the Midnight color really is beautiful! 😉

 

[star-affinity]

The main disappointment for me with the new Mac Pro is that it's not better than Mac Studio when it comes to the SoC. For that price one would expect more and faster CPU cores, more GPU cores and option for more RAM. No? Definitely hoped they would differentiate it more. Hmm... Maybe the next iteration? 🤔

 

[toke lahti]

this took that many years with zero design change? why does Mac Pro need the same giant heatsink? sounds like they messed up with a new design and just said "screw it, we'll just reuse the same old design"

You don't think there's enough room for that heatsink?

 

[toke lahti]

iMac event later this year? It's the only Mac stuck on M1 chip. Everything else is on M2

Wouldn't back to school timing be most logical?
I'm wondering why Apple does not want to sell bigger imacs anymore?
Have they finally decided that it's not wise to glue up expensive screen with throwaway computer?

 

[toke lahti]

The transition took 3 years (or 2.5 if you count from when they shipped the first M1 Macs). Not too bad considering everything that's gone on the last 3 years.

They sold intel minis last January.
Which is nice, because my mini, bought in 2019, will get updates until 2030.
And has supported and maybe will support powerful eGPU all that time!

 

[toke lahti]

Vision Pro if it ran Mac apps, which it doesn't.

VNC to mac?

 

[pp_amorim]

1. i literally worked at Apple as a software engineer. have plenty of evidence to back this up if you want.
2. it doesn't take a hardware genius to see that what they did with Mac Studio shows it's obviously possible to have less of a footprint in terms of cooling architecture for the M2 Ultra in a tower case.

come again?

I got massively disappointed that they didn't make the SoC modular like we see on the new NVidia Grace CPU. Do you think they will change that in the next interaction?
It seems likely that they grew weary of the series of failures they encountered while attempting to develop a solution capable of accommodating 1.5 terabytes of memory and multiple SoCs, and decided to reach the wide potential of users that wouldn't mind the limit of 192Gb.

 

[chrfr]

I was shocked to hear that the 13” MacBook Pro is Apple’s best selling laptop. I bought one when the M2 came out because it had the TouchBar, and I like the form factor better. Even though it’s slightly heavier than the Air, it feels lighter and it looks like Jonny Ive designed it. I find it to be the sleekest of Apple’s laptops. The Airs are fine, but design wise they are merely thin. Square pancake shaped and heavy in hand. However the Midnight color really is beautiful! 😉

You misheard, or someone misstated. The 13” Air is by far Apple’s best selling laptop.

 

[BellSystem]

Wow, when did macrumors comments become a cesspool of Apple haters?

When Apple fell off the rails.

 

[Doomtomb]

Why did it take so long?
Yes COVID and global chip shortage are valid but even more likely.
1. M1 Ultra introduced Mac Studio. Apple did not want Mac Pro competing for the attention.
2. It took until M2 Ultra to double the speed of previous Intel Mac Pros. Why is this important? Because Apple wants to get up on stage and tell you the old thing you have sucks, buy this instead, and they need at least 2x performance to do that.

 

[Captain Trips]

The "6 Pro XDR Displays" thing really cracks me up. Display technology is so far behind everything else. I mean really....six?! Can't you just make one display that's big enough?

You can never have too many monitors. Never.

I am serious. At home, I only have a 34" ultra wide due to having too many computers at my computer desk. But at work? I bring in a laptop and connect 2-3 monitors - and I use all of the screen real estate.

[Edit: grammar corrections]

 

[NT1440]

And now the Mac Pro has officially become an expensive toy. RIP Mac Pro. No real Pro would want it now.

So when it’s decked out at design studios, audio engineering firms, and the likes of Disney/Pixar it’s just a toy?

Some of you people seem to think that you know Apple’s market, or would prefer the fantasy that YOU are the target market for product X or Y. It’s kind of sad really.

Anywho, when I worked at ESPN the main audio guy there had a Mac Pro in the dedicated composing studio. I suspect this one will be there shortly…

 

[SFjohn]

You misheard, or someone misstated. The 13” Air is by far Apple’s best selling laptop.

That would make more sense. I’ll have to listen to it again. 👍🏻

 

[dysamoria]

The "6 Pro XDR Displays" thing really cracks me up. Display technology is so far behind everything else. I mean really....six?! Can't you just make one display that's big enough?

The ability to make defect-free display panels reduces as size increases.

 

[dysamoria]

So they removed complexity and parts from the Mac Pro, but it costs $1000 MORE. Fantastic.

Clearly I will never have a Mac Pro and will have to settle for whatever thermals the Mac Studio has.

 

[dysamoria]

Vision Pro if it ran Mac apps, which it doesn't.

Nor does it connect to a desktop Mac to act as a virtual display.

 

[dysamoria]

honestly I think the silicon folks and the Mac product teams werent on the same page. I think this machine is a compromise, they didn't have to build out a new form of the M* series chips that broke out more things from the SoC/chiplet/bus designs just for the least sold machine and the product folks still got a Mac Pro with expansion slots to sell to the industries they want to keep that really need it (designers, film production, etc). This is probably neither the Mac Pro the product teams wanted nor the chip lineup the silicon teams wanted.

I have the same suspicion.

 

[dysamoria]

But you can use it as a display for your Mac, and make said display as large as you want.

How? Via compressed video through Airplay?

 

[dysamoria]

Are you kidding? You really don't know anything about software and hardware development.

More like the focus on everything mobile …

 

[dysamoria]

The Mac Pro with an M2 Ultra is a really weird device to me. The 192GB RAM limit is much lower than the 1.5TB of the previous machine. And can you actually pop an Nvidia or AMD card into this thing? If not then what's the point? Just get the Mac Studio for $3000 less at every spec level and have a lot smaller footprint.

Yeah I noticed that immediately. Plus, that limited RAM is shared between GPU and CPU.