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

[CarAnalogy]

Yeah that’s pretty much become clear. I liked the Mac Pro in theory for this reason but it was already becoming clear Boot Camp was basically done even the last year they were still selling Intel Macs. It still says copyright 2015.

Honestly all the reasons I wanted it have pretty much gone away for other reasons by now.

 

[toke lahti]

Shooting for overkill is not the problem. Apple is being lazy with the mac pro or trying to save money which is a bad look.

The "innards" of the box might change now from year to year.
And they aren't going to sell much of these.
Makes no sense to change the design every year.
And the look is also kinda iconic.

I still believe that support for upgradeable RAM and dGPU is needed for succesful workstation.
Maybe it doesn't even take 4 years for Apple to realize this this time...

 

[seek3r]

Yeah that’s pretty much become clear. I liked the Mac Pro in theory for this reason but it was already becoming clear Boot Camp was basically done even the last year they were still selling Intel Macs. It still says copyright 2015.

Honestly all the reasons I wanted it have pretty much gone away for other reasons by now.

I’m still willing to bet we get bootcamp back, with ARM Win11, whenever Microsoft’s Qualcomm deal ends

 

[CarAnalogy]

I’m still willing to bet we get bootcamp back, with ARM Win11, whenever Microsoft’s Qualcomm deal ends

Love your optimism and I’d like to believe that’s true, but I just don’t see it. I do see more and better virtualization support coming. I can’t say for sure either way but I’ve heard that the exclusivity deal is already over.

They went to the trouble of making sure Microsoft Office is available on the Vision Pro from day one, but Office is more important to Microsoft than Windows, and it’s becoming clear that Vision Pro is more important to Apple than the Mac.

I’m betting the closest we’ll get to boot camp is an official Apple VM manager with better native support, and not just for Windows but for Linux too. Apple already seems pretty friendly toward Linux virtualization. As Windows on ARM becomes the main version of Windows, it may be better supported.

But sadly I’m getting the feeling that neither Microsoft nor Apple cares enough about Windows anymore to put any resources into getting it working properly on Apple Silicon.

 

[CarAnalogy]

The "innards" of the box might change now from year to year.
And they aren't going to sell much of these.
Makes no sense to change the design every year.
And the look is also kinda iconic.

I still believe that support for upgradeable RAM and dGPU is needed for succesful workstation.
Maybe it doesn't even take 4 years for Apple to realize this this time...

The message I’m getting from Apple based on what they did to the Mac Pro, is that there is a faction inside the company that wants to discontinue it. They didn’t have the ability to fully kill it, so they did this. Made a machine without a use case. It’s literally just a Mac studio with some PCI slots of questionable support. For $3000 more. It doesn’t make sense for anyone. In a few years the sales numbers will be so low, the faction that wants to kill it will finally get their way.

 

[chrfr]

I’m still willing to bet we get bootcamp back, with ARM Win11, whenever Microsoft’s Qualcomm deal ends

I just don't see why. Apple's making plenty of money without this capability now, and unless there's a wholesale change for Windows PCs to move from Intel to arm64, there's not going to be any significant demand to be able to boot arm64 Windows on Macs. It's not 2006 when Apple is only 7 or 8 years from getting back on its financial feet and needs to worry about marketshare.

 

[tripsync]

The "innards" of the box might change now from year to year.
And they aren't going to sell much of these.
Makes no sense to change the design every year.
And the look is also kinda iconic.

I still believe that support for upgradeable RAM and dGPU is needed for succesful workstation.
Maybe it doesn't even take 4 years for Apple to realize this this time...

never said to change every year. it should change on a major upgrade such as a new architecture

 

[Serqetry]

I’m still willing to bet we get bootcamp back, with ARM Win11, whenever Microsoft’s Qualcomm deal ends

Why on earth would they do this? Windows is basically starting from scratch with ARM right now. Apple would have no incentive to make Windows run on Macs after Apple has the ARM marketshare advantage. If you want Windows, you shouldn't buy a new Mac. If you want ARM, you probably should not buy a Windows machine.

 

[seek3r]

Why on earth would they do this? Windows is basically starting from scratch with ARM right now. Apple would have no incentive to make Windows run on Macs after Apple has the ARM marketshare advantage. If you want Windows, you shouldn't buy a new Mac. If you want ARM, you probably should not buy a Windows machine.

I can think of a few reasons why, including a lot of reasons already given on this thread, but also official bootcamp or not I think we’ll see windows on macs soon no matter what and then Apple will likely want an official version. Bootcamp is 3 things:

1) boot support for non-Apple OSes - already on M* Macs, which is how Asahi Linux works

2) automatic partitioning and some pre-provisioning of license keys - which is nice but not actually necessary to installing windows (including on x86 macs now)

3) Drivers - which we’ll probably have from community work at some point as the work derived from Asahi continues to propagate through other projects

There’s also a need for bootloader support to some extent, but 3 applies as well

 

[toke lahti]

never said to change every year. it should change on a major upgrade such as a new architecture

Well, this is just the second model with this chassis...

Btw, what does it matter?

 

[dannys1]

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"

It's not a bad idea to reuse a perfectly good design made to fit a lot of PCI-E cards in it. It shouldn't really look any different and it needs the airflow for cooling those cards.

 

[tripsync]

Well, this is just the second model with this chassis...

Btw, what does it matter?

Again, it's overkill and lazy. Waste of materials and it could be so much better/lighter. Possibly a full tower that you can carry with one hand which plenty of pros need for moving the computer around (instead of relying on wheels)

 

[tripsync]

It's not a bad idea to reuse a perfectly good design made to fit a lot of PCI-E cards in it. It shouldn't really look any different and it needs the airflow for cooling those cards.

Considering those cards don't really need cooling, it's unnecessary. It doesn't look like you can add AMD/NVIDIA cards anyways and the Mac Studio shows you can cool the M2 Ultra with less of a footprint.

 

[Imperial926]

I’m taking the long view and wondering whether now that Apple has taken the plunge and used the subscription model with Logic and Final Cut they will eventually do that with the MacOS full fat versions.
I already have an Adobe subscription because I want Photoshop and a few of their other apps. I’m thinking I should rethink my position on Premiere Pro and Resolve and carry on building PCs that are exactly as I wish them to be. I usually build with the same components as Puget Systems.
Apple are simply not interested in offering flexibility or upgradability to users like me so I need to move on. I will still buy iPhones but so much that pulled me to Apple has been stripped away. A few things: Airport Express, routers generally, user battery replacement at an affordable price and minimal turnaround time, insufficient ports on cheaper machines.

 

[dannys1]

Considering those cards don't really need cooling, it's unnecessary. It doesn't look like you can add AMD/NVIDIA cards anyways and the Mac Studio shows you can cool the M2 Ultra with less of a footprint.

Lots of PCI-E cards benefit from improved airflow and cooling - Apple already designed themselves into a thermal corner with the trashcan Mac Pro it makes no sense to change a standard desktop design which is made for function not looks and has the same shape as every other PCI-E holding PC case in the world.

It works, it never needs changing again.

 

[toke lahti]

Again, it's overkill and lazy. Waste of materials and it could be so much better/lighter. Possibly a full tower that you can carry with one hand which plenty of pros need for moving the computer around (instead of relying on wheels)

You might be on to something.

does have possible explanation to this:
Maybe they were lazy, because

1. They just want to get rid of supporting Intel by the year 2030
2. There's one real new design coming with M3, which is delayed
3. They want to get rid of MPs, just like with Xserve and especially Xraid before...
4. They just have a big inventory of the parts not sold

 

[tripsync]

Lots of PCI-E cards benefit from improved airflow and cooling - Apple already designed themselves into a thermal corner with the trashcan Mac Pro it makes no sense to change a standard desktop design which is made for function not looks and has the same shape as every other PCI-E holding PC case in the world.

It works, it never needs changing again.

Apple designed the cooling for extremely hot AMD cards and the power hungry Intel chips. No other cards reach the temperatures of those graphics cards. Assuming PCIE graphics cards will never be used in the Apple Silicon Mac Pro, the design is overkill. Cards will not benefit from the extra cooling. Standard cooling would suffice.

 

[toke lahti]

It's quite clear that the case can now cool more than it needs.
TDPs:
580X - Radeon Pro Vega II Duo: 185W - 485W
Xeon W-3223 - W-3275M: 160W - 205W

M2 Ultra: 90W

 

[ric22]

It seems sad that they clearly wanted to create a superior chip to the Studio's Ultra, but they just gave up in the end and went with the Ultra anyway...

 

[chucker23n1]

I can think of a few reasons why, including a lot of reasons already given on this thread, but also official bootcamp or not I think we’ll see windows on macs soon no matter what and then Apple will likely want an official version. Bootcamp is 3 things:

1) boot support for non-Apple OSes - already on M* Macs, which is how Asahi Linux works

2) automatic partitioning and some pre-provisioning of license keys - which is nice but not actually necessary to installing windows (including on x86 macs now)

3) Drivers - which we’ll probably have from community work at some point as the work derived from Asahi continues to propagate through other projects

There’s also a need for bootloader support to some extent, but 3 applies as well

1) On boot support: ARM macOS doesn't use EFI; it uses something more device tree-like. So does Asahi Linux. Apple's device tree isn't quite the same as Qualcomm's, so there's probably a fair amount of low-level work involved to make Windows on ARM boot on a Mac.

2) partitioning is probably not a big issue, yeah. ARM Macs do use an EFI-like partitioning scheme.

3) drivers could end up being a lot of work.

 

[_Spinn_]

Glad to see this is finally done.

 

[dannys1]

Apple designed the cooling for extremely hot AMD cards and the power hungry Intel chips. No other cards reach the temperatures of those graphics cards. Assuming PCIE graphics cards will never be used in the Apple Silicon Mac Pro, the design is overkill. Cards will not benefit from the extra cooling. Standard cooling would suffice.

You're wrong. On almost every level.

 

[tripsync]

You're wrong. On almost every level.

You're wrong. On every level.

One of my first jobs before becoming a software engineer was work in IT maintaining 50+ 2010-2012 intel mac pros + a few G5 Mac Pros in a creative department of a fortune 500 company. I know what I'm talking about.

Lack of substance in your response means I think you've realized you're wrong and have nothing to back up your assertion. So I think we're done. Have a good one.

 

[seek3r]

You're wrong. On every level.

One of my first jobs before becoming a software engineer was work in IT maintaining 50+ 2010-2012 intel mac pros + a few G5 Mac Pros in a creative department of a fortune 500 company. I know what I'm talking about.

Lack of substance in your response means I think you've realized you're wrong and have nothing to back up your assertion. So I think we're done. Have a good one.

1) The cooling was designed to dissipate 1280w, which is what the power supply can produce - and this still has the same psu. Apple doesnt know or care what you’re going to do with that power, or if there are uses yet to come out that will require more power hungry cards. They have to engineer to the highest possible power usage, not make an assumption that GPUs are the only seriously power hungry cards around (hint btw: they’re not, not even close).

2) The cooling was designed with rack mounting in mind too, the better airflow helps with that even if the someone hasnt stuffed it to the gills with gpus.

 

[tripsync]

1) The cooling was designed to dissipate 1280w, which is what the power supply can produce - and this still has the same psu. Apple doesnt know or care what you’re going to do with that power, or if there are uses yet to come out that will require more power hungry cards. They have to engineer to the highest possible power usage, not make an assumption that GPUs are the only seriously power hungry cards around (hint btw: they’re not, not even close).

2) The cooling was designed with rack mounting in mind too, the better airflow helps with that even if the someone hasnt stuffed it to the gills with gpus.

Power hungry cards: like gfx cards which you can't use. What internal card setup will result in 1280W usage? AJA cards use <50W. DSP accelerators I've seen don't have any mentions of power requirements (not to mention that doesn't even have heatsinks on the chips) so I can only assume they use <50W as well. Fibre cards? 30W.

I don't see what setup will need 1280W.

Apple reused the same PSU for the same reason it didn't change the design. Rack mount doesn't need this design especially the lattice enclosure.