Apple discontinues the Mac Pro
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Apple discontinues the Mac Pro
1–10 of 672 posts
Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro
#2They've been trying to kill the Mac Pro for over a decade. I wonder how long before they backtrack again? It seems like they should at least have a migration path for users who needed the expansion cards the Mac Pro supported. Pushing them to the PC seems pretty bad.
Apple's new "Pro" definition seems more like "Prosumer".
Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro
#3They've been trying to kill the Mac Pro for over a decade. I wonder how long before they backtrack again? It seems like they should at least have a migration path for users who needed the expansion cards the Mac Pro supported. Pushing them to the PC seems pretty bad. Apple's new "Pro" definition seems more like "Prosumer".
The form-factor always felt like a weird fit for Apple Silicon. With the Intel boxes it was understandable; you want a few liters of free space for a couple AMD cards or some transcode hardware. The system was designed to be expandable, and the Mac Pro was the apex of Apple's commitment to that philosophy after bungling the trashcan Mac Pro.
None of the Apple Silicon hardware can seemingly justify this form factor, though. The memory isn't serviceable, PCIe devices aren't really supported, the PSU doesn't need much space, and the cooling can be handled with mobile-tier hardware. Apple's migration path is "my way or the highway" for Mac Pro owners.
Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro
#4Now everyone that needs classical workstations can finally move on into Linux or Windows workloads.
Believe t-shirts at WWDC were not enough.
Thus the workstation market joins OS X Server.
Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro
#5They've been trying to kill the Mac Pro for over a decade. I wonder how long before they backtrack again? It seems like they should at least have a migration path for users who needed the expansion cards the Mac Pro supported. Pushing them to the PC seems pretty bad. Apple's new "Pro" definition seems more like "Prosumer".
The form-factor always felt like a weird fit for Apple Silicon. With the Intel boxes it was understandable; you want a few liters of free space for a couple AMD cards or some transcode hardware. The system was designed to be expandable, and the Mac Pro was the apex of Apple's commitment to that philosophy after bungling the trashcan Mac Pro. None of the Apple Silicon hardware can seemingly justify this form factor, t…
I suspect we'll start seeing higher-spec Mac Studio options.
One of those with an M* Ultra, and some sort of Thunderbolt storage expansion would probably cover most of the Pro's use cases. And Apple probably doesn't want to deal with anything more exotic than those.
Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro
#6While the trash can generation was somewhat present and around, I don't think I ever saw a cheese grater in the flesh. Did it have any users? Were there any actual useful expansion cards? Did anybody continue buying this at all, after it didn't get the M3 Ultra bump, that the Mac Studio got last year?
Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro
#7They've been trying to kill the Mac Pro for over a decade. I wonder how long before they backtrack again? It seems like they should at least have a migration path for users who needed the expansion cards the Mac Pro supported. Pushing them to the PC seems pretty bad. Apple's new "Pro" definition seems more like "Prosumer".
The form-factor always felt like a weird fit for Apple Silicon. With the Intel boxes it was understandable; you want a few liters of free space for a couple AMD cards or some transcode hardware. The system was designed to be expandable, and the Mac Pro was the apex of Apple's commitment to that philosophy after bungling the trashcan Mac Pro. None of the Apple Silicon hardware can seemingly justify this form factor, t…
Their justification for the form factor, when it was released, was that pro users need various PCI cards to interface with some of their equipment, and this would allow them to do that.
It seemed like the guts of the Mac Pro were essentially shoved inside of a box and stuck in the corner of the tower. It would seem like they could decouple it and sell a box that pro users could load cards into (like other companies do for eGPUs). It wouldn’t feel like a very Apple-like setup, but it would function and allow Apple to focus where they want to focus without simply leaving those users behind.
I suppose the other option would be to dispense with the smoke and mirrors and let people slot a Mac Studio right into the Mac Pro tower, so it could be upgraded independently of the tower.
The alternative is people leave the platform or end up with a bunch of Thunderbolt spaghetti. Neither of which seem ideal.
Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro
#8Now everyone that needs classical workstations can finally move on into Linux or Windows workloads. Believe t-shirts at WWDC were not enough. Thus the workstation market joins OS X Server.
For those who don't know what the t-shirt reference is, it's a creation by John Siracusa/The Accidental Tech Podcast: https://cottonbureau.com/p/4RUVDA/shirt/mac-pro-believe-dark>.
Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro
#9Now everyone that needs classical workstations can finally move on into Linux or Windows workloads. Believe t-shirts at WWDC were not enough. Thus the workstation market joins OS X Server.
For those who don't know what the t-shirt reference is, it's a creation by John Siracusa/The Accidental Tech Podcast: https://cottonbureau.com/p/4RUVDA/shirt/mac-pro-believe-dark >.
And I still don't get it.
Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro
#10While the trash can generation was somewhat present and around, I don't think I ever saw a cheese grater in the flesh. Did it have any users? Were there any actual useful expansion cards? Did anybody continue buying this at all, after it didn't get the M3 Ultra bump, that the Mac Studio got last year?
The cheese grater mac pros were very popular, in that people got them and continued to use them.
The most notable feature was that there were mac-specific graphics cards, and you could also run PC graphics cards (without a nice boot screen). They had a 1.4kw power supply I believe, and there was extra pcie power for higher-end graphics cards. You could upgrade the memory, add up to 6 or more sata hard disks (2 in dvd slot). You could run windows, dual booting if you wanted and apple supported the drivers.
The 2013 was kind of a joke. small and quiet, but expansion was minimal.
2019 looked beefy, but the expansion was more like a cash register for apple, not really democratic. There were 3rd party sata hard disk solutions,
the 2023 model was basically a joke. I think maybe the pcie slots were ok for nvme cards, not a lot else (unless apple made it).
nowadays an apple computer is more like an iphone - apple would prefer if everything was welded shut.