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Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

9to5mac.com

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231–240 of 672 posts

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#231

Post by gizajob »

raincole wrote: post #203
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is counting on something else: model shrink The most powerful AI interactions I've had involved giving a model a task and then fucking off. At that point, I don't actually care if it takes 5 minutes or an hour. I've cued up a list of background tasks it can work on, and that I can circle back to when I have time. In that context, smaller isn't even the virtue at hand–user patience is. Having a machine that wo…

Cool? And it has nothing to do with what kind of consumer hardware Apple should sell. If your use cases are literally "bigger model better" then the you should always use cloud. No matter how much computing power Apple squeezes into their device it won't be a mighty data center.

For running the model once it’s been trained, all a datacenter does is give you lower latency. Once the devices have a large enough memory to host the model locally, then the need to pay datacenter bills is going to be questioned. I’d rather run OpenClaw on my device plugged into a local LLM rather than rely on OpenAI or Claude.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#232

Post by aurareturn »

rudedogg wrote: post #180
aurareturn wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people at Apple see it. That’s why they added matmul to M5 GPU and keep mentioning LMStudio in their marketing.

Their rule of only releasing major software updates once a year in June is holding them back IMO. Their local LLM apis were dated before macOS/iOS 26 was even released. Just because something worked 20 years ago doesn’t mean it works today, but I’m sure it’s hard to argue against a historically successful strategy internally.

Huh? What local LLM apis? It uses Metal.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#233

Post by swiftcoder »

moogly wrote: post #153
jasoneckert wrote: post #120

As someone who came from the SGI O2/Octane era when high-end workstations were compact, distinctive, and sexy, I’ve never really understood the allure of the Mac Pro, with the exception of the 2013 Mac Pro tube, which I owned (small footprint, quiet, and powerful). For me, aesthetics and size are important. That workstation on your desk should justify its presence, not just exist as some hulking box. When Apple relea…

> That workstation on your desk should Under your desk, right? Right?!

I mean... if you spent $7,000 on it, do you really want to hide it away under the desk?

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#234

Post by wtallis »

gizajob wrote: post #229
root_axis wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, Apple made the right choice. Nobody except a niche market of hobbyists is interested in running tiny quantized models.

About the same niche market as the people who bought the Apple I, and we know where that went.

The Apple I was a pretty poor predictor of what mainstream mass-market computing was going to end up looking like. I don't think anybody has yet come up with the Apple II of local LLMs, let alone the VisiCalc or Windows 95.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#235

Post by sipjca »

kyboren wrote: post #186
sipjca wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s about literally shrinking the models via quantization, but rather training smaller/more efficient models from scratch Smaller models have gotten much more powerful the last 2 years. Qwen 3.5 is one example of this. The cost/compute requirements of running the same level intelligence is going down

Yes, but bigger models are still more capable. Models shrinking (iso-performance) just means that people will train and use more capable models with a longer context.

Of course they are! Both are important and will be around and used for different reasons

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#236

Post by sundvor »

Arcanum-XIII wrote: post #172
sundvor wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup the 4090 and SoundBlaster ZXR in my AM5 7800X3D system would both like to upvote your reply.

Sound card works fine on USB2 (RME for example has cards on USB2 that can manage 30/30 io at 192khz without issue at low latency if you have the CPU to deal with the load) With USB3 you have 94 i/o… For years pci has not been mandatory for audio. UAD, Apogee, RME and other high end brands will push you to them. Or even only provide them as usb device… even Thunderbolt is not needed here. And that’s been the case for…

I have about 14 or 15 USB devices in addition to my 4 monitors, and whilst I'm sure you're right I'm very happy to have a high quality soundcard that is not part of that mix.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#238

Post by badc0ffee »

pjmlp wrote: post #211
badc0ffee wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple still sells a workstation-type machine: the Mac Studio.

No it isn't, it is a mini where you can add audio cards, which is basically the only extensions it has available. Hardly workstation class.

It's certainly beefier than a Mini - 6 TB5 ports (which can drive 6 PCIe 5.0 x4 slots in an enclosure if you want), M3 Ultra, up to 256GB RAM.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#239

Post by StingyJelly »

aloha2436 wrote: post #191
steve-atx-7600 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate how I can't buy an new apple silicon with upgradeable RAM or SSD. Is there a legit reason why they couldn't make these things upgradeable at all even on a studio machine? 4TB is the smallest SSD I ever want in a new machine, but buying one from Apple is stupidly expensive. Back in the intel days, I'd buy a macbook pro, for example, with less ram and a smaller SSD than the max available and then upgrade to much…

> Is there a legit reason why they couldn't make these things upgradeable at all even on a studio machine? For the SSD, no. For the memory, yes. The memory lives on the same chip as the CPU and the GPU, it's even more tightly bound than just being soldered on. The memory being there has legitimate technical benefits that make it much easier/cheaper for them to reach the extremely high memory bandwidths that they do.

>it's even more tightly bound than just being soldered on

No. There is a reason for it but no, it's just soldered on the same carrier board as the APU, in order to be really close to it. Apple could have used a form factor like CAMM2 and it would have worked the same, be it at slightly higher cost. The reason is simply to kill upgrade options and cut manufacturing costs - same as for any other soldered ram.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#240

Post by dotancohen »

markn951 wrote: post #129
matthewfcarlson wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who worked on the M2 Mac Pro and has a real soft spot for it, I get it. It’s horrendously expensive and doesn’t offer much benefit over a Mac Studio and a thunderbolt pci chassis. My personal dream is that vms would support pci pass through and so you can just spin up a Linux vm and let it drive the gpus. But at that point, why are you buying a Mac? Opinions are my own obvs.

> Opinions are my own obvs. Whose else would they be?

  > > Opinions are my own obvs.

  > Whose else would they be?
On the internet? Often the opinions of others they see getting upvotes.
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