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Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

9to5mac.com

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Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#481

Post by alerighi »

chatmasta wrote: post #165

I bet there’s gonna be a banger of a Mac Studio announced in June. Apple really stumbled into making the perfect hardware for home inference machines. Does any hardware company come close to Apple in terms of unified memory and single machines for high throughput inference workloads? Or even any DIY build? When it comes to the previous “pro workloads,” like video rendering or software compilation, you’ve always been…

To me there is a fundamental difference. Even if PC hardware costs slightly more (now because of the RAM situation, Apple producing his chips in house can get better deals of course), it's something that is worth more investing in in.

Maybe you spend 1000$ more for a PC of comparable performance, well tomorrow you need more power, change or add another GPU, add more RAM, add another SSD. A workstation you can keep upgrade it for years, adding a small cost for an upgrade in performance.

An Apple machine is basically throw away: no component inside can be upgraded, you need more RAM? Throw it away and buy a new one. You want a new GPU technology? You have to change the whole thing. And if something inside breaks? You of course throw away the whole computer since everything is soldered on the mainboard.

There is then the software issue, with Apple devices you are forced to use macOS that kind of sucks, especially for a server usage. True nowadays you can install Linux on it, but the GPU it's not that well supported, thus you loose all the benefits. You have to stuck with an OS that sucks, while in the PC market you have plenty of OS choices, Windows, a million of Linux distributions, etc. If I need a workstation to train LLM why do I care about a OS with a GUI? It's only a waste of resources, I just need a thing that runs Linux and I can SSH into it. Also I don't get the benefit of using containers, Docker, etc.

Mac suck even hardware side form a server point of view, for example it's not possible to rack mount them, it's not possible to have redundant PSU, key don't offer remote KVM capability, etc.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#482

Post by apparent »

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…

[dead]

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#483

Post by bigyabai »

dabockster wrote: post #471
traceroute66 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tell me what pc with an nvidia gpu can you buy with same memory and performance. And power consumption ! The performance per watt of Apple is unmatched.

This needs to be sold as the big ticket item for low level devs. Their chips are some of the most power efficient chips on the market right now. Hoping they release a blade server version somehow.

Nvidia's recent GPUs are more power-efficient than Apple Silicon in raster, training and inference workloads.

A blade server would get cancelled just like the Mac Pro for exactly the same reasons: https://9to5mac.com/2026/03/02/some-apple-ai-servers-are-rep...

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#484

Post by moogly »

FinnKuhn wrote: post #331
petepete wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a sit/stand desk so mine's on top, it makes organising the cables much easier. Nothing as swish looking as a Mac Pro though, it's a plain black Lian Li behemoth from the late 00s.

I also have a standing desk, and my desktop computer is still on the floor. That way I can just route all the cables to the back and then under the desk to my PC. Looks very clean as well.

Yep, same.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#485

Post by bigyabai »

traceroute66 wrote: post #455
chocochunks wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 128GB 2TB Dell Pro Max with Nvidia GB10 is about $4200, a Mac Studio with 128GB RAM and 2TB storage is $4100. So pretty comparable. I think Dell's pricing has been rocked more by the RAM shortage too.

> So pretty comparable. The Mac Studio almost certainly uses at least half the power (educated guess, I'm too lazy to go look at all the spec sheets and run the numbers)

It's actually reversed. The GB10 chipset has a TDP of 140w, whereas M2/M3 Ultra pulls over 250w from the wall: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102027

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#486

Post by elorant »

jiwidi wrote: post #426
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But inference is unique because its performance scales with high memory throughput, and you can’t assemble that by wiring together off the shelf parts in a consumer form factor. Nvidia outperforms Mac significantly on diffusion inference and many other forms. It’s not as simple as the current Mac chips are entirely better for this.

tell me what pc with an nvidia gpu can you buy with same memory and performance. I never liked apple hardware, but they are now untouchable since their shift to own sillicon for home hardware.

Untouchable my ass. You get a PC that has an ssd glued to the motherboard so if you run write intensive workloads and that thing wears out replacing it will have significant cost. Then there’s no PCie slot to get any decent network card if you want to work more than one of them in unison, you’re stuck with that stupid thunderbolt 5 while Infiniband gives x10 network speeds. As for memory bandwidth, it’s fast compared to CPUs but any enterprise GPU dwarfs it significantly. The unified RAM is the only interesting angle.

Apple could have taken a chunk of the enterprise market now with that AI craze if they had made an upgradable and expandable server edition based on their silicon. But no, everything has to be bolt down and restricted.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#487

Post by mjburgess »

alerighi wrote: post #481
chatmasta wrote: post #165

I bet there’s gonna be a banger of a Mac Studio announced in June. Apple really stumbled into making the perfect hardware for home inference machines. Does any hardware company come close to Apple in terms of unified memory and single machines for high throughput inference workloads? Or even any DIY build? When it comes to the previous “pro workloads,” like video rendering or software compilation, you’ve always been…

To me there is a fundamental difference. Even if PC hardware costs slightly more (now because of the RAM situation, Apple producing his chips in house can get better deals of course), it's something that is worth more investing in in. Maybe you spend 1000$ more for a PC of comparable performance, well tomorrow you need more power, change or add another GPU, add more RAM, add another SSD. A workstation you can keep up…

"Upgrades" havent been a thing for nearly a decade. By the time you want to upgrade a machine part (c. 5yr+ for modern machines), you'd want to upgrade every thing, and its cheap to do so.

It isnt 2005 any more where RAM/CPU/etc. progress benefits from upgrading every 6mo. It's closer to 6yr to really notice

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#488

Post by bigyabai »

mjburgess wrote: post #487
alerighi wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me there is a fundamental difference. Even if PC hardware costs slightly more (now because of the RAM situation, Apple producing his chips in house can get better deals of course), it's something that is worth more investing in in. Maybe you spend 1000$ more for a PC of comparable performance, well tomorrow you need more power, change or add another GPU, add more RAM, add another SSD. A workstation you can keep up…

"Upgrades" havent been a thing for nearly a decade. By the time you want to upgrade a machine part (c. 5yr+ for modern machines), you'd want to upgrade every thing, and its cheap to do so. It isnt 2005 any more where RAM/CPU/etc. progress benefits from upgrading every 6mo. It's closer to 6yr to really notice

That's news to me. I see Mac Minis with external drives plugged-in constantly; I bet those people would appreciate user-servicable storage. I doubt they bought an external drive because they wanted to throw away the whole computer.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#489

Post by elorant »

nextaccountic wrote: post #433
sippeangelo wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some Chinese sources sell modded Nvidia GPUs with extra VRAM. They're quite affordable in comparison to even a Mac Pro.

Any links to them? Never heard of this..

Go at ebay and search for RTX 4090 48GBs. There's plenty of them with prices around $3.5k

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#490

Post by eitally »

_zoltan_ wrote: post #364
AdamN wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia isn't selling one-off home computers afaik. But yes in terms of datacenter cloud usage Nvidia performs.

GB300 DGX Station was announced last Monday.

It's going to cost far more than a diy machine with multiple lower end GPUs. Which is fine -- it's aimed at enterprise, not home labs.
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