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Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

9to5mac.com

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Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#511

Post by traceroute66 »

bigyabai wrote: post #500
traceroute66 wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's actually reversed. The GB10 chipset has a TDP of 140w, whereas M2/M3 Ultra pulls over 250w from the wall Come on mate ... I think you and I both know I was talking about complete system here, not discrete components. I'm pretty sure your total package (Dell Pro Max + GB10) will pull more from the wall.

I'm pretty sure you need to look up what you're talking about instead of making a guess. The Dell Pro Max PSU + enclosure is only rated for 240w, it literally can't pull more than 250w from the wall without shorting itself.

> 240w

280w according to the spec sheet I just looked at.

Also just look at the graphs on Geerling's website. The Mac Studio eats the Dell for breakfast in a number of the tests: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/dells-version-dgx-spa...

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#512

Post by utopiah »

pwython wrote: post #454
utopiah wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...making the perfect hardware for home inference machines. I really don't get why anybody would want that. What's the use case there? If someone doesn't care about privacy, they can use for-profit services because they are basically losing money, trying to corner the market. If they care about privacy, they can rent cloud instances in order to setup, run, close and it will be both cheaper, faster (if they can affo…

Genuine question: If I were to fine-tune a model with 10 years of business data in a competitive space, would you feel safe with cloud training?

I'm not a lawyer but technically most if not all cloud providers, specific to AI ("neo-cloud") or not, to provide Customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) as someone else pointed out.

That being said if I were to be in such a situation, and if somehow the guarantees wouldn't be enough then I'd definitely expect to have the budget to build my own data center with GB300 or TPUs. I can't imagine that running it on a Mac Studio.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#513

Post by appletrotter »

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…

> 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

Windows is 10x more enshittified than OSX

> 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.

Tell that to all the people rocking 5-10 year old macbook that still run great

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#514

Post by chocochunks »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #462
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.

Unfortunately the GB10 is incredibly bandwith starved. You get 128gb ram, but only 270GB/s bandwidth. The M3 Ultra mac studio gets you 820GB/s. (The M4 max is at 410GB/s. I'm not aware of any workload that gets the GB10 to it's theoretical peakflops.

You can't get a 128GB M3 Ultra, it's also more expensive. For some workloads the Studio is better, for others the GB10.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#517

Post by cesarb »

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

> By the time you want to upgrade a machine part (c. 5yr+ for modern machines), you'd want to upgrade every thing,

That's only the case for CPU/MB/RAM, because the interfaces are tightly coupled (you want to upgrade your CPU, but the new one uses an AM5 socket so you need to upgrade the motherboard, which only works with DDR5 so you need to upgrade your RAM). For other parts, a "Ship of Theseus" approach is often worth it: you don't need to replace your 2TB NVMe M.2 storage just because you wanted a faster CPU, you can keep the same GPU since it's all PCIe, and the SATA DVD drive you've carried over since the early 2000s still works the same.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#518

Post by orangecat »

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…

you need more RAM? Throw it away and buy a new one.

Or sell it, which is much easier to do with Macs because they're known quantities and not "Acer Onyx X321 Q-series Ultra".

There is then the software issue, with Apple devices you are forced to use macOS that kind of sucks, especially for a server usage

That's a fair point. Apple would get a ton of goodwill if they released enough documentation to let Asahi keep up with new hardware. I can't imagine it would harm their ecosystem; the people who would actually run Linux are either not using Macs at all, or users like me who treat them as Unix workstations and ignore their lock-in attempts.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#519

Post by sgc »

embedding-shape wrote: post #449
darkwater wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An enthusiast in the hobby space is by definition someone willing to pour much more money that someone else not that enthusiast in whichever hobby we are talking about.

Well, and also has a bunch of money, not just willing. I guess locally we don't really have that difference, as two other commentators here went by, that's why I had to update my local understanding of "enthusiast". Usually we use it for how engaged/interested a person is, regardless of how much money they can or are willing to use. Learned something new today at least, so that's cool :)

Yes, when tech gear is sold as 'enthusiast' gear, it is almost invariably the most expensive non-professional tier of equipment. That is roughly the common understanding: Expensive and focused on features more than security required for public use; while remaining within reach of at least some individuals, not only corporations.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#520

Post by TechSquidTV »

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…

As others have said, that's just not the reality of a modern work machine. If I need a new GPU or more RAM, I'm positive I need everything else upgraded too
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