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They'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 pa

They'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".

bigyabai 7mo ago
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.
- redwall_hp 7mo ago
  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.
  - bombcar 7mo ago
    Can't you already stack 4 Studios? Building a $1,000 case to hold them makes some sort of Apple sense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4_RsUxRjKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4_RsUxRjKU or something
- al_borland 7mo ago
  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.
  - testing22321 7mo ago
    It was always strange the Apple Silicon kept the 1.3kw power supply which was massive overkill. I always hoped we’d get a consumer version of what they have internally - 10 or 20 or more Apple Silicon chips for 1000 cores or so.
    - bombcar 7mo ago
      A bunch of the Mac Pro decisions seem to have been more driven by "we have a warehouse of these parts" than "this is what the system needs".
      - dijit 7mo ago
        A lot of Apples offerings feel a bit like that actually. To be expected when lord of the supply chain Tim Cook is running the show.
        NetMageSCW 7mo ago
        Apple doesn’t end up with a lot of parts in warehouses because they control the supply chain so well.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
wmf 7mo ago
The migration path is Thunderbolt PCIe enclosures (basically eGPU enclosures but you don't have to use a GPU).
- bigyabai 7mo ago
  > but you don't have to use a GPU That's a cute way of saying that GPUs aren't supported.
- eigenspace 7mo ago
  Not only are third party GPUs not supported on apple silicon, but thunderbolt has significantly more latency and lower bandwidth than 'real' PCIe implementations, even ones with similarly cut down lanes like oculink. Apple tried before to push everything out into external PCIe enclosures and people hated it. Maybe this'll go differently this time, the Mac Studio is certainly a much more compelling offering than the trashcan Mac Pro. But I think this is still a shitty and painful situation for a lot of specific users.
  - NetMageSCW 7mo ago
    I think “a lot” is heavily exaggerated- more like a few niche users.
    - eigenspace 7mo ago
      Oh yeah, the market for these capabilities is tiny, no doubt. But at least historically, the people that wanted these things tended to be very big lucrative customers, and also tended to be very influential word-of-mouth Apple evangalists. Just as a random personal example, my uncle was an Apple guy since the 80s, and when I was a kid in the early 2000s he always had a Mac Pro, several Macbook pros, and a bunch of other Apple gear. He played a big role in convincing all of his 3 other brothers that Apple was the way to go, and those brothers then raised kids in households with only Apple computers. This uncle is still a mostly Apple user, but he's increasingly pissed at Apple, and definitely no longer evangelical in recommending it to people. He needs to have a linux server machine for his home NAS, and another one for some specialized work applications and it really frustrates him that Apple abandoned his market segment. I think there's a real possibility that if Apple had pissed him off like this in the early 2000s instead of the 2020s, that our wider family might have not ended up as being so Apple centric, so Apple may have missed out on a lot more sales than just a couple of Mac Pros and expensive software licenses.

bigyabai 7mo ago

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.

redwall_hp 7mo ago
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.
- bombcar 7mo ago
  Can't you already stack 4 Studios? Building a $1,000 case to hold them makes some sort of Apple sense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4_RsUxRjKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4_RsUxRjKU or something
al_borland 7mo ago
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.
- testing22321 7mo ago
  It was always strange the Apple Silicon kept the 1.3kw power supply which was massive overkill. I always hoped we’d get a consumer version of what they have internally - 10 or 20 or more Apple Silicon chips for 1000 cores or so.
  - bombcar 7mo ago
    A bunch of the Mac Pro decisions seem to have been more driven by "we have a warehouse of these parts" than "this is what the system needs".
    - dijit 7mo ago
      A lot of Apples offerings feel a bit like that actually. To be expected when lord of the supply chain Tim Cook is running the show.
      - NetMageSCW 7mo ago
        Apple doesn’t end up with a lot of parts in warehouses because they control the supply chain so well.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

wmf 7mo ago

The migration path is Thunderbolt PCIe enclosures (basically eGPU enclosures but you don't have to use a GPU).

bigyabai 7mo ago
> but you don't have to use a GPU That's a cute way of saying that GPUs aren't supported.
eigenspace 7mo ago
Not only are third party GPUs not supported on apple silicon, but thunderbolt has significantly more latency and lower bandwidth than 'real' PCIe implementations, even ones with similarly cut down lanes like oculink. Apple tried before to push everything out into external PCIe enclosures and people hated it. Maybe this'll go differently this time, the Mac Studio is certainly a much more compelling offering than the trashcan Mac Pro. But I think this is still a shitty and painful situation for a lot of specific users.
- NetMageSCW 7mo ago
  I think “a lot” is heavily exaggerated- more like a few niche users.
  - eigenspace 7mo ago
    Oh yeah, the market for these capabilities is tiny, no doubt. But at least historically, the people that wanted these things tended to be very big lucrative customers, and also tended to be very influential word-of-mouth Apple evangalists. Just as a random personal example, my uncle was an Apple guy since the 80s, and when I was a kid in the early 2000s he always had a Mac Pro, several Macbook pros, and a bunch of other Apple gear. He played a big role in convincing all of his 3 other brothers that Apple was the way to go, and those brothers then raised kids in households with only Apple computers. This uncle is still a mostly Apple user, but he's increasingly pissed at Apple, and definitely no longer evangelical in recommending it to people. He needs to have a linux server machine for his home NAS, and another one for some specialized work applications and it really frustrates him that Apple abandoned his market segment. I think there's a real possibility that if Apple had pissed him off like this in the early 2000s instead of the 2020s, that our wider family might have not ended up as being so Apple centric, so Apple may have missed out on a lot more sales than just a couple of Mac Pros and expensive software licenses.