MP All Models 2023 Mac Pro! [MERGED]

[Longplays]

Antique types... like the still very capable 2009 MP I'm typing this on right now?
Very capable because it's... (wait for it) upgradable.

I'm thinking PPC.

Your Intel Mac can still do multiple steams of 4K HDR NLE.

 

[Longplays]

Everyone realizes that. No reasonable person would assume it would cost nothing to go from the Mac Studio to the Mac Pro. But also no reasonable person would accept $3,000 extra for some PCIE slots and bigger case. The same way that it's unreasonable to charge $2,000 for a 4TB SSD drive when a similar high end drive sell for $300;

4TB SSD Kit for Mac Pro - Apple (CA)

Apple Store Search Results

www.apple.com

WD_BLACK 4TB SN850X NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive - Gen4 PCIe, M.2 2280, Up to 7,300 MB/s - WDS400T2X0E - Newegg.com

Buy WD_BLACK 4TB SN850X NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive - Gen4 PCIe, M.2 2280, Up to 7,300 MB/s - WDS400T2X0E with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

Nearly 7 times the price... that's just disgusting.

Apple's not a charity. They have to pay top talent to get you top goods and services.

How else to pay their Engineers and other top talent 6 digit salaries?

A lot of pension funds bought into Apple and need the dividends.

As many pointed out Intel/AMD/Nvidia/Windows/Linux are better alternatives.

 

[danwells]

The one thing I'll say in favor of the Mac Pro is that you don't have to pay Apple's ridiculous SSD prices. PCIe SSD carrier cards are cheap and should be driverless - you have 6 PCIe slots - why not use them?

 

[fhturner]

And yet here we are today. No one uses floppies. USB-A is on its way out.

Oh good grief, you're missing the point— if they held to your logic, they would have assessed the existing usage and would not have transitioned to USB.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I strongly suspect that they had this in development when they decided not to do an M1 Extreme... If you throw an M2 Extreme (which could still happen - it was the M1 version that was cancelled) in this, it suddenly makes a LOT more sense. The M1 Ultra (and I strongly suspect the M2 Ultra, but I haven't actually seen any confirmation on that) uses a special heat sink in the Mac Studio. Ultra Studios are two pounds (nearly a kilogram in the 90% of the world that uses sensible measurement) heavier than Max Studios, at least almost all of which is a huge copper heatsink, and I suspect cramming a double-Ultra in the Mac Studio case would be one of four things.

1.)Impossible (sufficient heatsink and power supply just wouldn't fit).

2.)Loud (you could do it - RTX 4090s fit in compact PC cases, after all - you just wouldn't like the sound of the fan)

3.)Liquid-cooled (Apple once actually released a liquid-cooled G5, and they might be able to do that with the Extreme in a Studio, but where do you stick the radiator in the tiny Studio case)?

4.) Throttled (M-series chips run really, really cool at low power - they could get a lot of cores in there, assuming the physical size of the silicon is not an issue - if they accepted a lower clock speed).

The big ol' Mac Pro case means that a Mac Pro running an Extreme can be none of those things - except that Extremes don't exist!

We knew from the beginning of the M-series project that RAM and GPU expandability was the loss for the extraordinary power and efficiency of Apple Silicon. We knew that there was a hardware limitation precluding extraordinary amounts of RAM, while massively increasing RAM speed. Similarly, we knew that the best integrated GPU ever made (and by a significant margin) precluded external GPUs, and that the GPU was optimized for certain tasks, and not for others (gaming).

For the vast majority of Mac users, running anything from a MacBook Air up to a big MacBook Pro, it's been a huge win - look at them compared to any PC laptop of similar weight and battery life (there isn't any). Big workstation and gaming laptops can be as fast or faster than a M2 Max MBP, but they run much hotter, have short battery lives (and are throttled even then), and are often much heavier, especially when you include the adapter.

Even the Mac Studio fits very nicely into a market niche - the Ultra is faster than anything that isn't a lot more expensive (the largest Xeons and Threadrippers are several times the price). For non-game tasks, the GPUs are competitive with anything in the same price range. What it's NOT competing with is creative workstations several times the price. We'd all hoped the Mac Pro would do that, and it's a Mac Studio Ultra with a card cage...

If the Mac Pro DID have an available M2 Extreme chip that the Mac Studio didn't offer, it would make more sense. An M2 Extreme would likely Geekbench (v5) over 40,000 - that's similar to, or faster than the fastest Threadrippers. The 96 core Epyc 9654 and some of the Sapphire Rapids Xeons may be somewhat faster, but at what cost in power and money? Certainly, dual (or more) processor workstations can be faster - but those tend to be well over $20,000 for reasonable configurations - before adding tons of RAM.

A 152-core version of their graphics should give anything a run for its money, especially outside of games (Apple Silicon performs better on non-game benchmarks than its game scores would suggest - or, conversely, it's worse in games than its other scores would suggest). Again, maybe not multiple super-high-end cards, but that's a niche within a niche (Apple may be giving up on render farms, and has never supported crypto...).

The big issue would be use cases that wanted massive RAM. An M2 Extreme should support 384 GB - a lot, but much less than the last Intel Mac Pro. It would be almost unimaginably fast RAM, but only a lot, not an enormous amount.

Without the Extreme, the Mac Pro looks a little silly (it's a compact workstation in a huge case, selling for $3000 more than a compact workstation version of the same thing). With it, it would look like a high-end single processor workstation with superb performance and competitive capacities for the class. The "no RAM expansion" would be a little odd, but the RAM speed would help make up for it, and 384 GB would be a decent max.

And M3 when economically available may facilitate all that you suggest.

 

[Longplays]

Oh good grief, you're missing the point— if they held to your logic, they would have assessed the existing usage and would not have transitioned to USB.

Steve wanted a legacy-free Mac as they were position the iMac for the Digital Hub.

You cannot do that with legacy I/O like serial/parallel ports and removal storage that cannot do more than 2MB.

They were future facing.

 

[fhturner]

Apple's not a charity. They have to pay top talent to get you top goods and services.

How else to pay their Engineers and other top talent 6 digit salaries?

A lot of pension funds bought into Apple and need the dividends.

As many pointed out Intel/AMD/Nvidia/Windows/Linux are better alternatives.

How many apologies and "explanations" are you prepared to dole out here? He says that it's reasonable to expect a price differential over the Mac Studio to get a Mac Pro w/ slots and that it's unreasonable for that differential to be $3000. Your answer is that Apple has to make money? Why not make it $7,932 higher then? Perhaps they could hire one more six-figure engineer...he could figure out make the product biodegrade after 5 years. Sheesh... "However much it takes, Apple, we're on board and we'll pay it!!" How on Earth did they manage to make decent products 10-20 years ago w/o this top talent???

Alright, I should stop now. Your trolling is very effective...that makes more sense now. No one could offer up that many hole-filled apologies and arguments and genuinely mean them. Well played, sir.

 

[Jethro!]

I'm thinking PPC.

Your Intel Mac can still do multiple steams of 4K HDR NLE.

PPC? Really? Apple hasn't sold one since 2006.
But they, too, were upgradable. AND reasonably priced. I upgraded both my G4 and G5.
Now? Too bad, sucka! Pay that Apple tax and throw it away. Then pay again.

 

[fhturner]

the icon driven System Preferences is gone replaced by a noddy incoherent list of cobbled together text based items that look like a children's playbook or maybe a failed 1997 unix GUI interface

God, yes! The new System Settings in Ventura is why I cannot bring myself to upgrade my primary system to it. Horrendously bad.

 

[Longplays]

PPC? Really? Apple hasn't sold one since 2006.
But they, too, were upgradable. AND reasonably priced. I upgraded both my G4 and G5.
Now? Too bad, sucka! Pay that Apple tax and throw it away. Then pay again.

Inflation does happen. What was the buying power of $3k in 2002 money when applied in 2023?

I would not be surprised that it exceeds $7k.

I'm sure those upgrades can do multiple 8K HDR stream NLE.

Apple has changed their business model for Mac Pros so it becomes viable to continue it.

If a business unit cannot self sustain itself it ends up becoming an Apple Aperture.

 

[m1maverick]

Inflation does happen. What was the buying power of $3k in 2002 money when applied in 2023?

I would not be surprised that it exceeds $7k.

Well, you could look it up yourself.

$1.00 in 2002 is equivalent to $1.69 today. Or $5,070 for what used to cost $3,000.

Surprised?

 

[fhturner]

I was curious about how much PCIe slots cost. This is by no means an exhaustive search or comparison, but I found an Asus Pro WS logic board with 7 PCIe 5.0 slots at NewEgg for $1300:

ASUS PRO WS W790E-SAGE SE Intel W790 (LGA 4677) CEB motherboard, PCIe 5.0, 7 PCIe 5.0 x16 slots,M.2 PCIe 4.0 slots, 12+1+1 DrMOS, DDR5 R-DIMM, Dual 10G BMC LAN, LAN Server-grade Remote Management - Newegg.com

Buy ASUS Pro WS W790 SAGE SE Intel W790 (LGA 4677) CEB, PCIe 5.0,7 PCIe 5.0 x16 slots,M.2 PCIe 4.0 slots,12+1+1 DrMOS, DDR5 R-DIMM, Dual 10G BMC LAN, LAN Server-grade Remote Management, 14+1+1 power stages, front and Rear USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type C with fast shipping and top-rated customer service...

www.newegg.com

This looks like server-grade stuff, kinda like the Mac Pro 2019. It's $1700 less than the difference between the Mac Studio and Mac Pro. But that gets you the entire board. Compare it to a board that still has slots, but fewer of them, and that might be ~$300. So a differential of around $1000. I think that would've been a reasonable premium for Apple to charge, pricing it at $4999. But even if you're being generous and double it to $2000 premium...still "only" $5999 like the MP 2019.

I'd happily take much less: 3-4 PCIe slots (but with some RAM slots too), with an M2 Max or similar for $2999 though. Probably a lot of folks like me that would buy that but are priced out at $7K.

 

[Longplays]

Well, you could look it up yourself.

$1.00 in 2002 is equivalent to $1.69 today. Or $5,070 for what used to cost $3,000.

Surprised?

So nearly the price of a base 2019 Mac Pro where in economies of scale was higher prior to the 2021 Mac Studio and prior to longer than a year refresh cycle that started with the 2013 Mac Pro. Longer refresh cycle indicates that Mac users moved to other Macs that were now powerful enough for their needs.

It also incidentally had to contend with the lower economies of scale related to the 2017 iMac Pro that only discontinued in 2021.

 

[mcnallym]

Whilst I don't agree with the Mac Pro that they launched, the Mac Pro really needs more then PCI-E slots to distinguish from the Mac Studio then if look at the difference in price.

Apple Studio Ultra 24/60/64Gb/1Tb = 4199
Apple Mac Pro Ultra 24/60/64Gb/1Tb = 7199

So 3K for 2 x PCI-E x16 v4 and 4 x PCI-E x8 v4

• Two 6-pin connectors delivering 75W of power each
• One 8-pin connector delivering 150W of power

Sonnettech Echo IIIDesktop 1099 for 1 x16 and 2 x8 at PCI-E v3 via 1 TB Bus

so looking at 2.2K for the slots and fed via two TB Bus and are v3 rather then v4, and three boxes rather then 1.

Netstore NA211TB3 Three PCIe 3.0 x8 at $859 and not actual x16 slots but 1700 for 6 slots and looks ugly compared to the Mac Pro.

If you need them PCI-E slots then it possibly isn't that much more then buying a Studio and buying two enclosures for PCI-E slot enclosures that are PCI-E v3 rather then V4 and on TB bus rather then direct.

Is actually that bad a price when compared to a studio if look at what cost to add the slots too a studio by buying enclosures.

 

[Longplays]

Whilst I don't agree with the Mac Pro that they launched, the Mac Pro really needs more then PCI-E slots to distinguish from the Mac Studio then if look at the difference in price.

Apple Studio Ultra 24/60/64Gb/1Tb = 4199
Apple Mac Pro Ultra 24/60/64Gb/1Tb = 7199

So 3K for 2 x PCI-E x16 v4 and 4 x PCI-E x8 v4

• Two 6-pin connectors delivering 75W of power each
• One 8-pin connector delivering 150W of power

Sonnettech Echo IIIDesktop 1099 for 1 x16 and 2 x8 at PCI-E v3 via 1 TB Bus

so looking at 2.2K for the slots and fed via two TB Bus and are v3 rather then v4, and three boxes rather then 1.

Netstore NA211TB3 Three PCIe 3.0 x8 at $859 and not actual x16 slots but 1700 for 6 slots and looks ugly compared to the Mac Pro.

If you need them PCI-E slots then it possibly isn't that much more then buying a Studio and buying two enclosures for PCI-E slot enclosures that are PCI-E v3 rather then V4 and on TB bus rather then direct.

Is actually that bad a price when compared to a studio if look at what cost to add the slots too a studio by buying enclosures.

Someone pointed out that PCIe 4.0 slots has a throughput higher than TB4's 40Gbps.

Depending on your use case your recommendation may apply to them while it may not to others.

My ideal Mac laptop or desktop would have vacant M.2 slot. It can be SATA or NVMe without encryption to satisfy Apple's bean counters.

For audio engineers and companies like LucasFilms or Marvel Studios the Mac Pro M2 Ultra's PCIe slots are very much applicable. Those people bring in major $$$ and any delay costs more $$$$.

But if you're just a typical wedding photographer that offers video on-site editing to play nearing the end of the reception then a MBP 16" or Mac Studio would be more than sufficient. The portability of the Mac Studio would be a plus point.

 

[m1maverick]

So nearly the price of a base 2019 Mac Pro where in economies of scale was higher prior to the 2021 Mac Studio and prior to longer than a year refresh cycle that started with the 2013 Mac Pro. Longer refresh cycle indicates that Mac users moved to other Macs that were now powerful enough for their needs.

It also incidentally had to contend with the lower economies of scale related to the 2017 iMac Pro that only discontinued in 2021.

The comparison is not between the 2019 Mac Pro but rather the 2023 Mac Pro.

 

[Jethro!]

Inflation does happen. What was the buying power of $3k in 2002 money when applied in 2023?

I would not be surprised that it exceeds $7k.

The PowerMac G5 base model was US$1,999 (equivalent to $3,008.05 in 2023).
My elementary math = less than half the $ of the new Mac "Pro". It was a powerhouse at the time. And the G5 was upgradeable in every way.
Apple has lost its way.

 

[jscipione]

Apple doesn’t expect very many people to buy the Mac Pro, just like the last one. They only make it because we keep saying that we want to buy one. I used to be able to see the reasoning behind Apple’s pricing, but $3000 extra for PCIe slots over the Studio cannot be connected in any way to the BOM cost of the products. As far as I’m concerned the pricing for the Mac Pro was decided in April of 2017 by Apple management when they decided to make the iMac Pro base model $5k. The engineers were put in the tough position of trying to shoehorn an m2 into a Xeon’s place, but it’s clear that Apple management has lost its way, at least with this product.

 

[m1maverick]

Apple doesn’t expect very many people to buy the Mac Pro, just like the last one. They only make it because we keep saying that we want to buy one. I used to be able to see the reasoning behind Apple’s pricing, but $3000 extra for PCIe slots over the Studio cannot be connected in any way to the BOM cost of the products. As far as I’m concerned the pricing for the Mac Pro was decided in April of 2017 by Apple management when they decided to make the iMac Pro base model $5k. The engineers were put in the tough position of trying to shoehorn an m2 into a Xeon’s place, but it’s clear that Apple management has lost its way, at least with this product.

IMO Apple may be weening people off of the Mac Pro. Unless one utilizes the PCIe slots (with what, we don't yet know) the Mac Pro equivalent to, aside from a few extra ports, a Mac Studio. People will say to themselves "Why spend $3K more on a Mac Pro when I could get the same computing power from a Mac Studio?" People will talk themselves out of the PCIe slots to the point where the market for the Mac Pro is even less than it is today.

Of course this assumes those PCIe slots can't be filled with GPU goodness.

 

[Jethro!]

IMO Apple may be weening people off of the Mac Pro. Unless one utilizes the PCIe slots (with what, we don't yet know) the Mac Pro equivalent to, aside from a few extra ports, a Mac Studio. People will say to themselves "Why spend $3K more on a Mac Pro when I could get the same computing power from a Mac Studio?" People will talk themselves out of the PCIe slots to the point where the market for the Mac Pro is even less than it is today.

Of course this assumes those PCIe slots can't be filled with GPU goodness.

Exactly. They hobble the machine, then act surprised... "Gee, it looks like no one wants PCI anymore. Or mass internal storage, or upgradability. Golldernit, guess we we got no choice but to discontinue!"

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

IMO Apple may be weening people off of the Mac Pro. Unless one utilizes the PCIe slots (with what, we don't yet know) the Mac Pro equivalent to, aside from a few extra ports, a Mac Studio. People will say to themselves "Why spend $3K more on a Mac Pro when I could get the same computing power from a Mac Studio?" People will talk themselves out of the PCIe slots to the point where the market for the Mac Pro is even less than it is today.

Of course this assumes those PCIe slots can't be filled with GPU goodness.

Which brings me back to the question of will this be the last Mac Pro. If it will, then it's worth getting. But if everyone buys a Studio or skips this model, then apple says "see no one wants one" and it will be the last.

There is some weird combo of catch22 meets self fulling prophecy going on here.

This machine is definitely a pass for me, with the exception if I knew it would be the last Mac Pro, then it becomes worthwhile to get. If I don't get one in the first few months, it becomes useless because I'm not going to give apple new money for old hardware, which seems to be their basic marketing strategy with Macs.

 

[m1maverick]

Which brings me back to the question of will this be the last Mac Pro. If it will, then it's worth getting. But if everyone buys a Studio or skips this model, then apple says "see no one wants one" and it will be the last.

There is some weird combo of catch22 meets self fulling prophecy going on here.

This machine is definitely a pass for me, with the exception if I knew it would be the last Mac Pro, then it becomes worthwhile to get. If I don't get one in the first few months, it becomes useless because I'm not going to give apple new money for old hardware, which seems to be their basic marketing strategy with Macs.

I say to anyone that needs a proper Mac Pro my recommendation is to start looking to migrate away from Apple. This has been an issue for 10 years now and yet here we are...trying to figure it out once again.

The only excuse I can give to Apple is if they have more grandiose plans for the Mac Pro but weren't able to bring them to fruition soon enough. So they dumped this onto the market to complete their AS transition. Maybe future Mac Pro's will have a mega SoC with 8 Ultra dies, 4TB+ memory capacity, etc, etc. But this one isn't it.

Until PCI cards can be confirmed to work in this system I can't see anyone buying this Mac Pro over the Studio.

 

[Jethro!]

I say to anyone that needs a proper Mac Pro my recommendation is to start looking to migrate away from Apple. This has been an issue for 10 years now and yet here we are...trying to figure it out once again.

Until PCI cards can be confirmed to work in this system I can't see anyone buying this Mac Pro over the Studio.

Yes. I'll probably build out a 2019 MP, then start figuring out how to migrate away from Apple. As much as it pains me to say.
This ain't the same Apple.

 

[jazzerd8]

The PowerMac G5 base model was US$1,999 (equivalent to $3,008.05 in 2023).
My elementary math = less than half the $ of the new Mac "Pro". It was a powerhouse at the time. And the G5 was upgradeable in every way.
Apple has lost its way.

Exactly! The price difference is too great and the bigger issue is you can no longer make modifications - which is where the savings is! This can’t be justified by “inflation” - total nonsense

 

[mcnallym]

I say to anyone that needs a proper Mac Pro my recommendation is to start looking to migrate away from Apple. This has been an issue for 10 years now and yet here we are...trying to figure it out once again.

The only excuse I can give to Apple is if they have more grandiose plans for the Mac Pro but weren't able to bring them to fruition soon enough. So they dumped this onto the market to complete their AS transition. Maybe future Mac Pro's will have a mega SoC with 8 Ultra dies, 4TB+ memory capacity, etc, etc. But this one isn't it.

Until PCI cards can be confirmed to work in this system I can't see anyone buying this Mac Pro over the Studio.

At the risk of being pedantic then they are PCI-E slots in tne Mac Pro. Been a really long time since PCI slots were around.

secondly it is known that PCI-E cards work. Just not GPU cards. they even announced types of cards that work and very conspicuos in its absence was GPU cards. The only requirement is that has a Mac OS driver available.

with them bringing PCI-E Slots to AS then if not bringing GPU card support with this machine then they ain’t gonna.