Hard Truths About The Apple Silicon Replacement to the Mac Pro (2019)

[sam_dean]

I think you forgot that the only Mac Pro without internal expansion is widely considered a commercial failure and Apple themselves have admitted that it was not successful. Mac Studio/iMac Pro class devices have their place and it is indeed possible that most enthusiast Mac users are satisfied with them, but it’s not what a potential Mac Pro user is looking for.

If they were commercial failures then why are the Pro desktops with PCIe expansion slots updated in the past decade were released in 2012 & 2019 while Pro desktops without it were updated in 2013, 2017 & 2022?

It is like saying the iPhone mini was a commercial success when it did not receive an iPhone 14 refresh.

 

[JouniS]

Also, I’d disagree with your example of SIMD as being “weird”. It’s a solution to a very different problem. And it’s being aggressively used by software - where appropriate.

In my experience, almost everything can be made significantly faster with SIMD. It's just that instead of spending 10 minutes writing a simple algorithm, you have to spend a day or two figuring out solutions and measuring their performance. And in order to see that performance in practice, you have to spend similar effort optimizing a thousand other algorithms. Which means that if you are writing performance-critical software with limited developer resources (as is common in science), you are only going to see a small fraction of the theoretical performance.

 

[Rafterman]

I saw a video where a dude pitted a Mac mini M2 vs his $15,000 Mac Pro. The Mini either tied or kicked the Mac Pro's azzzzz in most operations.

 

[fuchsdh]

I am having difficulty googling the annual worldwide shipment figures for workstations. Would you mind sharing them?

I suspect that it may have stagnated...

https://www.businessresearchinsights.com/market-reports/computer-workstation-market-10268

If they were commercial failures then why are the Pro desktops with PCIe expansion slots updated in the past decade were released in 2012 & 2019 while Pro desktops without it were updated in 2013, 2017 & 2022?

It is like saying the iPhone mini was a commercial success when it did not receive an iPhone 14 refresh.

Frankly Apple's pro desktop lineup has been so scattershot and infrequently updated since 2010 you can't really draw many conclusions about it. Like saying "the Mac Pro is a failure of a product" isn't really a fair statement when Apple has been the one who has failed to make it consistently. It's not like workstations from any other vendors have had similar issues.

I am having difficulty googling the annual worldwide shipment figures for workstations. Would you mind sharing them?

I suspect that it may have stagnated...

There's not really hard shipment numbers, but the global workstation market continues to grow and analysts projections have it growing continually for the next 6-8 years at least. https://www.globenewswire.com/en/ne...y-2029-Analysis-by-Future-Market-Insight.html

 

[sam_dean]

Frankly Apple's pro desktop lineup has been so scattershot and infrequently updated since 2010 you can't really draw many conclusions about it. Like saying "the Mac Pro is a failure of a product" isn't really a fair statement when Apple has been the one who has failed to make it consistently. It's not like workstations from any other vendors have had similar issues.

Any product the fails to get at least an annual refresh means demand is not strong enough for it.

Or the product being presented does not tactfully respond all its target customer's needs.

When a lot of the Pro desktops in the last decade has absent PCIe expansion slots indicates to me that >50% of Mac Pro users do not want to buy that feature.

 

[fuchsdh]

Any product the fails to get at least an annual refresh means demand is not strong enough for it.

Or the product being presented does not tactfully respond all its target customer's needs.

When a lot of the Pro desktops in the last decade has absent PCIe expansion slots indicates to me that >50% of Mac Pro users do not want to buy that feature.

Or the people who want that feature have fled Apple, because Apple has pointedly refused to offer the product they want for years.

Who can say with a straight face "yeah Apple has done a good job with the Mac Pro line over the past decade"? If you can't say that, then trying to extrapolate what pros want from the product is a fool's errand because you can't remove the confounding factors.

 

[bcortens]

Or the people who want that feature have fled Apple, because Apple has pointedly refused to offer the product they want for years.

Who can say with a straight face "yeah Apple has done a good job with the Mac Pro line over the past decade"? If you can't say that, then trying to extrapolate what pros want from the product is a fool's errand because you can't remove the confounding factors.

Who can say that apple has done a good job with the Mac lineup in general? The iMac started getting more sporadic updates. The M1 iMac makes huge tradeoffs in the name of thinness (it is unlikely we'll see an M2 Pro iMac while the M2 Pro Mac mini was easy). The Mac mini went years and years between updates, got worse in 2014 compared to 2012 and generally was mistreated till they finally recommitted in 2018...
The butterfly keyboard stuck around for 5 years...

 

[sam_dean]

Or the people who want that feature have fled Apple, because Apple has pointedly refused to offer the product they want for years.

Who can say with a straight face "yeah Apple has done a good job with the Mac Pro line over the past decade"? If you can't say that, then trying to extrapolate what pros want from the product is a fool's errand because you can't remove the confounding factors.

You are probably correct but I have difficulty quantifying the number of switchers to Windows that were alienated by the Mac Pro's current form.

Or they have saw other Macs as suitable to their current workflow that is different from their past workflow that required a Mac Pro.

It is also possible the die hards have already died.

Apple highlights every so often in their quarterly reports that 1 out of 2 Mac purchase are to a new customer. On 1st glance it comes across as growth but no one asks what are the numbers who switched away to Windows or switched off permanently from life.

 

[mcnallym]

I saw a video where a dude pitted a Mac mini M2 vs his $15,000 Mac Pro. The Mini either tied or kicked the Mac Pro's azzzzz in most operations.

I remember when the trash can launched then people were showing videos where showed exporting on FCP X significantly quicker on MBP laptops then top of the range trash can.

basically was doing a h.264 export that MBP could use quick sync for to export so had dedicated hardware that the trash can relying on CPU and GPU for.

the M2 and other Apple Silicon systems have a fair bit of dedicated hardware ie neural engine, media engine that simply not available to the Mac Pro, and if software can make use of the, then will significantly improve performance.

if is the video I saw then the Mac Pro also didn’t have the afterburner card which can make a big difference with ProRes.

also if the task will fit into a m2 mini 24gb ram limit they probably never needed the Mac Pro for it back in 2019.

 

[Rafterman]

I remember when the trash can launched then people were showing videos where showed exporting on FCP X significantly quicker on MBP laptops then top of the range trash can.

basically was doing a h.264 export that MBP could use quick sync for to export so had dedicated hardware that the trash can relying on CPU and GPU for.

the M2 and other Apple Silicon systems have a fair bit of dedicated hardware ie neural engine, media engine that simply not available to the Mac Pro, and if software can make use of the, then will significantly improve performance.

if is the video I saw then the Mac Pro also didn’t have the afterburner card which can make a big difference with ProRes.

also if the task will fit into a m2 mini 24gb ram limit they probably never needed the Mac Pro for it back in 2019.

It had a Vega card in it, not sure what that was, but it aded a few thousand to the cost.

 

[bobcomer]

Sure, you would, but that's because you care about Windows compatibility. Apple doesn't.

P.S. I mean, let's look at this from the performance and value proposition perspective. There is zero sense for Apple to use x86 on mobile, where Apple has similar or better performance and dramatically higher energy efficiency. For performance-oriented desktop, it's less clear-cut. Apple currently doesn't really have anything to complete agains enthusiast-class x86 desktop performance wise. M1 Ultra CPU is ok, but it competes with $700 Intel and AMD processors, so it's not a good value if you are looking for performance. So Apple is pushing towards ultra-compact desktops, a niche market area where x86 can't really do anything. This strategy won't work for the Mac Pro, so we'll have to see what Apple comes up with.

I think you sell the intel tiny desktop market short, but whatever. They're not enthusiast class, but they are solid work machines that are in the same class as the M chips in raw performance.

For me, I did just buy a new Mac, a refurbed 27" iMac 5K. It's not quite as fast as the M series chips, and it wont even be my fastest intel machine, but it will run absolutely everything I want to run at home and it wont be slow at it. I'll add lots more RAM and an external ssd or two, and it will be my main working machine. My Mac Studio Max and Lenovo desktops will be there for the stuff I need something faster. I'm more happy now...

 

[bcortens]

I think you sell the intel tiny desktop market short, but whatever. They're not enthusiast class, but they are solid work machines that are in the same class as the M chips in raw performance.

For me, I did just buy a new Mac, a refurbed 27" iMac 5K. It's not quite as fast as the M series chips, and it wont even be my fastest intel machine, but it will run absolutely everything I want to run at home and it wont be slow at it. I'll add lots more RAM and an external ssd or two, and it will be my main working machine. My Mac Studio Max and Lenovo desktops will be there for the stuff I need something faster. I'm more happy now...

Intel NUCs have maybe similar CPU performance, but no where near the GPU performance of the M series. Yes you can buy mini PCs with dedicated GPUs but these are usually much larger than the Mac mini and many do not even include an integrated power supply like the Mac mini.

 

[bobcomer]

Intel NUCs have maybe similar CPU performance, but no where near the GPU performance of the M series. Yes you can buy mini PCs with dedicated GPUs but these are usually much larger than the Mac mini and many do not even include an integrated power supply like the Mac mini.

I agree with most of that but they are quite a bit smaller than a Mac Mini, and I'm not talking NUC's. You can get them with a dGPU, just not a very fast one.

And besides, GPU performance isn't critical in my line of work.

 

[bcortens]

I agree with most of that but they are quite a bit smaller than a Mac Mini, and I'm not talking NUC's. You can get them with a dGPU, just not a very fast one.

And besides, GPU performance isn't critical in my line of work.

Which mini pcs include a discrete GPU and are smaller than the Mac mini and also have an integrated PSU?
Even this one Minisforum (which is admittedly faster than a Mac mini) is larger and has an external power brick.

 

[bobcomer]

Which mini pcs include a discrete GPU and are smaller than the Mac mini and also have an integrated PSU?

I never mentioned the integrated power supply. I actually like it external on small PC's like that.