MP All Models Is the Mac Pro still relevant in 2025

[maflynn]

Edit: I mean is, buying a Mac Pro relevant in 2025, not its usage

As a fairly new owner of the M4 Max Studio, I'm finding that the Studio reminds me of a time when Apple had an affordable, fast and beautifully designed desktop computer (outside of the iMac and mini). It got me thinking about the viability of the Mac Pro in 2025.

Mac Pro: Base model 7,000, Max configuration M2 Ultra 24 cpu core/76 gpu core 32 core neural engine, 192GB of ram and 8TB of storage. $11,800
Mac Studio: Base model 2,000, Max configuration M3 Ultra 32 cpu core/80 gpu core, 32 core neural engine, 512GB of ram and 16TB of storage 14,100

What function can a Mac Pro do, that the Studio is incapable of? The only thing that the Mac Pro has AFAIK, is PCIe slots, but that expandability is extremely limited since the GPU is on the SoC.

I came across this video, and he touches upon points on why the Mac Pro is no longer the go to computer for most people who previously used Mac pros.

 

[eyoungren]

For my own personal use, my 2009 MacPro running Sonoma with three video cards and six drives says 'Yes', it's still relevant. Just did some editing of InDesign files in ID CC24 this morning. Photoshop and Illustrator CC25 are also installed.

If I needed/wanted to, I could use my MP to do the work I do for my job on my work-issued M2 Mac. So, to be fair, the company I work for largely abandoned tower Macs in 2015. My first work issued Mac was an MBP, the second, also an MBP. My company wants its designers to be able to work from anywhere - which means no desktops. Mini, Studio, or otherwise.

With that said, both work issued MBPs exist at home underneath my desk in clamshell mode. I have never once taken them anywhere other than home or work. The 2015 MBP was once attached to two of my 30" Cinema Displays, and now the M2 MBP is attached to those same displays.

When I am forced to upgrade my MP, which I predict will be in the next two years or so, I'll be getting an M1 Mini (or whatever newer model falls within my price range). Upgrading will simply be because my MP won't be able to run current versions of the Adobe Creative Suite - which I have a subscription to.

But for now, yeah. My MP is still relevant.

 

[maflynn]

which I predict will be in the next two years or so, I'll be getting an M1 Mini

That sort of answers my question. The Mac Pro isn’t relevant (as a purchase option) in 2025

I probably worded it poorly. I don’t mean existing Mac pros are irrelevant but rather as a purchase option moving forward

 

[frou]

Not relevant for me. I've had a 6,1 and a 5,1 back in the day, but would buy a Studio instead these days.

 

[eyoungren]

That sort of answers my question. The Mac Pro isn’t relevant (as a purchase option) in 2025

I probably worded it poorly. I don’t mean existing Mac pros are irrelevant but rather as a purchase option moving forward

Well, to further be fair to you, I was also just assuming. As has been proven on these forums many times, I am an outlier in a lot of things. I imagine that even those with a 'current' model MacPro may find their MPs no longer relevant in the context you meant.

If Apple had a new MP to offer though (and I had that money to blow on it), I'd get one. I have always been partial to PowerMac/Book over iMac/Book and MacPro/MacBook Pro over iMac/MacBook. And it's only in the last five years or so that the words 'Mac Mini' have entered my brain.

So, yeah, at this time, not a relevant purchase. I'm hopeful Apple will change that, but at the same time, the industry I work in now is not the same as the one I got started in in 1999. Almost anyone can be a graphic designer now, and you don't need a supercomputer to be one. Heck, they even teach graphic design in high school as an elective now.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

I believe it's still relevant, but context is important.

Since the launch of the iPhone, and to some degree the iPod, Apple has been under increasing pressure to release what many would consider to be highly-successful products that's satisfy mainstream audiences. But this has created an issue with our perception of what it means for a product to be relevant and successful.

Vision Pro is a great example of this. Now, I'm not saying this is a flawless product by any stretch of the imagination - it's more like a prototype, in fact, whether that is morally right or not to launch - but what Apple considers to be successful sales is likely very different to us as critics. If they've sold even half a million Vision Pro, that is likely a good return for such a niche product. Likewise, we cannot compare the relevance of the iPad mini to the iPad Air, even if the sales figures are vastly different, because they satisfy different audiences: Apple expects this.

But the Mac Pro, as we all know, is in an odd (self-inflicted) position.

Apple released 7,1 shortly before the Apple Silicon transition, possibly with the intention of serving the final group of customers who needed that availability of power on x86, primarily to industries it has good relations with. Apple would have known that Silicon would take many years to catch up to the combination of Xeon and high-end AMD graphics on a double-Duo format.

Yet in one respect they shot themselves in the foot by debuting the M2 version, because it was both a step forwards and backwards compared to the prior Intel version. One may argue that an M3 Ultra and M3 'Extreme' release, even if a year later, would have been received far better.

Performance aside, the Mac Pro still has an identity crisis. It is so close to the Mac Studio that many question its value. Is it really worth paying that much more for PCIE expansion? They don't tell a sell a convincing story as to why the Mac Pro enclosure really is worth that much more, given its position in the market.

This leads on to the market position itself. Simply, the Mac Pro is no longer a necessity for a larger professional audience because other solutions exist that replace internal modularity. GPUs are now on a SoC and BTO. RAM is on the package. The PCIE components themselves are now used by fewer users due to changes in workflow and software.

And perhaps the most convincing argument: the Mac Pro is no longer required in order to get the best performance from a Mac, and the workflows themselves have become so resource-light that even a MacBook can edit multiple streams of 4K video and be used for coding - ideas that would have once been fantasy.

If Apple is to keep the Mac Pro, then it needs to seriously think about two things.

First, what is its position in the product line-up? Considering that the Studio Ultra model is $4K (do correct me), then the Pro must be at least more expensive to support the larger modular enclosure. This immediately keep the audience limited.

Second, the enclosure itself needs re-thinking for modern workflows. It needs shrinking down with a vision for what it really ought to be in 2025, which is a Studio with PCIE modularity.

 

[maflynn]

I believe it's still relevant, but context is important.

Its funny, and maybe I'm totally missing your point, but you state its relevant, but then list of reasons on why it isn't.

I'm not down on the Mac Pro, I've have owned them in PPC incarnations back in the day, but today as I look at the Studio sitting on my desk, I ask myself. What can the current Mac Pro that apple sells, do, that my studio cannot?

Aside from very niche/vertical applications that rely on certain PCIe cards, I don't think think there is anything and if you need lots of cores, ram, storage, the studio has a higher ceiling on all of those items (for a higher price ).

I think Apple made a number of strategic and tactical decisions that basically painted the Mac Pro into a corner, maybe we'll see a M5 Ultra version of the Mac Pro in the coming years - don't know

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Its funny, and maybe I'm totally missing your point, but you state its relevant, but then list of reasons on why it isn't.

I'm not down on the Mac Pro, I've have owned them in PPC incarnations back in the day, but today as I look at the Studio sitting on my desk, I ask myself. What can the current Mac Pro that apple sells, do, that my studio cannot?

Aside from very niche/vertical applications that rely on certain PCIe cards, I don't think think there is anything and if you need lots of cores, ram, storage, the studio has a higher ceiling on all of those items (for a higher price ).

I think Apple made a number of strategic and tactical decisions that basically painted the Mac Pro into a corner, maybe we'll see a M5 Ultra version of the Mac Pro in the coming years - don't know

Apologies, my point was that it continues to be relevant but to a smaller demographic that in previous times.

 

[eyoungren]

Its funny, and maybe I'm totally missing your point, but you state its relevant, but then list of reasons on why it isn't.

I'm not down on the Mac Pro, I've have owned them in PPC incarnations back in the day, but today as I look at the Studio sitting on my desk, I ask myself. What can the current Mac Pro that apple sells, do, that my studio cannot?

Aside from very niche/vertical applications that rely on certain PCIe cards, I don't think think there is anything and if you need lots of cores, ram, storage, the studio has a higher ceiling on all of those items (for a higher price ).

I think Apple made a number of strategic and tactical decisions that basically painted the Mac Pro into a corner, maybe we'll see a M5 Ultra version of the Mac Pro in the coming years - don't know

If Apple decides that the MacPro still has relevancy and they begin to position it, then you can be sure that other products in close proximity to its capability will eventually be neutered in some way.

There are many examples of this, but a personal one I can point to is that the MBP work issued me is a 2023 13". It can drive three displays, two plus the LCD - just like the larger models. But it WON'T. Because Apple neutered that ability on purpose to push the bigger models. You get the LCD and one screen. Apple won't even allow two screens in clamshell for the 13" MBP. You need a dock - which I discovered the hard way when I got this POS.

It's how Apple does things.

 

[TracerAnalog]

The Mac Pro is a highly specialized computer for a very small set of users. I'm not part of that set and for me the Mac Studio M4 Max is all I need for many many years...

 

[weckart]

A Mac Pro with upgradable graphics, memory and storage would be a relevant buy. You can't possibly carry all the skews that market might need depending on its myriad use cases, so give it some modularity. The nerfed apology of a MP that Apple saw fit to release had contractual obligation written all over it. It is obvious that Apple doesn't see a future for the traditional workstation and spent a hurried coffee break on churning out what it did.

People bought it because they liked its looks over the Studio, I suppose. I would be very surprised to see another MP this decade.

 

[iSuzan]

For 99,9% of users this thing isn't relevant nowadays.

 

[theluggage]

The only thing that the Mac Pro has AFAIK, is PCIe slots

That's it. That and the semi-related issue of lots of internal storage (most likely via a PCIe card full of Flash these days, but there's space for a couple of SATA drives as well).

If you don't need non-GPU PCIe slots enough to pay a $3k premium for them then you can safely ignore the Mac Pro. Presumably, enough customers *do* need that for Apple to keep selling it (and if you look at how much rack-mount kits and PCIe expansion boxes for Studio/Mini cost it's a bit more understandable). For all other purposes the Mac Studio is the new Mac Pro - being basically a more successful, more timely implementation of what they tried with the Trashcan.

I think Apple made the right decision pursuing Apple Silicon rather than staying with Intel, but Apple Silicon's strong game is with laptops, small-form-factor and all-in-ones, where the small size and low power consumption of Apple Silicon has the most impact, and they've got a comfortable lead over the ARM-based competition (Snapdragon?) which is being held back by Windows legacies.

If you look at what the mourners of the "real" Mac Pro are asking for - expandable DDR5, lots of wide PCIe slots, discrete AMD (and , ideally NVIDIA) GPU support that would negate several of Apple Silicon's selling points - Thunderbolt I/O, integrated GPU/Neural engine etc. sharing unified memory with the CPU. Apple could produce an ARM chip with a ton of PCIe and external DDR5 support, but would it still be Apple Silicon, and would it distinguish them from what NVIDIA, AWS, Google and Ampere are already doing with server-class ARM chips (in a market far less beholden to Windows where Linux is well etablished)?

If you want a powerful, big-box-o'slots personal workstation that mainly serves to supply power and blow air over AMD & NVIDIA's latest humungous GPUs then x86 (most probably AMD) is probably still the tool for the job. However, the market for big personal workstations is shrinking - being eaten away by increasingly powerful laptops/SFF systems at the low end and flexable, pay-for-what-you-need-when-you-need-it cloud computing at the high end. Neither the 2019 or classic "cheesegrater" Mac Pros were really made for the server room or high-density computing (rotating it 90 degrees and adding mounting rails doesn't make it server-class hardware). It's not a long-term market where I can see Apple wanting to invest the cost of developing a Xeon-W/Ryzen-killer processor. Rumours of an AI-centric "server" chip sound like a rather different product, maybe more like NVIDIA Grace/Hopper and maybe mainly for Apple's internal use.

 

[M4th]

Even buying used (although this example is probably an extreme outlier) it just doesn't make sense to me either.

I guess unless you've won the lottery and the cheese grater has been at the top of the bucket list, otherwise no...

 

[Jumpthesnark]

That sort of answers my question. The Mac Pro isn’t relevant (as a purchase option) in 2025

Wow. OP asks the question and then two posts later answers it for all of us.

I guess we can move on now, close the thread! /s

 

[m1maverick]

You might get a feeling by asking how many people in this forum have the M2 Mac Pro.

 

[clam zero]

My take on the current Mac Pro is that it exists so that Apple could set a timeline for ending Intel support on macOS, and so that they can say they build computers in the US. They understood that they would be leaving a few power users in the lurch by ditching GPU/RAM expandability but felt that unifying their software stack on top of Apple Silicon was more important and that the majority of power users would be satisfied with the Mac Studio.

Going forward, my expectation is that Apple will design and market future Mac Pros as a "data center in a box", the solution for small and midsize businesses which desire a locally-hosted LLM. Most likely this means they will stack a bunch of chips on top of each other and connect them with some proprietary ultra-low-latency solution; they may also switch to liquid cooling eventually. Alternatively, if the performance of third-party GPUs continues to be beyond what they can match with Apple Silicon, they may re-add support for them somehow.

 

[m1maverick]

Going forward, my expectation is that Apple will design and market future Mac Pros as a "data center in a box", the solution for small and midsize businesses which desire a locally-hosted LLM. Most likely this means they will stack a bunch of chips on top of each other and connect them with some proprietary ultra-low-latency solution; they may also switch to liquid cooling eventually. Alternatively, if the performance of third-party GPUs continues to be beyond what they can match with Apple Silicon, they may re-add support for them somehow.

I consider this highly unlikely and not the Apple way. IMO the only reason they used in in the 2005 PowerMacs was they had no choice.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

Is the Mac Pro still relevant in 2025? I have no idea if it is or not, but at least to those who are still using it and don’t need to upgrade to a more powerful computer it may be relevant for a few more years. In my view a computer that is similar to the MacBook Pro -relating to expandability- which is not the case with the Mac Studio, would make more sense to the user.

But it seems that computer expandability by the user is becoming a thing of the past, mostly because it is more profitable for the computer manufacturers to "build it" for you. In this case, system integration is the future of computer manufacturing, all done for profit in order for the manufacturer to survive.

 

[Happy_John]

It’s relevant to people you like them, have one and use one.

It’s a weird thread title Apply it to any other daily use item.

My wife has.ma 22 year old VW Beetle. She loves it, and doesn’t want to get a newer car, so we spend a fair bit each year keeping it on the read.

Would it be financially more sensible to get a new car instead? Probably, but she doesn’t want to. Her 22 year oks beetles is relevant to her. Getting a new cat is irrelevant.

The same applies to a Mac Pro. The amount of users who NEED to buy a Mac Pro, and a Mac Aridio just wouldn’t do is a tiny number.

But if you have a Mac Pro, you like it and it dies do everything you need it to do, then there’s no problem.

No-one needs to upgrade the computer, phone or car of their existing phone Mac or car meets their needs. In that case their current items relevant can’t, and an upgrade is irrelevant.

 

[m1maverick]

No-one needs to upgrade the computer, phone or car of their existing phone Mac or car meets their needs. In that case their current items relevant can’t, and an upgrade is irrelevant.

I don't think this is related to the OPs question.

That said your Beetle analogy is not a good one. The Beetle can utilize the same infrastructure as when it was new. It can utilize fuel that is easily available today. The same cannot be said of computers. A computer is only as useful as the availability of software to run on it. Unless you intend to use contemporary software forever with it at some point you will be forced to upgrade (and you would be hanging out in the PPC or Early Intel Mac discussions).

The reality is, for the majority of people an EoL system cannot be maintained indefinitely and an upgrade will be necessary.

 

[darkphoenix24]

I have a 2019 Mac Pro. I’m a researcher and I work with complex 3D datasets from CT scans which eat memory and take up a lot of computational power. That’s not something the lower end Macs can give me. I might be able to get away with a maxed out M4 Max or similar. But I think the Mac Pro will probably get a redesign and hopefully get an even faster chip. I can see myself using Mac Studios with 512 GB of RAM though.

The 2013 trash can Mac Pro and the 2015 12” MacBook were impressive feats of engineering, especially for when they were released. They were crippled by Intel and AMD and thermal constraints. If Apple were to put Apple Silicon chips in them today, they’d be incredible.

 

[m1maverick]

I have a 2019 Mac Pro. I’m a researcher and I work with complex 3D datasets from CT scans which eat memory and take up a lot of computational power. That’s not something the lower end Macs can give me. I might be able to get away with a maxed out M4 Max or similar. But I think the Mac Pro will probably get a redesign and hopefully get an even faster chip. I can see myself using Mac Studios with 512 GB of RAM though.

Unfortunately the current Mac Pro is limited to 192GB of RAM. Even the M3 Studio Ultra cannot match the memory capacity of the 2019 Mac Pro.

The 2013 trash can Mac Pro and the 2015 12” MacBook were impressive feats of engineering, especially for when they were released. They were crippled by Intel and AMD and thermal constraints. If Apple were to put Apple Silicon chips in them today, they’d be incredible.

The 2013 MP was crippled solely due to "cannot innovate my ass" on Apples part.

 

[darkphoenix24]

Unfortunately the current Mac Pro is limited to 192GB of RAM. Even the M3 Studio Ultra cannot match the memory capacity of the 2019 Mac Pro.


The 2013 MP was crippled solely due to "cannot innovate my ass" on Apples part.

I have 384 GB on my Mac Pro. I can get by with 192 if I downsmaple some of my data, but sometimes microCT scans are very large image stacks. I also only have 16 GB of video memory. But I think 512 GB of unified memory would benefit a lot for my use case.

I don’t fully agree but to each their own. I think Intel’s years of promises on chip technology faltered and Apple did back themselves into a corner with that design. But I stand by my opinion that the trash can with an M3 Ultra or “Extreme” would obviously work really well given that the smaller Mac Studio seems to be performing well.

 

[m1maverick]

I don’t fully agree but to each their own. I think Intel’s years of promises on chip technology faltered and Apple did back themselves into a corner with that design. But I stand by my opinion that the trash can with an M3 Ultra or “Extreme” would obviously work really well given that the smaller Mac Studio seems to be performing well.

A 2013 trashcan with AS would be awesome, I didn't realize that's what you were referring to. I have an 2013 MP and love the form factor. Unfortunately the system didn't live up to pro expectations. In the end I think the Studio is a great system and, with few exceptions, no one should consider the current iteration of Mac Pro.