Which Apple appears to be bowing out from.
It isn't worth their time or money. They probably make a better return by making Emojis.
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Mac Pro 2023 = Another Mac Pro 2013 crisis and failure.
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It isn't worth their time or money. They probably make a better return by making Emojis.
That’s true, and totally understandable.
That’s said, as is tradition here at MR, the vast majority of “takes” on this machine are from people that a standard M2 is overkill for, have never had a workflow that actually requires a Mac Pro, and just posting their complaints out of pure “principle”.
The people who are actually in the market to USE a Mac Pro have already had their needs met by the Studio, didn’t because they require PCIe for things OTHER than GPUs, or are in a category of workflow that simply isn’t supported by Apple anymore.
For years Apple sold a power tower: G4, G4, G5 and Mac Pro. These were solid machines that were priced appropriately. I had several of these with a typical price tag of $3K - $5K. My 2013 was around $7K and 2019… I’m embarrassed to say.
Apple’s focus on the pro market made the Mac the standard for video editing and graphic design. Now, they are killing off what makes the Mac great. Yes, most sales are for laptops and the iMac, but what is missing from the conversation is that if a company does high end work on a MacPro they probably buy several other non-MacPro Apple machines. Loose the pro business and the entire computer lineup suffers.
I understand the limitations of current Apple Silicone; all I’m suggesting is that Apple acknowledge these limitations and price the MacPro accordingly instead of arbitrarily raising the price, alienating, and turning off many customers who would spend $500-$1,000 more for the MacPro over the Studio.
Apple promised to complete the migration to Apple Silicon over two years. They were under pressure to ship a Mac Pro. Unfortunately, they couldn't effectively make a 4x Max chip. It was a no-win situation.
I think they're just trying to placate the market until they can ship a Jade4C-ish die. M3 Extreme? I'll bet we'll see an update to the Pro in around 18 months. There will be target customers and they will be happy, except the price.
I think they're just trying to placate the market until they can ship a Jade4C-ish die. M3 Extreme? I'll bet we'll see an update to the Pro in around 18 months. There will be target customers and they will be happy, except the price.
Look at it this way: With the Mac Pro now on Apple Silicon it's gonna get refreshes a lot more often now.
Depending on which inflation calculator we use, $6000 in December 2019 (Mac Pro release) is like >$7000 in April 2023! I know it's not always fair to use a total inflation measure for any given individual product but inflation is what it is and is a factor. So Apple didn't even effectively raise the price of the machine. I'm sure it's not hurting Apple's margins though.
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I think one of the main reasons this is being setup to fail is the price over the Mac Studio. While Apple may feel PCIe and the chassis are worth $3000 I don't think this is that reasonable a price jump, considering the Mac Studio already has a pretty complex chassis and cooling system I would argue that the Mac Pro should cost at most a $1000 price premium. That would make it much more compelling.
I'm also in the camp that beleives there was a quad chip planned but something went wrong.
Market changed since those times.
The 2013 & 2019 you bought were refreshed that slowly because of that change.
Macs without PCIe slots have become good enough to those who previously had no other choice.
Losing Mac Pro users who want Intel, AMD and Nvidia is just an "atom in a bucket of water" to a $3 trillion company.
Apple likely improved revenue with the changes they made.
A Mac Pro is more than PCIe slots. 🤣
There are other considerations for that price gap.
Considering the very niche demand for PCIe slots the price hike is merited.
I think they should have had some sort of story for add in compute accelerator boards, like, add a second M2 Ultra on an MPX module and software written to take advantage of distributed computing can run on it, kind of like a cluster in a single PC case. Or install 2 additional M2 Ultras and dedicate an M2 Ultra to 2 VMs which can be accessed remotely... something to really wow and inspire.
Given what we've seen from Nvidia and Intel on building truly massive SoCs from tiles I think the single SoC with unified memory approach is the future and I am personally glad they didn't build in support for traditional GPUs.
Given what we've seen from Nvidia and Intel on building truly massive SoCs from tiles I think the single SoC with unified memory approach is the future and I am personally glad they didn't build in support for traditional GPUs.
Apple probably lost the business of those demanding:
- SCSI
- Firewire
- SuperDrives
- Parallel
- Serial
- PS/2
- VGA
- DVI
- ISA
- CRT
- Abacus
As soon as I saw the title of the thread I knew who the OP would be. Fortunately you guys have actually turned the thread into a meaningful conversation, which means the OP won't be back. 
I already addressed your concerns in another post. In brief; losing the Pro business results in customers moving the entire process away from Mac.
And more landfill garbage because they decided not to make the SoC part modular.
These were replaced by newer technology. Until you have something better than PCIe for internal components, there needs to be a machine to satisfy that need.
Not even close to being the same thing most of us are griping about.
Assuming that were done they'd ship a potential 80,000 MPX modules over a period of 4 years assuming the SoC has not already made the modules redundant.
I am betting there is a 75% chance the PCIe on the 2023 Mac Pro is gimped in some way, way worse than the 2019 was gimped a little.
Which the 2023 Mac Pro M2 Ultra is.
For almost everyone TB3's 40Gbps is good enough.
For the ultra niche use case then PCIe 4.0 slots are there with leaps more than 40Gbps.
I am not discount the presence of demand. I am pointing how minuscule it is.
For those moving their pre-PCIe 4.0 cards to the 2023 Mac Pro... would they even notice?
People on the PowerPC subforum would disagree. They're the type buying used hardware off from eBay and garage sales.
Yeah you're right
It's also a much bigger chassis
A much bigger power supply, significally more than the Studio
A much bigger cooling system
And a lot more IO, including two 10gb ethernet ports
The size, power supply, and cooling system will probably yield much higher performance of that M2 Ultra than on the Mac Studio since you can dump more power in the SoC. But we will have to see in benchmarks. If in tests the performance gain is minor compared to the Studio, then yeah it'll be an L.
Mac Pro 2023 has at least 64 PCIe gen 4 lanes. How many come directly from the CPU? How many come from the PCIe gen 4 switch (if there is one)? How much do PCIe gen 4 switches cost?
Mac Pro
Here's the technology overview for the Mac Pro
Will Apple make a technology overview for the 2023 Mac Pro? Or is the 2023 Mac Pro too simple for that?
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