Yea, this rumor develops in the wrong direction. We should hear about custom gpus, more cores then ever etc. if these rumors are true, maybe they will just cancel the mac studio with m2 ultra and just put that into the new pro to have a fake differentiation. 40 faster than mac studio, 6 slots pcie for audio and storage. Nothing extra for gpu or compute. Just failing silently and faking that it was the plan all along. I do intensely hope that I am wrong.
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MP 7,1 Mac Pro 8.1 - WHAT IF...
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The studio would have been great if it wasn't just incredibly poor value in the higher configs.
First off is starting at $1999, replacing the iMac 27 which started at $1799 and included a 5k screen (which they now charge $1.6k for), so already off to a very poor start. The whole point of Apple Silicon was that it was supposed to be incredibly cheap for Apple to make because of economies of scale and they don't have to pay Intel and AMD. Apple doesn't seem interested in passing these savings on to the consumer.
Then if you upgrade to the M1 Ultra which is just 2x M1 Maxes glued together you have to pay literally the same price as 2x M1 Max studios. No economies of scale for the end-user here.
Finally if you want to to upgrade from 48 GPU cores to 64 GPU cores you have to pay $1000. So you're paying top end consumer PC GPU prices for performance that goes from basically a low-end GPU to a low-mid-range GPU. Then you have ridiculous ram and storage upgrade prices.
This all ends up with an $8k machine that performs like a $2k PC in some cases. (and in the cases where Apple Silicon shines, you'd probably have been fine with the M1 Max)
Apple Silicon needs to either be underpowered OR overpriced. It can't be both. It needs to have some semblance of value. 40% apple tax is ok, but 400% isn't.
So many things that Apple sells are expensive, but actually great value, because you're getting something that is arguably the best that money can buy, at least by some metric. The Studio doesn't stand out by any metric other than price.
I must admit I'm also getting very worried about the future of the Mac Pro with these new rumors. It seems that Apple was at least planning on making the Mac Pro into a giant Mac Studio until even they realised the value proposition to the customer would be ridiculously poor.
First off is starting at $1999, replacing the iMac 27 which started at $1799 and included a 5k screen (which they now charge $1.6k for), so already off to a very poor start. The whole point of Apple Silicon was that it was supposed to be incredibly cheap for Apple to make because of economies of scale and they don't have to pay Intel and AMD. Apple doesn't seem interested in passing these savings on to the consumer.
Then if you upgrade to the M1 Ultra which is just 2x M1 Maxes glued together you have to pay literally the same price as 2x M1 Max studios. No economies of scale for the end-user here.
Finally if you want to to upgrade from 48 GPU cores to 64 GPU cores you have to pay $1000. So you're paying top end consumer PC GPU prices for performance that goes from basically a low-end GPU to a low-mid-range GPU. Then you have ridiculous ram and storage upgrade prices.
This all ends up with an $8k machine that performs like a $2k PC in some cases. (and in the cases where Apple Silicon shines, you'd probably have been fine with the M1 Max)
Apple Silicon needs to either be underpowered OR overpriced. It can't be both. It needs to have some semblance of value. 40% apple tax is ok, but 400% isn't.
So many things that Apple sells are expensive, but actually great value, because you're getting something that is arguably the best that money can buy, at least by some metric. The Studio doesn't stand out by any metric other than price.
I must admit I'm also getting very worried about the future of the Mac Pro with these new rumors. It seems that Apple was at least planning on making the Mac Pro into a giant Mac Studio until even they realised the value proposition to the customer would be ridiculously poor.
Honestly, I think the Studio is the permanent replacement for the 27" iMac / iMc Pro, and there will never be a Mac Mini Pro. That's the strategy.
The iMac is going to stay at 24" as a simple limited SKU low-end machine, and if you want something better, the solution is "buy a Studio and Studio Display, with all the options of processor and performance".
The joke of course being that people suggested the Mac Pro would become cheaper without the "Xeon Tax".
I should create a second account so I can Like this twice.
Looks that way. I can't imagine what a mini Pro could be, other than a Studio. 1.5x the height of a mini, with an M1 Pro, starting at $1500? Hardly seems worth the bother. You either need more performance or you don't.
Agree, very well formulated. Clearly expressing the issue many of us have with the current situation. The pricing structure these days doesn’t mirror performance in any sane way.
SICK BURN:
It's a sobering thought that Apple will charge you the price of a 7900XTX to upgrade to a GPU that's only 'decent' by PC standards.
The upcoming Mac Pro is a critical machine, not just for people who may buy one (either at launch or second hand), but as a validation of the whole Apple Silicon strategy. They've clearly got the low-midrange well covered, but there's little evidence so far that they have a compelling plan for the high end. If all Apple can offer in the desktop space with a decent GPU is a $10K workstation, they can FRO.
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You know what they used to say about the Holy Roman Empire…. It is not holy, not roman and not an empire. That’s what comes to mind when I see “pro” in apple’s products.
I couldn't wait any longer got myself a LENOVO 12thgen with rtx 3070...honestly this thing flies with adobe stuff. It cost me $1600 (CAD) on kajiji. Its comparable to mac mini ULTRA...why spend $5k !! I can even upgrade graphics, memory and SSD. It unfortunate apple couldn't stick with intel in MAC PRO i would have been all over it. The 2019 is just too old !!
Personally I think apple is having a hard time with performance and can't match PC's and believe that may be the real reason for the delay. The ultra is OVERPRICED !!
Personally I think apple is having a hard time with performance and can't match PC's and believe that may be the real reason for the delay. The ultra is OVERPRICED !!
Apple would have broadly understood all the implications when it committed to switching to Apple Silicon; it's not like they started the transition, then started thinking about how it might apply to the Mac Pro.
If the Mac Pro is important to them, they would have had a solid plan in place for it from the start. Even if it is though, perhaps the various benefits of porting macOS to iOS hardware were so tempting, they were willing to forego the Mac Pro as we know it.
If the Mac Pro is important to them, they would have had a solid plan in place for it from the start. Even if it is though, perhaps the various benefits of porting macOS to iOS hardware were so tempting, they were willing to forego the Mac Pro as we know it.
You mean solid plan by the same people that painted themselves into a thermal corner?
I respect your faith in them but do not share it.
The ‘thermal corner‘ thing is a funny one. It’s obvious that SFF chassis are more constrained than towers; everyone knows this, including Apple. It can only, therefore, have been a deliberate decision to miniaturise the Mac Pro instead of making another high-powered workstation. They prioritised making the MP smaller, lighter and cheaper to make, at the expense of expandability and performance. Their miscalculation wasn’t so much technical, but that pro users would come to accept the type of computer Apple wanted to sell.
Apple would surely have been aware of the technical implications of Apple Silicon before the transition began. What we don’t know yet are the details of those implications, and what trade-offs Apple were prepared to make with regards to the Mac Pro.
Apple would surely have been aware of the technical implications of Apple Silicon before the transition began. What we don’t know yet are the details of those implications, and what trade-offs Apple were prepared to make with regards to the Mac Pro.
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Um, it was completely technical. They could never upgrade to other cards, AND, there was a high failure rate on the graphics cards they used as well. Your assertion purports to know their thoughts in contradiction to their own statements of failure, and explicitly admitting to painting themselves into a thermal corner. SO your assertion of their "surely" being aware, is literally contradicted by both words and deeds, by apple itself.
And who forced them to make an SFF? If Puget announced tomorrow that all their workstations going forward would use a DAN Case A4, would it be surprising to later find out this had limited their options? Though obviously to a far lesser extent than the Mac Pro 6,1 did.
It's not like the TDP of Xeon processors and GPUs had been steadily declining for some time, and Apple was just the first to 'realise' the tower was dead. In the way they had done with e.g. the floppy drive, parallel port or DVD drive, where we'd essentially stopped using them already. Apple had their own agenda.
My assertion is that the Mac Pro has long been a challenging machine for Apple to sell at a profit. For a while, their solution was to reduce costs. The 6,1 reduced material / shipping / storage costs; the Xeon iMac leveraged existing production. Before the latter was released though, they realised this strategy wasn't working, so took the opposite approach - returning to the tower, but charging twice as much for it.
Their 'statements of failure' were to a small group of friendly, hand-picked journalists. When you're spinning something, it's a common tactic to readily concede one charge if distracts from an even worse one. Admitting lack of technical foresight would have been embarrassing, but it's better than admitting they made a machine that suited their business needs, at the expense of the needs of their pro customers.
Unlike PC OEMs, Apple is the sole provider of hardware for macOS, which enables them to push design choices that e.g. Dell wouldn't get away with. Apple were banking on their pro users eventually giving in and buying what they were given, but it seems they began moving to Windows instead, hence the apology tour.
My assertion is that yes, Apple would have started the transition to Apple Silicon with full awareness of the possibilities for scaling it. It's inconceivable they would just treat that as a bridge to cross later. Either they were confident that adding PCIe / external RAM / external GPU modules etc. to their SoC architecture would be perfectly doable, or they knew it wouldn't be, and decided to forgo those things for the other benefits AS brings to the Mac - and Apple. Hopefully we'll know in 2023.
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Thats A lot of dancing trying to deny that it was a technical failure, and masterfully failing to do so. Congrats.
They didn’t know squat. They went from “Cant innovate my ass” to “we designed ourselves into a thermal corner”. They made a mistake, and they admitted to it. Full stop.
They didn’t set out knowingly to go: Hey, let’s make this machine with a dead end design, that we can’t update video cards for, that has a high rate of video card thermal failures, and as a bonus, and leave it out there for 6 years untouched because we don’t know how to fix it, and boy that’s such a great plan!
You can wave your hands all you want, and Nirvana all the apologies you like, but you just keep showing that you’re more wrong. It was an admitted technical epic fail.
Apple Introducing New Mac Pro, Pro iMacs and External Display Over Coming Years
“If we’ve had a pause in upgrades and updates, we’re sorry for that — what happened with the Mac Pro — and we’re going to come out with something great to replace it.” Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller is talking to a small group of reporters. The purpose of the...
techcrunch.com
And your assertion is they are aware ’this time’ is contrasted by “can’t innovate my ass” plans of the past. So just because they may have a plan doesn’t mean it’s a good one. Buttressed by one “can’t innovate my ass” epic failure of a past plan and reports of failure to get the chip out that they wanted for this ‘new plan’ and doubts on their ability to provide video card support, what little we can evince of their ‘new plan’ is far from something that would instill existing Mac pro owners with any confidence in their ability to put something out that is actually desired.
Agree on one thing. We will see when they put it out there.
But a machine with fewer cores than my now ancient 28 core machine that cannot support 3rd party graphics card would be another epic failure imo. Ymmv.
But they admitted and know their “can’t innovate my ass” plan resulted pro/enthusiast users leaving because the previous machine didn’t serve them fully, contrary to their great “can’t innovate my ass” miscalculation. Failure to produce a machine supporting 3rd party graphics cards would result in more unplanned for losses, because fewer cores and lack of support of 3rd party graphics would be a ‘bad plan’.
I suspect it would be enough of a bad plan to kill what little remains of the pro/enthusiast segment of Mac Pro users, pushing us off the platform permanently. They were capable of such miscalculation before, a low core, no 3rd party graphics card Mac Pro would be further miscalculation, either in their premise, or in their estimation of what was technically feasible, or maybe even both.
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Try reading my post slower, so you actually understand it this time.
I'm not denying the 6,1 was a technical failure (for the record: IT WAS), I'm pointing out that the reason for their dumb choices wasn't simply a poor bet on the future of computing, like they claim. Much more so, it was about making a computer that fitted a desirable business case for them, rather than making what their customers wanted.
In the PC space, you couldn't contemplate doing that - your competitors would see to that. Apple has no competitors for macOS hardware, and most of their users really don't want to have to move to Windows. But if left with no choice, everyone has their breaking point.
I'm not denying the 6,1 was a technical failure (for the record: IT WAS), I'm pointing out that the reason for their dumb choices wasn't simply a poor bet on the future of computing, like they claim. Much more so, it was about making a computer that fitted a desirable business case for them, rather than making what their customers wanted.
In the PC space, you couldn't contemplate doing that - your competitors would see to that. Apple has no competitors for macOS hardware, and most of their users really don't want to have to move to Windows. But if left with no choice, everyone has their breaking point.
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You said:
“Apple would have broadly understood all the implications when it committed to switching to Apple Silicon; it's not like they started the transition, then started thinking about how it might apply to the Mac Pro.
If the Mac Pro is important to them, they would have had a solid plan in place for it from the start. Even if it is though, perhaps the various benefits of porting macOS to iOS hardware were so tempting, they were willing to forego the Mac Pro as we know it.”
Yea I read what you wrote. And you may have forgotten, but yes, apple may have started the transition and “then” too late realized how it may not apply well to the Mac Pro. Their ability to make a bad plan is now admitted by you. Youre welcome.
I simply don't consider that plausible. On a technical level, it should be pretty obvious what's feasible and what's out of the question. They would know, for example, that making an SoC the size of a beer mat would not be an option. They would know if there's a plausible way to link multiple SoCs such that they appear as one CPU / GPU. These things would set clear limits on what's realistic.
It's perfectly possible, of course, that the transition to AS is so appealing to Apple, for so many reasons, that they'd sacrifice the potential of the Mac Pro to do so. But they'd do so with their eyes open, not by mistake.
Yes, but there's a distinction to be made here about bad planning. I don't think anyone at Apple ever imagined that limiting the Mac Pro to a single CPU, 4 RAM slots and 2 mediocre graphics cards would somehow make it faster, or even competitive, with PC workstations that didn't have that restriction. That's bleedingly obvious. It's more likely Apple were aware of the restrictions, but wanted to make a small machine, and betted their users would consider it 'fast enough' to be happy. The 'bad planning' was fundamentally about misjudging their customers, rather than technical ineptitude, though there was certainly that as well. Apple have a long history of quiet but hot-running machines that fry their graphics cards (see various MBPs, iMacs).
The Mac Studio is very much in the same mould as the 6,1. I guess it's possible that the Studio was the original plan for the AS Mac Pro, and now they're scrabbling. But it wasn't long ago that they made a big show of releasing a massively expandable workstation, publicly acknowledging they'd learned their lesson from the 6,1. So it would be pretty bizarre. 2023 will certainly be interesting.
Again, what you consider is wrong. It has been proven that "cant innovate my ass" turned into "we designed ourselves into a thermal corner" and they misjudged what was feasible (ie by way of large failures of overheated graphics cards in the trashcan). And you admitted it was a technical failure, and yet... So apparently when they said "cant innovate my ass" their entire plan was to make technical mistake because it's not 'plausible' that they would misjudge feasibility of graphics cards that do not overheat, and yet they did.
As for sacrificing the Mac Pro. True that could be possible, but in the past with their apology tour, that clearly was not the intent, even if it was the result. I don't see why, here, it also couldn't be the unintended consequence.
Was it bleedingly obvious that the 2 mediocre graphics cards would also have high failure rates from overheating? I guess that was their intent? Youre arguing around yourself.
As for the studio being the original plan. I pray that's not the case. It seems like a stopgap machine, much like the iMac Pro was. Agree, I think they intended to get some version of the Mac Pro out similar to the 7,1 but with their chips. I think somewhere along that way, they experienced some unplanned for technical problems. *IF* the rumor is true on them dropping the core count, that would be some evidence (if that pans out) IMO.
Regarding a purported inability to support 3rd party graphics cards. I don't know what to think about that, and it's an interesting question. Did they always want to support 3rd party graphics cards and are running into technical trouble? Is there just sloth and laziness preventing them from writing drivers to support 3rd party cards? Is is a strategic miscalculation? All or some of the above? Good question. I do not know.
And who knows, they may surprise us and actually support 3rd party graphics, at which point, the discussion is moot. If not, I suspect a technical miscalculation, which they have proven capable of with thermal failures of the trashcan, but I cannot know...it could be poor choices too.
As one of your earlier posts correctly stated, time will tell.
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I sure hope Apple surprises us with whatever they have have in store for the Mac Pro. If they make another blunder and release another machine with no PCI slots and no room for upgrading, no external GPU support, you can almost guarantee that almost every single pro user that needs those things will find a way to move over to Windows unless they are completely married into the Apple software eco system using Final Cut Pro and Motion (is even a thing anymore...lol). Honestly I do not know anyone using Final Cut Pro or Motion. Everyone is either doing AVID, Adobe or DaVinci.
The 2019 Mac Pro is a very capable machine even now. Personally I think Apple would be better served and the community better served if they just left the Mac Pro on Intel for now and released an updated kit with PCIe 5.0 and newer Xeon chips. They should also find a way for current Mac Pro users to upgrade via a motherboard swap.
But let's be real, Apple is not going to do the above. Fully committed to Apple Silicon; the only way I see them being able to compete in the workstation market with a straight face is having new Silicon, that perhaps does not have GPU cores and then having a PCIe 5.0 (or something home cooked) with lots and lots of GPU cores on a separate card. System/GPU RAM should also be removed from the CPU package; and although this will be slower, the overall benefits will be better in the long run.
I just upgraded the RAM in my 2019 Mac Pro and it is like I just actually woke it up....lol.
The 2019 Mac Pro is a very capable machine even now. Personally I think Apple would be better served and the community better served if they just left the Mac Pro on Intel for now and released an updated kit with PCIe 5.0 and newer Xeon chips. They should also find a way for current Mac Pro users to upgrade via a motherboard swap.
But let's be real, Apple is not going to do the above. Fully committed to Apple Silicon; the only way I see them being able to compete in the workstation market with a straight face is having new Silicon, that perhaps does not have GPU cores and then having a PCIe 5.0 (or something home cooked) with lots and lots of GPU cores on a separate card. System/GPU RAM should also be removed from the CPU package; and although this will be slower, the overall benefits will be better in the long run.
I just upgraded the RAM in my 2019 Mac Pro and it is like I just actually woke it up....lol.
Agree with everything you said above.
And weirdly, there really is no reason why apple couldn't make a pCI5 ASi machine that supported 3rd party graphics cards. It's a question of will.
There is no real technical impediment. I'm not saying it's trivial to do, but it is doable.
The could make a chip tailored for the Mac Pro. Everyone assumes it's not economically smart to dedicate such resources to such a niche machine. Maybe everyone is right too. But they *could* do it, and more over, they could sell it cheaper too. Instead of positioning the machine as a $10k niche machine, they could do like with the original Mac Pro and sell it for $3799 entry, and get much wider adoption (although that is a statement of relativism).
How much ram did you go from and to?
The iMac 27" isn't really being replaced by the Mac Studio + the Studio Display, it's replaced by a Mac mini + Studio display and the Mac Studio. The calculation is different than the one you put forth, especially if the Mac mini gets a M2 Pro option in the next revision.
It's still much cheaper to get the AIO display than buy them separately, but that's historically been the case with Apple's iMacs—they were at times essentially 'giving away' the screen with the computer compared to what it cost to get an equivalent panel as an end user (especially early on with the 5K ones.)
M1 Mac mini starts at $700. That leaves a $1300 hole in the lineup Apple could work with (even if you max it with everything but the SSD, you only get to $1400.)
Hi ZombiePhysicist,
I went from 32GB to 240GB; at first I was just going to throw in 6 32GB chips, but decided that $60 for 2 more 8GB sticks (I did not buy from Apple, duh!) so I could leave the originals in made more sense. My original purchase I also got the 580X GPU, but have since swapped that for a W6800 Duo. I actually find it funny people on here complaining about the power supply requirements for the new nVidia 4090; please do not forget that the 2019 Mac Pro has a 1200Watt PSU in it; which is definitely needed for the 28-core and people with dual MPX graphics installed.
I was running into After Effects crying working on massive pixel spaces for LED wall graphics.
Apple has really disappointed me in the fact that they have been so silent on what they have in store for the next Mac Pro; I just couldn't wait anymore so more upgrades are on the road map for my current Mac Pro.
Yes of course, but never forget that for less than 7000 dollars/euros including VAT, I can have a pc with a i9 13900K (24 cores), 128 go of ram, RTX 4090 24 go VRam, AMD pro W6800 32go VRam, motherboard meg Z790 ace , lot of fast ssd M2, 1500w be quiet dark power, a nice case... so without threadripper/ xeons and big motherboards or other expensive things...
So I hope that for 7000 dollars/euros including VAT, Apple will make something equal at least...
So I hope that for 7000 dollars/euros including VAT, Apple will make something equal at least...