MP 7,1 Mac Pro 8.1 - WHAT IF...

[prefuse07]

I always loved the trashcan for what it is. It's a gorgeous design. A dense powerful little machine. It's basically a better Mac Studio. Or Mac mini Pro. There was no problem with the machine in and of itself. The problem was positioning it to be a Mac Pro, which it just wasn't a satisfactory machine for that role.

Agreed

If they had released it under the Mac Studio name right then and there, they would've been in a much better position, and no apology tour necessary, although I do wonder if the 7,1 would've come to fuition (which I guess is what @jmho was interested in, perhaps?).

I just hope they never scrap the Mac Pro brand, and that they don't ever bastardize it like they once tried to.

 

[vinegarshots]

I always loved the trashcan for what it is. It's a gorgeous design. A dense powerful little machine. It's basically a better Mac Studio. Or Mac mini Pro. There was no problem with the machine in and of itself. The problem was positioning it to be a Mac Pro, which it just wasn't a satisfactory machine for that role.

My employer years ago had bought a trashcan Mac when it was released for our production work, and we ended up having to sell it a month later because many of our projects were using the ray tracing engine in After Effects, and it was so much slower than the old PC we had been using previously.

It's crazy that it's around 10 years later, and that particular problem is still a problem in Apple computers.

 

[deconstruct60]

The M2 Pro mini is stepping on the Studio’s toes though - it’s actually more expensive at the same spec. All depends on how high the new MP goes spec wise.

Not really true. Not possible to make the Studio and Mini Pro the same spec. The Studio only does 'down' the product line to "Mn Max' configuration. The Mini Pro only goes up to "Mn Pro" configuration. There is always a GPU gap there. Some folks may deprecate the GPU difference as a high value preposition, but it is a different spec.

There is overlap on CPU cores and RAM capacity settings, but the full specs do not overlap.

so the Mini Pro really isn't stepping on the Studio's toes. there is some potential fractricde at the "internal edges", but that is far more present across the whole Mac line up now.

 

[mode11]

Fair enough. As usual with Apple, the mini Pro is poor value when specced up - I'd buy a base Studio in preference too.

I was just speculating on what would happen to the Studio if Apple repositioned the Mac Pro to be more of a 'super Studio', perhaps differentiated with exclusive use of the Ultra. Given the mini now has a Pro chip, would the Studio have a niche as just a Max machine?

On reflection, I think it would. As various people pointed out, there's a huge price jump from Pro to Ultra. And as you say, fratricide is much more common in the range now, given everything is using the same few SoCs, with the same clock speeds. And the Studio would likely retain the Ultra anyway.

I'd thought it odd the Studio hasn't received an M2 yet, and was speculating as to why. Though of course the iMac hasn't either. Perhaps they're just fulfilling laptop orders first.

 

[mode11]

If they had released it under the Mac Studio name right then and there, they would've been in a much better position, and no apology tour necessary, although I do wonder if the 7,1 would've come to fuition (which I guess is what @jmho was interested in, perhaps?).

It wouldn't have changed much - either way they'd have discontinued the Mac Pro tower and replaced it with a SFF cylinder. There'd still be users clamouring for a tower.

It's true that Apple could have brought out that tower earlier, without losing face. But they had committed to down-sizing and removing internal expansion from their pro desktop machine, even building a new factory for its production. It's what they wanted to do. They resisted change for a long time, probably vacillating between changing the form factor again and just dropping the line altogether. And when they concluded a tower was the only workable form factor, had to take it much higher up-market to justify building it.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Need a return of the four drive bays like in the pre-6,1 Mac Pros...

Not gonna happen.

When 5,1 was designed, HDDs didn't have the same top capacities or value for money that they do today, so four bays was almost a requirement if you wanted a decent amount of storage.

It's unlikely Apple would sacrifice more space/volume in the 8,1 enclosure when they had other solutions for 7,1.

 

[maikerukun]

Why not just release the m2ultra max studio? My guess is that it is ready but they want to have it on a about 1.5 year cadence and in that case wwdc is the sane spot but without much hoopla. If there is a true Mac Pro, it has to add something substantial to differentiate from the studio. Obvious answer there is expansion a la 2019. Lacking that, there need to be something else. 4xSoC is the obvious answer but if it doesn’t have the upgradability the market wouldn’t be that big.
If we just take a step back it seems to me that the most sane and obvious answer is that will get (in due time) the updated studio as well as the 2019 style MP with all the power and expansion needed. All other solutions point to Apple backtracking on their new (since 2018) approach to satisfy pros with what they actually say they need.

This is the most logical and obvious answer to the Mac Pro and I'm not sure if Apple has the nuts to just follow through on that lolol.

 

[maikerukun]

Apple always have the option of just repositioning the Mac Pro, as they did with the trashcan and iMac Pro. Although there was a public mea culpa over the 6,1, and the 7,1 took advantage of the Xeon parts bin to make a highly expandable chassis, Apple don't have to make a direct replacement. In fact, most of this thread has been speculation on how that would even be possible under the SoC paradigm.

It's possible the Studio will be yet another single-generation Pro product. The new Mac Pro will then take its place at the top of the tree, as something in between the 7,1 and Studio.

Hmmm, I hope not. It would be great if it was something between 7.1 and 8.1 at minimum, and full blown 8.1 would be great.

 

[mattspace]

When 5,1 was designed, HDDs didn't have the same top capacities or value for money that they do today, so four bays was almost a requirement if you wanted a decent amount of storage.

It's unlikely Apple would sacrifice more space/volume in the 8,1 enclosure when they had other solutions for 7,1.

And to be honest, there's a really good question that needs to be asked as to whether spinning storage should EVER be directly managed by any macOS system in the APFS era.

I've been having that question myself, and with APFS having a level of abstraction that:

• degrades performance
• means a lot of tools can't be used in a failure situation - for example, you can't clone an APFS time machine volume to a larger drive the way you can with HFS+

...while also lacking a lot of integrity-checking and protection features - maybe the way forward for spinning storage is (BTRFS-formatted) NAS systems, like Synology etc.

You can see that scenario playing out with eventually moving to a state where a 2 bay redundant NAS is effectively just the replacement for a single external USB drive, and companies like Synology cut down their NAS software to just the storage management tools.

It's a real shame Drobo burned out, because had they launched now (and not been unreliable), they might really have found a better market as a storage-only alternative to Synology.

 

[maikerukun]

I think the "apology" over the 6.1 is really overblown. I've seen people calling it an "Apology tour" as if Apple was travelling around repeatedly apologising for every aspect of the 6.1. In reality Apple invited 5 journalists to Cupertino for a sneak peak of the 7.1 where Phil Schiller indirectly said he was sorry for the 6.1's lack of upgrades, and Craig Federighi said the "painted into a thermal corner" line - then this was sensationalised by headlines as "Apple apologises for trash can!", and 5 years later the story has just kept growing and growing.

Now that the 7.1 has been out for 4 years or so, Apple will be trying to re-contextualise the success of the 6.1. I think it's clear that to MacRumors members, the 7.1 is the better machine, but I wonder how well it actually sold compared to the significantly cheaper and more accessible 6.1.

It could be that now in 2023 Apple actually thinks the 6.1 was the better performing product, and maybe they also think that Apple Silicon is exactly what they need to fix its thermal and upgradability shortcomings.

I must admit that personally I don't care about the form factor at all, I just care about the GPU. If Apple can give me a powerful GPU then I don't care if it's in a trash can, cheese grater, or a soggy cardboard box .

Not gonna lie, this is honestly my feeling as well. Apple makes something as powerful as a 4090, it can be in a soda box for all I care lololol.

 

[maikerukun]

Nope, never owned one.

I'm just trying to work out if Apple truly did hate the 6.1 or if it's just something that we've all been repeating so often that we've all just started to accept it as truth.

You're correct that Apple is mostly just interested in whether or not a product is a sales success or not, which is why I'm very curious as to whether the 7.1 gamble actually paid off or if it was a well loved machine that nobody bought.

I'm very curious about that as well. Because 7.1 was AWESOME and is exactly 2 upgrade generations away from literal PERFECTION.

 

[jmho]

It would be really interesting if Apple just completely ignored the 6.1 and 7.1 and ended up going all the way back to the 5.1 and made a desktop computer that was accessible to everyone.

Scrap the Studio and give up on a higher end iMac, and just try to make a desktop Mac to rule them all - from the bottom end all the way to the top. Simplify the line-up - Start at $1999 with an M2 Pro / Max, and then have the top spec $10k+ with an absolute beast. Put desktop computers back on the floor where they belong!

 

[Boil]

Need a return of the four drive bays like in the pre-6,1 Mac Pros...

But rather than four SATAII, four U.3 hot-swap connectors, with a hardware RAID controller in the SoC...

So the boot/apps drive would be two (or four...?) NAND blades, bulk storage could be four 32TB (class) U.3 2.5" SSDs, and a 64TB OWC PCIe RAID card for a scratch/working drive...

Not gonna happen.

When 5,1 was designed, HDDs didn't have the same top capacities or value for money that they do today, so four bays was almost a requirement if you wanted a decent amount of storage.

It's unlikely Apple would sacrifice more space/volume in the 8,1 enclosure when they had other solutions for 7,1.

Yet Apple allowed the third-party Promise units (J2i & R4i) that were designed specifically for the 7,1 Mac Pro...

The space for the R4i could be used for other resources (MPX GPU), but the space for the J2i was only there for the J2i (and that Sonnet triple drive dealio)...

And to be honest, there's a really good question that needs to be asked as to whether spinning storage should EVER be directly managed by any macOS system in the APFS era.

I never mentioned HDDs, everything I mentioned (in the initial post, quoted at the top of this reply) was in regards to Solid State Drives, specifically of the U.3 2.5" SSD variant...

The option for 120TB of hot-swappable NVMe SSDs in a RAID configuration seems like a worthy addition to a high-end workstation...?

Anyway, moving back to the main topic; how about that ASi Mac Pro...? ;^p

 

[Joe The Dragon]

It would be really interesting if Apple just completely ignored the 6.1 and 7.1 and ended up going all the way back to the 5.1 and made a desktop computer that was accessible to everyone.

Scrap the Studio and give up on a higher end iMac, and just try to make a desktop Mac to rule them all - from the bottom end all the way to the top. Simplify the line-up - Start at $1999 with an M2 Pro / Max, and then have the top spec $10k+ with an absolute beast. Put desktop computers back on the floor where they belong!

really need an non apple storage slot. Or at the very lest an case with mac pro 7.1 like access to the apple slots with apple only upgrades that need an full system wipe to pull off.

 

[AndreeOnline]

It would be really interesting if Apple just completely ignored the 6.1 and 7.1 and ended up going all the way back to the 5.1 and made a desktop computer that was accessible to everyone.

The 7.1 is the 5.1. They even went some distance to make it obvious in terms of looks.

"You want a cheese grater? Here you go!"

I think that, much more than any closed door board room meeting where' people are whispering "I'm sorry", the 7.1 is a beautiful "Sorry, you were right".

And don't for a second confuse people who got into the 5.1 late via eBay with those who bought it from Apple at launch. To me, at the time, the 5.1 was... if not eye-wateringly expensive, at least pretty costly. I had to settle for a single CPU 3.33 GHz 6-core with an ATI 5770 for my personal use computer.

One difference I do think it's worth pointing out is that while my 5.1 config was considered a good 'price performance' tier, the entry level 7.1 was always considered weak, and stepping up got more expensive, quicker.
But at no point at launch was the 5.1 a cheap case that enthusiasts threw themselves at to 'spec out'.

The 7.1 is fine as it is, but the transition is being forced.* At least another generation would lead to more updated components such as MPX modules, which would be great on the used market. I didn't buy my 7.1 new, but I didn't have to wait long until I found a good deal. That's how the enthusiast market needs to look at that computer. Also, I find it kind of nice—borderline surprising—that Apple actually did release updated MPX modules. They are quite a unique design and not just a few screw holes that need to be moved.

I'd be pretty happy staying with the 7.1, combing the internet for high end parts, if it wasn't for the Xeon's weak single core performance (real or imagined). I might still do exactly that. I want to see the 8.1 specs and then I'll do some tradeoff calculations and see where I land. But to be honest, I think an AS Mac Pro is the better overall computer even if it gives up quite a bit of max GPU grunt (but I'm not running dual Duos anytime soon).


*= It's easy to see why: Tim Cook has said he is not interested in "piecing together other people's stuff" and calling it a product (CPUs from Intel and GPUs from AMD). There is almost no way around that if you want to present a traditional Workstation. The buyers expect to be able to do exactly that themselves.

 

[jmho]

And don't for a second confuse people who got into the 5.1 late via eBay with those who bought it from Apple at launch. To me, at the time, the 5.1 was... if not eye-wateringly expensive, at least pretty costly. I had to settle for a single CPU 3.33 GHz 6-core with an ATI 5770 for my personal use computer.

One difference I do think it's worth pointing out is that while my 5.1 config was considered a good 'price performance' tier, the entry level 7.1 was always considered weak, and stepping up got more expensive, quicker.
But at no point at launch was the 5.1 a cheap case that enthusiasts threw themselves at to 'spec out'.

Looking at historical pricing it seems like the Mac Pro in 2012 started at $2499, and choosing the top cpu would put that up to just over $6k. Meanwhile the 7.1 starts at $6k and the top cpu will put you at $13k.

I'm not saying the 5.1 was cheap, but it was in a different price class to the 7.1.

In my head I'm thinking that $8k sounds like a fair price for an Apple Silicon Mac Pro - in 5.1 land $8k buys a top spec machine, in 7.1 land $8k buys you a clown computer.

 

[AndreeOnline]

Looking at historical pricing it seems like the Mac Pro in 2012 started at $2499, and choosing the top cpu would put that up to just over $6k. Meanwhile the 7.1 starts at $6k and the top cpu will put you at $13k.

$6k sounds about right for my config. It was the top spec single CPU. I remember the dual tray as $10k+. At least in Switzerland. So in my mind it’s “same-ish” with an edge to the 5.1 that didn’t feel lame at lower prices.

I might remember wrong. But I maintain that the 5.1’s greatness came after people started to pick it up for cheap. The 7.1 will get there—on some level. But it’s different now that “Intel-based” will age quickly and poorly.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

I might remember wrong. But I maintain that the 5.1’s greatness came after people started to pick it up for cheap. The 7.1 will get there—on some level. But it’s different now that “Intel-based” will age quickly and poorly.

Keep in mind that, when 5,1 was around, there were no ‘prosumer’ options. For instance if you wanted Photoshop or Logic Pro simply to run smooth, you almost had to get the Mac Pro.

Today it’s an entirely different story. These apps and the alike run perfect on entry level Macs, leaving the Mac Pro as a real niche for those who need the absolute most power-to-profit ratio in their workflows, and who want the internal expansion.

 

[AndreeOnline]

Keep in mind that...

You're replying to me, but I'm not sure where the objection is (if any).

I mostly agree with what you're saying. But I don't think that 'top tier' AS performance together with expansion and/or internal storage possibilities qualify as "niche".

In fact, I believe that 'best in class' AS performance (for what it is) in a Mac Pro case will appeal to many.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

I don't think that 'top tier' AS performance together with expansion and/or internal storage possibilities qualify as "niche".

I would have to disagree on this one, because of how workflows have changed. Again I’m only making comparisons to 10-15 years ago when 5,1 was available, but Apple’s influence and penetration of many professional markets - mainly video and audio - is nowhere near what it was once.

Clearly there are many reasons for this beyond the scope of this thread, but it’s very telling that more and more people who qualify as professionals are using lower tier hardware for their work. And for those who do need the very best hardware, the PC space now dominates the market.

This is why I think there is a great deal of mystery around 8,1; for over a decade Apple demonstrated that it wasn’t willing to take opportunities when they became available, yet they continually try and dictate the market.

In fact, I believe that 'best in class' AS performance (for what it is) in a Mac Pro case will appeal to many.

Again, a definition of ‘many’ is rather ambiguous.

But at the end of the day, the best machine is the one that gets the job done, much like the best camera being the one that you have with you.

 

[AndreeOnline]

I would have to disagree on this one...

Sure, we have to call it as we see it.

But looking at how the situation is now is not a great way to draw conclusions, in my mind.

Pros have to buy what's available. The Mac Pro I think Apple will launch hasn't been available. I'm in the camp that thinks an AS Mac Pro will come in at a lower price and be accessible to anyone who specs out other AS solutions today.

We'll see.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

I'm in the camp that thinks an AS Mac Pro will come in at a lower price and be accessible to anyone who specs out other AS solutions today.

We'll see.

It’ll be interesting for sure. Given that a Studio Ultra starts at $4K I think this will be the base price, but obviously that depends on whether the Pro replaces the Studio or not, in which case Apple could release a more affordable Max variant of the Pro… Ahh the reveal can’t come soon enough.

 

[norsemen]

The Apple Silicon transition were supposed to take two years. We are now into year three.

They obviously did a reset last year. My guess is that they are trying to differentiate the Mac Pro from the Mac Studio.

My main guess would be that they need the Mac Pro to be more modular than the Mac Studio.

Development in AI necessitates graphics that Apple can’t make of their own. So they need expansions slots for those graphic cards. Perhaps we’ll see the partnership with AMD activated again?

There’s a privacy angle that Apple is in a strong position to advocate for with AI. So running AI models locally on device, would benefit Apple’s hardware.

It will be very expensive, for sure

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

In the mean time… 128core model is sold out:

Ampere launches 80-core Arm dev kit with support for Nvidia RTX GPUs

Ampere launched the Altra Dev Kit this week, a stripped-down system that comes in a cardboard box. It includes a featureful motherboard, an SoC glued to a...

www.techspot.com

 

[innerproduct]

This waiting game is getting quite tiring… but in the meantime there have been some quite impressive developments on the software side for 3d rendering. Maya is now native and most renderers are available. Octane got a 30-40% speed boost in the latest version and Blender 3.5 is out with almost full metal functionality throughout. (And in blender, m2max manages to close in on a single 6800 while easily beating out a m1ultra )
Seems to me that the mac pro will be released at a good time. Had it been released last year, none of these sw would have been ready.
The only things that really is missing now (for higher end stuff) is Nuke and HW support for unreal engines nanite tech.