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MP All Models So long, old friend.
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I think the Pro will return someday. It won’t be gone forever.
Probably don’t even need studio - just do a small farm of Mac Minis?
Would that be the most cost effective solution? If one fails, then you just replace it instead of being completely stopped.
Could that also make the Studio redundant? Maybe Apple made an error in making the Mac Mini too good?
mattspace
macrumors 68040
mattspace
macrumors 68040
I think the Studio should be cancelled, it's a distraction of scarce resources from the Macbook, Macbook Pro, Macbook Neo, Macbook Air, iMac, Mac Mini, iPhone, iPhone E, iPhone Pro, iPhone Air, Apple Vision Pro, iPad, iPad Air, iPad Pro, iPad Mini, Apple TV, Apple Watch, Apple Watch SE, Apple Watch Ultimate, Airpods, Airpods Pro, Airpods Pro Max, Homepod, Homepod Mini, and takes Apple's eye off the ball of laser focus on battery life.
The Mini should also lose its power cable, and gain a battery, again to avoid distracting from battery efficency. It can have a charging port on the underside like the Magic Mouse - users won't need to shut down more than once a day to recharge, and they can always buy a Macbook if they don't like that, it's just as good anyway, and if they can't afford it, they're probably not serious about using technology.
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FilthyMuppetInnuendo
macrumors regular
1.5 terabytes is crazy RAM. You can already get an M3 Ultra with 256. I imagine the M5 Ultra will be 512.
Basic75
macrumors 68030
The M3 Ultra was already available with 512GB until very recently. Make of that what you will.
Flint Ironstag
macrumors 68000
How cheap will the AS MP have to get before y'all try one? 🤣. The Intel prices are dropping like mad on ebay.
mattspace
macrumors 68040
Money on macOS 27 being the final system to support the AS MP, on account of the PCI slots, while the M2 Ultra studio will get support to macOS 28 or 29.
We need 1.5 TB RAM and have maxed out the MacPro from 2019 in this respect. When will the Mac Studio also have 1.5 RAM or more do you think?
splifingate
Contributor
I remember the look on my girl's face when I got home that day in Oct. of 2006: a huge box, and a really surprised face 🙂
I haven't power the 1,1 on in almost a decade, and (truth be told) I don't remember where I actually stored it.
Likewise, I haven't powered-on the 5,1 since I got the Studio in '23
A lot of fun was had after Tiamo released that semi-miraculous boot.efi ... I don't know where he went, but the 1,1 was quite performant up into ElCap.
Still, it's been a lot of fun (~ same $) adding new things to the Studio.
Good times!
I haven't power the 1,1 on in almost a decade, and (truth be told) I don't remember where I actually stored it.
Likewise, I haven't powered-on the 5,1 since I got the Studio in '23
A lot of fun was had after Tiamo released that semi-miraculous boot.efi ... I don't know where he went, but the 1,1 was quite performant up into ElCap.
Still, it's been a lot of fun (~ same $) adding new things to the Studio.
Good times!
StuAff
macrumors 6502
Still have my 1,1, bought new in 2006. That, to me, was the peak. Then, as always previously, the 'serious' Macs were the best for the enthusiast not just 'professionals'. Before the 1,1 I had a 6100/66 (my first Mac back in 1995), then a G3/266 tower, then a G4 dual gig MDD (yes, I got the quieter power supply when it was offered). Then the MP…absolutely annihilated the G5 quad let alone earlier machines. It could run Windows natively. Upgradeable- never did the CPUs on any machine before or since, but like its tower predecessors (even the 6100 I did the RAM), upgraded the GPU, storage, memory, added USB 3…quieter, too. And ridiculously good value for money- thanks to the initial terms of the deal with Intel, about £750 cheaper than the equivalent Dell Precision. For that iconic case alone, worth it, let alone OS X (apart from the handles…ouch!). Lasted as Top Mac in this household to 2013, as the potential upgrades got more and more expensive without being temptingly fast enough- I'd have wanted four or five times faster, like the previous bumps. The 2,1, 3,1 and 4,1 just kept going up and up in price for marginal gains. And no, I didn't want a Mini let alone an iMac. In 2013, trashcan…no thank you, especially not at that price. So secondhand it was, and my 4,1 (5,1 flashed). Accident killed that in 2019, so a new/old 5,1 it was. 7,1…ooh, nice. But only now financially reasonable, yet utterly blown out of the water by AS on the Mac side. For Windows/Linux, even in the current market, better off going elsewhere and buying new(er).
I don't know what a better answer to the conundrum facing Apple could have been. No, they didn't help themselves with poor design choices and all the price increases. No way the BOM for the M2 Ultra MP was £3k over a Studio. And yes, they could and perhaps should have just kept on bumping to M3, M4…Yes, if you really, really need and or want a proper workstation tower, you still need or want or both one, not TB expansion boxes etc. But when increasingly, more and more users can do 'power work' (or anything else) without a workstation, hard to see how they could make a system that could be priced to sell, and would sell, in the numbers required. They weren't ever going to sell something at a loss, or even trim the margins a bit. I hope, nonetheless, that they do somehow come up with something. In the meantime, Studio it shall be. Thanks MP, you served us well.
I don't know what a better answer to the conundrum facing Apple could have been. No, they didn't help themselves with poor design choices and all the price increases. No way the BOM for the M2 Ultra MP was £3k over a Studio. And yes, they could and perhaps should have just kept on bumping to M3, M4…Yes, if you really, really need and or want a proper workstation tower, you still need or want or both one, not TB expansion boxes etc. But when increasingly, more and more users can do 'power work' (or anything else) without a workstation, hard to see how they could make a system that could be priced to sell, and would sell, in the numbers required. They weren't ever going to sell something at a loss, or even trim the margins a bit. I hope, nonetheless, that they do somehow come up with something. In the meantime, Studio it shall be. Thanks MP, you served us well.
Flint Ironstag
macrumors 68000
Damn, that's a grim outlook. 🤣 Can you proxmox these things at least? I dunno, I could use one as a host for some VMs with a ton of NVME storage, but I don't need that much storage. Pretty sure I'll manufacture a reason to get one when they're in the $1k range.
venom600
macrumors 65816
But that isn't how pricing works. They don't scale pricing based on inflation or the Mac Mini would be well over a thousand dollars base price since it was introduced. In 1998 $2500 dollars got you a mid level Powerbook G3 (my first new computer). In 2001 $2500 got you a Powerbook G4 base spec. In 2026 $2500 gets you a midrange Macbook Pro.
For someone who apparently goes through people's posting history to accuse them of not knowing what to do with a Mac Pro, you sure don't seem to have much of a handle on it yourself do you?
Looks like I was right - you're so attached to the form factor that you'll invent reasons to buy and use it.
G5isAlive
Contributor
Um, no. I voted yes. And I own (current) a couple of MacPro 1,1's a 3,1 and two 5.1's. They were a lot of fun, great satisfaction 'tinkering' with them, but the reality is they were power hogs and long retired as such and I am loving my Mac Studio for work. It might not be as cool, might not be as fun, but so much more powerful and cheaper. I have more RAM in my Mac Studio than any of my Mac Pro's, and more storage in a small external SSD. Sure, I have more storage these days in a NAS, but that would be true if I had a Mac Pro or not.
I will likely pick up a 7,1 just because it's so darn pretty. But if I have to chose between an Intel Mac Pro (AS just does not make sense in a pro tower), or an AS Mac Studio? I will pick the Studio every single time.
The Mac Pro was the right machine for the right time. That time has passed. It's as simple as that.
flowrider
macrumors 604
I never said they did
Lou
Hard disagree on this one. especially considering that Windows currently is crippling itself in market share (global stat counter reported that windows went from 66% in febraury to around 60% in March). you can also work for longer and just do stuff generally longer without having to put things on charge constantly.
Tdude96
macrumors 6502a
Anecdotal, but I've seen a significant shift towards Macs in my company. Ten years ago, only the staff designers and one of the programmers had Macs. Today, the designers still all have Macs, the IT staff have a mix of Macs & Windows machines, half the programmers have Macs, and the majority of the management and executives have Macs. We still have one person left on a Trashcan Pro, but plan to retire that for a Studio later this year. I'm hoping to snag it as a display piece. 😁
I've seen something similar. I'm also seeing now that the org I work for actually can't get any supply of any of the standard laptops from HP and Dell that we used to. You bet we can still get Macs though.
venom600
macrumors 65816
Ahh, my mistake. If you want to blow your mind look at the price of the old Quadra and early PowerMac starting prices in today's money.
I think 2009 and later iMacs did come with “target display” mode, which meant you could use them as displays for other computers. I hooked up a family member’s old 27” to her new-ish MacBook Air and it works.
But yeah, my ‘07 iMac is only good as a door stop now. Display still looks nice, although resolution is low by today’s standards. The computer still works, Snow Leopard, but absolutely nothing runs on it. I should have left it in Bootcamp mode back then, at least I would still be able to run Windows.
I think the price gouging really hurt the Mac Pro. 7,1 prices were insane at the time. I priced out a moderate 12 or 16 core at the time and it came to $12K. This was true for 6,1 as well, where you had to pay for two GPU’s whether you needed them or not.
With Apple Silicon it really became redonkulous, $3K over an identical Mac Studio for what was essentially an onboard PCI expansion chassis? Puhleeze…
I think it is fair to say Apple royally screwed the Mac Pro, if they had been a bit more prudent with pricing and updates, I believe they could have kept it going with relatively minimal R&D effort.
But the fact that the “Ultra” processors are still stuck on the third generation whereas the rest is already on the fifth doesn’t bode well for the Mac Studio either.
I know, it’s just such a cool piece of industrial design. I’m tempted to get the M2 Ultra MacPro, but I think reason will eventually return.