MP All Models So long, old friend.

[avro707]

If they drop support for 2023 MP then the others at same

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.

In another topic here people were complaining about orders for Studio being very delayed and/or cancelled. That could be bad news for the Studio also, maybe that could get dropped and the Macbook Pro gets an extreme high end version that is expected to cover everything.

That takes Apple out of desktop high end computers and people just connect screens and keyboards for desk based use.

Probably that won't happen but since this is Apple, you can't discount anything.

I think the price gouging really hurt the Mac Pro. 7,1 prices were insane at the time.

Mine were really, really expensive! But they were a big step up from the 5,1, better designed - with the exception of the bespoke storage and "unobtainium" GPUs and the Apple war on bespoke GPUs outside of a narrow range of Radeons (and compatible models).

When Apple next launches a new, bespoke and uber-expensive computer product, maybe everyone will stay away from it. Purchase the cheapest option that will just do the job. Or if a bunch of Mac Minis connected together will do, then go that method.

 

[TheAngryKiwi]

Mac is not a serious platform for computing. Never has been. It’s always been a toy. Nobody uses a Mac for real work. That’s why they are more excited about releasing an underpowered Neo than a real PC.

You appear to have wandered onto the wrong forums.

 

[TheAngryKiwi]

Apple Silicon isn’t as capable as Intel. And now Intel has matched it for performance per watt. PCs run circles around MacBooks for battery life and have better performance to boot. Steve Jobs would never have abandoned Intel or the Mac Pro. But at least Apple has a $600 toy with 8GB RAM for professionals.

OK, so you’re just clueless. Thanks for making it easy for us, first couple of comments were a bit ambiguous, but good to know.

 

[avro707]

You appear to have wandered onto the wrong forums.

There is no right or wrong place, it's a public forum, otherwise there would be a requirement of Mac Pro ownership to post here, which there isn't.

Do you own one or more of them, just out of curiosity?

 

[Flint Ironstag]

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.

I'm well aware that my 7,1 can be proxmoxed. Just curious about the current state of virtualization on the AS MP as I do not own one.

 

[TheAngryKiwi]

There is no right or wrong place, it's a public forum, otherwise there would be a requirement of Mac Pro ownership to post here, which there isn't.

Do you own one or more of them, just out of curiosity?

No, no. Don't be trying to take the high road. Anyone who comes on here to needlessly bag Apple is in the wrong place. End of. Not interested in your reply either, thanks.

 

[teh_hunterer]

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.

The reason for this I think is because Apple silicon has always been monolithic, so to make an ultra chip you had to have two perfect max chips to stick together. At a certain point it just becomes too costly to make these big chips because of how low the yield is.

With Apple's new fusion architecture they can make smaller tiles and stitch them together to make the Ultra chips, making it much more economical because there's less yield issues.

I think we'll see faster and more consistent ultra chips from here on out. And I think Apple doesn't want to make a single M3 Ultra more than is absolutely necessary, because they'll make far more money on the M5 Ultra Studio.

 

[ddhhddhh2]

Mac is not a serious platform for computing. Never has been. It’s always been a toy. Nobody uses a Mac for real work. That’s why they are more excited about releasing an underpowered Neo than a real PC.

Nice, I finally figured out how to farm a ton of “Haha” reactions 😉

 

[keksikuningas]

How cheap will the AS MP have to get before y'all try one? 🤣. The Intel prices are dropping like mad on ebay.

If I was in the USA, I'd've jumped on the Microcenter $3000 M2 immediately to be honest. I paid that much for my M3 Max mbp and I'd love to have a powerful desktop. Now with the deprecations, I'd only consider one at a big discount to play around with Asahi Linux. I heard M2 Ultra is physically incapable of using GPUs which is sad, cause otherwise you could at least do fun things with it on Linux

 

[avro707]

No, no. Don't be trying to take the high road. Anyone who comes on here to needlessly bag Apple is in the wrong place. End of. Not interested in your reply either, thanks.

You didn’t answer my question, how many Mac Pro do you own at the moment?

If none, then you can hardly be using that tone at others. I don’t forget things either…

If I was in the USA, I'd've jumped on the Microcenter $3000 M2 immediately to be honest. I paid that much for my M3 Max mbp and I'd love to have a powerful desktop. Now with the deprecations, I'd only consider one at a big discount to play around with Asahi Linux. I heard M2 Ultra is physically incapable of using GPUs which is sad, cause otherwise you could at least do fun things with it on Linux

It would be interesting to try and connect one with an EGPU enclosure to see what it does and what is shown as being connected. I suppose the same thing could be done with a Mac mini to achieve the same outcome. I do have an M4 Pro mini here, also an EGPU and an RX6600XT.

 

[impulse462]

Look I get it that a lot of tech enthusiasts have gotten very attached to the desktop tower form factor over the years, and it takes a while to move on, but things are moving on. Do you think it's just going to be Apple? Apple are just the beginninng

I'm not sure you understand what I was getting at. I'm not a tech enthusiast, i'm a scientist/engineer. I'm not "attached to the form factor" for the sake of it. the tower form factor is a clear way to approach computing. I'll give you a concrete example from my work.

Right now in ML, mixed-precision computing is getting pretty big, however its only applied in a narrow domain (LLMs). Research-wise I'm interested in using mixed-precision computing for other applications. I didn't have access to state-of-the-art 8-bit floating point hardware (this is only available in nvidia blackwell gpus), however my M1 Max 16" MBP does have native 16-bit floating point and 8-bit integer (uint8) registers. So I implement my prototype implementation using uint8 types in C (pretty standard) via bitpacking and profile my code with the instruments app in xcode. I see I have much better memory effeciency and L1 cache reusage which confirmed my hypothesis.

I later purchased an nvidia blackwell 5000 rtx pro and installed in my mac pro. Now I have access to true FP8 hardware and I've implemented my prototype algorithm in CUDA and I can confirm native FP8 speedups.

The only thing I had to purchase was a new GPU which fit in fine in the mac pro chassis. Then I updated nvidia drivers because i can run linux on this computer and I'm up and running in a few hours. The only extra money I spent was on the new gpu (unavoidable), but thats it. Hence my Mac Pro investment from 2019 is still paying off 7 years later. Additionally I can still do anything I want on macOS, even install windows if i chose to.

The only thing I could do on a mac studio is implement the original algorithm in uint8 (because M4/5 doesn't support native FP8 arithmetic). who knows if apple will ever support it in the next M series chips? and even if they do, i have to now buy a WHOLE other computer. why should i? What will I do with my existing studio? its worthless. But apple would still get their money from me. They don't care about my needs or the environment, or this type of work in general. This is just one stop to a dystopian future where people get a ****** computer that can't do anything and I have to pay some subscription to some giant corporation for their server time.

Hopefully my one usecase elucidates my initial strong reaction. I suspect there are a lot of people in a similar boat in this forum.

 

[Ctrlos]

I've often heard that, and never really understood it - it seems that US users are getting 'special' treatment here. I'm in the UK, and I believe due to using International English, Windows 11 installs a lot less bloat (no Candy Crush etc.). Windows 11 Pro might also be better in this regard than the standard version. This is also a self-built PC (using a cheap grey-market key), so no manufacturer bloat.

I also skipped creating a Microsoft account during install using a simple workaround (that I Googled on my iPad at the time - I assumed there would be a way).

I did use an app called MSEdgeRedirect to launch a browser of my choice (Brave) instead of Edge, when returning system web searches etc. This only needed running once, a few years ago.

My CPU doesn't support Copilot+, so can't speak to that. I've generally turned off any default buttons and widgets on my Task Bar, login screen etc. anyway.

Its not just the bloatware. Base OS features are sending all sorts of crap back to Microsoft that is on some level using up resources on your PC you didn't ask for. If a computer is doing something that isn't either critical to running the OS or that you explicitly commanded it to do then thats a problem.

Just run the script and see what you find: https://github.com/raphire/win11debloat

 

[avro707]

later purchased an nvidia blackwell 5000 rtx pro and installed in my mac pro. Now I have access to true FP8 hardware and I've implemented my prototype algorithm in CUDA and I can confirm native FP8 speedups.

That’s a monster of a card! Nice. I looked up what it costs, that's not bad for what it is. If I remember right W6900X MPX modules were AUD$9000...

I do use Windows but sadly something is amiss and my two LG 6K screens are not playing nicely now. Nothing changed on the windows side, they used to work.

That’s the first issue I’ve had in Windows 11 Pro for Workstations. macOS has had more problems over time. But even that has been pretty decent so I cannot complain.

This is just one stop to a dystopian future where people get a ****** computer that can't do anything and I have to pay some subscription to some giant corporation for their server time.

I fear you are right. Power by the hour arrangements could make corporations big $$$ and cut the amount they spend in developing multiple lines of computers. It’s a win win for them.

 

[mode11]

Its not just the bloatware. Base OS features are sending all sorts of crap back to Microsoft that is on some level using up resources on your PC you didn't ask for. If a computer is doing something that isn't either critical to running the OS or that you explicitly commanded it to do then thats a problem.

Just run the script and see what you find: https://github.com/raphire/win11debloat

Every 6 months or so I run an app called O&O Shutup, that turns off any telemetry in Windows. It's just a 1-click process, though I turn a couple of items back on as they're useful.

I have a 14 core desktop CPU, so if there's the odd non-critical process running, I don't lose sleep over it. No doubt macOS has got various AI ******** running in the background.

 

[mode11]

Nobody has purchased an iPad Pro as their first Apple product, and then went out and bought an iPhone, an Apple Watch, AirPods, an Apple TV and a Mac because they liked it so much.

Don't think halo products work like that. It's more like Ford makes the GT40, and regular people buy an Escort. GT40 buyers don't necessarily get an Escort.

 

[mode11]

It's only a matter of time until more of the industry shifts to SoCs with baked on memory instead of socketed CPU/GPU and memory sticks. This isn't going to be just Apple, this is going to be everyone, and the truly professional grade stuff that is currently PCIe-only will simply need to switch over to thunderbolt eventually.

Whilst integration of components has been a long term trend (Ethernet and audio used to be on dedicated cards, the memory controller was on the Northbridge etc.), that doesn't mean the industry will inevitably follow Apple's approach.

There's a tendency on this forum to assume that if Apple don't make a product, it's because it's not worth making. To which I would add *for them.

Apple Silicon is a development of the A-series chips created each year for the iPhone. Combining everything into an SoC is excellent for performance / watt, but has a downside in terms of expandability. Given that Apple are notorious control freaks and love high-margin upsells, this suits them just fine.

Products like the Mac Pro, that worked when they could draw from the x86 parts bin, just don't fit in to the new paradigm. If the MP was a volume seller for Apple, this would give them something to think about. But it's not, so it's easier to just cut it from the line up.

 

[Arctic Moose]

Don't think halo products work like that. It's more like Ford makes the GT40, and regular people buy an Escort. GT40 buyers don't necessarily get an Escort.

A halo product is a popular product that attracts attention to the brand and other products offered by the brand, which may or may not be the most expensive or technically innovative. There is probably no better example in modern tech history than the iPod.

There is no worse example than the Vision Pro, which is bringing absolutely nobody new to the Apple ecosystem, despite its technical merits.

You are confusing halo products with flagship products or products popular with early adopters.

 

[zephonic]

Hopefully my one usecase elucidates my initial strong reaction. I suspect there are a lot of people in a similar boat in this forum.

Thanks for sharing that.

But, and I’m not trying to be glib here, genuinely asking, wouldn’t you be served just as well (or better) by a non-Mac workstation?

 

[mode11]

A halo product is a popular product that attracts attention to the brand and other products offered by the brand, which may or may not be the most expensive or technically innovative. There is probably no better example in modern tech history than the iPod.

There is no worse example than the Vision Pro, which is bringing absolutely nobody new to the Apple ecosystem, despite its technical merits.

You are confusing halo products with flagship products or products popular with early adopters.

A halo is at the top - the clue's in the name. It may not make a lot of money for the company in its own right, but helps shift volume products.

The iPod wasn't a halo product since most people could afford one. If anything, it was a gateway product to Macs, though in practice most customers kept using PCs. In fact, it only exploded in popularity with the third gen, when it got USB 2.0 and PC compatibility. The music industry still rue letting Apple have access to their back catalogues for the iTunes store, which they didn't take seriously since it was Mac-only and hence had a tiny market. Then Apple made the iPod PC compatible and it was game over.

Apple switching to x86 did more to draw people to the Mac, since a) they then had performance parity with PCs, and b) they had the option of running Windows apps / games via VMs or Bootcamp if needed, mitigating the risk of switching to a minority platform.

The Vision Pro would qualify as a halo product, if anyone had any interest in trying it, let alone buying it.

The Mac Pro was never really a halo product, since it wasn't relevant or desirable to the mass market. Mercedes makes really expensive lorries, but they don't inspire people to buy a C-Class. That's more the job of the AMG One.

You're confusing halo products with gateway products.

 

[teh_hunterer]

I'm not sure you understand what I was getting at. I'm not a tech enthusiast, i'm a scientist/engineer. I'm not "attached to the form factor" for the sake of it. the tower form factor is a clear way to approach computing. I'll give you a concrete example from my work.

Right now in ML, mixed-precision computing is getting pretty big, however its only applied in a narrow domain (LLMs). Research-wise I'm interested in using mixed-precision computing for other applications. I didn't have access to state-of-the-art 8-bit floating point hardware (this is only available in nvidia blackwell gpus), however my M1 Max 16" MBP does have native 16-bit floating point and 8-bit integer (uint8) registers. So I implement my prototype implementation using uint8 types in C (pretty standard) via bitpacking and profile my code with the instruments app in xcode. I see I have much better memory effeciency and L1 cache reusage which confirmed my hypothesis.

I later purchased an nvidia blackwell 5000 rtx pro and installed in my mac pro. Now I have access to true FP8 hardware and I've implemented my prototype algorithm in CUDA and I can confirm native FP8 speedups.

The only thing I had to purchase was a new GPU which fit in fine in the mac pro chassis. Then I updated nvidia drivers because i can run linux on this computer and I'm up and running in a few hours. The only extra money I spent was on the new gpu (unavoidable), but thats it. Hence my Mac Pro investment from 2019 is still paying off 7 years later. Additionally I can still do anything I want on macOS, even install windows if i chose to.

Hopefully my one usecase elucidates my initial strong reaction. I suspect there are a lot of people in a similar boat in this forum.

But what did you actually achieve by doing all this? It sounds like you went down a very specific rabbit hole but for... what?

Did you figure out that some prototype application runs faster specifically on 5000 series NVIDIA GPUs?

The only thing I could do on a mac studio is implement the original algorithm in uint8 (because M4/5 doesn't support native FP8 arithmetic). who knows if apple will ever support it in the next M series chips? and even if they do, i have to now buy a WHOLE other computer. why should i? What will I do with my existing studio? its worthless.

You could sell it and get quite a big chunk of your money back precisely because it's not worthless.

But apple would still get their money from me. They don't care about my needs or the environment, or this type of work in general. This is just one stop to a dystopian future where people get a ****** computer that can't do anything and I have to pay some subscription to some giant corporation for their server time.

I don't even know what you're talking about.

If you were expecting Apple to offer a product just so someone can buy an NVIDIA GPU and put it in there and run Linux, it just doesn't make sense. Apple is trying to offer a competing platform. If FP8 arithmetic becomes seriously important I'm sure it'll eventually make its way into Apple silicon.

 

[Arctic Moose]

A halo is at the top - the clue's in the name. It may not make a lot of money for the company in its own right, but helps shift volume products.

The clue is in the name, but not in the way you think.

Halo is a positive effect that spreads outwards (like a halo) from one thing to another associated with it, it is an aura of favorable impression, prestige, or value that extends beyond its original source.

You want to be picturing the halo around a planet, moon or galaxy, not one perched on top of an angel.

Cambridge Dictionary defines "halo effect" as:

The positive opinion that someone has of a person, product, company, etc. as a whole, which is based on an earlier opinion of one particular quality or feature.

halo effect

the positive opinion that someone has of a person, product, company, etc. as a…

dictionary.cambridge.org

Here's a paper from the American Marketing Association:

Halo or Cannibal? How New Video Game Introductions Affect Existing Product Sales

New JM article investigating video game platforms provides metrics on how new product introductions affect the revenues of existing products.

www.ama.org

There is no mention of particularly top-level anything, only purchasing one thing due positive experience with another.

Joe Wilcox, an analyst for Jupiter Research specifically refers to the iPod as such:

There is a halo effect, leading to a definite increase in Mac sales, but it’s much broader than the iPod.

Apple's Halo Stays on Despite Switch to Intel | Channel Insider

Industry watchers have noticed a "halo" surrounding Apple Computer's iPod: The popular music player is helping to bring new users to the company's

www.channelinsider.com

You're confusing halo products with gateway products.

No.

 

[maflynn]

Late to the party, but yeah the writing was on the wall once apple released their Apple Silicon with ram, storage and GPU on the SoC.

Once that was announced, the advantages of a tower design was largely muted.

 

[maflynn]

The Mac Pro is, and always has been the halo product.

No it wasn't.

Prior to trash can Mac Pro, these desktops were used for real work for a wide swath of customer types. It wasn't a product that brought other customers into the apple fold

 

[David Hassholehoff]

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.

That was a very small window of iMacs. None of mine support it, unfortunately.

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 have a white C2D 17" keeping my living room door open, a 23" of the same keeping the kitchen door open, and an aluminium i5 23" keeping the bedroom door open. If I need the office door kept open, or the guest room, I have two old aluminium Cinema Display HD standing ready. 😅

With Apple Silicon it really became redonkulous, $3K over an identical Mac Studio for what was essentially an onboard PCI expansion chassis? Puhleeze…

Sure. But to a very small group of customers it was worth the expense. Personally, I would have kept the product going even if it made little fiscal sense since it keeps that little but loyal group happy, and that has secondary effects. When someone who buys €10k computers for their business switches platform, odds are they will also do that with their personal gear eventually. Then their family members', and so on.

Mac is not a serious platform for computing. Never has been. It’s always been a toy. Nobody uses a Mac for real work. That’s why they are more excited about releasing an underpowered Neo than a real PC.

Right. We all know exactly what this is.

Every 6 months or so I run an app called O&O Shutup, that turns off any telemetry in Windows. It's just a 1-click process, though I turn a couple of items back on as they're useful.

The fact that you have to go through that "one click process" at all makes Windows a completely unserious alternative. If I need to fiddle with the OS at all to make it acceptable, I may just as well use GNU and fiddle to make the GUI acceptable. At least an unacceptably poor GUI design won't snitch on me just because I didn't have time to fiddle with it on setup. 😬

 

[mode11]

The clue is in the name, but not in the way you think.

Halo is a positive effect that spreads outwards (like a halo) from one thing to another associated with it, it is an aura of favorable impression, prestige, or value that extends beyond its original source.

You want to be picturing the halo around a planet, moon or galaxy, not one perched on top of an angel.

Cambridge Dictionary defines "halo effect" as:

The positive opinion that someone has of a person, product, company, etc. as a whole, which is based on an earlier opinion of one particular quality or feature.

halo effect

the positive opinion that someone has of a person, product, company, etc. as a…

dictionary.cambridge.org

So essentially, by putting a high quality product (the iPod) in the hands of lots of people, it cast a positive aura over Apple and it's other products (e.g. the Mac)?

That's a fair point, but also a bit circular. Companies that make good products get known for making good products. If Apple only made iPods, would it make sense to say they only made halo products?

To me, what defines a halo product is that it's principle purpose is to create your "aura of favourable impression, prestige". Something that's typically free from the constraints of mass-market affordability, but casts a bit of glamour onto more prosaic products.

Here's a paper from the American Marketing Association:

Halo or Cannibal? How New Video Game Introductions Affect Existing Product Sales

New JM article investigating video game platforms provides metrics on how new product introductions affect the revenues of existing products.

www.ama.org

Not sure what your point is here. It's just discussing whether a smash-hit games release (like the latest Mario Kart) is detrimental to existing games in the genre, taking their sales, or whether by drawing new players to the platform itself, tends to increase sales all round (rising tide lifting all boats etc.). Their use of the term 'halo' doesn't really fit in this context.

There is no mention of particularly top-level anything, only purchasing one thing due positive experience with another.

A halo product needn't be the most expensive product a company makes - though is often 'bad value' in conventional terms. For example, the original MacBook Air was something of a halo product, in that whilst not expected to outsell regular MacBooks, it was expected to generate headlines over its strikingly thin design. The G4 Cube would fall in this category too.

Joe Wilcox, an analyst for Jupiter Research specifically refers to the iPod as such:

There is a halo effect, leading to a definite increase in Mac sales, but it’s much broader than the iPod.

Apple's Halo Stays on Despite Switch to Intel | Channel Insider

Industry watchers have noticed a "halo" surrounding Apple Computer's iPod: The popular music player is helping to bring new users to the company's

www.channelinsider.com

People in that era often talked up the Mac as being on the brink of breaking through. It was the desktop Linux of the time - perpetually hovering at 5-10% of market share. The wildly successful iPod did throw glamour / attention on the comparatively unsuccessful Mac, but the effect was pretty weak. It wasn't until x86 that the Mac really picked up Steam (figuratively and literally).

The Apple Vision Pro was clearly intended to be a halo product. Hugely expensive and with no obvious use-case, but demonstrating a future-looking UI paradigm and top notch displays. The fact it failed to grab the public imagination is neither here nor there.