MP 6,1 Trashcan was the perfect Mac

[mikas]

Then they (tcMP) sank in price to 1k€ ballparks and even lower, I bought three of these eventually. Not nearly ideal workstations for me, not now nor at the publish time. But really really beautiful you just can't say any other way. I use one with my tv, one as a MacOS helper besides my daily work PC. One sits on the shelf just to look beautiful.

I tried to use them as a daily driver and to wait for the Mx series Mac Pro, but eventually gave up and bought some PC iron to work with daily basis. And for the ASi Mx workstations, well, we know now what's happened to those. At least I now know I will have to keep on going with PC stuff and win11 for now, maybe forever sadly.

@Nermal
ps. I've got one ThinkStation P520, upgraded it to 10c W-2155, 128GB ram, came with 900W PSU. I have considered a spare power supply for it, but they cost a lot, like 200€-300€. A 690W PSU could be bought cheap though, like 50€. The same goes for my Z4 G4 1000W PSUs, but I've got two pieces of those, so I can manage if either one quits on me.

 

[woolypants]

You know, if you're an investor you should be vacuuming up trashcan Macs right now. In about 10-20 years, they're going to be held as the pinnacle of the Ive-era Apple design. By that point, considerations about their utility just be footnotes. They'll solely be considered as design objects.

 

[mikas]

Maybe so. But personally not going to sell them, no. Not even sure if I'm alive to enjoy their collector values go up that much, and pretty sure my offspring don't care or recognize their value. But it's a good point you made there.

I've got two original boxes too, and one spare MB. Maybe my Cube or iMac G4 will see their collector values rise a little earlier than tcMP. But I don't think I'll sell them either.

I've been buying only used Macs for a while now. The last new iMac I bought as new was a 2017 iMac 27". Just got an 2018 Mac Mini and immediately upgraded to 64GB ram, just because I could. It's gonna be a sw-license and file server, only after I have tried it as a portable eGPU workstation for a couple of months.

To stay on-topic, my third tcMP beauty on the shelve is waiting for it's CPU transplantation to 1680v2 or 2697v2. Can't decide which one.

 

[woolypants]

I've been buying only used Macs for a while now.

For general use like web browsing and office apps, and if you max-out the RAM and fit an SSD, old Macs are a really pleasant experience. Purely from a UI and UX experience, they might even be better than getting a new Mac.

I like how John Gruber explained macOS while he was talking about the Vision Pro:

To me the Macintosh has always felt more like a place than a thing. Not a place I go physically, but a place my mind goes intellectually. When I’m working or playing and in the flow, it has always felt like MacOS is where I am. I’m in the Mac.

And, actually, I feel Apple's been getting worse at this in recent years. Around OS X 10.4 was where they hit the sweet spot. 10.4 was such a nice place to be and work. It wasn't like "using a computer".

10.5, 10.6, 10.7 was where they perfected things... 10.8 and 10.9 stated to feel a little like they were treading water. And then they took a hard left with 10.10 when somebody put Johnny Ive in charge of UI.

I remember hearing that Apple had hired a truckload of ex-Microsoft engineers, and I knew things were damned at that point. Since then we've had awful things like the new System Settings app. We've had "Preferences" renamed as "settings" across the board. Finder now lets you keep folders on top like in Windows, rather than the more natural (and humanly chaotic) ordering by date, or filename, or whatever. The concept of optional features within macOS apps (accessed by hitting the Option key!) has died, and is incredibly rare now.

 

[deconstruct60]

Pro users seem to divide into two sorts: those who want the horsepower and basic connectivity (ethernet, thunderbolt etc), but don't really make use of serious on-board expandability (depending more on network storage and that sort of thing); and those who want to make use of the on-board flexibility for storage, specialist expansion cards and the like.

With the trashcan, Apple took the path of assuming its customers were primarily of the first sort, but with the cheesegrater they backtracked and embraced the second sort.

Apple never really backtracked. MP 2013 --> iMac Pro ( stopgap 2020 iMac 27" ) --> Mac Studio
There was a hiccup stopgap on that path because the Mac Studio came out so late in the transition, but those were all :
i. bounded literal desktop footprint of the Mac Mini's 7x7 inch box.
ii. About 400W power supply.
iii. Larger GPU VRAM option
iv. One, and only one, internal drive
v. $2,999-$4,999 entry point


The MP 2019 gave up on i-iv but did not on v. Apple lopped off the 2006-2012 Mac Pro users that were in that zone ( plus the ones that wish MP was still in the $2-2.5K zone. ). That price increase STILL thinks that customers are primarily of the first sort. Otherwise they wouldn't be leaving a large block of folks with more limited budgets behind to set the 'foor' price to the $6K ( a 100% increase. 100% increase you NOT going after exactly the same group. It is a subset. ).

Apple shifted to a different user segmentation at least as much "backtracked". A Vega II / W6800X Duo all by itself cost about double what an entry MP 2010 did. That is whole new 'zipcode' for a price range.


All of which gets to the core problem the thread's start inquires about; the "We are a bigger and/or 'more important' group than those folks" issue. Apple was trying too hard to herd too many folks into one bucket to the point there is lots of ranker about what the boundaries of the bucket are. Much of the 'over the top' anger about the 'Trashcan' is about the self perception that this is the larger/'more important' group. Apple just likely has a different viewpoint. Mac unit sales and revenue from 2012-2019 went up. Did they miss out on most users? Nope.


Apple Silicon has 'doubled down' on some of those first four aspects that Apple has stuck to since 2013. The Mac Studio is just taller in the same footprint. The whole line is focused on keeping power down; not draining the maximum amount possible from a wall socket. Larger VRAM is being spread to the whole line up! The security intertwined with the primary boot drive has just gotten deeper.


Some folks took the MP 2019 as some complete 180 degree turn toward hypermodular infatuation by Apple. It allowed optional drives (not sold at all in BTO ) but the T2 SSD was firmly there. There was better 'off-the-shelf' GPU coverage for AMD cards , but Nvidia was gone and much of the GPU coverage was driven by dGPU in other Intel Mac systems. The 'off-the-shelf' major driving force was the UEFI that Intel chips needed anyway (not particularly driven by Apple). The lack of an iGPU in the CPU was Intel's call; not Apple's. The TDP targets for the GPUs ... AMD's call; not Apple's.

Don't force folks to buy more than one GPU really isn't about hypermodular love.
Don't lean too hard on Thunderbolt is giving to some internal expansion, but not making hyper internal flexibility the total end goal. Thunderbolt was in no way optional on a standard MP 2019 (MPX connectors , etc. ) .
Commitment to Extremely high bandwidth is not necessarily '==' standard PCI-e slots.

 

[Falhófnir]

Feel like it would be an excellent Mac Studio design ironically, given that was essentially the market segment it pioneered! Easier upgrade access than is currently possible and a sleeker looking design.

 

[seek3r]

I think it proved that there was a demand for a workstation-style Mac. The trash can drove a lot of professional users away from macOS, likely permanently.

Apple did try to keep some with the ongoing (at the time) 2010 updates, like adding native nvme boot support, to let folks keep using the 5,1s fully

 

[erikkfi]

If you wait long enough, any deservedly-reviled product or artwork can come to be seen as an under-appreciated classic.

 

[jaw04005]

I picked one up for less than $300, upgraded the RAM, SSD and CPU. Works great when I occasionally need it for Windows 10. I call it Darth Vader. 😂

It took the place of my Mac Pro (5,1) because it can actually drive the new Apple Studio Display.

Like the Cube, it was ahead of its time. If they released it today instead of the Mac Studio (it has more ports!) it would have been successful.

 

[SDAVE]

I think the Mac Studio is the perfect Mac.

The M1 Max/Ultra are on deep discount right now.

 

[Herbert123]

"What works is better than what looks good"

Every MacRumors member should be required to read this sentence before posting. The stark opposition to this simple idea nearly destroyed the Mac, and the obsessive, maudlin need for people to always define Apple products first by their "beauty" is a sign of a greater problem: People buying things they don't actually need because they're victims of marketing nonsense, tarted up as high-art. It's a bunch of glitter throwing for the easily distracted.

Not only did it almost destroy the Mac, on a larger scale consumerism is actively destroying our environment and planet, as well as our human spirit.

And still people are convinced they "need" their phone. They "need" two cars. They "need" more than 2 or 3 pairs of trousers, and they "need" to update their --fill in the blank here-- every year or sooner even if the one(s) they have would continue to work well for many years to come.

The collective stupidity and ignorance is mind-boggling. But hey! Gotta have that latest bling, right?

Sigh.

 

[Dayo]

"What works is better than what looks good"

I don't know where all the "it looked good" is coming from.

I was in the market for an update to my MP31 back in 2013 and when I looked at the trashcan, what I saw was an attempt to replace an icon of industrial design, that brilliantly married form and function, with a clearly functionally crippled cheap looking piece of ugly plastic.

I never bought one despite going back several times desperate to believe the propaganda and actually, have not bought a Mac since. Such was the disappointment that Apple could try to pass such an abomination off as a Mac Pro. The kool-aid stopped working on me at that exact period.

 

[avro707]

When NVME became possible with the 5,1 that hugely improved it, to the point that a X5690 5,1 with newer GPUs and Opencore and a newer macOS was a much better machine than the 6,1.

When I put the NVME in the 5,1 it ran with blazing speed, literally everything was almost instant.

Now I have that NVME card in my 7,1 running windows 11.

 

[jaw04005]

I don't know where all the "it looked good" is coming from.

I was in the market for an update to my MP31 back in 2013 and when I looked at the trashcan, what I saw was an attempt to replace an icon of industrial design, that brilliantly married form and function, with a clearly functionally crippled cheap looking piece of ugly plastic.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the Mac Pro (2013) is made out of aluminum, not plastic. It has a solid build quality, heft and does not feel cheap by any means. It wasn't slapped together.

I leave mine uncovered on the bookshelf (when I'm not using it for Windows 10). It's a talking point. The only other Mac I've ever had anyone ask about is the iMac G4, which sits on a side table in my office.

I never bought one despite going back several times desperate to believe the propaganda and actually, have not bought a Mac since. Such was the disappointment that Apple could try to pass such an abomination off as a Mac Pro. The kool-aid stopped working on me at that exact period.

Why can't both products simply exist? While I agree Apple shouldn't have released the Mac Pro (2013) as a replacement for the Mac Pro (Mid 2012), there's obviously a market for a slimmer profile prosumer/professional machine. Otherwise, the Mac Studio wouldn't exist.

Professionals (including so-called video people) blasted the Mac Pro (2013) at the time. They would never buy a Mac without PCI slots or multiple drive capacity, etc. yet they are the same people putting up YouTube videos praising the performance of the Mac Studio (OMG?!?! It doesn't even throttle, we can put 20 of them on a rack, etc.).

Things change.

And who says you have to discard these non-upgradeable computers anyway? I just pass them down to family members or they become collectors items.

 

[Dayo]

I suppose I just couldn't bring myself to like the thing but yes, it would have worked as a new product line.

 

[MisterAndrew]

The 6,1 trashcan is definitely not cheap plastic.

 

[Dayo]

I suppose my mind must have filled that in over time. Possibly because it managed to look like that to me at the time.

All I can accurately now recollect of my interaction is overwhelming revulsion and loathing. I just literally hated the thing. Mainly because what it stood for and what it meant for the future was apparent to me.

 

[Yebubbleman]

As a one-off release, it was a great machine. As what was intended to be the first of a new design generation, it was problematic. And as a replacement to a proper Mac tower, it was a failure.

Breaking that down a bit:

As a Mac with a Xeon, decent (at the time) high-end graphics, ECC RAM, and SSDs, it was a great machine. If you didn't need PCIe and weren't likely to require replacing or upgrading the graphics cards, it was a great machine for 2013.

As the first of what was intended to be a new design generation of Mac Pro, it was problematic. Apple admitted that they couldn't scale with it past those 2013 era components. So, newer Xeons, better graphics cards? Nope. According to them, it couldn't happen. So, great as a one-off. Not so great as a machine that you'd hope would get a standard refresh and not a whole new redesign.

Lastly, there are plenty of people out there that needed Xeon-caliber Mac performance, but didn't need PCIe expansion. Assuming those people were cool with what the 2013 model had to offer, no problems there. However, for those that needed that, it wasn't a viable replacement to a proper Mac tower. Not by a long shot. Furthermore, the 2019 Mac Pro allowed you to buy a lower-end model, or even a higher-end CPU model with base RAM, GPU, and SSD configurations and upgrade from there. Had Apple not switched the Mac to Apple Silicon, the 2019 design could've lasted as long as the 2003-2012 Power Mac G5 through MacPro5,1 design did, if not longer.

As it stands, it's telling that the 2023 Mac Pro still largely uses the same design as the 2019 model did. They just need to socket the SoC next time...

 

[seek3r]

4. SSD was proprietary. You simply couldn’t upgrade it. Eventually, OWC came out with a kit but it was very difficult to make sure all was perfect.

This one I'll quibble with, it's a proprietary plug but it shared its plug with a macbook pro and you could and can get adapters easily super cheap. It was the same story (different plug) as my 2012 air. In both cases a simple adapter sufficed. My 6,1 has a standard wd nvme drive in it using a cheap adapter.

 

[mattspace]

I don't know where all the "it looked good" is coming from.

Yes, while all the PR pics make it look like a deep polished black, most photos of it in use, it's the sort of light steel colour, and covered in fingerprints.

But it shares a problem a lot of Ive's work has - it's an obvious design, and not obvious because it was so good that it seems natural, but rather obvious because it's a bit "less is less". I suspect he's a fan of Judd's Specific Objects.

I agree on the breaking the magic aspect of it - I think that machine marks a failure of Apple's culture, that they believed was a triumph of their values... because they didn't really understand them, having just lost the actual source.

 

[avro707]

Yes, while all the PR pics make it look like a deep polished black, most photos of it in use, it's the sort of light steel colour, and covered in fingerprints.

This is true, you have to clean the thing all the time or it looks grubby.

The external case is a sort of gunmetal colour and the only black part is the top of it (where the fan is), and that black part is like anything with piano lacquer finish, it shows every finger print and dust.

It’s an interesting thing to upgrade - I pulled mine apart to replace the 12 core 2.4ghz processor with the 12 core 2.7. Very complicated process.

It gets a lot of attention - what is that, is it a heater? Yes - it can warm your hands, but no, it’s a computer… then confusion.

 

[redheeler]

The Trash Can failed for many reasons. expansion was limited to external solutions like eGPUs which lead to lots of cables and for many professionals it wasn't enough. A notable example is Neil Parfitt, a composer for major TV productions. His studio needed TWO Mac Pros basically daisy chained together in a weird setup with custom rack mounts loaded with cables and extra external boxes, versus the 2019 Mac Pro where it's all relegated to just one box and is a lot easier to manage now

Forcing people to buy two instead of one was the plan all along maybe...😬

 

[redheeler]

But hey, at least we got the Mac Studio now which in hindsight is also better than the trashcan since it has a lot more ports than it and a much better cooling system. So in the end you still got your perfect desktop, it just doesn't look like a corporate office trash can now.

Worthy replacement for the trash can, still not for the old 5,1s sadly. And worse in some ways such as the RAM upgradability. I'm thinking to look elsewhere than Mac for my next desktop, since I can't stand Windows it'll have to be Linux. In the meantime my RAM-upgraded 5K iMac is on 7 years and still hanging in there. Just needs some more space freed up on the SSD and a fresh application of thermal paste.

 

[discofuel]

They have similar designs on Amazon!

I would have loved the Mac Pro in Gold or Rose Gold.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

For me, the 2013 Mac Pro was the perfect desktop...
It sat on my desk looking stunning right next to my monitor...
Of course, if I was buying a desktop today, the Mac Studio would be the equivalent and it looks like an amazing machine.
I understand that the lack of connectivity was frustrating for some pro users who needed PCI, GPU, etc, but why was there so much hate around this model?

Eh? I think you've fallen into what I call the 'trashcan trap'. You like how the computer looks and this has skewed your opinion.

Let's use some common sense here - how can it be the "perfect desktop" when the Studio has better connectivity, dramatically better cooling capacity, better reliability, more performance (though this a given considering the age gap), a smaller footprint and lower starting price? Even the DIMM slots aren't an argument as the Studio starts with a respectable 32gb and can be configured up to 192gb.

The 'trashcan' represents what was wrong with Apple post-Jobs before the Apple Silicon renaissance. It's a device that is conceptually flawed and demonstrates a clear disparity between the industrial designers and product designers.

The triad-heatsink has nowhere near the capacity required for three power hungry dies. The reliance on Thunderbolt was misguided since the bandwidth wasn't anywhere near enough to replace PCIe. Thunderbolt itself was barely adopted at the time since it didn't solve a clear problem in professionals workflows. And the product couldn't be updated because of the limitations of the cooling capacity.

The fact that it is an attractive product is irrelevant when, in many regards, it was a worser replacement for the outgoing Mac Pro.

I also don't deny that for your audio production needs it ran well, but the fact is it was a both market failure (since Apple chose to replace cheese grater Mac Pro rather than make the trashcan a separate product line) and technical failure.