MP 6,1 Trashcan was the perfect Mac

[jaw04005]

Faster & cooler GPUs should’ve been possible a few years later?

Well, the dual custom graphics card were a massive failure for ATI. The mid and top tier cards were prone to heat failures and the concept of the FirePro never really caught on in the PC world — so they were out.

As for Intel, the Xeon was never developed to be an efficient chip and I think at this point they saw the writing on the wall.

So Apple was just sort of out of luck. I think Federighi finally admitted to John Gruber (of all people) they engineered themselves into a thermal corner for upgrades with the 2013.

Transcript: Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi and John Ternus on the state of Apple's pro Macs | TechCrunch

You have already read the news. But we thought we would also use this opportunity to share a transcript of the interview with Phil Schiller, Senior Vice

techcrunch.com

 

[yellowbunny]

Reading this while my 12 core, D300, 64GB exports a 4K edit for a client from DaVinci Resolve. Mine has been absolutely perfect, connected to a 4 bay thunderbolt Pegasus raid and a 4K grading monitor. I'm tempted by a Mac Studio but this is still doing everything I need, so maybe next year...

 

[DouglasCarroll]

Reading this while my 12 core, D300, 64GB exports a 4K edit for a client from DaVinci Resolve. Mine has been absolutely perfect, connected to a 4 bay thunderbolt Pegasus raid and a 4K grading monitor. I'm tempted by a Mac Studio but this is still doing everything I need, so maybe next year...

Awesome to hear!

I also have a 2013 Mac Pro and recently rescued a 4 bay thunderbolt Pegasus Raid from the recycle bin and have been experimenting with it connected to the Mac Pro. I’m going to try installing the Pegasus raid utility on the Mac Pro under Monterey. Which OS version are you using? Glad to hear it’s working with your similar setup.

😀

 

[yellowbunny]

Using Monterey too and mine was also rescued from the bin! It was a bit fiddly to set up initially but has been rock solid for last two years. Have 4 drives in there under pass through mode (so not using a raid). There’s about 20gb in there at the moment but super easy to add more strange as needed.

 

[arobert3434]

The Trashcan was awesome on release, but unfortunately Apple dropped the ball badly in not providing CPU and especially GPU upgrade options, which they should have seen easily for themselves were responsible for the previous models' enduring popularity. The pro audience is also quite fickle. With the Studio they took a different approach, essentially iterating on the tried and true Mini form factor which already had a loyal audience as well as a vocal minority asking for more power. It's way less sexy than the Trashcan, but doubtless far more successful already.

 

[DouglasCarroll]

Using Monterey too and mine was also rescued from the bin! It was a bit fiddly to set up initially but has been rock solid for last two years. Have 4 drives in there under pass through mode (so not using a raid). There’s about 20gb in there at the moment but super easy to add more strange as needed.

Good info, thanks!

I do have mine setup as a raid with 3tb (6tb total in raid format) available for use. It seemed fine under Monterey but I initially set it up with the raid utility under Mojave. I’ll try installing the raid utility on this Monterey machine.

Did you need to install the driver on Monterey or just the raid utility?

Thanks!

👍

 

[yellowbunny]

Nope, just updated OS and it carried on working. Tbh I haven’t opened up the Pegasus app since they day I rescued it from the bin. Good luck!

 

[cinclodes]

In my view, the Mac Pro peaked with the 5,1. Since the 6,1 has its merits, however, I purchased two of them when the stock of factory new machines was about to dry up. The only thing that I don't like about the 6,1 is that it doesn't allow multiple internal drives. One of the main advantages of the 5,1 is that it has four slots for hard drives that can easily be swapped out. I tried upgrading the stock 1 TB SSD in my 6,1 with a 2 TB SDD, but I couldn't get it to work and ended up returning it. Better to leave well enough alone and keep the trusty Apple 1 TB SSD. There are many things that I like about the 6,1. It's small enough to fit on my desktop. The ports are easily accessible. It always runs cool for my applications. It's set up with OS 10.13.6 so that some older apps that are essential to me will run on it. The 6,1 will run OS 10.9. It would be the perfect machine for me if it would run OS 10.8 and it allowed multiple hard drives (or at least a 2 TB SSD that actually works and can be relied upon). For these reasons, I plan to retain both 5,1 and 6,1 computers. I also have a 2019 MacBook Pro.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

The Trashcan was awesome on release...

But that's the thing; it may have been awesome for a segment of the professional market, but not for its entirety. Had Apple sold this alongside an upgraded tower, they would have covered both an emerging market (that didn't need PCI expansion) and existing market that still relied on the tower format.

but unfortunately Apple dropped the ball badly in not providing CPU and especially GPU upgrade options, which they should have seen easily for themselves were responsible for the previous models' enduring popularity.

This is because the heatsink didn't have enough capacity to accommodate more powerful components. Apple should have thought about this extensively before releasing the product, but instead they chose form over function.

The pro audience is also quite fickle. With the Studio they took a different approach, essentially iterating on the tried and true Mini form factor which already had a loyal audience as well as a vocal minority asking for more power.

The professional market is very different today than even in 2013. What constitutes a 'professional' has shifted a great deal due to the broader scope of creative industries and careers, and the democratisation of technology. When the trashcan was released, customers generally still needed a 'pro' branded product to complete workflows as consumer-grade products simply weren't powerful enough. Today however, you can edit 4K video on an iPhone.

 

[impulse462]

The professional market is very different today than even in 2013. What constitutes a 'professional' has shifted a great deal due to the broader scope of creative industries and careers, and the democratisation of technology. When the trashcan was released, customers generally still needed a 'pro' branded product to complete workflows as consumer-grade products simply weren't powerful enough. Today however, you can edit 4K video on an iPhone.

Yeah true. Additionally, if you look at the way the chip industry is headed its basically pointing toward 2 extremes: 1) big datacenters/warehouse-scale computers 2) smaller SaaS devices. So theres a "hollowing out" of traditional desktop/workstation computers thats been happening for a while now; sad for people like us tbh.

 

[serge996]

Anyone tried redesigning the 6,1 like turning the Trashcan flat with cooling on processor and gpus. I haven't got my 6,1 yet but by looking how it is taken apart it seems to me you could remove the triangular cooling and cool each component separately. I hope I can make myself clear enough

 

[avro707]

In my view, the Mac Pro peaked with the 5,1. Since the 6,1 has its merits

The ultimate Mac Pro is really the 7,1, it has the greatest ability for upgrades but it is hated by many because it went out of their price range.

You can use a lot of GPUs with no need to flash them. It has huge space for expansion, lots of RAM, never makes a noise.

And you can run newer MacOS without opencore.

 

[TobiasT]

7.1 was a SCAM, not because of the stupid price but because apple silicon made it obsolete.

 

[Mac3Duser]

Price of the 7.1 was high, but price of the Dell/HP/lenovo workstations is high too (check the ram or ssd upgrades on their website)
After the Cinebench 2024 GPU benchmarks charts, the M2 ultra appears to be far behind nvidia :
nvidia RTX 4060 ti : 15482
amd RX7900XTX : 15107
M2 Ultra (76 gpu cores) : 8668 (between RTX 3060 and RTX 3060ti) and near RX 6800
RTX 4090 : 34772

so the cpu "m2max" or "m2ultra" are faster but not the gpu.

 

[phoenix-mac-user]

This is my completely subjective opinion but the GREATEST MAC EVER (not even Pro) was the 5,1 2008. It had the best combination of affordability, upgradability, and design.

Through firmware upgrades, it was upgradable for 8 years to El Capitan and it was the last Mac Pro that I owned.

I never personally liked the Trash Can Mac, and the Mac Pro 2019 is similar to buying a PowerMac right before the transition to Intel, which I did and actually left the Mac platform for a couple years because I was so upset about how they handled it. Thankfully I jumped back in a couple years later at the perfect time.

I nearly bought the 2018 and am thankful that I didn't, though it seems like they handled it a little better. Half of my apps just stopped working or being supported within a year or two on the PowerMac.

I got every ounce of value out of that Mac and by the end the Motherboard and Case were the only things that were original, having upgraded every other component.

And even better, I had a ton of fun working with people in this forum doing it. There was also a lot of stress swapping out those CPUs and de-lidding them (Apple can never make anything too easy).

I still lurk out here every once in a while, which is how I happened on this thread.

 

[tsialex]

This is my completely subjective opinion but the GREATEST MAC EVER (not even Pro) was the 5,1 2008.

MacPro3,1 is the early-2008
MacPro4,1 is the early-2009
MacPro5,1 are the mid-2010 and mid-2012.

 

[phoenix-mac-user]

MacPro3,1 is the early-2008
MacPro4,1 is the early-2009
MacPro5,1 are the mid-2010 and mid-2012.

Haha, you're right! I think of it as the 5,1 because that is what I upgraded the firmware to so that is what it showed up as.

My memory failed me so much writing that post that I had to look up several things.

I still loved that Mac so much and was so sad when I eventually had to upgrade. I still have that beast in my closet. Tempted to dust it off and plug it in for old times sake.

 

[Mac3Duser]

I never personally liked the Trash Can Mac, and the Mac Pro 2019 is similar to buying a PowerMac right before the transition to Intel, which I did and actually left the Mac platform for a couple years because I was so upset about how they handled it. Thankfully I jumped back in a couple years later at the perfect time.

Except you can put Windows on the Mac Pro 2019, and it's great for that
Mac Os is also more mature. Mac Os versions are not completely different as it was in 2010-2012- 2014 etc

 

[AlexMaximus]

I never had a Mac Pro 6.1 because of one reason. - The occasional video game - .Because of this, I had to go with the trusted Mac Pro 5.1. The fact that I can run a AMD 6800XT card in that bad boy in the year 2023, really tells the story. I'd love to go for a 2019 Mac Pro 7.1 one of those days. However, prices are still out of reach these days, because that rig was so tremendous expensive when it first came out.

 

[avro707]

Price of the 7.1 was high, but price of the Dell/HP/lenovo workstations is high too (check the ram or ssd upgrades on their website)

And now even those HP workstations or the Lenovo ones can be pushed to insanely high levels.

I specified one at USD$28,000 - dual 32 core processors, 512GB RAM, Nvidia A6000, Windows 11 for Workstations.

So if you go all out with them, then like the 2019 Mac Pro they also get to the prices of a car if you option everything.

Personally I'm kicking myself I didn't go with the W6800X Duo 64GB card for my 7,1 out of the box and then later to get the second W6800X Duo for it.

However, prices are still out of reach these days, because that rig was so tremendous expensive when it first came out.

One of the forum members here loves trash talking the 2019 and reckons people couldn't give them away, but in reality they are still very useful machines - the one computer can run latest MacOS Sonoma and Windows 11 Pro for workstations, the latter which it runs very well - extremely fast and rock solid stable.

 

[TobiasT]

6.1 should had dual CPU instead of dual GPU.
7.1 was a joke/scam because of the apple silicon transition.
8.1 is not a real Mac Pro in the sense of the lack of CPU/RAM/GPU upgradability.

So... 5.1?

 

[ThomasJL]

I never thought Apple would ever make a Mac Pro will less expandability than the trashcan Mac. But I was wrong. The current Apple Silicon Mac Pro is less expandable since its RAM and main internal hard drive cannot be upgraded. Tim Cook has reached a whole new low.

"Can't innovate anymore, my a**!"

 

[seek3r]

6.1 should had dual CPU instead of dual GPU.

Agreed, though that’s easier to say in retrospect. Going all in on a bet on local GPGPU made more sense at the time.

7.1 was a joke/scam because of the apple silicon transition.

How so? They needed to give Intel users a replacement for the 2013. It was long overdue. It’s a solid workstation, it’ll get at least 5 years of OS updates and at least 7 or 8 of support if you count critical security updates after. It was priced higher than enthusiasts want, but it was still competitive with comparable workstations. And the hardware will still be solidly usable with windows or linux for years after Apple’s Intel releases stop if you want latest and greatest OS releases.

The target market for the machine, corp buyers, will deprecate it at 3-5 years anyway, which times it well for getting a couple iterations of AS based machines into place

8.1 is not a real Mac Pro in the sense of the lack of CPU/RAM/GPU upgradability.

I mean “real mac pro” is a bit subjective. I’m a bit disappointed at the compromises too, I’m hoping whatever the 9.1 is will fix some of them, but if you want the fastest mac Apple sells in a package that lets you use pcie cards it fits the purpose.

Most corp buyers, again still the target, dont do mid cycle updates on things like RAM anymore anyway, workstations are bought as capital expenses, deprecated in 3-5 years, and then ewasted. Tax incentives on writing down this kind of spending encourage that, so does the time cost of IT depts. the total cost of:

* getting the machine back from the employee, which involves making sure they have migrated their data and workflow to a temp replacement, which involves at least some downtime and lost productivity on their part too (ex, the one time my work laptop needed service it basically cost me 2 days of productivity, that alone cost the company almost as much as buying me a new macbook pro would have, engineer’s time isnt cheap. If the machine hadnt been brand new, I had gotten it the week earlier, and just had a damaged keyboard I suspect that’s exactly what IT would have done - and that fix was done by Apple, not our IT)
—>
* actually doing the hardware update plus testing, takes time and resources in IT
—>getting the machine back to the user and repeating a lot of step 1

Is usually higher than just doing an upgrade cycle

And that’s not getting into the increasingly common model of companies leasing their machines.

 

[AlexMaximus]

And now even those HP workstations or the Lenovo ones can be pushed to insanely high levels.

I specified one at USD$28,000 - dual 32 core processors, 512GB RAM, Nvidia A6000, Windows 11 for Workstations.

So if you go all out with them, then like the 2019 Mac Pro they also get to the prices of a car if you option everything.

Personally I'm kicking myself I didn't go with the W6800X Duo 64GB card for my 7,1 out of the box and then later to get the second W6800X Duo for it.



One of the forum members here loves trash talking the 2019 and reckons people couldn't give them away, but in reality they are still very useful machines - the one computer can run latest MacOS Sonoma and Windows 11 Pro for workstations, the latter which it runs very well - extremely fast and rock solid stable.

The 2019 MP is without a single doubt the very best Apple workstation, IF you love a Win/Apple Hybrid.
On top of that, it has the most stunning design out there. It was the ”get-away” present of Jony Ive. Just because of that I absolutely will get one in the future. It will be the last Apple product that has a live span of a full decade or more.
And is an item that I will never part with, just as my trusted Mutant Mac Pro 5.1. The fact that I can run an 6800XT in this old rig is mind boggling. I am astonished why one would ever sell a Mac Pro 2019. Sure, Apple Silicon has its advantages in some isolated areas. However, I am not willing to pay a Workstation price tag for a device that can’t run Windows, period. So,- Apple Silicon go to hell, because I am not buying two workstations.
And if there is one thing that’s important to me in a true Workstation, it’s the capability to upgrade the GPU. I need GPU power. Lots of it. The Studio just can’t do it, because it’s another attempt from Apple to dictate the market. They tried that with the trashcan and failed miserably.

 

[DouglasCarroll]

6.1 should had dual CPU instead of dual GPU.
7.1 was a joke/scam because of the apple silicon transition.
8.1 is not a real Mac Pro in the sense of the lack of CPU/RAM/GPU upgradability.

So... 5.1?

You’re right, they all suck….I’ll go ahead and take them for free from everyone who hates theirs to help them with their anger management!

😀