What might the future hold for the Mac Pro?

Question

Considering the historical tendencies of Apple, what do you see as the outlook for the next Mac Pro?

Answer 1

In the past, Apple has had a trend where they would first implement the existing design with a newly developed chip for better performance and then the redesign would take place in the next generation. This pattern has already been replicated in this year’s Mac Pro as the chassis of the Intel Mac Pro has been used but accompanied with the new M2 Ultra chip. It can be expected that the Next Generation Mac Pro will turn a new leaf featuring a complete redesign and possibly new specs or features with the M3 chip integration out in the market.

Comments

Shot in the dark: because it took longer than expected and they have a direct product cannibalising it, I’m going to assume that they did have a faster, bigger chip for it that they couldn’t get to work; this being their fallback.

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The high end Macs have always been called into question dating back to the MacII fx.  They exist for a few reasons; I suspect Apple use them, companies that use high end equipment use them and they are good PR for the lower end Macs.  Back in the 1990s when a Mac II fx, tricked out, was $12,000 most people just laughed, especially so called experts in the media.  My company put them into printing companies and newspapers in droves.  In those places the cost of the Mac was low compared to other equipment they used, and the ROI was huge.

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If we don't consider the PCIe slots, I think they also refreshed it because they decided the profitability beats the R&D cost to stick in a M2 Ultra into the Mac Pro chassis, and also keep the door open for a potential M3 "Extreme" or "Ultimate" for the next iteration of the Mac Pro. Essentially, renewing the product because it's cost effective (people will buy the M2 Ultra Mac Pro enough to offset costs) and also hold it up as a temporary stopover for when they differentiate the Mac Pro once again as something above the Studio.

EDIT: Lol didn't realise Marques brought this exact same point out towards the end of the content

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Im wondering how Apple is going to handle this. I wouldn’t expect yearly Mac Pro updates but then again if they release a new chip yearly, they would kinda have to. Feels like they’re putting themselves in a bit of a tight spot here…

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It's clear from the lineup that the Mac Pro should have had a base configuration of M2 Ultra with a high end M2 Extreme variant also in play. Obviously somewhere along the line Apple dropped the ball and could not ship the Extreme chip. Perhaps the M3 version will fix this glaring oversight.

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Low key one of the more interesting features of the Mac Pro is that you can now buy it in a rack mounted configuration. So that means cloud services can now put macs in their datacenters for highly specialized mac-only scenarios. Apple used to have a mac server option years ago but stopped selling it (likely due to low demand).

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Actually, based on information from apple suppliers. M2 Extreme was in the work and was planned to be used for Mac Pro. However, it turned out fusing two M2 Max chips were wayyyy too expensive and Apple doesn't see enough demand for a chip like that. So the project was scrapped in the end. 48 core CPU would've been the most insane thing.....

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Apple surely has a redesigned “M2 Extreme“ (or M3 Extreme) Mac Pro in the works. My guess is they just didn’t have it quite ready yet but needed to complete their Apple Silicon transition, so this M2 Ultra Mac Pro is a type of ‘gap filler’. There were also plenty of leaks and rumors to that end.

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I'm going against Marques and saying that even with his workflow he does not need the new Mac Pro. Like many have said the Mac Pro is such a niche that even specialized cards have moved to external TB3 connections. I doubt they will design two versions just for the Mac Pro crowd. To make the Mac Pro special they need to get it to upgradable memory over 1TB and something like two M2 Ultra chips. All of this with the current base price would make it somewhat justifiable to be 3k over the Mac Studio.

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I was hoping they would have the unified memory and a ddr5 controller to allow slower system memory not at the unified speed. I was also expecting an m2 extreme, but I guess they didn't get that working in time. I project the m3 generation will be a large upgrade for that system and they just needed to get it out.

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I hear your theory at the end but maybe I'll play contrarian for a second by saying that they might end up keeping this design for the foreseeable future, considering the OG Mac Pro from 2006 carried over the external design of the Power Mac G5 from 2003 all the way to 2013. The G5/Mac Pro design (and the Mac mini) seemed to be the design exceptions for the longest time in their lineup, unlike the rest of their computers during the PPC to Intel transition.

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This was probably a "lazy refresh" because Apple could be unlikely to make another one. Maybe an excuse to cut it out of their product lineup and get people to switch to Apple-silicon, Apple will say this product performed poorly in sales so people are no longer interested in this design, and ignore its actual shortfalls like the fact there is no GPU support, and no upgradeability or real modularity. This could just be Apple's way of saying they completed the transition and allow them to stop software support earlier on older intel Macs.

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10:28 With the small volume of Mac Pro’s sold, I wouldn’t be surprised if an exterior redesign takes another 4 years or so. Which means it’s closer to the M5-generation of Apple Silicon. We’re left hoping Apple spec bumps the processor generation at least once mid cycle.

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The really sad thing is that music and sound studios, who will be the main customer base for this, already bought the Intel based one from three years ago because the last upgrade the Mac Pro had before that was the 2013 trashcan (and to say that thing was difficult to deal with would be an understatement). So the last time sound professionals had a viable option was in 2012 with the Mac Pro 4.1/5.1. Given that the OG cheese grater was already 6 grand at the base model, I cannot imagine many will invest in the M2 Mac Pro.