It seems like it was only a matter of time. In 2019, Apple finally gave in to vocal requests for a PC-like modular professional tower system to replace its idiosyncratic 2013-era trash-can Mac Pro, but it never really felt like the company’s heart was in the new, somewhat more traditional model. Apple last refreshed it in 2023 with an M2 Ultra processor, after which it simply began the process of slowly vanishing. On Thursday, the company confirmed to 9to5Mac that it had been discontinued and wouldn’t be replaced.
I reached out to Apple for more information, but didn’t immediately hear back.
Part of the Mac Pro’s problem was that the intent didn’t fit comfortably into Apple’s system-on-chip strategy for its M-series processors. As I commented at the time, “One irony of the M2 Ultra upgrade, though, is that Apple has essentially made the Mac Pro less modular, which was the reason everyone clamored for it to begin with.”
SoCs integrate the memory and GPU on-chip, and the whole point of workstation-class modularity is the ability to upgrade the memory and GPU, as well as link multiple GPUs: The chips don’t support discrete GPUs, either. And with all the slots essentially there for Afterburner-type add-in cards for heavy-duty video processing — they’ve also disappeared, by the way — I always felt like the target market was rather narrowly focused on people in Apple TV and cinema production workflows.
Another reason modularity is important for this class of workstations is that they’re really expensive and, in a lot of cases, are serviced by IT departments, which are very fond of mixing and matching components, passing them down as the luckier folks get upgraded to newer gear. And being able to spread the expense of the new system over time is appealing, too.
The compact Mac Studio, the company’s most powerful desktop, replaced the Mac Pro as the flagship performer with the launch of the M3 Ultra, and it aligns far better with Apple’s silicon strategy. The Pro Display XDR debuted in conjunction with the Mac Pro and was intended for that same audience. It too was discontinued this year and replaced with the smaller, more prosumer-friendly and Mac Studio-aligned Studio Display XDR.
Now that a lot of the high-end workstation market has pivoted to GPU-intensive AI operations like machine learning (especially deep learning) and related development like robotics, the lack of upgradability has become even more of a downside. It makes sense that Apple would want to funnel its Ultra chips into the more popular Mac Studios.
I suppose the upside is that Apple doesn’t have to scavenge for memory and other components in short supply, thanks to AI-driven shortages, or have to renew its ties with Nvidia, which Apple broke with in 2018.
Read the full article here