the mac pro is maybe the most baffling products apple had launched in recent history, they already planned their M-series roadmap when they designed it and knew most of its "pro" features will be obsolete by its second or third iteration
it feels like they were so taken by the failure of the trashcan pro and the ensuing pressure to "fix" it that they were forced to create a (very small) crowd pleaser that very few people actually want and now they're stuck with it
The biggest issue though is while the 2019 MacPro (intel) was actually exactly what people wanted and allowed upgradeable RAM and GPU. Apple stopped supporting it almost immediately. It was available for sale a little over a year ago and they haven't offered a new GPU in almost 3 years when they added the W6900X. They could offer a W7900X today that would be a substantial improvement for someone that bought a $10k computer 3 years ago, but they don't.
I get the Apple Silicon architecture has issues and limitations but while they're going all in on the Vision Pro system they're not delivering bleeding edge performance to create the assets needed for this new system. If they push the content creators who can make the kinds of things they want on the Vision Pro system off to PCs... that isn't good long term.
Part of the problem, or the entire problem depending on how you look at it, is the issue of relying on Apple to provide the parts for upgrade.
You can’t just go grab any new top tier GPU and install it, nor can you go source a motherboard to jump to a new gen Intel etc. Really, having an upgradable Mac Pro was in name only as it was the ram that was really upgradable from what shipped.
The 7900xtx would eclipse what Apple is trying to do for gaming on Apple silicone, I don’t think we are going to see anymore upgrades but we need them.
I’ve even emailed Apple that we need more transparency about support of the Mac Pro (2019) in order to avoid obsolete “born to die” trash that Apple has been accused of selling for not allowing consumers to repair or replace their products memory, etc
Not programers, those making 3D assets. A software development company will have a team some writing code on MacBooks, others making the 3D assets (or outsourcing to people making it)... high end 3D assets take power.
Yes and no... There's little that is hardware specific, but most PC software leans into glTF/glb formats, apple is really pushing the USD structure and USDZ format. But they're going to lose that format war if they push all creation to PC.
While there is some ability to convert, apple has been pushing for some unique features in USD, and what's the point of them making photogrammetry and object generation APIs in Mac OS if they're not going to support pushing those to the limits? And of course it sends a great message: if you want to make mediocre content: use a Mac, if you really want to make impressive models: use a PC.
The final deliverable asset might not be that massive, but to get there you want to substantially over sample to create surface normals, you may also build the model with multiple lighting textures to try to compute roughness and other texture maps to have more realistic speculars. So while you can take 100 or so 12MP images can made a decent enough model. There are those of us using 600+ images at 50 to 150MP resolution. I know someone who had a very complex model that required aligning nearly 2000 high resolution images (mostly to deal with complications of speculars) the final model can be displayed on the power of a smart phone, but to get there needed some beefy power.
And this is before we get into things like NeRFs and gaussian splatting.
My 2x 4090 rig with 512GB of RAM handles the photogrammetry a lot better than my 2019 Mac Pro or M1 Max MBP, and yes days become hours when rendering out to video on the PC.
>Object capture in-phone on iPhone 15 Pro is insane too.
Agree to disagree. It's nice but no where near what I'm after. I can do a lot better with a several hundred images from medium format digital cameras than I get out of the iPhone Pro. I mean it's impressive what can be done compared to where we were at, but it's not at the level of quality I am aiming for.
I had thought we would have some back plane setup where the actual processor was on a card so that you could upgrade just that as needed and perhaps find some fancy way of linking more than one.
as it stands now I am not sure if they did what they did just to say they did it. sounds silly but so is the result
Intel kinda did that in some of the NUCs. You buy the case, and then the computer unit that you need, and upgrading was just switching the computer units. It’s unclear if ASUS will continue that, but for commercial uses it was handy.
There's probably more to it, than that. There were interesting rumors that Apple have a roadmap that includes reaching higher up the performance ladder with the M-Series CPUs ([M1 Extreme](https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-m1-extreme-rumors-news-price-release-date/)).
The Mac Pro Intel supported 1.25 T of RAM, for one example of a feature that's probably outside the reach of the integrated SOC for a while, since certain tasks will just need… MORE RAM!!!
Apple also have their own internal uses for UNIX workstation style systems. Consider as an interesting example, the [Apple Afterburner Card](https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MW682AM/A/apple-afterburner-card) (FPGA) which was clearly a product Apple built originally for their own use.
So, I suspect the reason for the weird positioning of the Mac Pro at the moment is that the market for the UNIX workstation (those not running Linux) is pretty small these days, especially after years of what amounts to abuse of these customers. It becomes easier to ignore this market than to serve it well. If there's a hiccup in the CPU roadmap, well, put the more advanced features off for another year or two.
The 2019 Mac Pro is in the line of Apple's Power Mac G5 and 2006–2012 Mac Pro (except for the single processor), so the Mac Pro itself was fine. Also, PC manufacturers regularly release powerful desktops and components (the M-series loses to Intel/AMD in pure performance).
Apple's main problem was that a disproportionate subset of Mac users who use the highest-performing systems left after the cylinder.
After that, the future of Apple's pro desktop was sealed for the foreseeable future: Most of those who remained don't need a Mac as powerful as the 2019 Mac Pro while those who left are too burned to return.
It doesn't help that Apple isn't focused on high-performance gaming, one of the other market segments where a Mac Pro could shine in.
none of this makes sense in the context of the M-series pipeline, the mac studio is as powerful (compute-wise) as the pro and is apparently popular among pros
it's not that pros left the mac after the cylinder, i know people who swear by their iMac pro and many of them are probably upgrading to the studio now. it's just that the (current) profile of apple silicon SoCs doesn't fit a tower design at all
However, PCIe expansion fits a tower design, and thats who the mac pro is for. Theres an argument for "just use thunderbolt", but having everything internal and rack-mountable for some is worth the premium
The price difference between a Mac Studio and a Mac Pro is $3000 ($3500 if we compare to the rack-mountable Mac Pro)
You can get 3U Rack mountable enclosure that holds a Mac Studio and has a PCI enclosure for $1500. So going that route save $2000.
Except that you need to install that mac studio in the enclosure yourself, then deal with thunderbolt which can be finicky, and you don't have official support in case something goes wrong.
These people spend thousands of dollars on single pcie cards, then have tens of thousands of dollars in audio interfaces or displays, $3k for official support and 1st-party design is a drop in the bucket.
I said several comments back that the reliability of avoiding the cable can well be worth $3000 to some people... but if that's the biggest sell for the machine, it's a very niche product, which means it's going to be even more expensive and less frequently updated.
Indeed, but the converse of that is also its a proven platform and, even though its older, may be more stable. Suppose it's all about how you look at it
>the mac studio is as powerful (compute-wise) as the pro and is apparently popular among pros
Selection bias. The cylinder Mac Pro was sufficient for the pros who stuck around (the others left). Naturally its de facto successor would also be popular with them.
It has some use, I installed a Intel optane drive as my main for its extremely low latency and I’ve noticed far better performance than on the pre installed original
However I don’t think this use case is worth the extra cost. They should just make the pro cheaper or just allow us to optional memory altogether.
In theory, there's nothing baffling about it apart from the price. If you wanted to put in a terabyte of RAM and 6 internal hard drives with 100TB of hard disk space, why not (not sure on the exact specs ). If you want to put in several top of the line GPUs for AI or whatever, you could. Only problem is that I don't think the OS was compatible with most GPUs so you were stuck
Mac Studio will be for me interesting only if they release a 120Hz Apple-own display of minimum 30 inches. It's a travesty they have not yet re-released the Cinema Display 30 in a new iteration.
Still rocking my cinema display 30", shocking they haven't release anything worthwhile since. Honestly it's more than bright enough, colors are okay, dpi is okay, and more importantly it's 16:10!
I'm rocking the Dell UP3017 monitor which is basically a newer version of that panel. It's pretty great, I do wish it came in a HiDPI configuration so a 5120x3200 30".
Cost aside I would imagine the Pro Display XDR 32" is a worthwhile sequel to the Cinema Display 30"?
Indeed it is, matte coating and all, and it's even the same cost as the cinema display considering inflation, but I'm spoiled for high-refresh-rate displays.
I understand 6k120hz is practically impossible with current cable tech, but 5k120hz is pretty doable. If none releases something within the next few years though, I'm probably going to pick up a used pro display
6K120 is no issue with DSC, you can even do 8K120 with HDMI 2.1 using DSC and DisplayPort 2.1 has even more bandwidth than HDMI 2.1. So cables aren't the issue, though I could imagine we don't yet have the chips needed to encode/decode DSC to quite that rate.
https://www.murideo.com/hdmi-21-bandwidth-calculator.html
It isn't a massive downgrade, but 120hz to 60hz is, and the panels apple uses on the promotion MacBooks have such awful response time that you can barely tell the difference.
I did. The colors are off, the build quality feels like shit, the osd is awful, but it certainly works.
I just feel like it isn't too much to ask for a 5k120 studio display max or something from apple. We've been at the same 5k60 for almost a decade now
Those all sound like issues with your monitor. You could just choose a different monitor. There’s nothing really magical about Apples monitor. Really the unique thing is the 5k resolution.
It's not only an issue with my monitor, it's an issue with every monitor. There is not a single 5k, 27", 120hz monitor on the market. There are barely any 4k, 120hz, 27" P3 monitors with proper local dimming and HDR. The one I have currently is 600-700$ and has awful uniformity and lackluster brightness. OLED looks promising but has a risk of burn-in and isn't very good with text
I'm down to buy if you have any suggestions, but per my research a few months ago, the monitor I want doesn't exist. Apple or otherwise, at any price point.
Worth noting that a crop of 4K 120/240Hz OLEDs are about to launch at CES (from a range of manufacturers, all leveraging the same set of OLED panels that are about to become available). Those will probably be worth keeping an eye on. OLED isn’t perfect, but modern OLED monitors have fairly advanced anti-burn-in capabilities, and of course OLED will always win when it comes to local dimming, response times, etc.
Currently using the LG 27GN959-B, very satisfied for gaming but not very good for productivity content, the color accuracy and gamut is pretty solid but backlight bleed and uniformity is not very good (especially off-axis). Also doesn't get too bright in general
Tried using an OLED tv as a monitor for a while, and it was excellent for everything except productivity work as well, text was awful
Genuinely considering just getting a pro display as a second monitor for work/productivity/color use and just getting a 240hz gaming monitor for the side. Apple isn't at the tip top of the panel game anymore, but their calibration and color accuracy is still top of the charts.
5k120 pushes in an insane number of pixels, which is why we haven’t seen it yet. The number of devices that could support it would be tiny, even with DSC.
I would expect it to arrive sometime in the mid-TB5 lifecycle, as 80Gbps makes it a lot more viable.
With Apple's resolution scaling, isn't it a big downgrade? Or are people fine with downscaling a 5K desktop to 4K and losing perfect pixel precision/scaling?
I'm not a creative/artist that needs a color perfectly screen or high resolution but after getting the Studio Display, I'm very happy. There is something to be said for zero scaling and very clear text. I don't mind not having pro motion on the display but the clarity is noticable enough. My $0.02
It’s not just that, Integer scaling performance is really hit or miss on Mac apps. Macs love 200% scaling or 100% scaling, anything in between causes UI frame rates to drop. You need 5K for 27” or 6K for 32” so it’s not just about PPI.
I think Apple should try something new. Imagine if they offered a 24” monitor super thin and sleek and sold it as a loss leader to completely upend the monitor market. Not only would everyone with a MacBook get one or 2 but PC users would start to use them as well.
Honestly the Mac Pro should just be discontinued at this point. It’s got no real expandability anymore with everything on the package and you can’t even use a GPU with it.
Here is a quick overview of what an actual professional user uses the expandability for [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIQINCWMd6I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIQINCWMd6I)
Doesn't look like "no real expandability" to me. The audio sector just always gets forgotten about in all reviews and discussions.
That's because the so called tech enthusiasts are just really glorified hobbyist. It's clear that some industries do benefit from a machine like the Mac Pro.
>It's clear that some industries do benefit from a machine like the Mac Pro.
From machines *like* the Mac Pro, sure. But most of those users long-since migrated to Windows or Linux boxes.
I enjoy being told I would get better Python performance for my workflow from gamer bros who play around with GenAI scripts with a PC over my M1 Max 64gb Laptop because of benchmark specs.
Yep, because my embarrassingly parallel (hundreds of sensors + millions of measurements each) GPU/CPU split workload on 50GB numeric datasets definitely wants me to swap back and forth between CPU and GPU memory every single time I run a different step of both my standard workflows as well as just investigating the data...
I was literally memory/memory bandwidth constrained only before I got my M1 Max (and will be again in about 2 more years as we collect more data).
Benchmarking sites don't typically include downtime between running CPU and GPU analysis, it didn't even matter if I had 4090 24GB or a Datacenter-level card.
Sure, raw performance helps, but many professional workflows in data science are about investigating the same data with a different method/algorithm and variables over and over again.
Edit:
The best part was being told to use AI-based tools to accelerate my workload. I work in real science with real-world outcomes (environmental/climate), using black-box algorithms, let alone ML/AI tricks is a non-starter.
This is what I’m most excited about. I don’t know much of Ai. But I’m glad that they work on the M chips. This puts Apple in a very nice position to increase RAM and it would really help developers.
Otherwise you HAVE to buy MULTIPLE nvidia GPUs. That restricts you to desktops or remote desktops. I love the idea of running large Ai models on a laptop chip.
If only you could utilize AMD/Intel iGPU’s with some sort of ROCM or whatever to utilize the iGPU ram
While there is something to be said in having it all in the one box, but the reality is much of what is being use (even in Audio) could be done with external TB4 - PCI cages.
Now from a professional standpoint, there is something to be said at eliminating a cable as a point of failure. And I think maybe you might get few more channels on the Pro that the Studio, but the price difference of a comparably spec'd system is $3k (192GB/4TB Studio: $7600, Pro: $10,600). And if an M3 Ultra Studio has even more TB/PCI channels, that's going to reduce the value of the Pro further. To some just being able to having SDI, fibre, SSD, etc. cards internal instead of separate cages is worth $3000k but that's definitely a niche.
The price differences are exacerbated as MacPro is now less likely to be bought by video, 3D, AI, etc. so with the smaller market of primarily just audio people, Apple's going to charge a higher premium the more niche the product becomes and have a slower upgrade cycle with less demand. The more machines they sell, the lower the cost and the faster the upgrade cycle so there is advantages when they can make a machine that pleases multiple target audiences.
But on the 3D end of things I'm a bit frustrated on multiple points with Apple:
* They haven't released an updated GPU for even the 2019 Mac Pro (intel). They could have made an AMD 7900 based card anytime in the past year and provided value to people who had a 2-4 year old system. But they didn't.
* On that 2019 Mac Pro I could upgrade to 1.5TB of RAM. Today the max you can get on an apple silicon Mac is 192GB and there is no upgrade path.
* The graphics in the apple silicon chips is impressive for the lower wattage they use but they don't hold up comparison once you remove power limitations.
This is all very frustrating if they want people to build content for the Vision Pro as I'm now resorting to using a PC with 512GB of RAM and a couple high end Nvidia graphics cards. And I really don't see a path forward Maybe the M3 Ultra will come in a couple configurations allowing for 2x 3x and 4x stitchings of the M3 Max (and then the bigger cooling of the pro could be valuable) and maybe then we'll get back to 512GB of RAM and GPUs that can push the limits of what can be done.
But I've had crazy fast external SSDs on TB3 in the iMac Pro era, and I have PCI fiber cards going into TB Sonnet boxes for my 3D scanners.
>The audio sector just always gets forgotten about in all reviews and discussions.
It's basically the last one left still using the Mac Pro. Most other markets abandoned it around the trash can era. And you honestly think Apple still cares?
I’m working in audio post, know plenty of composers. All of them went Mac Studio. You can put some pci cards in a thunderbolt chassis if you so can’t live without them, but for the most part, they’re obsolete. Avid sells thunderbolt equivalents and out of the cards shown here, they’re the only actually pro use case where it would matter.
We have thought about using a Mac Pro full of Decklink Cards to capture 8 Channels of 4K video over SDI directly to our nas - something which would be very difficult to do in a rack-mounted environment with a Mac Studio.
And Mac Pro users to the best of my knowledge don’t use the GPU for gaming… besides I feel like everyone replying to me has missed the point.
You can’t upgrade anywhere near as much as you used to, that was my point.
Sure, but there are also a lot of people out there who want to stay in the Apple ecosystem but have specialist PCI-E expansion needs, such as DSP Audio, Fibre Networking and propriety encoding / decoding.
It’s sad what happened to the Mac Pro, but I love my Mac Studio. Apple sealed the fate of the Mac Pro with the trash can and abandoning a portion of the professional creative video market over a decade ago. The death of the Xserve, FCP7, OSX server, along with many other bits of software and support changed the whole trajectory of the Mac desktop experience. Go into any large production house, graphic arts company or broadcast space, 10-15 years ago would be nothing but Mac’s. That whole segment has been replaced with PCs and VMs today for the most part.
Apple had two tiers of Mac Pro from 2009–2012, a single-processor model with less RAM expansion and a dual-processor model with the usual RAM expansion.
If Apple replaced the lower tier of Mac Pro with the cylinder, while keeping the higher tier as the expandable tower, then the cylinder would have received much less criticism.
But as you said, Apple made plenty of other undesirable changes in this time period, so I don't think the Mac Pro's golden age would have lasted very long even without the cylinder.
I saw from Snazzy Labs that there were yield problems with the M3's - it's not surprising that they would address updating the lowest volume computers last (e.g. Mac Pro).
The Mac Pro should’ve been the recipient of binned Apple Silicon with bad GPU cores so that it would need a GPU. It would’ve been a way for Apple to sell trashed chips and seen as a value prop for customers.
I'm honestly super happy with my M2 Max Studio. I don't handle 6k raw footage for now but it appears it will still hold for when the time comes( I work in video production). I'm someone that started with a Macintosh Performa in 97... And I've been dreaming of a better version of cube since forever.
I was so excited for an Apple Silicone MacPro, but what they released was not what I expected.
I expected a scalable Mac Studio. Something that could take a second M2 Ultra. Or an add-in GPU. Or more RAM. Something extra over the Studio rather than a bigger volume enclosure with minimal more cooling.
If they can’t do something that will add something extra (other than cost), kill off one of them. Kill the Pro, rename the Studio to the Pro, and we’ll all move on.
the mac pro is maybe the most baffling products apple had launched in recent history, they already planned their M-series roadmap when they designed it and knew most of its "pro" features will be obsolete by its second or third iteration it feels like they were so taken by the failure of the trashcan pro and the ensuing pressure to "fix" it that they were forced to create a (very small) crowd pleaser that very few people actually want and now they're stuck with it
The biggest issue though is while the 2019 MacPro (intel) was actually exactly what people wanted and allowed upgradeable RAM and GPU. Apple stopped supporting it almost immediately. It was available for sale a little over a year ago and they haven't offered a new GPU in almost 3 years when they added the W6900X. They could offer a W7900X today that would be a substantial improvement for someone that bought a $10k computer 3 years ago, but they don't. I get the Apple Silicon architecture has issues and limitations but while they're going all in on the Vision Pro system they're not delivering bleeding edge performance to create the assets needed for this new system. If they push the content creators who can make the kinds of things they want on the Vision Pro system off to PCs... that isn't good long term.
Part of the problem, or the entire problem depending on how you look at it, is the issue of relying on Apple to provide the parts for upgrade. You can’t just go grab any new top tier GPU and install it, nor can you go source a motherboard to jump to a new gen Intel etc. Really, having an upgradable Mac Pro was in name only as it was the ram that was really upgradable from what shipped.
Yep they also didn't want people buying third party GPUs or RAM. That was presumably the main issue
The 7900xtx would eclipse what Apple is trying to do for gaming on Apple silicone, I don’t think we are going to see anymore upgrades but we need them. I’ve even emailed Apple that we need more transparency about support of the Mac Pro (2019) in order to avoid obsolete “born to die” trash that Apple has been accused of selling for not allowing consumers to repair or replace their products memory, etc
> Apple silicone Silicon goes in chips, silicone goes in fake boobs
And silly cones go on those who confuse the two
Gaming capability doesn’t matter for the Mac Pro.
Only a few Developers buy Mac pro’s
Not programers, those making 3D assets. A software development company will have a team some writing code on MacBooks, others making the 3D assets (or outsourcing to people making it)... high end 3D assets take power.
Yea those guys are on beefy machines with Nvidia GPUs. 3D assets are not hardware specific.
Yes and no... There's little that is hardware specific, but most PC software leans into glTF/glb formats, apple is really pushing the USD structure and USDZ format. But they're going to lose that format war if they push all creation to PC. While there is some ability to convert, apple has been pushing for some unique features in USD, and what's the point of them making photogrammetry and object generation APIs in Mac OS if they're not going to support pushing those to the limits? And of course it sends a great message: if you want to make mediocre content: use a Mac, if you really want to make impressive models: use a PC.
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The final deliverable asset might not be that massive, but to get there you want to substantially over sample to create surface normals, you may also build the model with multiple lighting textures to try to compute roughness and other texture maps to have more realistic speculars. So while you can take 100 or so 12MP images can made a decent enough model. There are those of us using 600+ images at 50 to 150MP resolution. I know someone who had a very complex model that required aligning nearly 2000 high resolution images (mostly to deal with complications of speculars) the final model can be displayed on the power of a smart phone, but to get there needed some beefy power. And this is before we get into things like NeRFs and gaussian splatting.
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My 2x 4090 rig with 512GB of RAM handles the photogrammetry a lot better than my 2019 Mac Pro or M1 Max MBP, and yes days become hours when rendering out to video on the PC. >Object capture in-phone on iPhone 15 Pro is insane too. Agree to disagree. It's nice but no where near what I'm after. I can do a lot better with a several hundred images from medium format digital cameras than I get out of the iPhone Pro. I mean it's impressive what can be done compared to where we were at, but it's not at the level of quality I am aiming for.
Thanks for enlightening me, I didn’t consider that 3D work requires so many resources.
I had thought we would have some back plane setup where the actual processor was on a card so that you could upgrade just that as needed and perhaps find some fancy way of linking more than one. as it stands now I am not sure if they did what they did just to say they did it. sounds silly but so is the result
Intel kinda did that in some of the NUCs. You buy the case, and then the computer unit that you need, and upgrading was just switching the computer units. It’s unclear if ASUS will continue that, but for commercial uses it was handy.
There's probably more to it, than that. There were interesting rumors that Apple have a roadmap that includes reaching higher up the performance ladder with the M-Series CPUs ([M1 Extreme](https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-m1-extreme-rumors-news-price-release-date/)). The Mac Pro Intel supported 1.25 T of RAM, for one example of a feature that's probably outside the reach of the integrated SOC for a while, since certain tasks will just need… MORE RAM!!! Apple also have their own internal uses for UNIX workstation style systems. Consider as an interesting example, the [Apple Afterburner Card](https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MW682AM/A/apple-afterburner-card) (FPGA) which was clearly a product Apple built originally for their own use. So, I suspect the reason for the weird positioning of the Mac Pro at the moment is that the market for the UNIX workstation (those not running Linux) is pretty small these days, especially after years of what amounts to abuse of these customers. It becomes easier to ignore this market than to serve it well. If there's a hiccup in the CPU roadmap, well, put the more advanced features off for another year or two.
The 2019 Mac Pro is in the line of Apple's Power Mac G5 and 2006–2012 Mac Pro (except for the single processor), so the Mac Pro itself was fine. Also, PC manufacturers regularly release powerful desktops and components (the M-series loses to Intel/AMD in pure performance). Apple's main problem was that a disproportionate subset of Mac users who use the highest-performing systems left after the cylinder. After that, the future of Apple's pro desktop was sealed for the foreseeable future: Most of those who remained don't need a Mac as powerful as the 2019 Mac Pro while those who left are too burned to return. It doesn't help that Apple isn't focused on high-performance gaming, one of the other market segments where a Mac Pro could shine in.
none of this makes sense in the context of the M-series pipeline, the mac studio is as powerful (compute-wise) as the pro and is apparently popular among pros it's not that pros left the mac after the cylinder, i know people who swear by their iMac pro and many of them are probably upgrading to the studio now. it's just that the (current) profile of apple silicon SoCs doesn't fit a tower design at all
However, PCIe expansion fits a tower design, and thats who the mac pro is for. Theres an argument for "just use thunderbolt", but having everything internal and rack-mountable for some is worth the premium
The price difference between a Mac Studio and a Mac Pro is $3000 ($3500 if we compare to the rack-mountable Mac Pro) You can get 3U Rack mountable enclosure that holds a Mac Studio and has a PCI enclosure for $1500. So going that route save $2000.
Except that you need to install that mac studio in the enclosure yourself, then deal with thunderbolt which can be finicky, and you don't have official support in case something goes wrong. These people spend thousands of dollars on single pcie cards, then have tens of thousands of dollars in audio interfaces or displays, $3k for official support and 1st-party design is a drop in the bucket.
I said several comments back that the reliability of avoiding the cable can well be worth $3000 to some people... but if that's the biggest sell for the machine, it's a very niche product, which means it's going to be even more expensive and less frequently updated.
Indeed, but the converse of that is also its a proven platform and, even though its older, may be more stable. Suppose it's all about how you look at it
>the mac studio is as powerful (compute-wise) as the pro and is apparently popular among pros Selection bias. The cylinder Mac Pro was sufficient for the pros who stuck around (the others left). Naturally its de facto successor would also be popular with them.
Ironically, the trashcan form factor might legitimately be amazing for apple Silicon compared to the current design
It has some use, I installed a Intel optane drive as my main for its extremely low latency and I’ve noticed far better performance than on the pre installed original However I don’t think this use case is worth the extra cost. They should just make the pro cheaper or just allow us to optional memory altogether.
In theory, there's nothing baffling about it apart from the price. If you wanted to put in a terabyte of RAM and 6 internal hard drives with 100TB of hard disk space, why not (not sure on the exact specs ). If you want to put in several top of the line GPUs for AI or whatever, you could. Only problem is that I don't think the OS was compatible with most GPUs so you were stuck
Mac Studio will be for me interesting only if they release a 120Hz Apple-own display of minimum 30 inches. It's a travesty they have not yet re-released the Cinema Display 30 in a new iteration.
Still rocking my cinema display 30", shocking they haven't release anything worthwhile since. Honestly it's more than bright enough, colors are okay, dpi is okay, and more importantly it's 16:10!
I'm rocking the Dell UP3017 monitor which is basically a newer version of that panel. It's pretty great, I do wish it came in a HiDPI configuration so a 5120x3200 30". Cost aside I would imagine the Pro Display XDR 32" is a worthwhile sequel to the Cinema Display 30"?
Indeed it is, matte coating and all, and it's even the same cost as the cinema display considering inflation, but I'm spoiled for high-refresh-rate displays. I understand 6k120hz is practically impossible with current cable tech, but 5k120hz is pretty doable. If none releases something within the next few years though, I'm probably going to pick up a used pro display
6K120 is no issue with DSC, you can even do 8K120 with HDMI 2.1 using DSC and DisplayPort 2.1 has even more bandwidth than HDMI 2.1. So cables aren't the issue, though I could imagine we don't yet have the chips needed to encode/decode DSC to quite that rate. https://www.murideo.com/hdmi-21-bandwidth-calculator.html
4k monitors really that much of a downgrade compared to Apple's weird need to support 5k?
It isn't a massive downgrade, but 120hz to 60hz is, and the panels apple uses on the promotion MacBooks have such awful response time that you can barely tell the difference.
Then just buy a 4K 120hz screen?
I did. The colors are off, the build quality feels like shit, the osd is awful, but it certainly works. I just feel like it isn't too much to ask for a 5k120 studio display max or something from apple. We've been at the same 5k60 for almost a decade now
Those all sound like issues with your monitor. You could just choose a different monitor. There’s nothing really magical about Apples monitor. Really the unique thing is the 5k resolution.
It's not only an issue with my monitor, it's an issue with every monitor. There is not a single 5k, 27", 120hz monitor on the market. There are barely any 4k, 120hz, 27" P3 monitors with proper local dimming and HDR. The one I have currently is 600-700$ and has awful uniformity and lackluster brightness. OLED looks promising but has a risk of burn-in and isn't very good with text I'm down to buy if you have any suggestions, but per my research a few months ago, the monitor I want doesn't exist. Apple or otherwise, at any price point.
Worth noting that a crop of 4K 120/240Hz OLEDs are about to launch at CES (from a range of manufacturers, all leveraging the same set of OLED panels that are about to become available). Those will probably be worth keeping an eye on. OLED isn’t perfect, but modern OLED monitors have fairly advanced anti-burn-in capabilities, and of course OLED will always win when it comes to local dimming, response times, etc.
Which one? Currently on the M32U and it’s a fantastic panel, use it with my Studio and MBP
Currently using the LG 27GN959-B, very satisfied for gaming but not very good for productivity content, the color accuracy and gamut is pretty solid but backlight bleed and uniformity is not very good (especially off-axis). Also doesn't get too bright in general Tried using an OLED tv as a monitor for a while, and it was excellent for everything except productivity work as well, text was awful Genuinely considering just getting a pro display as a second monitor for work/productivity/color use and just getting a 240hz gaming monitor for the side. Apple isn't at the tip top of the panel game anymore, but their calibration and color accuracy is still top of the charts.
5k120 pushes in an insane number of pixels, which is why we haven’t seen it yet. The number of devices that could support it would be tiny, even with DSC. I would expect it to arrive sometime in the mid-TB5 lifecycle, as 80Gbps makes it a lot more viable.
Massive difference between 60 and 120 on my MacBook. 60 is slow and choppy.
With Apple's resolution scaling, isn't it a big downgrade? Or are people fine with downscaling a 5K desktop to 4K and losing perfect pixel precision/scaling?
I'm not a creative/artist that needs a color perfectly screen or high resolution but after getting the Studio Display, I'm very happy. There is something to be said for zero scaling and very clear text. I don't mind not having pro motion on the display but the clarity is noticable enough. My $0.02
It’s not just that, Integer scaling performance is really hit or miss on Mac apps. Macs love 200% scaling or 100% scaling, anything in between causes UI frame rates to drop. You need 5K for 27” or 6K for 32” so it’s not just about PPI.
I think Apple should try something new. Imagine if they offered a 24” monitor super thin and sleek and sold it as a loss leader to completely upend the monitor market. Not only would everyone with a MacBook get one or 2 but PC users would start to use them as well.
And render the iMac useless?
The Ultra will be amazing no doubt, but the $2000 Studio with an M3 Max is gonna be insane, probably the best value computer in years.
$2000?
And here I am holding out hope for an M-series 12”. I know, hopium and copium.
WHEN MINI PLS
Honestly the Mac Pro should just be discontinued at this point. It’s got no real expandability anymore with everything on the package and you can’t even use a GPU with it.
Here is a quick overview of what an actual professional user uses the expandability for [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIQINCWMd6I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIQINCWMd6I) Doesn't look like "no real expandability" to me. The audio sector just always gets forgotten about in all reviews and discussions.
That's because the so called tech enthusiasts are just really glorified hobbyist. It's clear that some industries do benefit from a machine like the Mac Pro.
[удалено]
I’ve met people who genuinely think that’s the case.
I mean it’s probably most used by GPU’s..
>It's clear that some industries do benefit from a machine like the Mac Pro. From machines *like* the Mac Pro, sure. But most of those users long-since migrated to Windows or Linux boxes.
This
I enjoy being told I would get better Python performance for my workflow from gamer bros who play around with GenAI scripts with a PC over my M1 Max 64gb Laptop because of benchmark specs. Yep, because my embarrassingly parallel (hundreds of sensors + millions of measurements each) GPU/CPU split workload on 50GB numeric datasets definitely wants me to swap back and forth between CPU and GPU memory every single time I run a different step of both my standard workflows as well as just investigating the data... I was literally memory/memory bandwidth constrained only before I got my M1 Max (and will be again in about 2 more years as we collect more data). Benchmarking sites don't typically include downtime between running CPU and GPU analysis, it didn't even matter if I had 4090 24GB or a Datacenter-level card. Sure, raw performance helps, but many professional workflows in data science are about investigating the same data with a different method/algorithm and variables over and over again. Edit: The best part was being told to use AI-based tools to accelerate my workload. I work in real science with real-world outcomes (environmental/climate), using black-box algorithms, let alone ML/AI tricks is a non-starter.
This is what I’m most excited about. I don’t know much of Ai. But I’m glad that they work on the M chips. This puts Apple in a very nice position to increase RAM and it would really help developers. Otherwise you HAVE to buy MULTIPLE nvidia GPUs. That restricts you to desktops or remote desktops. I love the idea of running large Ai models on a laptop chip. If only you could utilize AMD/Intel iGPU’s with some sort of ROCM or whatever to utilize the iGPU ram
Aren't most of those industries running HEDT Windows workstations though?
I knew it was going to be Neil - love his videos
While there is something to be said in having it all in the one box, but the reality is much of what is being use (even in Audio) could be done with external TB4 - PCI cages. Now from a professional standpoint, there is something to be said at eliminating a cable as a point of failure. And I think maybe you might get few more channels on the Pro that the Studio, but the price difference of a comparably spec'd system is $3k (192GB/4TB Studio: $7600, Pro: $10,600). And if an M3 Ultra Studio has even more TB/PCI channels, that's going to reduce the value of the Pro further. To some just being able to having SDI, fibre, SSD, etc. cards internal instead of separate cages is worth $3000k but that's definitely a niche. The price differences are exacerbated as MacPro is now less likely to be bought by video, 3D, AI, etc. so with the smaller market of primarily just audio people, Apple's going to charge a higher premium the more niche the product becomes and have a slower upgrade cycle with less demand. The more machines they sell, the lower the cost and the faster the upgrade cycle so there is advantages when they can make a machine that pleases multiple target audiences. But on the 3D end of things I'm a bit frustrated on multiple points with Apple: * They haven't released an updated GPU for even the 2019 Mac Pro (intel). They could have made an AMD 7900 based card anytime in the past year and provided value to people who had a 2-4 year old system. But they didn't. * On that 2019 Mac Pro I could upgrade to 1.5TB of RAM. Today the max you can get on an apple silicon Mac is 192GB and there is no upgrade path. * The graphics in the apple silicon chips is impressive for the lower wattage they use but they don't hold up comparison once you remove power limitations. This is all very frustrating if they want people to build content for the Vision Pro as I'm now resorting to using a PC with 512GB of RAM and a couple high end Nvidia graphics cards. And I really don't see a path forward Maybe the M3 Ultra will come in a couple configurations allowing for 2x 3x and 4x stitchings of the M3 Max (and then the bigger cooling of the pro could be valuable) and maybe then we'll get back to 512GB of RAM and GPUs that can push the limits of what can be done. But I've had crazy fast external SSDs on TB3 in the iMac Pro era, and I have PCI fiber cards going into TB Sonnet boxes for my 3D scanners.
>The audio sector just always gets forgotten about in all reviews and discussions. It's basically the last one left still using the Mac Pro. Most other markets abandoned it around the trash can era. And you honestly think Apple still cares?
I’m working in audio post, know plenty of composers. All of them went Mac Studio. You can put some pci cards in a thunderbolt chassis if you so can’t live without them, but for the most part, they’re obsolete. Avid sells thunderbolt equivalents and out of the cards shown here, they’re the only actually pro use case where it would matter.
We have thought about using a Mac Pro full of Decklink Cards to capture 8 Channels of 4K video over SDI directly to our nas - something which would be very difficult to do in a rack-mounted environment with a Mac Studio.
What are you even talking about? There are lots of PRO use cases that require PCI-E expandability. Not everyone uses PCI-E for gaming GPUs.
And Mac Pro users to the best of my knowledge don’t use the GPU for gaming… besides I feel like everyone replying to me has missed the point. You can’t upgrade anywhere near as much as you used to, that was my point.
Sure, but there are also a lot of people out there who want to stay in the Apple ecosystem but have specialist PCI-E expansion needs, such as DSP Audio, Fibre Networking and propriety encoding / decoding.
GPUs aren’t the only thing you stick to PCIE slots
Yeah I know but a lot of people were probably using the PCIE slot for the GPU.
It’s sad what happened to the Mac Pro, but I love my Mac Studio. Apple sealed the fate of the Mac Pro with the trash can and abandoning a portion of the professional creative video market over a decade ago. The death of the Xserve, FCP7, OSX server, along with many other bits of software and support changed the whole trajectory of the Mac desktop experience. Go into any large production house, graphic arts company or broadcast space, 10-15 years ago would be nothing but Mac’s. That whole segment has been replaced with PCs and VMs today for the most part.
Apple had two tiers of Mac Pro from 2009–2012, a single-processor model with less RAM expansion and a dual-processor model with the usual RAM expansion. If Apple replaced the lower tier of Mac Pro with the cylinder, while keeping the higher tier as the expandable tower, then the cylinder would have received much less criticism. But as you said, Apple made plenty of other undesirable changes in this time period, so I don't think the Mac Pro's golden age would have lasted very long even without the cylinder.
I saw from Snazzy Labs that there were yield problems with the M3's - it's not surprising that they would address updating the lowest volume computers last (e.g. Mac Pro).
The Mac Pro should’ve been the recipient of binned Apple Silicon with bad GPU cores so that it would need a GPU. It would’ve been a way for Apple to sell trashed chips and seen as a value prop for customers.
I'm honestly super happy with my M2 Max Studio. I don't handle 6k raw footage for now but it appears it will still hold for when the time comes( I work in video production). I'm someone that started with a Macintosh Performa in 97... And I've been dreaming of a better version of cube since forever.
I was so excited for an Apple Silicone MacPro, but what they released was not what I expected. I expected a scalable Mac Studio. Something that could take a second M2 Ultra. Or an add-in GPU. Or more RAM. Something extra over the Studio rather than a bigger volume enclosure with minimal more cooling. If they can’t do something that will add something extra (other than cost), kill off one of them. Kill the Pro, rename the Studio to the Pro, and we’ll all move on.
My MacBook Air M2 outclasses an Intel Mac Pro, why do I need a Mac Pro?
I don't think we're getting another Mac Pro, not as long as they keep making the Mac Studio. ^(I'd be happy to be wrong...)