I’ve said before and I’ll say again: the only reason I didn’t spend my computer “nest egg” money on the 2013 model was because Apple never bothered to pair their own native/self-built Retina display with it. I waited for that. It never came. Apple even discontinued making displays at all.
The 2019 Mac Pro has been priced entirely out of my reach. I could have bought any of the prior Mac Pro models, but not this one. Apple doesn’t want me as a Mac customer any more, because they’ve stopped building machines I want. Portable is nice until you find thermal problems keep them from being workhorses. Everything else Apple makes is just a stupidly-compact portable.
I thought the 2013 Mac Pro was aimed at the pro-sumer more than those looking for a work horse. Apple deigned beautiful products but this shiny "bat man" looking computer looked destined for a CEO's desk and not for someone who will actually connect a ton of external drives, et...
No matter how powerful a model is the Achilles heel is the OS. Try getting a modern website to load when you are using a 10 year old Mac which can no longer be updated.
The worry with the 2019 Mac Pro is they have designed it deliberately for a very tiny market. Apple does not want it to be a major seller. That would prove too many executives wrong.
My worry about the 2019 Mac Pro is that they picked the wrong CPU. AMD's Rome -- a 64 core beast tabbed on TSMC 7nm -- was just released and the early reviews show it absolutely crushing Intel's Xeons by almost every metric. Rome wins in performance, performance/watt, price/performance, and absolutely crushes it in price/performance/watt.
In addition, ROME supports PCIe 4.0.
I had figured Apple must have chosen Cascade Lake over Rome for good reason, but now that I see these Rome reviews, I think Apple just messed up. The 2019 MacPro could have been approximately twice as powerful for the same price if Apple had gone with AMD.
I have owned every 'Mac Pro' since the Mac IIfx ($12,000 at the time) and the 2013 Mac pro is still working away wonderfully for me till I upgrade. I now have it at 64 GB and a 1 TB internal connected to 24 TB of RAID with three 27" monitors and it also runs fours PCs headlessly via Microsoft DTR.
Its weaknesses are in my list: No T2 chip (but that's true of many Macs out there), no CPU or GPU upgrade and we all know heat would probably prevent that even if it were possible but, to be honest, it is the IO being stuck in 2013 is my biggest gripe and not a f****g thing I can do about it. I was able to stick a $25 dual port USB-c card in my 2010 Dell T110 server for Cripe's sake.
I don't want an iMac, never have. I already have several MBPs of various ages including a 2019 one. Being retired now a new Mac Pro is extravagant, to say the least. Unless Apple comes out with a medium-sized tower to fill that gap between an iMac and a new Mac Pro I may have to bite the bullet though.
The worry with the 2019 Mac Pro is they have designed it deliberately for a very tiny market. Apple does not want it to be a major seller. That would prove too many executives wrong.
My worry about the 2019 Mac Pro is that they picked the wrong CPU. AMD's Rome -- a 64 core beast tabbed on TSMC 7nm -- was just released and the early reviews show it absolutely crushing Intel's Xeons by almost every metric. Rome wins in performance, performance/watt, price/performance, and absolutely crushes it in price/performance/watt.
In addition, ROME supports PCIe 4.0.
I had figured Apple must have chosen Cascade Lake over Rome for good reason, but now that I see these Rome reviews, I think Apple just messed up. The 2019 MacPro could have been approximately twice as powerful for the same price if Apple had gone with AMD.
It's very easy to build your own or even buy a high-end PC to your requirements and turn it into a Hackintosh. The trade-offs are for each to look into for their own uses. The lack of the T2 chip is why I won't go that route (other than for the fun of it) because that chip from everything I read does way more than security.
The worry with the 2019 Mac Pro is they have designed it deliberately for a very tiny market. Apple does not want it to be a major seller. That would prove too many executives wrong.
My worry about the 2019 Mac Pro is that they picked the wrong CPU. AMD's Rome -- a 64 core beast tabbed on TSMC 7nm -- was just released and the early reviews show it absolutely crushing Intel's Xeons by almost every metric. Rome wins in performance, performance/watt, price/performance, and absolutely crushes it in price/performance/watt.
In addition, ROME supports PCIe 4.0.
I had figured Apple must have chosen Cascade Lake over Rome for good reason, but now that I see these Rome reviews, I think Apple just messed up. The 2019 MacPro could have been approximately twice as powerful for the same price if Apple had gone with AMD.
Apple is all-in on Thunderbolt 3. I don’t know if AMD has a chipset that supports it yet. Other than that, I think you are correct.
It's now several years after this article and most of the comments were written. The prices have changed markedly. Now you can get a 2013 Mac Pro for $399 on eBay. I wonder if that makes it worth picking up for any purposes today, in 2023? I know the OS maxes out at Monterey, but there's a lot of external expansion, a lot of monitor support, and 32 GB of RAM... I can think of a lot of things I could use that for. But I can also think of a lot of things I could use that $399 for! Anybody have any thoughts on it today?
It's now several years after this article and most of the comments were written. The prices have changed markedly. Now you can get a 2013 Mac Pro for $399 on eBay. I wonder if that makes it worth picking up for any purposes today, in 2023? I know the OS maxes out at Monterey, but there's a lot of external expansion, a lot of monitor support, and 32 GB of RAM... I can think of a lot of things I could use that for. But I can also think of a lot of things I could use that $399 for! Anybody have any thoughts on it today?
A base M1 Mac mini is faster than a 12 core 2013 Mac Pro. I don't know about graphics, but guessing it outclasses it there too.
I'm sure you can find fun uses for one, but they use a hell of a lot more power, tend to have thermal problems/failures, are obsolete as far as repairs go, and don't run current software. So... ¯\(°_o)/¯
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The 2019 Mac Pro has been priced entirely out of my reach. I could have bought any of the prior Mac Pro models, but not this one. Apple doesn’t want me as a Mac customer any more, because they’ve stopped building machines I want. Portable is nice until you find thermal problems keep them from being workhorses. Everything else Apple makes is just a stupidly-compact portable.
No matter how powerful a model is the Achilles heel is the OS. Try getting a modern website to load when you are using a 10 year old Mac which can no longer be updated.
In addition, ROME supports PCIe 4.0.
I had figured Apple must have chosen Cascade Lake over Rome for good reason, but now that I see these Rome reviews, I think Apple just messed up. The 2019 MacPro could have been approximately twice as powerful for the same price if Apple had gone with AMD.
Its weaknesses are in my list: No T2 chip (but that's true of many Macs out there), no CPU or GPU upgrade and we all know heat would probably prevent that even if it were possible but, to be honest, it is the IO being stuck in 2013 is my biggest gripe and not a f****g thing I can do about it. I was able to stick a $25 dual port USB-c card in my 2010 Dell T110 server for Cripe's sake.
I don't want an iMac, never have. I already have several MBPs of various ages including a 2019 one. Being retired now a new Mac Pro is extravagant, to say the least. Unless Apple comes out with a medium-sized tower to fill that gap between an iMac and a new Mac Pro I may have to bite the bullet though.
I'm sure you can find fun uses for one, but they use a hell of a lot more power, tend to have thermal problems/failures, are obsolete as far as repairs go, and don't run current software. So... ¯\(°_o)/¯