Iconic 'Trash Can' Mac Pro is now on Apple's vintage products list

AppleInsider

Apple's infamous 2013 Mac Pro, with its unique cylindrical design, has been added to Apple's vintage and obsolete products list, along with multiple 2019 iMac and 2018 iPad Pro models.

Apple's 2013 Mac Pro has been added to the company's list of vintage products.

More than a decade ago, in 2013, the Mac Pro received its most controversial redesign to date. Unlike the 2012 model, which echoed the dated but tried-and-true rectangular tower form factor of the PowerMac G5, the 2013 Mac Pro was effectively a cylinder with compartmentalized innards.

It was designed to be different from the ground up, and it surely was -- though not always in a good way, as the design wasn't ideal for pro users. Despite its unique chassis and the fact that the cylindrical Mac Pro received hardware upgrades in 2017, Apple abandoned the design with the introduction of the 2019 Mac Pro, which marked a step back to the standard tower shape.

As for the iconic 'Trash Can' Mac Pro from 2013, the iPhone maker added the machine to its list of vintage products on July 11.

Apple considers one of its products "vintage" when it stopped distributing them for sale more than five years ago, and less than seven years ago. Once a product hasn't been sold new for more than seven years, it's then classified as "obsolete." The company provides service and parts for vintage products for up to seven years, assuming the necessary parts are available.

Also on the list are 2019 iMac models, and both the 11-inch iPad Pro and 12.9-inch iPad Pro from 2019. The 128GB variant of the iPhone 8 has also joined its 64GB and 256GB counterparts on Apple's vintage products list. The second-generation AirPort Express, 2TB and 3TB AirPort Time Capsules, and 802.11ac AirPort Extreme, meanwhile, have been placed on the company's list of obsolete products.

It's ultimately not much of a surprise that the unique 2013 Mac Pro was added to Apple's vintage products list. Neither is Apple's decision to give up on the unsustainable cylindrical design.

"Can't innovate any more, my ass," said Apple executive Phil Schiller during the product's launch, but the company's tune changed within only a few years, once it revealed in 2017 that it was working on a modular replacement for the "Trash Can" Mac Pro.

"We designed a system with the kind of GPUs that at the time we thought we needed, and that we thought we could well serve with a two-GPU architecture," said Craig Federighi, Apple's hardware chief at the time. "That was the thermal limit we needed, or the thermal capacity we needed. But workloads didn't materialize to fit that as broadly as we hoped."

Federighi also admitted that Apple had designed itself "into a bit of a thermal corner" with the 2013 Mac Pro. Still, the computer remains a relatively capable and somewhat upgradable machine. Even though it can't officially run macOS Sequoia, it's possible to install the operating system using the OpenCore Legacy Patcher.

As for the future of the Mac Pro, AppleInsider has seen indications that a new model is in development. Given the apparent failure of the 2013 Mac Pro, however, it will most likely maintain the design of the current 2023 Mac Pro, which features Apple's M2 Ultra chip.



Read on AppleInsider

ramanpfaff

I personally love mine and still use it to run Adobe Director when making prototype games.  I’m running a good old OSX (can’t remember at the moment, I’m on the road).

thresher-the-shark

I actually liked them and still have a couple. They just never should have been sold as a Mac Pro.

I also think they could have been noticeably better if they had been just a bit bigger to allow for a larger heatsink, included a 2nd SSD slot, and included a fan in the bottom in addition to the one it came with on the top. This could have allowed for better cooling via push-pull action, and potentially avoided the thermal headroom corner Apple backed themselves into. Although, also as hinted by Apple execs, it came out right before dual GPU setups started going by the wayside in favor of more powerful single GPUs. Inefficiencies, communication bottlenecks, and memory sharing issues all contributed to the relegation of AMD CrossFire/nVidia SLI to niche use cases.

Somewhat ironically though the 2013 cylindrical Mac Pro did eventually make a comeback. It's just now a cuboid and is called the Mac Studio.

edited July 11

m68000

There were probably some people who saw this Mac and did not even know it was a computer!    Some may remember how cool Apple’s website presented this computer.  Will we ever see a truly different looking design again like this or the G4 Cube?   I have doubts and hope.  

9secondkox2

It’s kind of crazy. The idea of the cylinder was actually pretty good. Utilize the natural tendency of heat to rise through the top, while surrender by modular structure which could be upgraded along the way. 

The Robles wasn’t the design. It was the stupidity of doing absolutely nothing with it. 

The redesigned 2019 harkened bavk to the old G5 Power Max and was basically the same thing in concept. 

At least Apple did a little with that one. 

Will be interesting to see what an m series specific redesign does. 

Hopefully Apple does something bigger and better than the ultra chip. We used to have the Godzilla of computing. Now, it’s up there, but not near the best. 

Would be great to see Apple shoot for domination again. 

lotones

The design was too advanced for Intel chips and regular GPUs. Imagine a cylindrical Mac with an M series chip. Maybe they should release an "Anniversary Edition" with an M4 Max or M5 Pro or Max, or even an M series Ultra chip.

edited July 12

9secondkox2

lotones said:

The design was too advanced for Intel chips and regular GPUs. Imagine a cylindrical Mac with an M series chip. Maybe they should release an "Anniversary Edition" with an M4 Max or M5 Pro or Max, or even an M series Ultra chip.

If it’s any kind of Mac PRO it needs to have an Ultra at the very least. Hopefully they develop a more powerful chipset or a way to combine multiple Ultras to get the performance at the absolute pinnacle of computing again. 

mattinoz

lotones said:

The design was too advanced for Intel chips and regular GPUs. Imagine a cylindrical Mac with an M series chip. Maybe they should release an "Anniversary Edition" with an M4 Max or M5 Pro or Max, or even an M series Ultra chip.

I’d imagine hacking one to have say an M4max in one side and ryzen Ai max in one neat unit.

cujoyyc

lotones said:

The design was too advanced for Intel chips and regular GPUs. Imagine a cylindrical Mac with an M series chip. Maybe they should release an "Anniversary Edition" with an M4 Max or M5 Pro or Max, or even an M series Ultra chip.

My thoughts exactly. 

cogitodexter

I have three Mac Pros. A 2008 one, a 2013 one (the cylindrical one) and a 2019 one. I can't afford an Apple Silicon 2023 one! The 2008 one lives on its side under my desk and is the perfect height to stand my laser printer on out of the way - I stopped using it years ago. The 2013 one works just fine (but it does have vast amounts of added RAM!) and the 2019 one is still going strong, although my daily driver these days is actually an M4 Mac mini with 24GB RAM and it knocks spots off the 2019 Mac Pro in daily usage (although I've had to add a 40Gbps thunderbolt external SSD storage box to it as native storage is a bit small for my needs). That shows just how far Apple has come with the move away from Intel.

tht

Thresher-the-Shark said:

I actually liked them and still have a couple. They just never should have been sold as a Mac Pro.

I also think they could have been noticeably better if they had been just a bit bigger to allow for a larger heatsink, included a 2nd SSD slot, and included a fan in the bottom in addition to the one it came with on the top. This could have allowed for better cooling via push-pull action, and potentially avoided the thermal headroom corner Apple backed themselves into. Although, also as hinted by Apple execs, it came out right before dual GPU setups started going by the wayside in favor of more powerful single GPUs. Inefficiencies, communication bottlenecks, and memory sharing issues all contributed to the relegation of AMD CrossFire/nVidia SLI to niche use cases.

Somewhat ironically though the 2013 cylindrical Mac Pro did eventually make a comeback. It's just now a cuboid and is called the Mac Studio.

Like I've said so many times, I would like someone to write a book about what Apple was thinking and why they shipped the products they did from 2012 to 2017. The 2013 Mac Pro and iOS 7 were the first big results of the Jony Ive era at Apple, and Cook's reorg. Apple's sense of computing took a detour for a while.

By the looks of it, Apple knew the 2013 Mac Pro was a mistake within about a year after shipping, by late 2014 or so, and resolved not to put any more money into it. They proceeded to put their workstation development budget on the iMac Pro by 2015 or so. They could have updated the 2013 Mac Pro form factor with newer Xeons and single 300 W GPU if they wanted. They could have made it work. They didn't. And, they had to think the iMac Pro was temporary and actually started working on the Mac Pro again in 2017 for the 2019 model.

The 2013 design had the 3 big heat generators share one heat sink. That likely means the GPUs and the CPU had to have a certain amount of heat generated or power consumption. Having one that is way higher could mean it heating up the other components. So the "unified thermal" architecture limited components due to this. But they could have re-designed it too. Heat sinks could have been made independent. They could have designed it for 1 300 W Xeon and 1 300 GPU.