I definitely hope that Apple has. MUCH more in store for the Mac Pro in the next year or two.
There was obviously a major push to launch/announce their vr headset and no doubt, that took (and is taking) the brunt of R&D from hardware and software development. There is so much that Apple can do.
While the m2 ultra soundly cleaned up m1 ultra design bottlenecks as predicted, it isn’t quite the king that we were hoping for. Now, we’ve heard inklings since M1 that M3 is where things get really serious and so I’m waiting until m3 ultra to really compare.
Yet, the m2 ultra is still quite the impressive powerhouse on a Mac Studio level.
But Mac Pro level? It’s just not.
I have a hard time believing this is some part of a masterful stroke by apple in identifying this mythical subset of users who just need a Mac Studio with more I/O and PCI-E that leaves out graphics upgrades - and that it is somehow a good thing to downgrade the Mac Pro so severely as to fit that group.
What is more likely is threefold: 1. Apple didn’t have a plan to launch - or wasn’t ready to launch - anything above max studio grade horsepower.
2. More likely - Apple wanted to get the Mac Pro ball rolling to get the market onto the Apple Silicon train. The drawbacks to this are:
a. The Mac Pro has only been out a few years and those who invested in MPX modules, etc. are completely out with no true upgrade path and now they are paying for a whole new architecture and starting from scratch.
b. These users are going from a system that when it launched was in the stratosphere of computing. They are now supposed to shell another 6-12k for Mac Studio power.
a. A system where users could upgrade their MULTIPLE processors, graphics, and ram as needed down the line - now has ONE SOC option. It looks like the m2 ultra module may be seapoable later. We will see. If that’s the case, it alleviates things a tiny bit. Especially if there is a way to add more than one SOC.
3. Apple doesn’t value exceedingly high performance computing anymore and wants to artificially limit their top tier offerings as they shift to focus on mass market consumer level offerings and projects like the headset and sneakily move their business toward that and subscription software models.
#2 sounds the most plausible. I sincerely hope it’s not #3. But I truly believe the Mac Pro isn’t so disrespected due to some genius and honest gameplay that isolated this perfect group of users who need only what it offers. It’s s strange day when a high end. PC is a better Mac Pro than the Mac Pro itself. While going PC is not an option for most Mac users, myself included, it does indeed absolutely suck that the pc world has this to hold over Mac osiers heads once again.
What value for Apple is there in the consumer space to limit the top end machines?
3 just doesn't make a lot of sense to me they could have just killed the product and have gotten the value. 1 also seem unlikely given again they could have phoned in a last Intel Mac Pro instead of going to all the trouble they could have just made the Rackable in a Appleish looking case.
2 as you say seems most likely something just didn't work out as planned or when planned.
It seems telling to me they didn't compress the PCIe slots for the M2 MacPro they just deleted out the MPX extra connector. But with GPU's and MPX modules there just don't seem to any PCIe cards that need that extra slot width.
Similarly the M2 now has the back section that with no RAM slots is just a big empty space.
And that’s why it should not have been launched like this. It pretty much is an embarrassment.
People would have been fine with a broken promise if it resulted in something “insanely great.” But to wait this long for them to just chuck a Mac Studio in the old Mac Pro tower - just sucks it’s worse than waiting.
I agree with the analysis that this was "the best they could do" this year, and they needed to keep the Apple Silicon transition rolling. Definitely it's a disappointment compared to how impressive the 2019 one was in its time. (Still, was criticized then for not having PCIe 4.0, not being Threadripper, etc. Nevertheless a huge leap from previous Macs.)
This second shredder Mac Pro is clearly marketed at audio creatives, and Pro Tools for example only released an Apple Silicon-native version three months ago! These pro software vendors, Avid in particular, are notorious for dragging their feet with new hardware/OS compatibility. They have little incentive to invest in migrating to Apple Silicon if their users are all still on Intel Mac Pros, and can't even buy an Apple Silicon Mac Pro if they wanted to.
It looks to me based on Hector Martin analysis and Mark Gurman reporting that they planned for the Jade-4C Die aka "Extreme" chip to be the top of the line, but were not able to make it happen for M1 or M2 generations. Gurman on Discord last night said he imagines that they will keep trying to make Jade-4C happen if they can. It sounds like Apple has had a good amount of brain drain on the Apple Silicon design team, which may be part of why they haven't been able to finish the job yet on the complex Jade-4C, the desire for massive RAM expansion, or discrete GPU expansion.
I share the hope that M2 Ultra Mac Pro is a stopgap, that getting Vision Pro launched was the engineering focus this year, and that future Mac Pro generations will go well beyond this one!
Let’s take a step back for an apples-to-apples comparison. In June 2023, Apple can now sell you two machines that are roughly twice as fast, give or take, as a maxed out 2019 Mac Pro that sold for $54,000–which is actually $64,000 in 2023 dollars, accounting for inflation.
Instead of $54K/$64K, you can get double the performance for $9K in a maxed out Studio or $12K for a maxed out Mac Pro if you need the PCI expansion. And this is disappointing because why? We know that memory is handled differently on Apple Silicon vs Intel, so why is it assumed that the 192GB max is “a problem?” I’d like to see the test where this problem is actually shown. Also: on what video tasks is Apple’s on-board video proving to be an issue vs a separate video card? It would also be interesting to see if the larger enclosure and fan system on the Mac Pro would allow users to push it harder and longer without throttling than the Studio with its smaller enclosure and single fan.
Far from narrowing the user base for the Mac Pro, I think the unprecedented improvement in price/performance ratio will grow the user base substantially. How many people actually need more than what the 2023 Mac Pro offers, and is that pool large enough to justify design changes that would appeal only to them, resulting in higher prices for everyone else? Spoiler alert: No. And yes, even more people may opt for the Mac Studio because they don’t need the PCI expansion, but having 2 lines of pro desktops is not a bad thing.
Apple should offer both there are those who need the extra I/O slots with a professional, long-term way to connect to those extra I/O connections (by adding a card) in a manner that will stay connected over the long haul, which is the case in production environments, back rooms, mechanical areas, and those that work in a more finished, controlled office area a Mac Studio Pro, might work better.
Supposedly the group that designed the M1 and left to start Nuvia wanted to make server grade chips at Apple but were told that Apple wasn’t interested.
Let’s take a step back for an apples-to-apples comparison. In June 2023, Apple can now sell you two machines that are roughly twice as fast, give or take, as a maxed out 2019 Mac Pro that sold for $54,000–which is actually $64,000 in 2023 dollars, accounting for inflation.
Instead of $54K/$64K, you can get double the performance for $9K in a maxed out Studio or $12K for a maxed out Mac Pro if you need the PCI expansion. And this is disappointing because why? We know that memory is handled differently on Apple Silicon vs Intel, so why is it assumed that the 192GB max is “a problem?” I’d like to see the test where this problem is actually shown. Also: on what video tasks is Apple’s on-board video proving to be an issue vs a separate video card? It would also be interesting to see if the larger enclosure and fan system on the Mac Pro would allow users to push it harder and longer without throttling than the Studio with its smaller enclosure and single fan.
Far from narrowing the user base for the Mac Pro, I think the unprecedented improvement in price/performance ratio will grow the user base substantially. How many people actually need more than what the 2023 Mac Pro offers, and is that pool large enough to justify design changes that would appeal only to them, resulting in higher prices for everyone else? Spoiler alert: No. And yes, even more people may opt for the Mac Studio because they don’t need the PCI expansion, but having 2 lines of pro desktops is not a bad thing.
Apple should offer both there are those who need the extra I/O slots with a professional, long-term way to connect to those extra I/O connections (by adding a card) in a manner that will stay connected over the long haul, which is the case in production environments, back rooms, mechanical areas, and those that work in a more finished, controlled office area a Mac Studio Pro, might work better.
The 1,1 through 5,1 were a truck with four seats, and a nice cargo bed. There was enough room in the cabin and the bed for folks to travel comfortably, for a while, and get just about any job done.
The 6,1 was still a truck, but a two-seater. The bed was smaller, and the jobs that could get done were limited some, but not as many as before. Then some time went on, and folks forgot about this particular truck.
Apple saw this, and released the 7,1 to try and get the truck-devout back. But, they figured out that they could charge a lot for it, given how much trucks with the same features that they wanted to include sold for. The bed was bigger again, and other than that price, joy was restored to the truck-going public.
But, they looked back at that 6,1 for the 8,1. They kept the bed, but had strict rules about what could go in it, and there wasn't a good way to get around them. And, those two seats in the front? They only suited a few drivers, leaving most of the driver population that suited the 1,1 through 7,1 out.
They really should have waited for M3 and gone with the Quad-max “Extreme” setup. Since the m3 is supposed to have the game changing GPU, that should put it up there with the grown ups and an extreme setup should lay the smack down.
The m2 ultra, while a reformer in its own right is as you said - not ideal for the many GPU workloads in these modern times.
As Apple is now entering the VR and AR space, you’d think they want to make sure that Macs are beyond everyone else in crafting 3D/AR/VR experiences.
But one thing I noticed in the VP keynote WAS THAT apple is copying HoloLens and just going with Unity, while capable, Unity is more of a low grade console, web browser, mobile friendly 3D engine. It’s nowhere near Unreal 5 (the new gold standard) or CryEngine anything like that. So hopefully Apple isn’t just not caring about the GPU as much since their creator-case is limited by Unity anyway. That would be very short-sighted.
They shouldn't have waited another year before updating it. Also an M3 Extreme would be more expensive, it wouldn't be in the base model so there would still be an M3 Ultra at $7k. M3 Extreme would be $10k, maybe more. $7-8k is the price point most Mac Pro buyers are at and it lets professional workflows upgrade to Apple Silicon.
Unity rendering quality can stand up against Unreal and CryEngine. These are rendered in Unity:
While it's important for a game engine to have a good rendering pipeline, it's easy to make a bad game in a good engine and it's possible to make high quality games in a slightly lower quality engine. Unity bought Weta Digital so they have some expertise in movie VFX now.
Sweeney Todd of Unreal Engine fame shot himself, and his company in the head, yes it probably would have been Unreal Engine on the stage at WWDC 2023, if Sweeney hadn’t started mouthing off and suing Apple. Why would any company (Apple) have anything to do with you after that. Making bad business decisions like that end up kicking you in the ass, like the bad decision Intel made when Steve Jobs ask them a question about supplying chips for the iPhone.
Going into the future all Apple needs to do is release an M3, M4 Mac ultra tower every time the next generation of ultra’s are ready, the video, audio production houses, colleges, and scientific communities who have need of fast I/O Mac towers will buy if they are available, and I’m sure Apple will be not be selling them at a loss, so what difference does it make if it’s only 3-5% of all Mac’s sold, the only thing that counts is that you make a profit and support your ecosystems.
There will be a Increase in demand for Mac Pros and Mac Studio machines, once developers, get their hands on the Vision Pro starting in workshops next month and down the road once the public gets their hands on the Vision Pro next year, there will be even an even greater demand for more powerful Mac’s with I/O capability from the development community, that sometimes happens when you create a whole new ecosystem of opportunity for developers.
Even interest in Mac games will go up at the dawn of a new ecosystem, but those games may be slightly different.
GPU PCIe cards will work. But someone has to write the drivers for them. Apple won't. [...]
It's not just drivers, it's a hardware limitation. Apple Silicon has no hardware hooks for direct writing video anything to an external video processor. At all.
Could you please explain? What do you mean by "hardware hooks"? It's up to the operating system whether to send graphics jobs to an internal or external GPU (or even just render everything on CPU). The question to me is really whether the driver interface on the OS kernel released for Apple Silicon allows a driver to divert graphics to an external GPU-- I mean, the PCIe bus is there, the CPU can still execute any instructions the OS sends to it, and send any graphics instructions over the PCIe bus. My understanding is therefore that it's not a hardware limitation, but it might be a protected-OS/kernel limitation. And while Apple publishes their XNU kernel source code and you can recompile it, I doubt anyone wants to go there for a graphics card and it's not clear to me if the CPU/GPU code is part of the published kernel. It's possible there might be some questions of whether PCIe devices have DMA access to Apple Silicon RAM so that the CPU doesn't have to do the job of pumping bits, but if it didn't, that seems like it would hurt more than just GPUs.
But I haven't exactly pored over the spec sheets or technical diagrams. What do you mean by "hardware hooks"?
GPU PCIe cards will work. But someone has to write the drivers for them. Apple won't. [...]
It's not just drivers, it's a hardware limitation. Apple Silicon has no hardware hooks for direct writing video anything to an external video processor. At all.
Could you please explain? What do you mean by "hardware hooks"? It's up to the operating system whether to send graphics jobs to an internal or external GPU (or even just render everything on CPU). The question to me is really whether the driver interface on the OS kernel released for Apple Silicon allows a driver to divert graphics to an external GPU-- I mean, the PCIe bus is there, the CPU can still execute any instructions the OS sends to it, and send any graphics instructions over the PCIe bus. My understanding is therefore that it's not a hardware limitation, but it might be a protected-OS/kernel limitation. And while Apple publishes their XNU kernel source code and you can recompile it, I doubt anyone wants to go there for a graphics card and it's not clear to me if the CPU/GPU code is part of the published kernel. It's possible there might be some questions of whether PCIe devices have DMA access to Apple Silicon RAM so that the CPU doesn't have to do the job of pumping bits, but if it didn't, that seems like it would hurt more than just GPUs.
But I haven't exactly pored over the spec sheets or technical diagrams. What do you mean by "hardware hooks"?
I had the same question. John Ternus mentioned Apple Silicon's Unified Memory model while addressing this issue: "Fundamentally, we’ve built our architecture around this shared-memory model and that optimization, and so it’s not entirely clear to me how you’d bring in another GPU and do so in a way that is optimized for our systems. It hasn’t been a direction that we wanted to pursue." That's probably not much help, but it does suggest the door is closed to anything that doesn't use the shared-memory model. It also sounds like that door will stay closed, and any hypothetical PCIe GPU (from Apple or otherwise) would have to conform to that.
To me, that sounds like PCIe 5, so "a few more years" as Mike's headline suggests.
But one thing I noticed in the VP keynote WAS THAT apple is copying HoloLens and just going with Unity, while capable, Unity is more of a low grade console, web browser, mobile friendly 3D engine. It’s nowhere near Unreal 5 (the new gold standard) or CryEngine anything like that. So hopefully Apple isn’t just not caring about the GPU as much since their creator-case is limited by Unity anyway. That would be very short-sighted.
You seem to think there is some sort of exclusivity at play here. There isn't, Apple just worked with Unity to get tooling ready in advance. Part of that is probably due to bad feeling towards Epic, but there's nothing to stop Epic building support for the VisionPro into their engine toolkit.
One huge thing about the Mac Pro is that it came out the same time as the Mac Studio refresh. That indicates the Mac Pro will be on the same, regular refresh schedule as the rest of Apple silicon. Long term, this will have a relentless, powerful real-world effect, as every cycle, like clockwork, one year after the launch of the base M-series, the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro will get their due.
I think Apple isn't happy with this 2023 Mac Pro model, just like many potential customers are. They wanted to make a blow away product, but didn't have the SoC they thought they would. Ie, they were waiting on the "M2 Extreme", their competitor (1) to a RTX 3090/4090, and they could not get it to market.
Not shipping anything would be a mistake. The M2 Ultra model offers great performance and their is plenty of internal expansion. You have to remember the 2019 Mac Pro at $6k was not a competitive product. You really needed to spend $9k or so to get a 16 core Xeon and a Radeon 5700X to get performance that could last awhile. The base model for $6k was an 8c Xeon and a Radeon 580. An M1 Pro out performs that by a considerable margin, let alone an M2 Pro you can get in a Mac mini for $1300 today. So, the $7k starting price for the 2023 Mac Pro isn't different from the $6k starting price for the 2019 model.
(1) Apple Silicon really needs hardware raytracing to remain in the race. It's a table stakes feature now.
They really should have waited for M3 and gone with the Quad-max “Extreme” setup. Since the m3 is supposed to have the game changing GPU, that should put it up there with the grown ups and an extreme setup should lay the smack down.
The m2 ultra, while a reformer in its own right is as you said - not ideal for the many GPU workloads in these modern times.
As Apple is now entering the VR and AR space, you’d think they want to make sure that Macs are beyond everyone else in crafting 3D/AR/VR experiences.
But one thing I noticed in the VP keynote WAS THAT apple is copying HoloLens and just going with Unity, while capable, Unity is more of a low grade console, web browser, mobile friendly 3D engine. It’s nowhere near Unreal 5 (the new gold standard) or CryEngine anything like that. So hopefully Apple isn’t just not caring about the GPU as much since their creator-case is limited by Unity anyway. That would be very short-sighted.
They shouldn't have waited another year before updating it. Also an M3 Extreme would be more expensive, it wouldn't be in the base model so there would still be an M3 Ultra at $7k. M3 Extreme would be $10k, maybe more. $7-8k is the price point most Mac Pro buyers are at and it lets professional workflows upgrade to Apple Silicon.
Unity rendering quality can stand up against Unreal and CryEngine. These are rendered in Unity:
While it's important for a game engine to have a good rendering pipeline, it's easy to make a bad game in a good engine and it's possible to make high quality games in a slightly lower quality engine. Unity bought Weta Digital so they have some expertise in movie VFX now.
Your argument is basically that Apple should not have waited and just released the same lame Mac Pro earlier.
If this is all the Mac Pro is meant to be - a Mac Studio with more ports and PCI-E slots, then sure. And it’s obvious they absolutely could have done that. But they didn’t. And it’s likely for a few reasons combined:
1) the m1 ultra had a design flaw bottleneck and Apple didn’t want to ruin the Mac pros reputation with something that didn’t look so great compared to the still somewhat new “old” model.
2) the Mac Pro wasn’t supposed to be a Mac Studio tossed into the Mac Pro case.
3) there were ideas being brainstormed and silicon being designed that would enable the Mac Pro to satisfy the most demanding of users and use-cases. It just needed a little more time…
turns out it still needs more time. So Apple wanted to satisfy those waiting for a “Mac Pro” by releasing…this - since they don’t want to look bad by offering new Intel/AMD upgrades to existing Mac Pro owners and looking like they couldn’t match competitors. So they gave the world a Mac Studio in a tower.
So here we are with what truly screams half-baked and fallback - as in Apple couldn’t do what they intended and went with the fsilsafe - launching a very disappointing and certainly not “insanely great” yet “good enough” offering that will satisfy a percentage of traditional Mac Pro customers and get the specter of the transition delay off their collective backs.
The only problem is that it is such a disappointment that they may have done more harm than good. When the Mac Studio was announced, we were given the expectation that this was somehow the iMac replacement t when coupled with the studio display. Shortly thereafter, we were told that the Mac Pro story would continue later. The iMac was never a Mac Pro level machine and the Mac Studio wasn't either. Hence the wait. When the AS Mac Pro launched and was revealed to be on the level of an iMac replacement, it was bound to disappoint. And it did/does. Apple really truly should have waited until they were ready to shock the world. Instead they took the pinnacle of computing and made it ordinary and vastly underwhelming.
Such a shame. Next year, there is an opportunity to reclaim some honor, but the shame of this launch will haunt them for at least s year.
Hopefully customers who bought this year can swap the SOC next year for the M3 extreme based setup. If it’s not easy for customers to do that, then apple has done its customers a most heinous disservice.
As far as Unity, it’s lower tier stuff.
Your argument amounts to comparing a turd made with gold to a crown made with bronze.
You can point out examples of stuff made with superior tools that look as bad as Unity graphics, but we both know that’s a disengenuous argument as art direction, budget, and creative talent have everything to do with that. The capability ceiling for Unreal 5 and even CryEngine is light years above Unity. There is a reason most of the Mandalorisn “CGI” is made with Unreal 5. It looks indistinguishable from real life.
If we are going to debate such points, let’s do so in good faith, eh?
Your argument is basically that Apple should not have waited and just released the same lame Mac Pro earlier.
If this is all the Mac Pro is meant to be - a Mac Studio with more ports and PCI-E slots, then sure. And it’s obvious they absolutely could have done that. But they didn’t. And it’s likely for a few reasons combined:
The only problem is that it is such a disappointment that they may have done more harm than good. When the Mac Studio was announced, we were given the expectation that this was somehow the iMac replacement t when coupled with the studio display. Shortly thereafter, we were told that the Mac Pro story would continue later. The iMac was never a Mac Pro level machine and the Mac Studio wasn't either. Hence the wait. When the AS Mac Pro launched and was revealed to be on the level of an iMac replacement, it was bound to disappoint. And it did/does. Apple really truly should have waited until they were ready to shock the world. Instead they took the pinnacle of computing and made it ordinary and vastly underwhelming.
Such a shame. Next year, there is an opportunity to reclaim some honor, but the shame of this launch will haunt them for at least s year.
There's no shock going to happen with a boring tower PC, nobody cares about these legacy types of computer any more.
All people ever describe about what Apple should do to make a 'real Mac Pro' is make it faster. But most Mac Pro buyers don't buy the higher-end models. The vast majority of Mac Pro users bought mid-range models and the Ultra chips are way beyond those at the same price point.
Apple delivered all they needed to for most of their customers.
Your argument amounts to comparing a turd made with gold to a crown made with bronze.
You can point out examples of stuff made with superior tools that look as bad as Unity graphics, but we both know that’s a disengenuous argument as art direction, budget, and creative talent have everything to do with that. The capability ceiling for Unreal 5 and even CryEngine is light years above Unity. There is a reason most of the Mandalorisn “CGI” is made with Unreal 5. It looks indistinguishable from real life.
The realism of the virtual sets is primarily due to the assets. Photogrammetry assets in Unity look photoreal too.
Unreal is the better engine for visual quality but it's not as big of a difference as you are suggesting. With good assets, shaders and lighting, Unity can render photorealistic results, Unreal just tends to have that out of the box.
No matter how you spin it, the M2 Mac Pro is a real disappointment. Full stop.
The only excuse I’d give Apple for this disappointment is if they felt it were more important to formally complete the Apple Silicon transition than it was to provide a proper pro machine. So, if this is a stop gap measure to hold us until this time next year, then fine.
The Mac Pro is meant to be the flagship device… the pinnacle of Mac performance. Instead, it’s a Mac Studio with PCI slots. At the very least, an M2 Extreme (2 M2 Ultra chips) is what users are expecting. Apple seems content on comparing to a 4 year old Intel Mac Pro while ignoring the current Intel / nVidia 4090 based solutions. That would address the CPU / GPU scalability concerns or at least help mute them. The other concern is memory. 192 GB is fine for most solutions, but there are very high end needs which go well beyond that.
Yeah, I agree. Apple has kind of set their own trap at the high end. One must conclude that reallynhihh performance just does not scale when you're required to make a new gigantic chip or two, rather than reusing one, when the market is that small already.
The problem with the idea of an M2 Extreme is that there is no M2 Ultra chip. That's two M2 Max chips connected end to end. Unlike most of the other chip to chip interconnects like AMD's infinity fabric or Intel's EMIB that's any reasonable kind of compact or routeable, just the eonergy to end connection. So Apple would, at best, need an extra chip for this with a 4-way port, and of course, support in their UltraFusion connection. Or potentially, more than one UltraFusion interconnect per chip.
As well, their tight coupling of DRAM to CPU necessitates DRAM on an MCM and maybe lowers main board cost in most of the M-series computers. But it also precludes memory expansion.
In the context of a powerful small desktop machine, the Studio makes perfect sense. But the power of a large workstation class tower PC is all about the expansion. It's not just that the Mac Pro can't compete with a nVidia RTX4090... it's that it can't compete with two, three, or four of them.
All of this discussion is peachy keen but omit the fact that the M2 processor is not capable of every possible function over PCIe BY DESIGN.
Recent numbers show that Max Pro sales are 1% of Mac Sales.
If there’s a percentage of Mac Pro buyers that need 1.5TB of ram or any feature that isn’t supported in the Mac Pro, then Apple is losing a portion of that 1%. It doesn’t justify the investment in redesign of the Mx family to support it.
We did see posts about a supposed stacked Mx processor which was the equivalent of two Ultras. Double everything. 384GB ram, blah blah cores.
The Mac Pro case has significant tooling investment. Expect it to stick around for another 3-5 years before it’s replaced or killed. The Mac Studio Ultra is a better deal for those who do not need PCIe Slots. Perhaps the two will merge some day. Why am I doubtful?
They've been working on this for a very long time.
Samsung has relied on Intel's collaboration to develop this new high-performance memory module, which means that the work was carried out on a platform based on an Intel Xeon processor in May 202.
Perhaps the answer to all this is in the pipeline.
Look at the bigger picture. Apple is already working on the version of MacOS that completely drops Intel support, as well as plans for future iterations of the M-series silicon. Which is more problematic in 2023? Selling $7K+ Intel machines which you can soup up to your heart's content, but have a known (internally at Apple, anyway) end date where all the expanded memory and video hardware in the world won't matter because MacOS has deprecated the entire device, or selling a $7K+ 2023 Apple Silicon Mac Pro that has the described limitations but will have a much longer OS shelf life?
In the latter case, a power user who needs to upgrade and replace their M-series machine maybe a little sooner can soften the blow, because their M2 model will retain resale value. Not so much, for the imagined 2023 Intel MP. The resale value of that machine will start dropping precipitously fairly soon, because anybody with any sense will know its days are numbered.
Meanwhile, if the M2 MP doesn't serve a particular task right now, it's not hard to hang on with the knowledge that the M3 or M4 likely will.
Comments
This second shredder Mac Pro is clearly marketed at audio creatives, and Pro Tools for example only released an Apple Silicon-native version three months ago! These pro software vendors, Avid in particular, are notorious for dragging their feet with new hardware/OS compatibility. They have little incentive to invest in migrating to Apple Silicon if their users are all still on Intel Mac Pros, and can't even buy an Apple Silicon Mac Pro if they wanted to.
It looks to me based on Hector Martin analysis and Mark Gurman reporting that they planned for the Jade-4C Die aka "Extreme" chip to be the top of the line, but were not able to make it happen for M1 or M2 generations. Gurman on Discord last night said he imagines that they will keep trying to make Jade-4C happen if they can. It sounds like Apple has had a good amount of brain drain on the Apple Silicon design team, which may be part of why they haven't been able to finish the job yet on the complex Jade-4C, the desire for massive RAM expansion, or discrete GPU expansion.
I share the hope that M2 Ultra Mac Pro is a stopgap, that getting Vision Pro launched was the engineering focus this year, and that future Mac Pro generations will go well beyond this one!
Apple should offer both there are those who need the extra I/O slots with a professional, long-term way to connect to those extra I/O connections (by adding a card) in a manner that will stay connected over the long haul, which is the case in production environments, back rooms, mechanical areas, and those that work in a more finished, controlled office area a Mac Studio Pro, might work better.
The new Mac Pro tower is a truck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH8_2u7-JVI
https://www.aja.com/products/kona-4
The 6,1 was still a truck, but a two-seater. The bed was smaller, and the jobs that could get done were limited some, but not as many as before. Then some time went on, and folks forgot about this particular truck.
Unity rendering quality can stand up against Unreal and CryEngine. These are rendered in Unity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXYUNrgqWUU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpPx_lvthBQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXI0l3yqBrA
Tekken 8 is made with Unreal 5 and looks like a PS4 game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j1BEga_BIM
The Lord of the Rings Gollum was made in Unreal 4 and similarly looks terrible:
https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-5/the-lord-of-the-rings---gollum
While it's important for a game engine to have a good rendering pipeline, it's easy to make a bad game in a good engine and it's possible to make high quality games in a slightly lower quality engine. Unity bought Weta Digital so they have some expertise in movie VFX now.
Going into the future all Apple needs to do is release an M3, M4 Mac ultra tower every time the next generation of ultra’s are ready, the video, audio production houses, colleges, and scientific communities who have need of fast I/O Mac towers will buy if they are available, and I’m sure Apple will be not be selling them at a loss, so what difference does it make if it’s only 3-5% of all Mac’s sold, the only thing that counts is that you make a profit and support your ecosystems.
There will be a Increase in demand for Mac Pros and Mac Studio machines, once developers, get their hands on the Vision Pro starting in workshops next month and down the road once the public gets their hands on the Vision Pro next year, there will be even an even greater demand for more powerful Mac’s with I/O capability from the development community, that sometimes happens when you create a whole new ecosystem of opportunity for developers.
Even interest in Mac games will go up at the dawn of a new ecosystem, but those games may be slightly different.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8-wTpiuZwE
https://seekingalpha.com/pr/19375729-developer-tools-to-create-spatial-experiences-for-apple-vision-pro-now-available?hasComeFromMpArticle=false
But I haven't exactly pored over the spec sheets or technical diagrams. What do you mean by "hardware hooks"?
To me, that sounds like PCIe 5, so "a few more years" as Mike's headline suggests.
In fact, whaddya know....
Not shipping anything would be a mistake. The M2 Ultra model offers great performance and their is plenty of internal expansion. You have to remember the 2019 Mac Pro at $6k was not a competitive product. You really needed to spend $9k or so to get a 16 core Xeon and a Radeon 5700X to get performance that could last awhile. The base model for $6k was an 8c Xeon and a Radeon 580. An M1 Pro out performs that by a considerable margin, let alone an M2 Pro you can get in a Mac mini for $1300 today. So, the $7k starting price for the 2023 Mac Pro isn't different from the $6k starting price for the 2019 model.
(1) Apple Silicon really needs hardware raytracing to remain in the race. It's a table stakes feature now.
1) the m1 ultra had a design flaw bottleneck and Apple didn’t want to ruin the Mac pros reputation with something that didn’t look so great compared to the still somewhat new “old” model.
turns out it still needs more time. So Apple wanted to satisfy those waiting for a “Mac Pro” by releasing…this - since they don’t want to look bad by offering new Intel/AMD upgrades to existing Mac Pro owners
and looking like they couldn’t match competitors. So they gave the world a Mac Studio in a tower.
All people ever describe about what Apple should do to make a 'real Mac Pro' is make it faster. But most Mac Pro buyers don't buy the higher-end models. The vast majority of Mac Pro users bought mid-range models and the Ultra chips are way beyond those at the same price point.
Apple delivered all they needed to for most of their customers.
The realism of the virtual sets is primarily due to the assets. Photogrammetry assets in Unity look photoreal too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4FGrVh5ZrI&t=24s
Unreal is the better engine for visual quality but it's not as big of a difference as you are suggesting. With good assets, shaders and lighting, Unity can render photorealistic results, Unreal just tends to have that out of the box.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDN22snbfZA
Unreal also isn't excluded, there will be Unreal content made for Vision Pro.
The problem with the idea of an M2 Extreme is that there is no M2 Ultra chip. That's two M2 Max chips connected end to end. Unlike most of the other chip to chip interconnects like AMD's infinity fabric or Intel's EMIB that's any reasonable kind of compact or routeable, just the eonergy to end connection. So Apple would, at best, need an extra chip for this with a 4-way port, and of course, support in their UltraFusion connection. Or potentially, more than one UltraFusion interconnect per chip.
As well, their tight coupling of DRAM to CPU necessitates DRAM on an MCM and maybe lowers main board cost in most of the M-series computers. But it also precludes memory expansion.
In the context of a powerful small desktop machine, the Studio makes perfect sense. But the power of a large workstation class tower PC is all about the expansion. It's not just that the Mac Pro can't compete with a nVidia RTX4090... it's that it can't compete with two, three, or four of them.
If there’s a percentage of Mac Pro buyers that need 1.5TB of ram or any feature that isn’t supported in the Mac Pro, then Apple is losing a portion of that 1%. It doesn’t justify the investment in redesign of the Mx family to support it.
https://list23.com/1413140-samsung-unveils-first-128gb-cxl-2-0-dram-memory-solution/
Look at the bigger picture. Apple is already working on the version of MacOS that completely drops Intel support, as well as plans for future iterations of the M-series silicon. Which is more problematic in 2023? Selling $7K+ Intel machines which you can soup up to your heart's content, but have a known (internally at Apple, anyway) end date where all the expanded memory and video hardware in the world won't matter because MacOS has deprecated the entire device, or selling a $7K+ 2023 Apple Silicon Mac Pro that has the described limitations but will have a much longer OS shelf life?
In the latter case, a power user who needs to upgrade and replace their M-series machine maybe a little sooner can soften the blow, because their M2 model will retain resale value. Not so much, for the imagined 2023 Intel MP. The resale value of that machine will start dropping precipitously fairly soon, because anybody with any sense will know its days are numbered.
Meanwhile, if the M2 MP doesn't serve a particular task right now, it's not hard to hang on with the knowledge that the M3 or M4 likely will.