thadec

adam venier said:

My dream version of the Mac Pro: Modular Design.

Create a series of bricks having the same length and width (a la Mac Studio, OWC Ministack STX, etc.) but with different heights.  Allow these to be vertically stacked to customize the server of your dreams.  I would then create:

• CPU - essentially an upgraded Mac Studio
• RAID array module based on M.2 SSDs
• RAID array module based on HDDs
• PCI expansion modules (for graphics cards, scientific packages, etc.)
• Power backup module (lithium battery for space)

The Mac Pro 'special sauce' would be the integration between all the components.  I'd make the footprint larger than the Mac Studio to support the 312mm PCI cards and appropriate cooling fans.  Extra credit for allowing multiple CPU modules to work together.

Were Apple to go this route, I believe they could capture the majority of revenue associated with server hardware.

The Mac Pro is not a server. Its hardware is only suitable for a small server. And macOS is not a server OS. Right now, the highest configuration Mac Pro has a CPU with only 28 cores. Currently most ARM server CPUs have up to 128 cores. The Nvidia Grace CPU that will launch in a few weeks will have up to 144 cores and its 2nd gen version will have 196 cores. AMD's Epyc server CPUs go from 128 cores to 192 cores this year with the move to 5nm, and will increase again in 2025 when 3nm Epyc CPUs debut.

The Mac Pro is a workstation, not a server. There have always been plenty of workstations more powerful than the Mac Pro that cost significantly less. And when Apple switches the Mac Pro from Intel to Apple Silicon, this will become even more so. The M1 Ultra is 2.6X slower than AMD's Threadripper Pro 5995WX. And unlike Epyc, Threadripper is a workstation chip. This means that even if Apple does eventually do an M2 or M3 Extreme, Intel and AMD's real competition in workstations - not servers! - will be each other, not Apple. 

blastdoor said:

If true this is a huge win for Qualcomm, small loss for apple. 

Huh? Explain. Qualcomm's discrete modem sales to Apple is a fraction of their overall business. Wasn't Apple's agreement with Qualcomm $4.5 billion over 6 years? Less than $1 billion a year for a company that had $36 billion in revenue in 2021. This is even sillier than the people who claim that losing Apple's business will cripple Intel when A. Apple is only the #4 PC maker behind Lenovo, Dell and HP and in 2020 was actually #5 behind Acer and not much far ahead of ASUS and B. the clear majority of CPUs Intel sold to Apple were the cheap Core i3 ones for the entry level MacBook Air and Mac Mini.

dtownwarrior said:

It’s funny how people still don’t know the difference between socialism and communism!!

It is funny how so many people on the left call everyone to the right of AOC a fascist.

Sorry but macOS gaming isn't going to happen. People who are serious about gaming buy PCs and consoles. Even if your main machine is a Mac, you are going to buy a console ($250 for a Nintendo Switch or XBox S, $500 for a PlayStation or XBox) or a gaming PC (which start at $750) to play your games. If you don't have a console or a gaming PC, you aren't serious about video games. Meaning that even if a flood of video games were to arrive on macOS, you won't start playing them. Why? Because if you were actually interested in playing them before you would have bought a console or PC and played them before.

PC and console gaming is an expensive, time-consuming, and frustratingly difficult hobby. Because of this not very many people do it. Even a hit console only sells 50-100 million units, and the PC gaming market is about the same size. By contrast billions of people play mobile games because they are cheap - $5 or less as compared to a $60 PC or console game - far easier and available on hardware that you already own for other purposes. Mac users who have never shown an interest before aren't all of a sudden going to start investing the time, money and effort into Final Fantasy and Far Cry just because you now can on a Mac.

Another thing: don't overstate Apple Silicon's capabilities. Its two best attributes when compared to Intel and AMD - multicore performance and power per watt - are completely irrelevant to PC gamers. What is most important for PC gaming is single core performance and GPU performance. Apple Silicon is honestly mediocre in both. The single core performance is behind Zen 3 AMD Ryzen 7, 11th gen Intel Core i7 and later this year may even be comparable with Zen 4 AMD Ryzen 5 (which will be on TSMC's 5nm node) and 13th gen Intel Core i5 (will be made on Intel's 2nd gen 10nm node). And while Apple has the best integrated GPU by far, discrete GPUs that outpeform it don't cost a whole lot (or at least won't when the shortage is over). A $2000 MacBook Pro offering the same effective gaming capability as a $1200 Dell G15 is nowhere near the compelling proposition to people who actually play video games as it is to Apple fans who push the "ballpark with x86 performance plus much better power per watt" thing.