I have owned Mac Pros since the days of the G3 processors. I always bought them for their expansion and upgrade ability, knowing I could coax multiple years from it by upgrading one thing or another as needed. Apple always charged a premium price but that flexibility justified it for me. This new machine seems to have done away with that configurability for whatever reason. It reminds me that back in the day, Steve Jobs wanted the original Macintosh to be a sealed unit, a clock radio sort of appliance, as I recall. It appears that that idea was not forgotten.
That's a side effect. The M2 chip plainly can't interface with GPUs and additional RAM in the way the old Mac Pros could. The M2 is a system-on-chip, where everything you need to build a functioning computer exists on that one chip, and this is how you do it in iPhones, some laptops, game consoles and other consumer hardware. It's not useful for standard desktop PCs, servers and workstations, but Apple had no choice in this matter. They painted themselves into a corner.
I too have been thinking this M2 Mac Pro is just a stop gap so that Apple can say the "transition is completed". This MP will be half-ass until the next one with M3 and other updated components
Right, right.. I think you got a point there. I think they just wanted it to get it over and done with, as far as the "transition". After all, their focus was clearly on the VisionPro, so they were ready to move on an call it 😂
I don’t agree with the ram, 192 limit seems way too short for the professional world. Hopefully it will get better with the next iterations of apple silicone
Getting one for our office to also use as a server. With all of those PCI slots you can load it with SSDs and not to have cables and Pegasus drives cluttering up the place.
I value your insight and opinion when it comes to computers and their purpose. I find the most outspoken crowd is video editors, and frankly, their opinion is to crap on everything they don’t understand. I don’t think they realize that they’re doing it. When there is even a minor feature, whether software or hardware, that makes big impact in specific workflows and industries, they write them off as insignificant and complain that they didn’t get specifically what they wanted.
Thank you. I think it's true of many user groups. We naturally focus on what's important to us - I know I'm guilty of that at times. It's good to take a step back and look at the wider picture, especially when a product seems to not make sense to us. Apple (and other tech firms) don't release products without careful planning, so logically a product like this will always be appealing to some users out there.
Great review of the Mac Pro. I just ordered one because I'm already heavily invested in PCIe hard drive raids. Otherwise, I probably could have gone with a Mac Studio (I'm a professional composer/music producer)
@@AlanW Yes , all the Pros had ECC. Also the gray iMac Pro did. The problem is that many ‘young people’ do not even know what it is and why it is so important. In the old days mainframes did not have ECC and they was practically unusable due to the low reliability. Then ECC came and suddenly ALL computing was either perfect or you knew there was an error and the computer could either fix or redo the calculation. This was a huge huge huge step forward. With more and more ram that is getting smaller and smaller these problems with accidental bit flips gets, will soon get out of hands. Do we really want to go back to the pre ECC era. Just to same 10% on the ram price? We need to fight this or computers will become unreliable pieces of s…
One of the big advantage of the Mac Studio over a Mac Pro now, is that the Mac Studio is quite a small and light footprint, you can easily carry it in a backpack and bring your big setup somewhere else. The Big Mac Pro towers are always a PITA to move.
Been trying to work out my thoughts on this since WWDC and I think you’ve distilled them nicely. Nailed it in fact. Reminds me very much of the old beige G3 days of desktop and Minitower variants of the same thing but with the tower having the expansion. I’m happy hanging on for the moment to my 28-core 7,1 with 768GB & Duo MPX GPUs and will only think about changing if and when there ever is an M3 Mac Pro.
This new Mac Pro just the early days of transition from PowerBook G4 to 17” MacBook Pro , which was still ide connectors. The next model came out with SATA connectors
I added 16 Tb of storage to my Mac Studio Ultra using an OWC Express 4M2 enclosure and 4 X 4 Tb NVME SSDs for under $1100 and the prices have come down even more since I assembled it. I get 2500 r/w data transfer rates. Apple pricing of the Mac Pro is ludicrous!
It really needed the 4 die version of the M2 to make sense. Hopefully the much better cooling means it runs a bit faster than the Mac Studio. I’ve always thought the M2 was a bit of stock gap due to 3nm being a year late. Hopefully we see Jade 4C-Die with M3.
A USD6000 computer, without ECC memory, unable to upgrade RAM, unable to improve graphics with a newer card eventually, and unable to grow in RAM up to 1.5 TB like the previous version. It seems to be a laptop, way less portable and without battery. The whole point of the Mac Pro is to have SERVER components and the ability to grow in time with more ram, better discs and better graphical cards, but nothing of that is true. Apple can't make versatile computers any more.
we use avid protools with over 100 audio tracks, and other i/o needs. for once apple came out with a rack mount which is a bfd for us. and we hated mounting the older pros sideways. a proper new pro for us will be around $7000, a lot but a write off for 3 years. for the smaller needs we have that m2 mini is unreal, and all you really need for most uses.
Feels like Apple did because it had to, not because it wanted to. I also can't help but feel that they're intentionally nerfing it to allow for more substantial upgrades in the future for when it needs to bump up quarterly numbers.
They didn't have to nerf anything intentionally. The M2 chip is so integrated that doing the necessary separation into extensible units would have been too costly and would have given a lower performance system. The highly integrated design of the M2 is what gives it its performance, but that also makes it hard or impossible to make a bigger chip for big machines.
I had a Mac Pro, but sold in back in 2020 for as much as I paid for it! I'm now using a Mac Studio M1 Max, but will likely upgrade to a Studio M3 Ultra when the 3nm technology debuts. I have zero need for expansion these days with Thunderbolt 4 available for external gee gahs that might tick my fancy.
The truth of the matter is that there are many professionals environments that couldn't care less about huge power hungry GPUs. PCI expansions is a good thing.
I wonder how many people have (and need) > 192GB or RAM in the old Mac Pro (which went up to 1.5TB IIRC). Probably not very many, but I imagine there are some people out there with very specific use-cases who are now tied to their old Mac Pro's and unable to upgrade (especially if their software is Mac specific).
I think it's difficult to directly compare x86 with Apple Silicon, particularly when it comes to memory usage, but certainly the Intel Mac Pro had a much wider potential audience. This new one is considerably more niche - for those in one of those niches, it will blow an equivalently priced Intel Mac Pro out of the water. But, if you're not in that niche demographic, the Intel Mac Pro might actually be better.
I think it is going to become a machine for a very specific group, this truly is a pro machine for professionals and the PCI integration is truly magical, I hope we will get some more in-depth reviews on how they achieved this, what type of controllers they used between the busses. These machines can easily be used for MRI processing for instance in a larger hospital setting, in movie studios and at NASA to give some examples. I have no need for anything remotely this powerful, but I am a nerd and truly enjoy the progress in the market.
In my opinion, I don’t think that it’s all that special. There are CPU with support for much more PCIe lanes than the new Pro. And they aren’t even PCIe 5.0 slots. Sure, having an ARM SoC with expansion slots is something new, but in comparison to its direct predecessor, the new Mac Pro is a actually a more limited workstation (less RAM, no GPU support). Either Apple ups their driver game or the Mac Pro will remain an ever more niche product than it already is. Very disappointed that they didn’t come up with compute cards (SoC / RAM) which would’ve made this the true ultimate workstation. But ofc, there may be some edge cases in which the new Pro shines ;)…
@@ExBenzi2 It’s essential though for Pro Tools professionals and their HDX cards. Yes, it’s a niche use case for high end professionals, but I’m glad it exists for those customers. I’m actually glad that core processing power is no longer tied to one form factor.
nobody using macOS for MRI or NASA for professional computing scientific which is no ECC RAM capability. .....for $7k you can get better linux /windows workstation with proper modularity chassic and motherboards
How are the PCIe slots 'magical'? They didn't use any type of controllers between the buses, even M1 has PCIe lanes, they just put a PCIe switch on the 16 lanes provided by the second M2 Max die in the M2 Ultra. No one is going to buy an overpriced Mac for MRI processing when even a 10 year old entry-level desktop PC has PCIe slots to which MRI add-in cards can be connected.
The $3k premium just to get PCIe slots is insane. Every $100 PC motherboard has PCIe slots. The Apple Tax is insane on this one. Especially for something that isn't upgradable or repairable.
I think your observations are right on point. I do wonder if this is just an interim machine so that they can say "The Transition is Complete", and that what they really want will show up in an M3-based Mac Pro. In any case, this model is completely out of my league. My work doesn't need any of the things which make this a better computer than the Mac Studio, even if I were to ignore the price difference.
3 nm chips are still bleeding edge. Expect some issues with M3. Many organizations don’t want to beta test such hardware. Instead of thinking of M2 as a stopgap, we should be treating it as Apple Silicon with the bugs removed.
Its NOT for simulations, NOT for animation, NOT for game development, NOT for 3D design, NOT for VR. I can only think of video editors and audio professionals benefiting but at that price point there are many other options available.
I really enjoyed your breakdown of this. Ingesting and maintaining huge amounts of data every day for my channels and Apple making it nearly impossible to put Dropbox on an external drive (which I currently do holding onto an older Mac OS), I think at some point, I will need to get a Mac Pro just so I can load it up with storage the way I do now with my RAID systems. Long term, it's more ideal anyway as that PCI m.2 expandable storage will be much faster than transferring over thunderbolt to a RAID. It's just very expensive. Apple charges $2800 for 8TB. I saw on another channel (I think Max Tech) some interesting options from OWC with insane transfer speeds. My plan right now is to wait for a refurb of the Mac Pro to come in with the specs I am after.
I was hoping to see a prosumer tower, something say $2500-$3k, but I guess the Mac Studio fits in there. No GPU upgrades is kind of annoying though. I just replace my machines with each gen while the trade-in is high.
Great review on the new Mac Pro Ultra, I didn't watch the WWDC Keynote and did not see what PCIe cards are already available for it I am glad you explained that, I am sure that the x86 Intel based drivers have to be rewritten and recompiled for the ARM M2 CPU.
@@thebeeamberheardsdogsteppe6368So the 2025 release but probably not the 2026 release. Sounds likely but I feel sorry for those who have bought one of the Intel models in the last year or two!
Bear in mind that Apple was selling the Intel Mac Pro up until last week as a new machine, so they will need to keep Intel support for a while yet. When they did the transition from PowerPC to Intel, it was three years from the end of the transition, but security updates continued after that for another four years.
As you mentioned it: Apple wants us to buy a new computer every 5 years... And that is why some people are not happy. In 2011, I bought a 6-core Mac Pro 2010 from the Apple refurb store for €3000 after selling my 2006 Mac Pro 1. This computer is still next to me, fully upgraded over the years, and now runs Monterey, alongside Windows 10 with an Nvme SSD, 58GB of RAM, and a powerful Radeon RX6600XT... I still use this computer professionally. Truly the best computer I ever bought in my life... Apple killed this long-term reliability and upgradability... Now I really can't afford a Mac Pro anymore as the prices are skyrocketing high... And for what, anyway? You can't even upgrade the GPU in the new 2023... When I look at the Mac Studio, I see a cute little computer, a sealed box that I can't even open to clean the dust inside! No, man... I am moving on. My next Mac will be a laptop... alongside a PC I will build and upgrade over the years... It's a philosophy. Now all Apple computers are like iPhones, they last quite long but are still disposable... In 10 years, I bet my 2010 Mac Pro will still work... Not so sure about the Mac Studio, if the system drive dies, it's the end...
Pretty much the approach I've taken. I have a PC workstation and I use Apple laptops. For my workflow, it's excellent. I wouldn't worry about the drive in the Mac Studio. It will last for the useful life of the machine - I've got a video coming on that.
That's the approach I've taken since 2017, an upgradeable PC Workstation plus Apple iPads and Laptops. I'm not really interested in their laptops now for a similar reason, the price is getting ridiculous. As you say any failure of component and it's either a ridiculous price to fix or game over.
iFixit it did get it open and gave it a 6/10 on repairability. Not good but not impossible. I hate cleaning out dust, so for mine I built a box that goes underneath and included a dust filter.
From the various videos that I have seen about the new Apple Mac Pro Computer it looks like one main lesson can be learned from these videos. The main difference between the New Apple Mac Pro computer and a similarly equipped Apple Studio Computer is the six expansion slots on the Mac Pro computer. So the main factor for a person deciding between these two computers is does the person have a need for the expansion slots. If the person has a need for the Mac Pro expansion slots then they should buy the Mac Pro computer. But if a person has no need for the expansion slots they should save $3000 by buying the new Mac Studio computer.
I reckon there must be a difference in performance from the M2 Ultra Studio, maybe better thermals, more watts going to the CPU. It is uncanny that the 3000 dollars difference goes only to pcie, having a chassis that can take so much more.
It's just a real shame that for the vast majority of us "prosumers" or "enthusiasts" or whatever, we don't have a reasonably priced option that gives us flexibility and expansion. There's nothing inherently super-expensive about PCIe slots- they cost a bit more to include, but not thousands and thousands of extra $$. The beauty of the cMP (2006-2012) is that they DID offer great flexibility at a price point within reach of us non-high-end-business users. Unfortunately Apple seems to be continuing to shove Mac Pro into a tinier and tinier niche, purely due to cost.
I think its an interim machine, but we dont know if they will have a better one next year. or not. The storage and i/o is upgradeable, and it looks great if you can afford it. But you cannot upgrade the processor or ram or video. storage, yes. i/o yes. so its a mixed bag really. I think i'll keep my 7,1 for a few years. its great for me.
If you want a machine with a min of 8tb storage it’s not quite as bad value. Apple charge £2200 for this upgrade. Buy the pro with 1tb then add your own
10 synths,4 drum machines,10 DAW sync able effects units, a 64 channel mixer, 3 controllers all with their own usb ports to the motherboard and no hubs yes please.
Based on the rumors I think Mac Pro with ARM was thought to be something different. It should get M2 ultra duo (but it didn’t work in 5nm). PCIE are for regular add ons but also they could create new MPX modules that could accelerate specific tasks. So they could create modules with gpu and better hardware raytracing (that’s delayed), or mpx for neutral network, or with beefed up version of R1 to work with vision pro. I think apple just needs a lot more time to develop this tech but they also need to end support for intel based products as soon as possible. That’s why we got this…
I think you're right, this is an opening move to get the transition complete. Better things will come... which won't please the early adopters of this Mac Pro!!
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@@ConstantGeekery Yes, I think apple will redefine mac pro from being upgradable to be customizable. Every pro user in every field could put different MPX modules to get insane performance for their use case. There was a rumor that they wanted to put hardware ray tracing in A series chip but it drew too much power. So I belive they will make pcie gpu for mac but it will be based on tech from A series chip. Unfortunately I don't think they are even close to finishing many projects which started before pandemic. It is great that they've made this mac because it shows that they will stick to pro market, even if it means selling half-baked products without any real profit.
I have the feeling that Apple tried to do every extreme chip and more modular but couldn’t finish it in time. They needed to complete the transition to buy themselves more time
These machines will be with customers in a few days, so we'll soon get some idea of the performance. No doubt some RUclipsrs will get hysterical one way or another - they're already giving advice on machines they've never seen. It's good that Apple are still serving professionals, but it's probably not cost effective to try to produce ultimate machines that will never recover dev costs. But for many people even the entry level Mac Mini or MBA has much more power than they need, so there are other factors which influence buyers and users. RUclipsrs are mostly interested in power and speed so we'll never know about the stuff that might help them.
Given the heatsink the M2 gets in the new Mac Pro is bigger than the entire Mac Studio I suspect it'll perform much better under sustained loads than the Mac Studio does. Weather mere mortals need that extra sustained performance is another matter ofc since even a base M1 Air can easily handle 4K video editing which is more than 99% of people do with a computer.
This is very, narrow specific market with condition that MacOS is mandatory and you need to be ableto have some upgrades. However, if you need more than 192Gb, not limited to MacOS, then you can have really great workstations based on AMD Threadrippers. Almost all the cards Apple suggested can be used on other workstations. For same money for top Mac cpu, 192Gb and 1Tb SSD, you can have system with 24cores , 256Gb RAM (with still free slots), 4Tb SSD, Nvidia RTX A5000. You can upgrade replace everything
This video was edited on a Threadripper Pro workstation. I love it! But, there is no denying that for some workflows (e.g. video editing), an M2 Max laptop can keep up... and beat it for some codecs! Obviously, the Threadripper would destroy it in other tasks, but Apple knows its (very narrow) market!
I don't even use the full performance on the 2020 iMac 27 In 5700xt. Maybe on my game, but never run on mac settings, even though I have tried on 4k high and it runs good
I have the feeling, some development on the mac pro went south. All the rumours with the logic board being exchangable and the fusion of 4 M Ultras must have come from somewhere. I doubt apple was planning to release this studio clone. This machine is conceptually a step back and I believe the only reason they released it was so they can claim they replaced the last intel chip
They should have created an M2 Extreme (a combination of two M2 Ultras) just for the Mac Pro and made it replaceable. The problem is that pro users can't add GPU or RAM so they should have put enough to the point where diminishing returns set in. My understanding is that 3D artists and music producers have moved away from PCIe to Thunderbolt anyway, so the Mac Studio is more compelling for most.
I sense some hidden thing there, surely there's a reason why same-specced Mac Pro costs twice as much as Mac Studio, seeing added Thunderbolt and PCIe ports, it's highly unlikely there would be "same" M2 chip because bandwidth requirements are completely different: 6 Thunderbolt ports provide up to 240 Gbit in total, while single PCIe x16 4.0 slot is supposed to provide 256 Gbit (as for ex. four NVME SSDs, each providing 7-8GB/s each), either there will be a serious bandwidth "crippling" on the new Mac Pro, or there will be some kind of additional SoC to give that additional 1100's Gbit bandwidth over Mac Studio with supposedly same M2 SoC
I am a audio and developer professional running 30+ synths and editor plugins for hardware. I really can’t see point of getting mac pro even for the development standpoint. It was a huge leap for us to move from intel to arm with our m1 max laptops, and they have a TON of power to run DANTE and UA aggregate device to Logic (128 inputs). Like one said, maybe eBay one after 10 years has passed (if needed) 😅
The problem with Apple is that software updates apply to specific device models rather than specs unlike with Windows. Therefore they are pretty much the one who dictates whether your devices will be obsolete. While this is acceptable for cheaper devices like the iPhone and the iPad or the Apple Watch it does not justify for something over one grand like the Mac.
I don't know the exact number, but of the six open slots, two are x16, and four are x8 - so that's 64 lanes of gen 4. The Apple I/O card is installed in the seventh slot which is 4 lanes of gen 3. Plus whatever the SoC already has. Nothing earth-shattering from a workstation perspective, although none of those lanes are taken up with GPU.
I agree with your assessment of the Mac Pro with regards its target customers and use cases. It is certainly not for me. I wonder what version will sell more, the tower or rack mount? I expect a music production studio would prefer the rack mount where they can install it into a cabinet or rack mounting frame along with the rest of their equipment. Apple's delay in releasing an Apple silicon Mac Pro model, means there's a risk that their target customer base has significantly shrunk, as some of these customers have adapted to life with a Mac Studio, which fitted with a M1 Ultra or now M2 Ultra is an extremely capable PC. RIP Mac Pro.
I do not find an issue with the mac pro. To me when ppl say that even the m1 mba will work for 85-90% of users and then the pro-max is for the other 5-10% I think the MAC PRO is for like 1-3% at most. It is for very very specific tasks. When I was setting up my branding biz needs we were going to go with a smidge of old school where we thought the office would have mac studios and have either mba / mbp for the road. In real worldmthe 16” mbp plugs in the Apple studio display and has very sim stats as the mac studio. The m1 - m2 are really so fun and efficient. The best part is so far from m1 to m2 the diff is not crazy and the discounts on the m1 is silly in some cases. Great info. as always sir. Thanks.
Great summarisation as usual. I was underwhelmed by the Mac Pro, but you’ve summed up the use cases well. Shame you can’t upgrade it though. Is the memory ECC? Can’t seem to find that anywhere.
Pretty sure Apple has been trying it with both M1 & M2. Assuming it could be done, I would expect the fabrication yield to be very low (i.e. very few of the produced trips would make the grade) which would make it very expensive. Takes precious fab time away from stuff Apple actually wants to sell too!
@@ConstantGeekery they need that amd glue to have success on adding more cpu power the lack of gpu support seems to be something permanent, i dont think they will add any support on any future model
I think it is an "intermezzo" product, the next Mac Pro will already come in 1.5 years with about double the cores and more than double the RAM on 3nm-basis. That product will not get a "Studio" variant.
so when Poole comes out with he M3 chip, will the Mac Pro be underpowered? I couldn't see spending that much money and in a year or two my computer is "underpowered."
It seems to me that this Mac Pro is a stopgap solution because the M3 chipset is not yet available. I cannot judge whether the large case with room for expansion cards makes sense. I have no idea about that. The price jump between Mac Studio and Mac Pro due to the larger case is, as usual from Apple, not to be explained ;-) And I don't even want to think about the price of the casters.
I have a question for you- what software using to capture your screen recording? Because I’m using screen flow , tried to export to FCP which failed saved in MP4
I use the standard Mac Quicktime feature along with BlackHole if I need audio. If you haven’t used it before, I did a quick tips video on it: ruclips.net/video/e3YhR7sDbF8/видео.html
The Studio is the 2013 MacPro done RIGHT! I have a dozen 4,1 and 5,1 machines. They are great! Durable as they have been running 24/7/365 for over a decade. The 2019/2023 MacPro has always been ridiculously priced IMHO and my company has and will steer clear. I love my 2013 MacPro. Nice and portable for taking between home and office. One day, I will replace it with a Studio.
I’m not even sure if the $3000 premium is correct. The Mac Pro includes an improved Afterburner in the purchase price. On the Intel Mac Pros the previous version of Afterburner was a $2000 upgrade. Assuming that Afterburner is something you want or need, you’re only paying $1000 more for the chassis and expansion. It doesn’t change your main point, though. The Mac Pro’s capabilities are expensive overkill for 99% of Mac Users. It’s meant for a specialized customer.
Apple claim that the M2 Ultra’s Media Engine has the performance of 7 Afterburner cards. I’m not aware of any specific Afterburner card in the new Pro, and you can have the same M2 Ultra in the Studio.
What I think? Easy: very disappointing. 1 minute would have been fine to talk about it or not even mention it and just release it on the Apple Store. 3 years in the make and then this? What a joke. I think or hope they had great things in mind but had to settle on the M2 Ultra due to supply chain or production issues. All this would have been ok-ish if and only if the M2 Ultra was modular. As you said, it will find it's audience but still not the Mac Pro we all were hoping for.
Thanks for making the Mac PRO make sense for somebody. I really appreciate your calm, normal voice, drama free but substance rich presentations.I didn't understand it, and you're right, I absolutely do not need it. In fact I don't need any of the new Macs. My 16"/32GB/1TB M1-PRO MacBook PRO handles everything I do effortlessly, and probably will until long after Apple stops supporting it.
My understanding is that the Afterburner is now included in the purchase price. On the Intel Mac Pros it was a $2000 upgrade option. If that was something you wanted or needed, you’re only paying $1000 for the extras. So now you can be $2000 less mad.
@@MarcosElMalo2 M2 Ultra offers better much performance than what afterburner did. And it's available in Mac Studio, no performance loss compared to Mac Pro. It's quite obvious that Mac Pro was supposed to house 4-die M2 Max but they did not make it so went with plan B.
My guess is that Apple's reason for pushing wild specs at ridiculous prices is branding. Their products are designed to have an aura of luxury and I suspect that the expensive Mac Pro is to a large extent just marketing for the iPhone and the iPad.
We have a few professional workstations configured to receive multiple 4K streams and do stuffs realtime, then export the results through multiple 10G ethernet. 192GB of RAM isn't even remotely enough for that kind of work. I just don't understand the new Mac Pro at all.
Are those x86 workstations by any chance? If so, you can’t directly compare memory usage. Apple made some pretty bold claims about realtime encoding to ProRes of multiple 8K streams.
@@ConstantGeekery We have some lighter but similar workflows on some Macs, our experience is that, data is data, x86 or Apple Silicon make no huge difference, still need similar amount of memory to buffer and process those data streams.
@@macbrush In my testing, I've found that Apple Silicon can do more with less RAM when compared to equivalent x86 machines. Everyone's workflow is different of course and you are right in saying that data is data - I've said as much in other videos - but it's not just the capacity of the memory, it's the speed at which it and the CPU/GPU/media engine can access and move the data which is behind the difference. Apple is hanging its hat on quite specific optimisations, and I guess if a workflow steps outside of those, then Mac Pro is probably not going to be the right solution.
This is just a modern day Trashcan, Apple have lost the plot, and ignored what pros want. If you can’t afford the highest spec, you are sort of screwed, Apple need a way to allow additional memory to be added later, they also need support foe additional GPU cards until they can address this, the M series will be taken out by competitors. We are already seeing Arm chips in laptops out performing the macs, and this will likely transfer over to desktops in one way or another.
@@l21n18 apparently they were due out this year, and I think Dell are going to be one of the manufactures. They will be based on Windows PCs powered by Qualcomm Oryon CPU are expected to be available starting in late 2023, with wider availability in the first half of 2024. And claim the following “According to rumors, Qualcomm Oryon CPU-based Snapdragon chipsets will be able to match or outperform Apple’s M2 chipsets in both performance and efficiency”. So by end of this year we should see them in products fingers crossed. More there looks to be steady competition on the horizon which is good. This is where Apple are good from time to time they shake up the industry.
Hey Dave, nice catch up vid! As a salty 7,1 Mac pro purchaser, I'm still disapointed there is no upgrade path or even just a basic trade-in for the Mac Pro 7,1, especially now the secondary market has vanished for the 7,1. /sigh 😥
Thanks Ben 😊 7,1 owners have had a rough deal from Apple. There’s no way they didn’t know in 2019 that this would be happening. The consolation is that it’s still a super capable machine. Even if Apple Silicon is faster, I expect your Mac Pro can still handle most things you would throw at it.
@@ConstantGeekery yeah 100% it does, but being the first here to receive one of the 7,1 Mac Pros here in Australia which the wait was early 2020, for then a few months later for Apple silicon announced was a bit of a buzz kill. Obviously 3 years on it's still a great machine, but to have a secondary value of near zero now with no buyers, which is pretty much unlike any other Mac in the past, and then throw on top that there is no upgrade or and not even a low ball trade-in offer available, that is what hurts a bit.
One word for why not all M2 ultras will be the same. COOLING. We know Apple can over click the M2 family by drawing more power. Also the extra storage can supplement RAM and if it’s fast enough it will be barely noticeable to the end user, just like the lower end macs can get away with only 8GB of RAM.
Apple, in order to save on on hardware, always optimizes the software like compressed memory, better algorithms to save on disks. All those things tend to reduce power consumption and make your computer feels more reactive. Unlike other softwares like adobe which can be buggy. You can tell if a software is well made: it is very reactive, it never crashes, it does not hog memory unlike chrome. In order to do that you have to rewrite the all code from the ground up which is a lot of work and it is often painful for the company and for the customers. As for the mac pro , it is simply a business gimmick. You have 3 items , the cheap, the target one and the overpriced. It is just a way to funnel customers on the target one . Like i3 ,i5, and i7. Most people buy the i5, or the Mac Studio. The mac pro is just a side project at home for covering all the bases. That being said, in video 4K, in broadcasting, rendering, testing it is great to have a computer that can handle lots of data processing. Oftentimes technology trickles down to the people's computer down the road. It is like formula one; almost no one has ever driven one and yet in our cars we have plenty of technologies that were introduced first in racing.
I’m glad they released it, because it brings completeness to the lineup. Of course I’m not planning on buying one because I have no need for one of them. I’m able to do everything I need at this point with a plain old M1 iMac. What trips me out is the number of complaints from people that are outraged or disappointed because it doesn’t do this or that for X price point, and they could build an XYZ with more zing-brags for fewer credits to play Mine Craft on and play at being a developer. I’m just reading all that thinking uh-huh to myself while running two businesses and personal/family business on a 2k iMac. Most people need a Mac Pro like they need a Corvette or a McLaren for personal transportation when there are far better options better suited to their needs for getting around. If you are really a pro or a business/corporation/institution like a hospital or a music studio, you’re going to weigh this out, do the numbers and see if it makes sense and base your decision on that.
Gotta debate the point about Intel performance. While it's true that Apple Intel is slower than M1/M2, the latest Intel & AMD CPUs in PCs are considerably outperforming M1 & M2 for a lot less money.
"Choosing RAM is pretty easy, you don't go for the 64 GB of unified memory option, because that's not enough for that number of graphics cores" We're still talking about performance comparable to 4080/4090 if scales perfectly, which get by w/24GB dedicated
The appeal of Apple's GPU is that it can access significantly more memory than traditional GPUs... but that memory is shared with the CPU and ML cores. 64GB for 24 CPU cores, up to 76 GPU cores, and 32 ML cores, not to mention encoders/decoders etc., seems a little light and not particularly future proof IMO.
@Constant Geekery I wouldn't consider it future proof either. But you can conceivable compare to 40GB for CPU and 24GB dedicated, which would be balanced for a Ryzen threadripper or 7950x paired w/nvidia. And those 76 GPU cores are comparable in TFlops with the 4080, so should not need significantly more
@@LuisDiaz-qg3eg It's difficult to draw direct comparisons with x86 or PC GPUs - the memory architecture is different. I based my statements on my experience of extensive testing with different permutations of Apple Silicon over the past 2.5 years... mostly in the specific niches Apple is targeting with the Mac Pro. I'm also trying to think from the perspective of the target market and what this will be used for, and my personal opinion is that 64GB would be the wrong choice. It's just an opinion, and everyone is welcome to spec their machine however they like. 👍🏻
lol there is no such thing as 4090 performance on a integrated gpu sharing resourches with the cpu,that was well established years ago, don't believe the crap apple tried to spread to make customers forget that there was not going to be any gpu support soon, or ever
@arch1107 I agree, after looking it up, the TFlops are in line with the 4070 at higher 25-28 TFlops. While the 4090 triples or almost quadruples. But it is still a chip worthy of comparing with the 4090 if it were to be given dedicated 400 W of power and dedicated hyper fast memory, it's just that Apple calibrates for 125W instead
Yeah, Mac Pro says to me ‘We’ve been trying to sort Mac Pro for ages - we know it’s crap but we just need rid of Intel, so lump it out there and we’ll sort it in the future. Everyone will buy a Mac Studio anyway; 😂
I think making an Extreme is difficult due to the likely low yields in fabrication. It would be a hugely expensive chip with a narrow audience, whereas that production capacity could be put to better use making chips that have wider appeal. Like you say, most of us have moved to Thunderbolt through necessity.
• Needs RAM slots. Why force an SoC with built-in, non-upgradable RAM and (primary) storage on workstation customers? It's a module system by nature, so why not develop a separate CPU for it that allows for this kind of flexibility? • Needs the ability to use discrete PCIe GPUs in particular, so that it can be upgraded in a meaningful way down the road and offer features potentially not available with Apple's iGPU. I'd consider a splurge for a system like this if it had the above features and could replace my Ryzen gaming PC :D It's cool that Apple is building a special version of Wine into the next Mac OS release, so perhaps there is hope yet of the Mac one day offering a broad spectrum of gaming options without having to somehow virtualize Windows or emulate an x86 PC with graphics acceleration, a tall order to be sure. But it needs to be a proper workstation instead of a Mac Studio with PCIe expansion of limited use and non-upgradable RAM. It's bad enough that the Mac has been turned into such a sealed consumer gadget not meant to be opened and tinkered with by end users. They really shouldn't do this with the Mac Pro.
It almost seems like they just needed to get rid of these chassis. Really no valid reason for anyone to buy this when you can't even add RAM or graphics.
WHY THE F**K DID APPLE THINK IT WAS A GOOD IDEA HAVE NO DISCRETE GRAPHICS CARD AND USER REPLACEABLE RAM FOR A WORKSTATION!!!!! ITS A WORKSTATION, NOT AN ULTRABOOK!!! THEY COULD'VE MADE IT SMALLER SINCE THERE IS SO MUCH UNUSED SPACE!!!!
I have owned Mac Pros since the days of the G3 processors. I always bought them for their expansion and upgrade ability, knowing I could coax multiple years from it by upgrading one thing or another as needed. Apple always charged a premium price but that flexibility justified it for me. This new machine seems to have done away with that configurability for whatever reason. It reminds me that back in the day, Steve Jobs wanted the original Macintosh to be a sealed unit, a clock radio sort of appliance, as I recall. It appears that that idea was not forgotten.
That's a side effect. The M2 chip plainly can't interface with GPUs and additional RAM in the way the old Mac Pros could. The M2 is a system-on-chip, where everything you need to build a functioning computer exists on that one chip, and this is how you do it in iPhones, some laptops, game consoles and other consumer hardware. It's not useful for standard desktop PCs, servers and workstations, but Apple had no choice in this matter. They painted themselves into a corner.
I too have been thinking this M2 Mac Pro is just a stop gap so that Apple can say the "transition is completed".
This MP will be half-ass until the next one with M3 and other updated components
Right, right.. I think you got a point there. I think they just wanted it to get it over and done with, as far as the "transition". After all, their focus was clearly on the VisionPro, so they were ready to move on an call it 😂
I think they just just wanted to get rid of all these extra chassis they still have laying around
@@michael_c2 yep, looks that way :))
One can only hope.
I don’t agree with the ram, 192 limit seems way too short for the professional world. Hopefully it will get better with the next iterations of apple silicone
Getting one for our office to also use as a server. With all of those PCI slots you can load it with SSDs and not to have cables and Pegasus drives cluttering up the place.
I value your insight and opinion when it comes to computers and their purpose. I find the most outspoken crowd is video editors, and frankly, their opinion is to crap on everything they don’t understand. I don’t think they realize that they’re doing it. When there is even a minor feature, whether software or hardware, that makes big impact in specific workflows and industries, they write them off as insignificant and complain that they didn’t get specifically what they wanted.
Thank you. I think it's true of many user groups. We naturally focus on what's important to us - I know I'm guilty of that at times. It's good to take a step back and look at the wider picture, especially when a product seems to not make sense to us. Apple (and other tech firms) don't release products without careful planning, so logically a product like this will always be appealing to some users out there.
Great review of the Mac Pro. I just ordered one because I'm already heavily invested in PCIe hard drive raids. Otherwise, I probably could have gone with a Mac Studio (I'm a professional composer/music producer)
And you can get it in rack mount to fit right in with the 2290s!
Running raid on a computer without ECC? Ok - once upon a time car did not have seatbelts either. Good luck!
@@mortengreenhermansen4489 Thanks! I had never heard of ECC. Now I know! 👍
@@mortengreenhermansen4489 The old mac pros had ECC memory, right? I wonder if the change will be met with resistance.
@@AlanW Yes , all the Pros had ECC. Also the gray iMac Pro did. The problem is that many ‘young people’ do not even know what it is and why it is so important.
In the old days mainframes did not have ECC and they was practically unusable due to the low reliability. Then ECC came and suddenly ALL computing was either perfect or you knew there was an error and the computer could either fix or redo the calculation.
This was a huge huge huge step forward.
With more and more ram that is getting smaller and smaller these problems with accidental bit flips gets, will soon get out of hands. Do we really want to go back to the pre ECC era. Just to same 10% on the ram price?
We need to fight this or computers will become unreliable pieces of s…
One of the big advantage of the Mac Studio over a Mac Pro now, is that the Mac Studio is quite a small and light footprint, you can easily carry it in a backpack and bring your big setup somewhere else. The Big Mac Pro towers are always a PITA to move.
Also in rack spaces, imagine how much more compute one can put in the same footprint
And here i am on my pc where 64 gb of extra ram was had for less then 3 digits. Id consider hackintoshing a generation if i needed this machine.
Been trying to work out my thoughts on this since WWDC and I think you’ve distilled them nicely. Nailed it in fact. Reminds me very much of the old beige G3 days of desktop and Minitower variants of the same thing but with the tower having the expansion.
I’m happy hanging on for the moment to my 28-core 7,1 with 768GB & Duo MPX GPUs and will only think about changing if and when there ever is an M3 Mac Pro.
This new Mac Pro just the early days of transition from PowerBook G4 to 17” MacBook Pro , which was still ide connectors. The next model came out with SATA connectors
Why do you need that much ram?
You might get more longevity by changing those MPX for real GPUs?
Suited mostly for music studios (no pun intended... well almost !), with its PCI Express slots.
That's the most obvious area I've been thinking of.
I added 16 Tb of storage to my Mac Studio Ultra using an OWC Express 4M2 enclosure and 4 X 4 Tb NVME SSDs for under $1100 and the prices have come down even more since I assembled it. I get 2500 r/w data transfer rates. Apple pricing of the Mac Pro is ludicrous!
It really needed the 4 die version of the M2 to make sense. Hopefully the much better cooling means it runs a bit faster than the Mac Studio.
I’ve always thought the M2 was a bit of stock gap due to 3nm being a year late. Hopefully we see Jade 4C-Die with M3.
Apple lost all its good design techs to Qualcomm. The only thing we've had since are iterations to the original M1
@@mitchec100 I'd be intrigued to read more about that. Could you provide a source?
A USD6000 computer, without ECC memory, unable to upgrade RAM, unable to improve graphics with a newer card eventually, and unable to grow in RAM up to 1.5 TB like the previous version. It seems to be a laptop, way less portable and without battery. The whole point of the Mac Pro is to have SERVER components and the ability to grow in time with more ram, better discs and better graphical cards, but nothing of that is true. Apple can't make versatile computers any more.
we use avid protools with over 100 audio tracks, and other i/o needs. for once apple came out with a rack mount which is a bfd for us. and we hated mounting the older pros sideways. a proper new pro for us will be around $7000, a lot but a write off for 3 years. for the smaller needs we have that m2 mini is unreal, and all you really need for most uses.
well said thank you so much
I upgraded from the 2012 macbook pro 13 to the M1 macbook pro 14
Feels like Apple did because it had to, not because it wanted to. I also can't help but feel that they're intentionally nerfing it to allow for more substantial upgrades in the future for when it needs to bump up quarterly numbers.
They didn't have to nerf anything intentionally. The M2 chip is so integrated that doing the necessary separation into extensible units would have been too costly and would have given a lower performance system. The highly integrated design of the M2 is what gives it its performance, but that also makes it hard or impossible to make a bigger chip for big machines.
I had a Mac Pro, but sold in back in 2020 for as much as I paid for it! I'm now using a Mac Studio M1 Max, but will likely upgrade to a Studio M3 Ultra when the 3nm technology debuts. I have zero need for expansion these days with Thunderbolt 4 available for external gee gahs that might tick my fancy.
Are you sure that the M2 will not be upgradable to the M3 when it comes out?
As far as I know the M2 is soldered to the motherboard, not socketed, as per all the other M chips. Apple didn’t announce any modularity.
The truth of the matter is that there are many professionals environments that couldn't care less about huge power hungry GPUs. PCI expansions is a good thing.
I wonder how many people have (and need) > 192GB or RAM in the old Mac Pro (which went up to 1.5TB IIRC).
Probably not very many, but I imagine there are some people out there with very specific use-cases who are now tied to their old Mac Pro's and unable to upgrade (especially if their software is Mac specific).
Mac pro 2019 was 1.5 tb ram and more upgradable give me ur opinion about that plz
I think it's difficult to directly compare x86 with Apple Silicon, particularly when it comes to memory usage, but certainly the Intel Mac Pro had a much wider potential audience. This new one is considerably more niche - for those in one of those niches, it will blow an equivalently priced Intel Mac Pro out of the water. But, if you're not in that niche demographic, the Intel Mac Pro might actually be better.
I completely agree with your view on the Mac Pro.
I think it is going to become a machine for a very specific group, this truly is a pro machine for professionals and the PCI integration is truly magical, I hope we will get some more in-depth reviews on how they achieved this, what type of controllers they used between the busses. These machines can easily be used for MRI processing for instance in a larger hospital setting, in movie studios and at NASA to give some examples. I have no need for anything remotely this powerful, but I am a nerd and truly enjoy the progress in the market.
In my opinion, I don’t think that it’s all that special. There are CPU with support for much more PCIe lanes than the new Pro. And they aren’t even PCIe 5.0 slots.
Sure, having an ARM SoC with expansion slots is something new, but in comparison to its direct predecessor, the new Mac Pro is a actually a more limited workstation (less RAM, no GPU support).
Either Apple ups their driver game or the Mac Pro will remain an ever more niche product than it already is. Very disappointed that they didn’t come up with compute cards (SoC / RAM) which would’ve made this the true ultimate workstation.
But ofc, there may be some edge cases in which the new Pro shines ;)…
@@ExBenzi2 It’s essential though for Pro Tools professionals and their HDX cards. Yes, it’s a niche use case for high end professionals, but I’m glad it exists for those customers. I’m actually glad that core processing power is no longer tied to one form factor.
nobody using macOS for MRI or NASA for professional computing scientific which is no ECC RAM capability. .....for $7k you can get better linux /windows workstation with proper modularity chassic and motherboards
How are the PCIe slots 'magical'? They didn't use any type of controllers between the buses, even M1 has PCIe lanes, they just put a PCIe switch on the 16 lanes provided by the second M2 Max die in the M2 Ultra. No one is going to buy an overpriced Mac for MRI processing when even a 10 year old entry-level desktop PC has PCIe slots to which MRI add-in cards can be connected.
The $3k premium just to get PCIe slots is insane. Every $100 PC motherboard has PCIe slots. The Apple Tax is insane on this one. Especially for something that isn't upgradable or repairable.
I think your observations are right on point. I do wonder if this is just an interim machine so that they can say "The Transition is Complete", and that what they really want will show up in an M3-based Mac Pro. In any case, this model is completely out of my league. My work doesn't need any of the things which make this a better computer than the Mac Studio, even if I were to ignore the price difference.
3 nm chips are still bleeding edge. Expect some issues with M3. Many organizations don’t want to beta test such hardware. Instead of thinking of M2 as a stopgap, we should be treating it as Apple Silicon with the bugs removed.
if that happens, it will be in like 3 years
Its NOT for simulations, NOT for animation, NOT for game development, NOT for 3D design, NOT for VR. I can only think of video editors and audio professionals benefiting but at that price point there are many other options available.
I really enjoyed your breakdown of this. Ingesting and maintaining huge amounts of data every day for my channels and Apple making it nearly impossible to put Dropbox on an external drive (which I currently do holding onto an older Mac OS), I think at some point, I will need to get a Mac Pro just so I can load it up with storage the way I do now with my RAID systems. Long term, it's more ideal anyway as that PCI m.2 expandable storage will be much faster than transferring over thunderbolt to a RAID. It's just very expensive. Apple charges $2800 for 8TB. I saw on another channel (I think Max Tech) some interesting options from OWC with insane transfer speeds. My plan right now is to wait for a refurb of the Mac Pro to come in with the specs I am after.
OWC is a great company. They were always my go to for RAM upgrades back in the day.
I was hoping to see a prosumer tower, something say $2500-$3k, but I guess the Mac Studio fits in there. No GPU upgrades is kind of annoying though. I just replace my machines with each gen while the trade-in is high.
I wonder if apple was initially aiming higher - this didn’t need to take that extra year. good analysis
Great review on the new Mac Pro Ultra, I didn't watch the WWDC Keynote and did not see what PCIe cards are already available for it I am glad you explained that, I am sure that the x86 Intel based drivers have to be rewritten and recompiled for the ARM M2 CPU.
YOU NAILED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! KUDOS SIR......................
My understanding is there is still no ray tracing support in the M2 GPU cores. That may be important to some creatives.
Now that we have had the final Mac transition to Apple Silicon, how many more versions of MacOS do you think will be released with an Intel build?
i think maybe 2 maximal 3
@@thebeeamberheardsdogsteppe6368So the 2025 release but probably not the 2026 release. Sounds likely but I feel sorry for those who have bought one of the Intel models in the last year or two!
Bear in mind that Apple was selling the Intel Mac Pro up until last week as a new machine, so they will need to keep Intel support for a while yet. When they did the transition from PowerPC to Intel, it was three years from the end of the transition, but security updates continued after that for another four years.
10 years
As you mentioned it: Apple wants us to buy a new computer every 5 years... And that is why some people are not happy. In 2011, I bought a 6-core Mac Pro 2010 from the Apple refurb store for €3000 after selling my 2006 Mac Pro 1. This computer is still next to me, fully upgraded over the years, and now runs Monterey, alongside Windows 10 with an Nvme SSD, 58GB of RAM, and a powerful Radeon RX6600XT... I still use this computer professionally. Truly the best computer I ever bought in my life... Apple killed this long-term reliability and upgradability... Now I really can't afford a Mac Pro anymore as the prices are skyrocketing high... And for what, anyway? You can't even upgrade the GPU in the new 2023... When I look at the Mac Studio, I see a cute little computer, a sealed box that I can't even open to clean the dust inside! No, man... I am moving on. My next Mac will be a laptop... alongside a PC I will build and upgrade over the years... It's a philosophy. Now all Apple computers are like iPhones, they last quite long but are still disposable... In 10 years, I bet my 2010 Mac Pro will still work... Not so sure about the Mac Studio, if the system drive dies, it's the end...
Pretty much the approach I've taken. I have a PC workstation and I use Apple laptops. For my workflow, it's excellent.
I wouldn't worry about the drive in the Mac Studio. It will last for the useful life of the machine - I've got a video coming on that.
That's the approach I've taken since 2017, an upgradeable PC Workstation plus Apple iPads and Laptops. I'm not really interested in their laptops now for a similar reason, the price is getting ridiculous. As you say any failure of component and it's either a ridiculous price to fix or game over.
Yeah, I still have 2014 MacBook Pro. Still using it. Not for heavy tasks anymore, but still very usable laptop.
iFixit it did get it open and gave it a 6/10 on repairability. Not good but not impossible. I hate cleaning out dust, so for mine I built a box that goes underneath and included a dust filter.
"Powerful Radeon RX6600XT"? Come on... You can put even RX 6800 inside (patched by Syncretic's ROM) without Pixlas mod. ;)
From the various videos that I have seen about the new Apple Mac Pro Computer it looks like one main lesson can be learned from these videos. The main difference between the New Apple Mac Pro computer and a similarly equipped Apple Studio Computer is the six expansion slots on the Mac Pro computer. So the main factor for a person deciding between these two computers is does the person have a need for the expansion slots. If the person has a need for the Mac Pro expansion slots then they should buy the Mac Pro computer. But if a person has no need for the expansion slots they should save $3000 by buying the new Mac Studio computer.
I reckon there must be a difference in performance from the M2 Ultra Studio, maybe better thermals, more watts going to the CPU. It is uncanny that the 3000 dollars difference goes only to pcie, having a chassis that can take so much more.
We should have the answer next week, but my breath is not baited! 😁
They have to take into account the extra cost for using more aluminum and stainless steel, a more powerful power supply, and extra fans.
It's just a real shame that for the vast majority of us "prosumers" or "enthusiasts" or whatever, we don't have a reasonably priced option that gives us flexibility and expansion. There's nothing inherently super-expensive about PCIe slots- they cost a bit more to include, but not thousands and thousands of extra $$. The beauty of the cMP (2006-2012) is that they DID offer great flexibility at a price point within reach of us non-high-end-business users. Unfortunately Apple seems to be continuing to shove Mac Pro into a tinier and tinier niche, purely due to cost.
I think its an interim machine, but we dont know if they will have a better one next year. or not. The storage and i/o is upgradeable, and it looks great if you can afford it. But you cannot upgrade the processor or ram or video. storage, yes. i/o yes. so its a mixed bag really. I think i'll keep my 7,1 for a few years. its great for me.
If you want a machine with a min of 8tb storage it’s not quite as bad value. Apple charge £2200 for this upgrade. Buy the pro with 1tb then add your own
You nailed it! Astutely observed, clearly explained. You've gained a new subscriber.
Thank you 😊
10 synths,4 drum machines,10 DAW sync able effects units, a 64 channel mixer, 3 controllers all with their own usb ports to the motherboard and no hubs yes please.
@@garrusvakarian8709 used a pc
Fun watch, watched the whole way through, nice presentation. Subbed
Thank you 😊
Based on the rumors I think Mac Pro with ARM was thought to be something different. It should get M2 ultra duo (but it didn’t work in 5nm). PCIE are for regular add ons but also they could create new MPX modules that could accelerate specific tasks. So they could create modules with gpu and better hardware raytracing (that’s delayed), or mpx for neutral network, or with beefed up version of R1 to work with vision pro.
I think apple just needs a lot more time to develop this tech but they also need to end support for intel based products as soon as possible. That’s why we got this…
I think you're right, this is an opening move to get the transition complete. Better things will come... which won't please the early adopters of this Mac Pro!!
@@ConstantGeekery Yes, I think apple will redefine mac pro from being upgradable to be customizable. Every pro user in every field could put different MPX modules to get insane performance for their use case. There was a rumor that they wanted to put hardware ray tracing in A series chip but it drew too much power. So I belive they will make pcie gpu for mac but it will be based on tech from A series chip. Unfortunately I don't think they are even close to finishing many projects which started before pandemic. It is great that they've made this mac because it shows that they will stick to pro market, even if it means selling half-baked products without any real profit.
I have the feeling that Apple tried to do every extreme chip and more modular but couldn’t finish it in time. They needed to complete the transition to buy themselves more time
While it's a small market (and doesn't include myself), I do think it's critical for the health of the Mac pro ecosystem that it exists.
Great video, and excellent explanation for this product.
Thank you!
These machines will be with customers in a few days, so we'll soon get some idea of the performance. No doubt some RUclipsrs will get hysterical one way or another - they're already giving advice on machines they've never seen. It's good that Apple are still serving professionals, but it's probably not cost effective to try to produce ultimate machines that will never recover dev costs. But for many people even the entry level Mac Mini or MBA has much more power than they need, so there are other factors which influence buyers and users. RUclipsrs are mostly interested in power and speed so we'll never know about the stuff that might help them.
Given the heatsink the M2 gets in the new Mac Pro is bigger than the entire Mac Studio I suspect it'll perform much better under sustained loads than the Mac Studio does. Weather mere mortals need that extra sustained performance is another matter ofc since even a base M1 Air can easily handle 4K video editing which is more than 99% of people do with a computer.
This is very, narrow specific market with condition that MacOS is mandatory and you need to be ableto have some upgrades.
However, if you need more than 192Gb, not limited to MacOS, then you can have really great workstations based on AMD Threadrippers.
Almost all the cards Apple suggested can be used on other workstations.
For same money for top Mac cpu, 192Gb and 1Tb SSD, you can have system with 24cores , 256Gb RAM (with still free slots), 4Tb SSD, Nvidia RTX A5000. You can upgrade replace everything
This video was edited on a Threadripper Pro workstation. I love it! But, there is no denying that for some workflows (e.g. video editing), an M2 Max laptop can keep up... and beat it for some codecs! Obviously, the Threadripper would destroy it in other tasks, but Apple knows its (very narrow) market!
I don't even use the full performance on the 2020 iMac 27
In 5700xt. Maybe on my game, but never run on mac settings, even though I have tried on 4k high and it runs good
I have the feeling, some development on the mac pro went south. All the rumours with the logic board being exchangable and the fusion of 4 M Ultras must have come from somewhere. I doubt apple was planning to release this studio clone. This machine is conceptually a step back and I believe the only reason they released it was so they can claim they replaced the last intel chip
They should have created an M2 Extreme (a combination of two M2 Ultras) just for the Mac Pro and made it replaceable. The problem is that pro users can't add GPU or RAM so they should have put enough to the point where diminishing returns set in. My understanding is that 3D artists and music producers have moved away from PCIe to Thunderbolt anyway, so the Mac Studio is more compelling for most.
💯Great point!!!
I sense some hidden thing there,
surely there's a reason why same-specced Mac Pro costs twice as much as Mac Studio,
seeing added Thunderbolt and PCIe ports, it's highly unlikely there would be "same" M2 chip because bandwidth requirements are completely different: 6 Thunderbolt ports provide up to 240 Gbit in total, while single PCIe x16 4.0 slot is supposed to provide 256 Gbit (as for ex. four NVME SSDs, each providing 7-8GB/s each),
either there will be a serious bandwidth "crippling" on the new Mac Pro, or there will be some kind of additional SoC to give that additional 1100's Gbit bandwidth over Mac Studio with supposedly same M2 SoC
I am a audio and developer professional running 30+ synths and editor plugins for hardware. I really can’t see point of getting mac pro even for the development standpoint. It was a huge leap for us to move from intel to arm with our m1 max laptops, and they have a TON of power to run DANTE and UA aggregate device to Logic (128 inputs). Like one said, maybe eBay one after 10 years has passed (if needed) 😅
I think they will join two ultra chips together for next gen and it will be available only for the pro model
I bet they will stop allowing the old Mac Pro to not be upgraded to the latest OS.
The problem with Apple is that software updates apply to specific device models rather than specs unlike with Windows. Therefore they are pretty much the one who dictates whether your devices will be obsolete. While this is acceptable for cheaper devices like the iPhone and the iPad or the Apple Watch it does not justify for something over one grand like the Mac.
What graphics cards if any will the new system support?
It won’t support any.
I'm glad this new mac pro came out, if only because it means the 2019 pro will get cheaper.
TSMC is busy making 3nm controller cards for things that go boom.
Does anyone know how many pcie lanes does the cpu actually have?
I don't know the exact number, but of the six open slots, two are x16, and four are x8 - so that's 64 lanes of gen 4. The Apple I/O card is installed in the seventh slot which is 4 lanes of gen 3. Plus whatever the SoC already has. Nothing earth-shattering from a workstation perspective, although none of those lanes are taken up with GPU.
I agree with your assessment of the Mac Pro with regards its target customers and use cases. It is certainly not for me. I wonder what version will sell more, the tower or rack mount? I expect a music production studio would prefer the rack mount where they can install it into a cabinet or rack mounting frame along with the rest of their equipment. Apple's delay in releasing an Apple silicon Mac Pro model, means there's a risk that their target customer base has significantly shrunk, as some of these customers have adapted to life with a Mac Studio, which fitted with a M1 Ultra or now M2 Ultra is an extremely capable PC. RIP Mac Pro.
I do not find an issue with the mac pro. To me when ppl say that even the m1 mba will work for 85-90% of users and then the pro-max is for the other 5-10% I think the MAC PRO is for like 1-3% at most. It is for very very specific tasks. When I was setting up my branding biz needs we were going to go with a smidge of old school where we thought the office would have mac studios and have either mba / mbp for the road. In real worldmthe 16” mbp plugs in the Apple studio display and has very sim stats as the mac studio. The m1 - m2 are really so fun and efficient. The best part is so far from m1 to m2 the diff is not crazy and the discounts on the m1 is silly in some cases. Great info. as always sir. Thanks.
Great summarisation as usual. I was underwhelmed by the Mac Pro, but you’ve summed up the use cases well. Shame you can’t upgrade it though.
Is the memory ECC? Can’t seem to find that anywhere.
Memory is on the SOC.
Thanks Pete. I don't believe it is ECC - if it is, Apple isn't saying so.
i remember the rumors, about 4 m2 glued together
a bit unimpressive tbh
Pretty sure Apple has been trying it with both M1 & M2. Assuming it could be done, I would expect the fabrication yield to be very low (i.e. very few of the produced trips would make the grade) which would make it very expensive. Takes precious fab time away from stuff Apple actually wants to sell too!
@@ConstantGeekery they need that amd glue to have success on adding more cpu power
the lack of gpu support seems to be something permanent, i dont think they will add any support on any future model
Spot On Sir!
I think it is an "intermezzo" product, the next Mac Pro will already come in 1.5 years with about double the cores and more than double the RAM on 3nm-basis. That product will not get a "Studio" variant.
Good review. The Mac Pro is for businesses. The Mac Studio is for high end professionals who work at home or small businesses.
Yep, that's how I see it too.
No professionel would use a non-ECC machine!
so when Poole comes out with he M3 chip, will the Mac Pro be underpowered? I couldn't see spending that much money and in a year or two my computer is "underpowered."
Has Constant Geekery podcast stopped?
Pete and I have been busy with our main business and just haven’t had the time. We may yet come back to it.
@@ConstantGeekery thanks for the update ♥️
It seems to me that this Mac Pro is a stopgap solution because the M3 chipset is not yet available.
I cannot judge whether the large case with room for expansion cards makes sense. I have no idea about that.
The price jump between Mac Studio and Mac Pro due to the larger case is, as usual from Apple, not to be explained ;-) And I don't even want to think about the price of the casters.
like many studios, my 2012 mac pro tower is still working great. My M1 is okay.
Buy the Mac Studio and use the savings to buy an Apple Vision Pro 😆
I use older MacPro 5.1 and 6.1 and It's still good for music professionals
I have a question for you- what software using to capture your screen recording? Because I’m using screen flow , tried to export to FCP which failed saved in MP4
I use the standard Mac Quicktime feature along with BlackHole if I need audio. If you haven’t used it before, I did a quick tips video on it: ruclips.net/video/e3YhR7sDbF8/видео.html
The Studio is the 2013 MacPro done RIGHT! I have a dozen 4,1 and 5,1 machines. They are great! Durable as they have been running 24/7/365 for over a decade. The 2019/2023 MacPro has always been ridiculously priced IMHO and my company has and will steer clear. I love my 2013 MacPro. Nice and portable for taking between home and office. One day, I will replace it with a Studio.
I’m not even sure if the $3000 premium is correct. The Mac Pro includes an improved Afterburner in the purchase price. On the Intel Mac Pros the previous version of Afterburner was a $2000 upgrade. Assuming that Afterburner is something you want or need, you’re only paying $1000 more for the chassis and expansion.
It doesn’t change your main point, though. The Mac Pro’s capabilities are expensive overkill for 99% of Mac Users. It’s meant for a specialized customer.
Apple claim that the M2 Ultra’s Media Engine has the performance of 7 Afterburner cards. I’m not aware of any specific Afterburner card in the new Pro, and you can have the same M2 Ultra in the Studio.
What I think? Easy: very disappointing. 1 minute would have been fine to talk about it or not even mention it and just release it on the Apple Store. 3 years in the make and then this? What a joke. I think or hope they had great things in mind but had to settle on the M2 Ultra due to supply chain or production issues. All this would have been ok-ish if and only if the M2 Ultra was modular. As you said, it will find it's audience but still not the Mac Pro we all were hoping for.
Thanks for making the Mac PRO make sense for somebody. I really appreciate your calm, normal voice, drama free but substance rich presentations.I didn't understand it, and you're right, I absolutely do not need it. In fact I don't need any of the new Macs. My 16"/32GB/1TB M1-PRO MacBook PRO handles everything I do effortlessly, and probably will until long after Apple stops supporting it.
Shipping Cost ?
Apple offers free shipping in most regions.
@@ConstantGeekery No From china
@@ConstantGeekery Shipping to rest of world
Excellent look at Mac Pro, likely the best I have seen so far. I'm still angry that they slapped 2000+ extra for 6 PCIe slots and some aluminum.
My understanding is that the Afterburner is now included in the purchase price. On the Intel Mac Pros it was a $2000 upgrade option. If that was something you wanted or needed, you’re only paying $1000 for the extras. So now you can be $2000 less mad.
@@MarcosElMalo2 M2 Ultra offers better much performance than what afterburner did. And it's available in Mac Studio, no performance loss compared to Mac Pro.
It's quite obvious that Mac Pro was supposed to house 4-die M2 Max but they did not make it so went with plan B.
They also ceeded the super high end 3D and simulation markets to PC for good. The 192 GB ram is not enough for Heavy simulations.
ITs actually a machine for pros, that will have purchased cards that need a lot of PCIe slots. I mean this actually is for mainly pros.
My guess is that Apple's reason for pushing wild specs at ridiculous prices is branding. Their products are designed to have an aura of luxury and I suspect that the expensive Mac Pro is to a large extent just marketing for the iPhone and the iPad.
We have a few professional workstations configured to receive multiple 4K streams and do stuffs realtime, then export the results through multiple 10G ethernet. 192GB of RAM isn't even remotely enough for that kind of work. I just don't understand the new Mac Pro at all.
Are those x86 workstations by any chance? If so, you can’t directly compare memory usage. Apple made some pretty bold claims about realtime encoding to ProRes of multiple 8K streams.
@@ConstantGeekery We have some lighter but similar workflows on some Macs, our experience is that, data is data, x86 or Apple Silicon make no huge difference, still need similar amount of memory to buffer and process those data streams.
@@macbrush In my testing, I've found that Apple Silicon can do more with less RAM when compared to equivalent x86 machines. Everyone's workflow is different of course and you are right in saying that data is data - I've said as much in other videos - but it's not just the capacity of the memory, it's the speed at which it and the CPU/GPU/media engine can access and move the data which is behind the difference. Apple is hanging its hat on quite specific optimisations, and I guess if a workflow steps outside of those, then Mac Pro is probably not going to be the right solution.
This is just a modern day Trashcan, Apple have lost the plot, and ignored what pros want. If you can’t afford the highest spec, you are sort of screwed, Apple need a way to allow additional memory to be added later, they also need support foe additional GPU cards until they can address this, the M series will be taken out by competitors. We are already seeing Arm chips in laptops out performing the macs, and this will likely transfer over to desktops in one way or another.
Which ones?
@@l21n18 apparently they were due out this year, and I think Dell are going to be one of the manufactures. They will be based on Windows PCs powered by Qualcomm Oryon CPU are expected to be available starting in late 2023, with wider availability in the first half of 2024.
And claim the following “According to rumors, Qualcomm Oryon CPU-based Snapdragon chipsets will be able to match or outperform Apple’s M2 chipsets in both performance and efficiency”. So by end of this year we should see them in products fingers crossed. More there looks to be steady competition on the horizon which is good. This is where Apple are good from time to time they shake up the industry.
Hey Dave, nice catch up vid!
As a salty 7,1 Mac pro purchaser, I'm still disapointed there is no upgrade path or even just a basic trade-in for the Mac Pro 7,1, especially now the secondary market has vanished for the 7,1.
/sigh 😥
Thanks Ben 😊
7,1 owners have had a rough deal from Apple. There’s no way they didn’t know in 2019 that this would be happening. The consolation is that it’s still a super capable machine. Even if Apple Silicon is faster, I expect your Mac Pro can still handle most things you would throw at it.
@@ConstantGeekery yeah 100% it does, but being the first here to receive one of the 7,1 Mac Pros here in Australia which the wait was early 2020, for then a few months later for Apple silicon announced was a bit of a buzz kill. Obviously 3 years on it's still a great machine, but to have a secondary value of near zero now with no buyers, which is pretty much unlike any other Mac in the past, and then throw on top that there is no upgrade or and not even a low ball trade-in offer available, that is what hurts a bit.
@@ben_silver I feel your pain. It's a sucky situation and Apple shouldn't be treating customers this way. They knew full well what would happen.
could current mac pro users re-use their body and just change the internals?
In theory… but it would involve buying a new Mac Pro to get the new internals. 🤷🏼♂️
@@ConstantGeekery I wonder if apple will offer that program. That would make sense for this machine. Maybe not now, but in a few years.
@@nyambe it would be a nice move, and environmentally friendly.
One word for why not all M2 ultras will be the same. COOLING. We know Apple can over click the M2 family by drawing more power. Also the extra storage can supplement RAM and if it’s fast enough it will be barely noticeable to the end user, just like the lower end macs can get away with only 8GB of RAM.
Apple, in order to save on on hardware, always optimizes the software like compressed memory, better algorithms to save on disks. All those things tend to reduce power consumption and make your computer feels more reactive. Unlike other softwares like adobe which can be buggy. You can tell if a software is well made: it is very reactive, it never crashes, it does not hog memory unlike chrome. In order to do that you have to rewrite the all code from the ground up which is a lot of work and it is often painful for the company and for the customers. As for the mac pro , it is simply a business gimmick. You have 3 items , the cheap, the target one and the overpriced. It is just a way to funnel customers on the target one . Like i3 ,i5, and i7. Most people buy the i5, or the Mac Studio. The mac pro is just a side project at home for covering all the bases. That being said, in video 4K, in broadcasting, rendering, testing it is great to have a computer that can handle lots of data processing. Oftentimes technology trickles down to the people's computer down the road. It is like formula one; almost no one has ever driven one and yet in our cars we have plenty of technologies that were introduced first in racing.
I’m glad they released it, because it brings completeness to the lineup. Of course I’m not planning on buying one because I have no need for one of them. I’m able to do everything I need at this point with a plain old M1 iMac.
What trips me out is the number of complaints from people that are outraged or disappointed because it doesn’t do this or that for X price point, and they could build an XYZ with more zing-brags for fewer credits to play Mine Craft on and play at being a developer.
I’m just reading all that thinking uh-huh to myself while running two businesses and personal/family business on a 2k iMac.
Most people need a Mac Pro like they need a Corvette or a McLaren for personal transportation when there are far better options better suited to their needs for getting around. If you are really a pro or a business/corporation/institution like a hospital or a music studio, you’re going to weigh this out, do the numbers and see if it makes sense and base your decision on that.
Gotta debate the point about Intel performance. While it's true that Apple Intel is slower than M1/M2, the latest Intel & AMD CPUs in PCs are considerably outperforming M1 & M2 for a lot less money.
I have 6 Thunderbolt ports on my Mac Studio Ultra, NOT 4 as stated!
I'm not sure I stated that 😁 I said you get 2 fewer with the Mac Studio... i.e. 6 instead of 8 on the Mac Pro.
"Choosing RAM is pretty easy, you don't go for the 64 GB of unified memory option, because that's not enough for that number of graphics cores"
We're still talking about performance comparable to 4080/4090 if scales perfectly, which get by w/24GB dedicated
The appeal of Apple's GPU is that it can access significantly more memory than traditional GPUs... but that memory is shared with the CPU and ML cores. 64GB for 24 CPU cores, up to 76 GPU cores, and 32 ML cores, not to mention encoders/decoders etc., seems a little light and not particularly future proof IMO.
@Constant Geekery I wouldn't consider it future proof either. But you can conceivable compare to 40GB for CPU and 24GB dedicated, which would be balanced for a Ryzen threadripper or 7950x paired w/nvidia. And those 76 GPU cores are comparable in TFlops with the 4080, so should not need significantly more
@@LuisDiaz-qg3eg It's difficult to draw direct comparisons with x86 or PC GPUs - the memory architecture is different. I based my statements on my experience of extensive testing with different permutations of Apple Silicon over the past 2.5 years... mostly in the specific niches Apple is targeting with the Mac Pro.
I'm also trying to think from the perspective of the target market and what this will be used for, and my personal opinion is that 64GB would be the wrong choice. It's just an opinion, and everyone is welcome to spec their machine however they like. 👍🏻
lol there is no such thing as 4090 performance on a integrated gpu sharing resourches with the cpu,that was well established years ago, don't believe the crap apple tried to spread to make customers forget that there was not going to be any gpu support soon, or ever
@arch1107 I agree, after looking it up, the TFlops are in line with the 4070 at higher 25-28 TFlops. While the 4090 triples or almost quadruples. But it is still a chip worthy of comparing with the 4090 if it were to be given dedicated 400 W of power and dedicated hyper fast memory, it's just that Apple calibrates for 125W instead
Yeah, Mac Pro says to me ‘We’ve been trying to sort Mac Pro for ages - we know it’s crap but we just need rid of Intel, so lump it out there and we’ll sort it in the future. Everyone will buy a Mac Studio anyway; 😂
I think making an Extreme is difficult due to the likely low yields in fabrication. It would be a hugely expensive chip with a narrow audience, whereas that production capacity could be put to better use making chips that have wider appeal. Like you say, most of us have moved to Thunderbolt through necessity.
• Needs RAM slots. Why force an SoC with built-in, non-upgradable RAM and (primary) storage on workstation customers? It's a module system by nature, so why not develop a separate CPU for it that allows for this kind of flexibility?
• Needs the ability to use discrete PCIe GPUs in particular, so that it can be upgraded in a meaningful way down the road and offer features potentially not available with Apple's iGPU.
I'd consider a splurge for a system like this if it had the above features and could replace my Ryzen gaming PC :D It's cool that Apple is building a special version of Wine into the next Mac OS release, so perhaps there is hope yet of the Mac one day offering a broad spectrum of gaming options without having to somehow virtualize Windows or emulate an x86 PC with graphics acceleration, a tall order to be sure. But it needs to be a proper workstation instead of a Mac Studio with PCIe expansion of limited use and non-upgradable RAM. It's bad enough that the Mac has been turned into such a sealed consumer gadget not meant to be opened and tinkered with by end users. They really shouldn't do this with the Mac Pro.
It almost seems like they just needed to get rid of these chassis. Really no valid reason for anyone to buy this when you can't even add RAM or graphics.
EXACTLY!!! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
WHY THE F**K DID APPLE THINK IT WAS A GOOD IDEA HAVE NO DISCRETE GRAPHICS CARD AND USER REPLACEABLE RAM FOR A WORKSTATION!!!!! ITS A WORKSTATION, NOT AN ULTRABOOK!!! THEY COULD'VE MADE IT SMALLER SINCE THERE IS SO MUCH UNUSED SPACE!!!!
Incredible video. You have my subscription sir.
Awesome, thank you!