So the WWDC is over, and the VisionPro glasses cost $3500, WTF! But even worse is the price difference on the MacPro vs the MacStudio.
So here is the Mac Studio almost fully loaded, except only 4TB hard drive instead of a possible 8 TB.
And here is the MacPro for 10,599!
You have to be kidding. I do want expansion, but at the price, is it really worth it? Looks like a Mac Studio is in my future.
So in the last week it started to look like the Mac Studio would get updated with M2 and the M2 Utlra, and it did, but Apple also released the Mac Pro with M2 Ultra, which seems to have the addition of PCI Slots and 2 extra thunderbolt ports.
I have needed a new Mac for a while as my iMac Pro is starting to show it’s age (and inability to clean it out), so one of these is in my Future, but which one, I don’t currently know. I need to look at the pages on the Mac Pro once I the web site gets updated after WWDC.
You can follow the WWDC Keynotes at MacRumors.
2 Extra Thunderbolt Ports and 2 HDI ports is great, though I wish there were more thunderbolt and USB ports.
An article by Jeff Benjamin at 9to5 mac speculates on the ‘compute module’ in iOS 16.4 code.
I hope it really is for the Mac Pro, but honestly I doubt it. I think the Mac Pro will be a higher end Mac Studio, with more Thunderbolt ports. After the seeming upgrade-ability of the last Mac Pro which only had PCI slot upgrades, I just doubt they are making some upgrade-able aspect to the Mac Pro.
It seems much more likely to be a processor for the Reality Pro headset.
Honestly I was thinking about writing a post like this article, but Ben Lovejoy at 9to5Mac has beat me too it.
The recent pate of articles from Gurman and their bad news on the Mac Pro has really had me thinking. No Quad Apple Silicon means no performance boost over the Studio. No memory upgrades makes sense, but no external graphics card, means a decided lack of expansion, and a need to spend more upfront, without the possibility of later upgrades.
As for PCI Expansion, sure a video i/o card from black magic would be cheaper than external, and you could put in a fast ssd pci card, but those are damn expensive. Maybe an Apple Accelerator, but like the one in the current, you know it would be quickly added to the next chips, so why bother.
And having more options for storage, I would love that. I so miss my 4 internal slots for spinning hard drives, but more likely I see room for more proprietary Apple SSDs, which would be too expensive and likely not user upgrade-able.
The one thing no articles I have seen talk about would be more Thunderbolt ports, which would be great. I already use two Thunderbolt 4 Hubs, and still lack for ports, but is that and better cooling and maybe room for a second hard drive worth thousands more?
The answer is no. There needs to be a realistic reason for a Mac Pro to exist.
So maybe Apple waits till the M3, when they can do a quad chip design and really do an insane machine, and they go for an iMac Pro right now. I would be dissapointed, but not surprised. Mainly disappointment because I would love to move to 32 inch monitors for my next machine.
Sami Fathi at MacRumors has reported that TSMC has started 3nm production as of December 29th.
This will likely mean the rest of the M2 line for the MacBook and for the eventual MacPro will be 3nm which will save power and be more efficient, and of course will eventually make it’s way to the iPhone and iPad as power savings and less heat is better across the line.
Mark Gurman’s report in his PowerOn newsletter at Bloomberg that Apple has killed the M2 Extreme, which would be 4 M2 chips linked together like the M1 Max is 2 M1 chips linked together.
This is awful news, as it means the MacPro won’t have much differentiation from the Mac Studio. It isn’t like they can add additional memory slots as that isn’t how memore works with Apple Silicon. It could have more hard drive slots, maybe some sort of pci expansion, but that seems doubtful because of the way the graphics work. So more Thunderbolt ports, that seems likely, though still Thunderbolt 4.
With only a M2 Max, why make a macpro? Especially when the Studio gets upgraded to the same chip. Allot of Thunderbolt 4 ports would be great as Thunderbolt 4 hubs aren’t cheap. Still with Apple prices will some hard drive slots and extra ports will this even make sense financially.
This is certainly worrying. It could also mean a wait till M3 for the MacPro and just do an M2 Mac Studio till then.
We will have to wait (probably a while) and see.
From Ben Lovejoy at 9to5Mac, these rumors could make for a pretty powerful mac, but so expensive I am assuming.
Of course this is just a rumor, but it is likely though higher than the previous rumored 40 core, and 128 core gpu.
And that M2 Extreme could cost many thousands more, and 384 gigs of RAM, I am betting we are talking $7500 more than whatever the machine costs.
Harlety Charlton at MacRumors has an article, “Apple Silicon Mac Pro Configurations: Everything We Know.”
Of course we don’t really know anything, other then it is coming, so it is literally all speculation. We think it will be based on the M2, and it might be 5nm or even 3nm, and we don’t know ports and it is rumored to have 40 cores, or double the M1 Ultra.
I wish this machine was a known quantity as it really should be my next machine if it isn’t too expensive.
José Andorno at 9to5Mac has this article on an interview Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman gave.
It is really interesting that it says there was a M1 MacPro ready but they decided to wait for the M2, which means they won’t make the 2 year promise on the move to Apple Silicon.
Honestly it is likely because the M1 could only do dual, and the performance would not have been hugely more than the Mac Studio if there was not a quad option. So likely the M2 can do Quad.
Basically while it can be more energy efficient, it can also run more power and be more powerful. And it is larger than the previous generation, and it also includes ProRes acceleration instead of just H264 acceleration in the chip. Also it has more memory capacity, 24 vs 16 and at 100GB/sec vs 68GB/sec in the previous M1,
And the larger chip will have Max and Ultra versions and I am betting the quad version that will be in the next Mac Pro, which makes me happy that they didn’t yet release the MacPro as if it is based on this it will beat out the current Mac Studio, though will certainly be quite expensive.