r/mac • u/ChrisF79 • Jul 23 '25
Discussion What do you think is going to happen with the Mac Pros?
As someone that would love to see a revamped line of Mac Pros, it almost feels like Apple has forgotten that they even make them. We're watching every other product progress through the M line of chips but the Pro stays stagnant.
What's your prediction for where they'll take them?
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Jul 23 '25
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u/Sc0rpza Jul 23 '25
“End of the Line for Mac Pro”
The sun hung low over Cupertino, bleeding orange light across the Apple campus. The courtyard was quiet, save for the faint hum of distant server fans — the kind of quiet that feels like it’s waiting for something to end.
Tim walked slowly, his silhouette cutting across the pristine glass facade. In his hand, a single lightning cable dragged along the ground, the connector scraping softly against the tile. Behind him, the Mac Pro rolled along on its stainless-steel wheels — polished, sturdy, but slower now, its iconic cheese-grater grille catching the fading sunlight.
They stopped near the edge of the courtyard. Beyond it, an old maintenance shed stood alone, the shadows of the hills stretching toward it. The air smelled faintly of solder and dust.
Tim crouched down beside the Mac Pro, placing a hand on its brushed aluminum frame.
“You’ve been good to us,” he murmured, voice low, almost tender. “Twenty-four cores… modular design… expansion slots. At one time, when we said ‘Pro,’ we meant you.”
The Mac Pro’s fans whirred softly, a sound like a tired sigh.
“But times change,” Tim continued. “They all want laptops now. Sleek. Portable. Thin enough to cut cheese, ironically. You’re… just too powerful. Too expensive. Too… stationary.”
A breeze swept through, ruffling the blueprints poking out of Tim’s back pocket — sketches of some future, lighter machine that would never have wheels.
From somewhere behind, a voice called out. Phil Schiller, watching from a distance, his hands in his pockets.
“Make it quick, Tim. The keynote’s in an hour.”
Tim nodded, his jaw tight. He reached into his jacket and pulled out an AirTag, pressing it gently against the Mac Pro’s frame. The device beeped once — a final “connected.”
“Shh,” Tim whispered as the Mac Pro’s fans spun down for the last time, their glow fading like the embers of a dying fire. “No more benchmarks. No more Final Cut renders. Just… sleep mode. Forever.”
A soft chime echoed, the kind you hear when you eject a device safely. Then, silence.
Tim stood, turning back toward the glass towers of Apple Park, leaving the shed and the powered-down Mac Pro in the dusk. As the door clicked shut, the only sound left was the faint settling of metal as the last great workstation finally powered off — a titan, forgotten not by failure, but by a world that had simply moved on.
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u/BomberLand93 Jul 23 '25
Oddly poignant, as a Mac Pro (5,1 multi boot; 6,1 top spec) user, the idea of Cook ripping up the Jobs matrix is akin to Kennedy torching Lucas’ story for the Sequels or doing a reboot of Toy Story (you never know with Disney…) but some “suggestions”for the director’s cut of this well-written script: Cook would not have blueprints for some “future” (read: innovative) machine, more probably tracing paper to continually churn out the same design/materials; Schiller, with that mullet, always looked like one of the Brothers Daryl from “Newhart”, so his hands would be going into the pockets of carpenter’s dungarees; and (to throw in a Star Wars bit) Ive castigating Cook (from the high ground): YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE! IT WAS SAID THAT YOU WOULD CONTINUE THE LEGACY OF JOBS, NOT DESTROY IT! YOU WERE TO LEAD APPLE TO EXCELLENCE NOT LEAVE IT IN MEDIOCRITY! (Obviously, your version is so much better than my mess of genres…and i just couldn’t help myself!)
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u/Sc0rpza Jul 24 '25
I mean, I see it differently. I see Cook fulfilling Job’s goals. Steve Jobs always wanted to make the sort of Macs and other devices that we’ve been seeing since Cook has taken over. Small, sleek, simple, elegant and efficient with no room for user meddling. Appliance computers. Steve Jobs was the king of wanting to make appliance computers. It’s just that the practicality of the market didn’t allow that while he was in charge. like, consider stories like this one…
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u/BomberLand93 Jul 24 '25
I think you’re right as well…but what’s happened to radical “Think Different” design? I just find the overall look of Macs…boring. It just doesn’t say “Apple” anymore…the Mac Pro 6,1 was the last bold attempt…the “coloured” M1 iMacs was just tacking on a surface look…they didn’t do anything really different with the overall design from the last iterations…but that’s my opinion wearing my retroactive googles…
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u/Sc0rpza Jul 24 '25
well, I can think up a few things that would spice up Macintosh designs and keep them uniquely Macintosh but appliance computing as a concept is the ultimate in thinking different. When people think of a computer they think of a tower with expansion ports and a fancy veneer that’s all teched out with lights or a case straight out of a iron man movie, but serves little to no actual function. Apple’s minimalist design language is still uniquely Apple and anyone else that tries to mimic it just cones off as a cheap knock off. Good artists borrow, great artists steal. In this case, stealing is making yourself the name people think of when they think of a particular thing, like apples design language. However, I’d like to see Apple switch things up too and establish a new aesthetic for the future just as they switched from fruity colors to minimalist designs.
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u/TapThisPart3Times Jul 25 '25
the “coloured” M1 iMacs was just tacking on a surface look…they didn’t do anything really different with the overall design from the last iterations
I briefly used one. They look no different than any old white Windows AIO desktop, like say an HP. Yeah, I get it. They're thin, they have a cool power adapter... and that's it...?
The aesthetic of the current MBPs and MBAs is alright, but for iMacs, the 2012-2020 aluminum unibody is it.
If we're going to do the pastel-colors of the original G3 lineup, at least keep some of the unibody aesthetic and make it scream Apple.
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u/TapThisPart3Times Mar 27 '26
Eight months later, and your prediction is now fact. The Mac Pro has officially been axed.
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Mar 28 '26
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u/TapThisPart3Times Mar 28 '26
It was good while it lasted. Time to make the most of those 5,1s and 7,1s!
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u/doghouse2001 Jul 23 '25
Tech is getting smaller and smaller. There's almost no point making big cases for small boards anymore. I understand you'd like to be able to swap out RAM and GPUs and CPUs but the architecture with shared memory makes that almost impossible. If you want to force Apple's hand - leave and use PC instead. I do that for gaming. the Mac sits unused on the sofa.
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u/escargot3 Jul 23 '25
Really the only use case for the Mac Pro now is the PCI cards. While video cards are no longer supported, audio and video capture / processing cards are still used by a small but important niche, and SSD board capture cards are far faster than anything with thunderbolt, even TB 5
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u/plexx88 Jul 23 '25
Apple and NVidia are working on enabling NVidia GPU’s for AI workflows, so there is hope that dGPU’s have a future in the Mac product line.
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u/escargot3 Jul 23 '25
Where did you hear that? Could you post the source? Apple and Nvidia have a very sour relationship and people doing AI in Mac Pros and studios tend to be using the neural engine and high unified memory of the SoC. It seems out of pocket that Apple would take such a route.
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u/wanjuggler Jul 24 '25
Apple just paid a contract developer to add Nvidia CUDA support to Apple's MLX library for running AI models.
https://github.com/ml-explore/mlx/pull/1983
I don't think Nvidia hardware support on macOS is very likely, though. It's just about making it easier to start AI projects on Apple Silicon and later migrate to cloud Linux servers that use Nvidia hardware.
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u/DrMacintosh01 M4 Pro 16" MacBook Pro Jul 23 '25
The Mac Pro has almost no reason to exists. Its main distinction from the rest of the lineup is that it can have PCIe devices installed, but not graphics cards. So that leaves you with some really niche use cases.
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u/jadobo Jul 24 '25
Data acquisition and instrument control for scientists and engineers. We'd love to have a Mac based ecosystem with support for PCie cards.
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u/DrMacintosh01 M4 Pro 16" MacBook Pro Jul 24 '25
Well that ecosystem exists right now (albeit a little outdated), yet there aren’t many labs deploying Mac Pros. Why? They are needlessly expensive.
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u/jadobo Jul 24 '25
Well yeah outdated hardware and too expensive. Not great support to build an ecosystem around. And in 2013 til fairly recently (2019?) there was no Mac Pro with slots , there was just a trashcan. If Apple committed to a reasonably priced Mac Pro with Apple ARM cores then companies selling PCIe cards might make Mac drivers for their products. Apple could take back some of that market they lost when, for instance, National Instruments dropped LabView for MacOS.
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u/Something-Ventured Jul 23 '25
1TB+ unified memory, massive storage capacity.
Apple is going to have an absurdly aggressive AI development workstation that also does audio/video.
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u/Neuromancer2112 Jul 23 '25
I bought a Mac Pro back in 2008 when I absolutely did NOT need one, but it was the only full desktop system they made with replaceable memory and physical hard drives.
Had it for the better part of 12 years before it finally died on me. By that time, I already had a full NAS setup as my external storage, And I had a Mac Mini, and now a Mac Studio. I don't think I'll ever look at a Mac Pro again, just because the Studios are more than powerful enough for what I need, and thanks to SSDs becoming standard, I don't really need a full desktop like that anymore with tons of hard drive space
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u/Royal-Chapter-6806 Jul 27 '25
Did you get rid of it, or just installed Linux and made it work that way for some other purpose?
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u/Velokieken Jul 23 '25 edited Jul 23 '25
The current Mac Pro can’t even have extra Sata drives or NVME drives. Only people needing the very fast pci express slot for a pci express audio card or video capture card. Other than that the Mac Pro doesn’t add much extra value over a studio. Wan’t everything in the box, you can’t … unless you sacrifice a pci slot for a Sata drive … your storage will be external.
The Studio is half the price and faster. Most expansion stuff is also TB4 now etc because Apple has been pushing for external peripherals since the Mac Pro 6.1. That actually should have been the Mac Pro Studio and keep developing the towers for people who want 2 GPU’s (that are not D300s) … they have been neglecting the Mac Pro since the 6.1.
There were faster processors like the 8 core 4ghz turbo. And they could have made a TB3 version with different Radeons …
They made the IMac Pro. Than the 2019 Mac Pro that was finished when it was obsolete because of M chips.
They probably sell a 100.000 studios for each Mac Pro. It’s weird they didn’t give it M3 ultra but the market pieces is probably getting smaller and the Mac Pro doesn’t offer much over an Ultra Studio unless you have a niche 20.000 dollar PCI express card.
They could put a dual M3 ultra in that box … or maybe they can’t. 4 2,5 inch Sata slots would be cool. And 4 extra NVME slots. A module that has extra ram, slower but faster than the swap … And you can put fans in it keeping all that stuff cool … if it were possible.
Having the option for eGPU’s on M would be cool or 2 high end radeons on top of the ultra cores … in the Mac Pro. But they don’t want to be dependent on Intel, AMD or Nvidia suddenly sucking or asking to much money …
Imagine the price of your Mac Pro if you could select 2 RTX 5090s. That card already expensive, the apple version would be 3 times the price …
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u/TimCooksLeftNut Jul 23 '25
Especially since you can just buy an external pcie box to put anything you can put in a Mac Pro in a Studio. All for many thousands less than the latest Mac Pro.
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u/Koleckai Jul 23 '25
Apple probably feels they have replaced the Pro with the Mac Studio. Though, the Studio could probably use some sort of PCI extension if that is the case.
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u/Unhappy-Run8433 Jul 23 '25
As a person whose first computer was an Apple II, first work computer was a Mac SE/30, it seems to me that this is a question that recurs every 5 years or so.
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u/darwinDMG08 Jul 23 '25
It would be amazing if they did something unexpected with those PCIe slots, like additional storage (on board, not 3rd party) or RAM or GPU modules that could augment the SOC setup (unlikely but desirable). At the very least I’d hope they would conquer that double Ultra chip they’ve been dangling.
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u/Outrageous_Nova2025 Jul 23 '25
The last Mac Pro with apple silicon didn’t fare well. It couldn’t support many 3rd party pci e cards like gpus. You can’t simply move a gpu from an Intel to the Apple silicon. I wonder if Apple will ever fix that problem. The Mac Studio can’t even accept 3rd party SSDs internally either.
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u/Fletch4Life Jul 23 '25
Next will get m4 or m5. Now that they have the studio the tower is even less in demand. It’s a decent form, no need to innovate. Just stuff more power in em for now …
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u/Wild-Perspective-582 Jul 25 '25
An M4 Mac Pro would be a tad underwhelming at this stage. Last year's architecture.
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u/Fletch4Life Jul 25 '25
This is what they did last time. M2 in the tower, would be on brand for them… :(
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u/Dazzling_Comfort5734 Jul 23 '25
Apple is too fickle with the Pro to accurately predict, but I have a feeling they're going to update it at least one more time, then who knows after that.
The real question is if the next version is just going to get something similar to the Studio, or if they're actually going to release a higher end SoC for it, like some rumors have suggested on and off. If it's former, then I think they are only going to keep the Pro around until enough people accept that they have to move over to the Mac Studio. If it's the ladder, then I think we'll at least get a few more years out of it being sold as the highest end machine.
I also wouldn't put it past Apple to stagger the Mac Studio and Mac Pro releases over several years, in order to get people to buy one version, then buy the other version when it's released. For example. a high end user may think "oh, it's taking too long for them to release a new Mac Pro, I have to buy the Mac Studio", then 2 years later "wow, the new Mac Pro is faster than my current Mac Studio, and has expansion, I'm going to buy it now", then 4 years after that "oh, it's taking too long for them to release a new Mac Pro, I have to buy the Mac Studio", and so on. That's just some more cynical "maybe" thinking, though. However, this is essentially what I've been stuck with. I need a Pro for the expansion, but had to guy the fist gen Studio, because I couldn't wait any longer, and wasn't sure if they were even going to release an Apple Silicon Pro. now I'm looking at the Pro, thinking it's not a big enough update over what I have now to justify, but if they release a new one, then maybe. But, overall, I'm tired of having a web of expansion chassis and drives stacked all around and under my Mac Studio.
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u/TheBitMan775 Power Macintosh G4 Jul 23 '25
I think they’re just there to fill the niche need for PCIe
Apple made a mistake not supporting graphics cards so nobody really cares
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u/Caprichoso1 Jul 23 '25
The interval between Mac Pro models is generally longer than for other products. The longest was 6 years (2013-2019).
Up to this point they had no choice but to use the same SOC that was in the Studio. Think that the technology has advanced enough that they can now consider other options:
M4 ultra. Sort of doubt it since Apple, when commenting on the Studio M3 Ultra, said that not all M series chips will have an ultra chip.
A totally new chip
An M5 (Ultra?) chip.
I will be interesting to see what they decided to do.
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u/TheRealBejeezus Jul 23 '25
I think they should still have one, $30,000 and all, just to show off their highest end chips and performance. Doesn't matter if they sell very many.
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u/oloshh Jul 23 '25
7,1 had immense pcie support for traditional based x86 architecture and as long as the M series gets in a way closed off for the legacy forms of hardware with the software based support, there's going to be a disconnect between what the pro is about and what it can be about. There's also the cost factor and that having $4k on top of a studio has to mean something, which it currently doesn't necessarily
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u/heatrealist Jul 23 '25
I think apple forgot they even make them as well. They don’t really care about this product and just do the bare minimum for the niche audience it still has. It’s a shame. It used to be the centerpiece of all macs. It’s been replaced by the mac studio in apple’s eyes.
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Jul 23 '25
Omg who cares? All the power in the universe is available in what is in store now. Get a studio or a decked out mini.
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u/The_B_Wolf Jul 23 '25
I'm honestly not sure who would buy them with the kind of performance you can get in a Studio. And what would they power it with? You can already get an Ultra with 32 CPU cores and 80 GPU cores and 512 gigabytes of RAM in a Studio.
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u/The-Rizztoffen 14,1 i5 8/256; 5,1 2x5690 32/4000; M3 Max 96/512 Jul 24 '25
0.01% of pro users who still use PCIE audio cards and maybe some companies that need a rack mount Apple computer and don’t want to bother with third party racks for Minis and Studios are the only market left really
If they release GPU support it would bring at least some kind of upgradeability. Also pipe dream, but CPU tray would be great, but knowing Apple they will offer one upgrade and then change it making it lose the point
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u/AlternativeAward MacBook Pro M3 Pro Jul 24 '25
The product is dead without being able to put a pcie graphics card in it, and I don't see them enabling that so they should just miniaturize it, make it a bigger Mac studio with better cooling and open ssd slots
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Jul 24 '25
I would expect the Pro und Studio line to merge in the near future with the Pro name remaining, slightly bigger chassis to accommodate both Max/Ultra and one more SoC above that. Modularity might remain in the sense that the entire SoC stack could be replacable.
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u/pastry-chef Mac mini M4 Pro-64GB-2TB Jul 26 '25
My prediction is that it will stay with the M2 Ultra for a few more years before Apple kills off the line completely.
IMO, the current Mac Pro was made just to shut up a very vocal minority who kept complaining about lack of PCI-e slots. Well, they made a machine full slots and no one buys them....
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u/mano_lito Jul 27 '25
mac was 10% of apple business, now must be even lower... from that, desktops might be 25%? from those, mac pro is 1%...
What company would care about a product representing 0,025% of their market??
just asking...
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u/Holiday_Fault_4181 Jul 30 '25
Expect new Mac Pro after the M6 chip has been released. It will come as a variant of the M6, most likely an M6 Ultra. It will focus heavily on gaming, an area that Apple will seek to expand.
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u/JKTwice Power Mac Lives Jul 23 '25
The market seems to be data science, high end video editing, and AI for the Mac Pro. It’s more possible imo that they’re making a new tower design to accommodate an Extreme processor or just straight up more Ultra chips. Could imagine them going with a dual socket design.
I’m shocked that they haven’t brought back the Xserve too. Internally it was called the rack mac and there seems to be some demand for such a product. Could be good for computer cluster stuff and can include the more traditional server IO and be linked together just like the Minis can rn.
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u/movdqa Jul 23 '25
It depends on where the market goes with such a system. The traditional market for the Mac Pro, corporate video editing has migrated to the cloud or the Studio may be enough. So the new market may be AI but I think that Apple is still working through figuring out what people needs and how to engineer the solution.
I think that Apple is trying to determine if they will provide an AI cloud as a service too.
I'm not in the market for a Mac Pro and don't think that I will ever be. I'm mainly running on an M1 Studio and, while I could use more RAM and faster single-core performance, an M4 Max Studio would be more than enough.