Back in the Intel days, the Mac Pro was the computer many of us lusted over even if we had no possible justification for actually buying one. It was by far the most powerful Mac and the easiest to upgrade – not to mention one of the most beautiful machines the company ever made.
The 2023 Mac Pro was even more gorgeous than its predecessor, but with the radical new architecture of Apple Silicon, the writing was already on the wall …
Apple Silicon changed everything
The secret to the power and upgradability of the Mac Pro was the ability to install CPUs and GPUs of your choice, alongside additional RAM and hard drives or SSDs. However, the move to Apple Silicon put everything onto a single board.
That meant the machines were now nothing like as upgradable as they were before, and raised the question of whether there was any point in the machine anymore. Sure, Apple initially gave it a more powerful chip, but it could have put that chip in any other Mac.
Doubts about the need for the Mac Pro were further strengthened by the launch of the Mac Studio back in 2022. An M2 Ultra upgrade a year later saw the two machines offer identical performance. Things got even worse for the Mac Pro this year when the Mac Studio got an M3 Ultra chip. That means that the current Mac Studio is actually more powerful than the current Mac Pro while also being substantially cheaper.
The only benefit of the larger and more expensive machine is the availability of PCIe expansion slots and additional ports. However, since you can’t use PCIe slots for beefier graphics cards, they are a very niche need these days. In most cases, a Thunderbolt connection to an external accessory does the job.
Apple has ‘written off’ the Mac Pro
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported a few days ago that Apple has “largely written off the Mac Pro.”
Sad as I would be to see it go, I think this does make sense. The reason for the Mac Pro’s existence – its expandability – no longer applies. Leaving aside the tiny niche of the tiny niche of Mac Pro owners who benefited from the portability of being able to put all of the additional storage inside the casing, there’s just no benefit over the Mac Studio.
macOS Tahoe 26.2 provides another reason
But a new feature in macOS Tahoe 26.2 provides yet another reason to consider the Mac Pro redundant. As Engadget notes, this makes it more practical than ever to create clusters of Mac Studios.
The ability to cluster Macs in this way isn’t new, but as the site notes the latest update allows for full-speed Thunderbolt 5 connectivity.
Highlighted accessories
- Official Apple Store on Amazon
- Apple 40W Dynamic Power Adapter for iPhone 17
- Official Apple iPhone Air cases and bumpers
- iPhone Air MagSafe Battery
- Official iPhone Air case
- Official iPhone 17 cases
- Official iPhone 17 Pro cases and Pro Max cases
Photo by Iewek Gnos on Unsplash
