HUGE
Huge Black Mirror vibes…
(But I only joined the Apple eco system with the iPhone 3GS, so I’m no early adopter 
)
I haven’t seen anyone say they are excited about the new Mac Pro. Did I miss a post?
The expectation, if I remember correctly, was that the Pro would have a fancier CPU. You used to have to buy a Pro to get the fastest Mac, and that’s not true here (unless I’m missing something) as the Pro isn’t any faster than the Studio. It’s just a Studio with a PCIe backplane.
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Predictable news story following on the one about iPhones being stolen off bar tops by “friendly” bar patrons:
IPHONES AND OTHER PERSONAL ITEMS REPORTED GOING MISSING WHILE OWNER STARES OFF INTO SPACE AT THEIR VIRTUAL REALITY DISPLAYS
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As @webwalrus laid out, it’s kind of a half release, but I’m excited that they refreshed it and the Ultra. They might get to 512GB max RAM with the M3 Extreme (or whatever) next year and that won’t fit in the Ultra. PCIe 6(?) will eventually let them connect SoCs if they want to go that route.
Edit to clarify it’s a full release for people who can use the accessories available for it. I’m happy for them, but I really want it to extend general computing, too.
I am curious but not enough information.
When I bought my 2019 Mac Pro, PCIe peripherals were key; Apple cross-sold internal RAID when you configured the original computer. Now there are no such options - so presumably 2019 Mac Pro PCIe devices do not work with 2023 Mac Pros. When PCIe peripherals start appearing I shall assess.
Also there is the question of RAM. Of course 192Gb RAM is immense by any standard; but it’s quite low by comparison to prior Mac Pros. Most likely it will follow the route of other Macs and the M2 design will change the traditional view of RAM. But I need reviews to confirm that; on Intel architecture, lots of RAM is very helpful to run multiple apps simultaneously. It’s also important for highly RAM-intensive apps such as Panorama. It will be worth seeing reviews as to how a Mac Pro with “less” RAM such as 192Gb performs.
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It may be several years before someone could take one of these on an airplane. And not spend the entire flight being asked questions by the passengers.
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The Pro moniker may have been tortured by Apple over the years, but you need to be a Real Pro in order to justify these beasts.
I used to manage tech for regular office workers and a handful of people who customized merchandise for companies, teams, etc. An M1 iMac would be more than any one of them would need to do their job. I was just curious who would need a Mac Pro.
Apparently only people who need to a insert a PCIe card to add internal or external hardware. Otherwise, why not just buy a tricked-out Mac Studio?
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That is a good question and one I am pondering at the moment.
At present the internal RAID in my Mac Pro is much faster than anything I could implement even with Thunderbolt when I bought it in 2019.
What I do not know at present is whether there is a major performance advantage of PCIe 4.0 compared with current state of the art Thunderbolt peripherals.
Also I believe the Mac Studio supports 2 Thunderbolt ports but the new Mac Pro supports 8. To some extent that can be worked around by daisy-chaining Thunderbolt peripherals or by a Thunderbolt hub, but there are limits to how well that works.
Also I run 6 monitors and I suspect the memory/GPU capabilities of the Mac Pro will support that better than a Mac Studio would - but I do not know that for sure.
The RAM is the same. The GPU/CPU cores are the same. It’s literally the same piece of Apple Silicon inside the unit. So unless they’re doing something else to cap the display support, they should be identical in that respect.
The difference is the enclosure (and the ports that come with it) and the expansion slots.
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Looks like you can get up to six thunderbolt ports and only five displays on an M2 Mac Studio.
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Thank you @webwalrus and @karlnyhus - I had not realized those two are so close.
I can likely do almost anything with Thunderbolt that I would do with PCIe. If it officially supports 5 monitors than 6 will work; I am not doing graphics intense stuff like gaming where the video specs are critical.
So I have previously gone for the Mac Pro essentially as a document editing/viewing/storage workstation. It seems that the Mac Studio may well do that just as well now at a much lower pricepoint - which is nice.
I guess the remaining use of the Mac Pro is mostly for either video editing or extremely computationally intense scientific programming or maybe AI development?
For the Max. The Ultra has different specs, and looks to match the Mac Pro:
M2 Ultra
Simultaneous support for up to eight displays:
- Eight displays with up to 4K resolution at 60Hz
- Six displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz
- Three displays with up to 8K resolution at 60Hz
Oh, wow!
…
Anyone considering a 2023 Mac Pro might find the current ATP podcast interesting. John Siracusa tells what he “really thinks of the new Mac Pro”.
(spoiler: it can’t match the latest high end PCs.)
Just one? …20 characters….
I can’t believe you would say this and not follow up with a photo. This is how I picture it.
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