As we learned this week, the 2013 trash can Mac Pro is going to… Well… The trash can. Apple has promised a new “modular” Mac Pro for sometime after 2017.
In the light of this news, I thought it would be interesting to look back a model, to the “cheese grater” Mac Pros Apple sold from 2006 until 2013.
The cheesegrater is a truly iconic Mac. I love it.
On a related note, here’s some interesting tidbits and nuggets I’ve picked up regarding the new Mac Pro from people and sources who know their stuff. The Mac Pro was in limbo inside Apple. The decision to go ahead and develop a modular Mac Pro replacement seems to have been made only in recent months, with development starting only a few weeks ago, which makes it clear why Apple said it won’t ship this year. I have no idea how long it takes to develop a new computer like a Mac Pro, but I think we can expect the new Mac Pro late 2018 at the earliest, but most likely it won’t be until early 2019 before it ships.
What made Apple do a 180? Well, after the announcement of the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, orders for refurbished “old” MacBook Pros supposedly went through the roof, and after the initial batch of reviews came out, they shot up even higher. This response to the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar took Apple completely by surprise. Combined with the problems surrounding the LG UltraFine 5K display and the constant negativity from professional Apple users, the company decided to double down on professional users.
As Apple announced, we’ll be getting a new Mac Pro and an iMac Pro as a result. In addition, Apple is said to be exploring additional Retina MacBook Pro models without the Touch Bar, and other pro-oriented features, such as hooking an iPad Pro up to a Mac to use it as a Cintiq-like device.
All in all, there is definitely excitement in the air regarding professional Mac use, and to be honest – that’s been a while. Personally, I’m still very cautious, because in the end, all we got yesterday was a more official version of Tim Cook’s endless “we’ve got great stuff in the pipeline, trust us!” meme that’s been going on for a few years now.
Until we get it – and that may still be 2 years away – the new Mac Pro is vapourware.
By “old” MacBook Pros, are you referring to the last ones to have optical drives? Or the model immediately preceding the touch bar?
At my office, the ones preceding the TouchBar(TM). We got one of the new ones in and started ordering Dell hardware instead.
Specific things we don’t like:
* price, but configuring a 15″ Dell with similar specs gives a similar price (OTOH, the Dell can take 32GB of RAM and has room for an SATA drive)
* the keyboard is like typing on a sheet of paper
* the TouchBar(TM) is counter-productive for developers
* the TouchID is also the power button, but it’s not labeled (having TouchID is an awesome security feature though)
You forgot the fact that we can’t even hook anything up to the new mbp without carrying around adapters. Ironically, you can’t even hook an iDevice up to the new mbp with the supplied cable; you need a USB type C cable or dongle even to connect one Apple product to the other!
Yeah, getting the right collection of dongles to make USB-C laptops useful has been extremely annoying. This applies to the Dells we’ve been buying too though. The transition to USB-C is not being handled well by anyone.
The new Thinkpad X1 fits 2x USB-C, 2x USB-A, HDMI, headphone, and a weird little mini-ethernet port that takes a dongle; not too shabby. Shame it’s silly expensive.
Edited 2017-04-07 14:14 UTC
Too bad it’s Lenovo, who have pretty much thrown all their trust capital away. I know I wouldn’t ever buy from them unless I knew I’d be able to wipe the preinstalled version of Windows off of it. I haven’t trusted them since Superfish.
Not willing to buy Lenovo… had a bad experience with my Y500 at home (massive hinge design flaw wore through the video cable every few months), and then they botched everything with their bundled spyware.
Also, they bought Motorola and closed down the office we had here; a bunch of my friends worked there. 😉
I’ve only got one lenovo I’ve ever purchased, it is 7+ years old think pad w520.
The thing is a real best; upgraded to 24GB of ram with dual core i7 with hyperthreading is still making me money doing freelance work doing C# projects for Windows users.
Couldn’t be happier, invested 2k into it and it paid for itself.
I like the macbook pro the best, and user one for work and personal projects (compiler/assmblers etc) as I like unix-like env much better than Windows.
Funny enough, devices from the competition comparable to what Apple sells tend to cost less, but not significantly less.
I got a 2012 non retina because it was less that 1/3 of the price, has room for 2 SSD’s if I remove the DVD Drive (both at 6mb/s as the 2012 model has the same speed on both SATA busses, unlike the 2011 which had half speed on the DVD drives SATA bus), and the RAM is user serviceable. I can also replace the battery with some effort. The processor in the i5 model is probably faster than the Microsoft Surface 2 Pro it was replacing and that one is about the same as the Macbook Air (it’s a 1.6GHz vs 2.xGHz, 2.2 I think) and had USB 3 on board.
I was looking at a refurbished MacBook Pro, but I ended up with a 2015 13″ Retina just a couple of months ago – after the Touch Bar Macs came out. Their appearance knocked down the price. So far, I like it. It’s my first ever Mac, too
Edited 2017-04-07 07:59 UTC
The next generation in portable computing. Let us introduce J.
With J you will get the ultimate in mobilized assistance. Unlike competitors which are bogged down with heavy, power hungry needless accessories. We’ve taken out the waste to deliver the ultimate experience. And no, we are not reintroducing Mag Lock, but rather a newer, even better connector. Introducing J-Plug. J-plug will work with all of your J devices including the upcoming jPhone and jAblet. One letter, one vision: J.
The days of an outdated high resolution computer screen are over. J doesn’t need one. GPU, gone. By removing this non-green technology, J becomes the first friendly environmental computer. It’s thin design means our heavy duty aluminum encasement can easily stack anywhere, including a landfill. But you won’t be throwing the J away, it’s got our exclusive 2 year technology guarantee. If at anytime the J doesn’t perform as we designed it, send it back to us, and we’ll make it right so that you can keep on using J for 2 years or even more.
Next, we removed the keyboard. What!?? Yes, the keyboard. This is a piece of antiquity that came from the typewriter era simply because nobody wanted to innovate.
No screen. No keyboard. Extra thin. Superior warranty.
Time to “think different”? We’ve now set the bar so high, that we can’t even use the word “think”.
J
Different
Edited 2017-04-06 04:56 UTC
There’s no reason to think that Apple will do a 180 degree turn on the direction of a Mac Pro. Modular can mean many things other than PCIe slots. So maybe more of a 90 degree where they have some new type of system whereby 1 or more GPUs or Storage Bays are added via a hard-dock (sans cables) Thunderbolt 3 connection. The core module has consumer friendly RAM, NVMe, and Xeon E5 v4 upgrades. Basically an Apple-ified Razer Project Christine.
” In addition, Apple is said to be exploring additional Retina MacBook Pro models without the Touch Bar”
Models without the TB have replaceable hard drives unlike their more expensive brethren where everything is soldered in. It is a small concession to upgradability but one that is appreciated, especially where logic boards fail. At least you are not entrusting your data to a repairer should that happen.
What’s “pro” about the trashcan mac ? They still try to sell this worthless piece of crap for 4600 euro with 8 core CPU, mediocre GPU and pathetic RAM and SSD capacity.
Xeon CPU, ECC RAM, Dual FirePro GPU’s, many Thunderbolt connectors, dual gigabit ethernet….It absolutely had Pro components in it.
The problem was that these Pro components never got updated, the price never got dropped, and many other things about this machine (internal expandability, thermals) were absolutely NOT Pro.
The trashcan was the absolute “form over function” device and was not made for their customers but for their developers to show off (“Can’t innovate my behind”)
The moment the 5K iMac came out the trashcan got even more ridiculous.
The MacBook Pro is another “form over function” device that isn’t what their customers want or need.
I am happy to hear that Apple is (planning to) make Pro products again and that they are admitting that they consumerised the Pro products and lost sight of those customers. Lets see what they come up with in the future, but lets also buy non-Apple Pro Products for now to satisfy Pro needs and to give Apple something to copy
“Pros” typically choose which components they need, Apple’s been trying to choose for them instead.
Everyone knows that there is far less hardware choice on the Apple side compared to the Windows/Linux side. That has been the situation for decades. Of course there are (still) Pros on the Apple side.
Pros often use what they get from their company and what everyone else uses. You don’t have to know everything about individual components of your tools to be a Pro. A Pro cares about the total product that he uses, not about the individual components (those are tinkerers, and can, but doesn’t have to overlap, with Pros)
The Mac Pro was simply a case where the total product wasn’t what Pros needed
I do think that the idea behind the trashcan was not that bad, but the technology is not there yet and maybe the actual form factor wasn’t that good either.
But going for external expandability is the way to go in my opinion. As external connections improve (and Apple has been an early adopter in many high performance external connectors) is going to be the way to go. Modular without the need to “open” a main module to fit the others in.
But then, you need a very capable external connector. This *must* include a way to have GPUs external without compromising any performance. Each module would be able to approach in its own way power consumption (and heat).
Just imagine stacking something like a mac mini that provides basic processor + memory and boot drive with your choice of GPU and maybe a set of disks/external storage. all that without having to open a box. It would also be great for servicing. A failure on the GPU will allow you to take it off and take it to servicing. Same with the CPU main/module. You could even use the functional parts of the computer if you fancy.
There is quite a bit of difference between this and just the usual “modular PC” like the cheese grater mac pro was. No need to open, no screws and connectors that are thought for users, no system assemblers. Very easy to add/remove hardware, and a very incremental path to upgrade.
But then, we’re not quite there IMO as those external interfaces are still evolving. But we may be there soon.
External expandability is great, and has been available on all pro-devices for a long time. The problem with the Mac Pro is that it ONLY had external expandability and no internal.
What I don’t understand is that Apple now “updated” the Mac Pro with faster CPU/GPU but they haven’t upgraded the Thunderbolt2 to Thunderbolt3. Basically they haven’t made any updates at all, they just sell the old “high-end” model for the old “low-end” price
You don’t have to imagine that, this already exists and you can buy it today….just not from Apple (hint, razor core)
You also don’t have to imagine it only for high-end-pro machines. “turn your phone into the compute engine of a lapdock/deskdock” devices are starting to become available as well
Edited 2017-04-06 11:45 UTC
The answer for why no Thunderbolt 3 is simple. The Mac Pro is on an old architecture. The prosumer equivalent of the chipset is X79. For example since then we have had the X99 chipset, with two CPU gens. X299 is coming out later this year.
So the Mac Pro is stuck with DDR3, in a DDR4 world.
Thunderbolt 3 is just not possible.
What they are doing is just what they did with the last modular Mac Pro, bump any of the specs they can without changing any of the core design.
Thanks for the chipset background info.
It is so sad to see that a company with hundreds of billions of dollars available and a “can’t innovate my ***” statement is simply milking the (cash)cow yet again
Which is actually my point. That was not so common when the mac pro was released. The connectors/protocols are still evolving (and may not cease to do so) and at the point of the trashcan were not ready for the task. Having the GPUs in the main system shows that.
Remember that the trashcan is limited to thunderbolt 2. Thunderbolt 3 has double the bandwidth (and it is still limited compared to PCIe x16) so you are making some sacrifices in there. So it is still not an option to base a “pro desktop” system on… unless you pick a solution that aggregates several thunderbolts to feed a single unit.
I *think* the capacity of connectors like thunderbolt is going to increase *faster* than their internal counterparts. Or, in any case, they will advance to the point of “don’t care” for many users. But we are not there yet, at least for the “pro” market.
I wonder if Apple is going to take that direction or not. IMO to pull it out in a good way a faster thunderbolt would be needed. The “pro” machine would be one with many of those faster thunderbolts. In a sense, a “pro” iMac would be one with many thunderbolts. Ability to aggregate the bandwidth of several thunderbolt to achieve at least PCIe x8, ideally PCIx16 on an external GPU. In the case of an iMac add also the bandwidth to output the display to the native screen.
And no, the razer core is not that. It is a nice toy, but the bandwidth is not there.
Modular design can also mean moving the iPhone as the main processing device for casual applications and the “Pro” dock just for enhancing its abilities once the iPhone is being docked.
What form or shape it will come in remains to be seen.
Edited 2017-04-06 11:51 UTC
A Beowulf cluster of iPhones?!
Parry,
Forget the iphone, I think a legit “cluster” is something that might be marketable. SMP scalability is often found lacking (adding more cores often means those cores are slower and resource contention is usually a barrier), but a computer running many fast nodes, a fast interconnect, and specialize OS to manage them all transparently could be a monster of a machine. I for one would be jealous of anyone who had a cluster in their PC tower
Granted I don’t know if this would be any value for the “pro” segment that apple traditionally markets to. Many of those have professional titles, but they’re really seeking appearance and thinness over sheer horsepower.
I don’t know if apple has any interest in redefining it’s pro market, but I would welcome the change if it started a personal computing cluster market war.
The current Mac Pro would make a great Mac Mini Pro. Getting stuck with 1x proc and 1-2x GPUs isn’t a great look. It really needed to allow a much wider array of options. A chassis with the ability to accept some combination of 1-4x procs, 1-4x GPUs, or 1-6x Phis with 4x NVMe slots would have made people pretty happy.
An ecosystem like that would be great for laptops, and we’re slowly getting there.
That’s actually a great point. The trashcan mac quad core could go for $1500 and it would still blow out the 2014 mac mini.
In reality, apple built a second g4 cube but made it a cylinder this time and that was a ripoff of the next cube. It failed in the market 3 times now. I wonder when they’ll try it again.
Apple needs to finally give us all what we want:
1. Upgradable mac mini with optional real processor option (non ultrabook, quad core.. think 2012 mac mini high end)
2. Mac Pro with updated xeon cpus. Perhaps a lowend version with a 6800k.
3. Stock iMac with a core i7 reference chip…. 7700k or similar.
4. super slow, cheap beater mac mini with anemic CPU to compute with lowend HP garbage like Tim wants to build. (this is just for tim, i don’t think consumers like it)
I should be able to walk into an apple store and come out with a computer containing:
1. At least a core i7 desktop CPU or better
2. 512GB disk space or better (SSD/nvme required)
3. 16GB or more. if it’s soldered, 32GB.
4. Upgradable or double the specs on RAM and disk.
5. A GPU that can play games. It should be able to run diablo 3, starcraft 2 and WoW at max or near max settings as these are all old games at this point. 2 of these can be done with intel GPU.
I shouldn’t have to special order it. I shouldn’t have to watch my PC from 2013 smoke a new mac. (it’s got a 4770 i7 and 32GB ram with SSD and Radeon Fury x nitro)
Prior to tim, we had progress:
1. Games were getting ported and ran. 90% of the games I wanted to play had mac versions too.
2. Apple had high end and low end macs. The lowend macs were a bit pricey still but one could save up for them. Apple always prices like everyone lives in new york city or cupertino ignoring how much money a mac is to a guy in nebraska.
3. Apple had ENTERPRISE hardware. Xserves, Xserve raid, a server OS that wasn’t a total joke but needed work.
4. Apple had headphone jacks.
5. Apple had growth in iOS devices across the board.
6. Most people that had used a mac would recommend one.
7. Johnny Ive wasn’t calling all the shots. The mac pro trash can should have never happened.
There has been a Mac released without a headphone jack?!?
iOS devices not growing? What are we complaining about iPod Touch? iPads, which except for the piles of minis that sold before the iPhone 6/7 Plus are growing.
That said, getting rid of Toslink audio output on some Macs is killing me. And I agree that they should have persisted with the Enterprise servers/macOS. And saying that “the mac pro trashcan should never have happened” – the G4 Mac Cube certainly did happen – Steve was just as prone to mistakes as Tim is — and I wouldn’t be surprised if some people keep their Trash Cans as long as Cube buyer kept theirs…
FWIW, my favorite (personally owned) Macs: the original 128K Mac (the Cube of its day), Mac SE, the 2009 cheese grater Mac Pro (still in heavy use), and the 2013 retina MacBookPro (still in heavy use)
The thing about the Cube…. was that it sold _alongside_ tower options at the time.
The Trashcan _replaced_ the tower units. There is no other choice for a headless CPU that isn’t a ‘mini’.
That’s just it though: The G4 Mini was the “replacement” for the G4 Cube. Smaller, quieter, less expandable, less expensive, and slower…but it was the new Cube. It even had the same shape looking down from the top.
Now, we have the 2013 Mac Pro (trashcan) that is the replacement for the tower Mac Pro; again, smaller, quieter, less expandable, and slower. The only real difference is the Trashcan was technically more expensive than what it replaced, if you consider that you pay the same for less expansion.
To put it another way, nothing has really changed apart from the move from PowerPC to Intel; since the G4 days we’ve had a low end headless desktop and a “Pro” headless desktop.
I’m going to disagree about keeping the servers going. If they were interested in servers, they should have bought Sun.
I will conceded there are management tools bundled with MacOS Server, but MacOS server on a VM would fill that niche just fine without needing to build hardware for it.
They could even drop MacOS server if they would work with the FOSS community. They could contribute to FreeIPA for example, and provide GUI tools in MacOS to setup everything that needs to be setup for authentication. The technology is there.
For me it is the most awesome mac to date. But the price is exorbitant. At $1500 with “ordinary” i7 and single beefy GPU it would be perfect.
For a professional Workstation, I would like a lot more investment in Apple on the product. Especially if you are a Linux or Windows shop. If you are going to invest in a different infrastructure, I would need more investment in apple, As the company grows, there will be the need for new systems, and replacing systems on a regular basis. Having their products stannate means you are better off on a model where you are more flexible. It isn’t about Style, Performance, or reliability it is about keeping your organization functioning and keeping up with competition.
Still happily using my 2010 mac pro.
I run linux on it, though. Can’t be bothered with modern incarnations of os x. I gave up after mountain lion.
It’s a great machine, and i really don’t want to replace it, but it’s starting to show it’s age.
For most tasks, it’s still fine, and it’s still as fast as it ever was, but even regular quad core laptops seem to run circles around it now.
The EvilFI means that you are stuck with apple wrt video cards and bootable devices.
I run a video card in it that doesn’t have apple firmware, and basically this means that you have no video until the operating system loads the driver for it.
I wanted to upgrade from current (oooold) SSD to an NVME solution, but this is tricky as well.
Need to be at a certain firmware revision if you want to change the CPUs as well. Limited to a selection of old chips too. This machine won’t boot with a more modern CPU, even if they should otherwise be compatible.
YET!
Aside from all that. I still think it’s a wonderful machine.
It is a very high quality piece of machinery.
Same here. Upgraded to a six core 3.47GHz Xeon and I’m happy.
Glad to hear.
I don’t think i will be swapping out my machine for now.
Will be interesting to see what the new design is going to be like.
I’m not holding my breath though …
Was the process of swapping out the CPUs an easy one?
I’ve heard horror stories about the IHS being an issue and cracking the die.
I have zero trust in criticism of Apple, not because they don’t deserve it (of course they do) but because almost every critic of Apple would be exactly as critical no matter what they did. It’s just like with Nintendo — doesn’t matter what they do, hating them is its own cottage industry, and that damages criticism as a field by making all such criticism, even true and valid and well-meant, suspect.