MP All Models Is the Mac Pro still relevant in 2025

[Jethro!]

If Apple updated the 2019 MP with all its upgradability and expandability, absolutely YES I'd buy one.
But the current MP offering, absolutely NO.

 

[mattspace]

The 2019 Mac Pro does consume a bit of power, I can see what my 28 core W6800X machine does powered by the batteries I have. I thought it would be worse to be honest.

My Mac Pro itself sits on about 190-220w at idle. It's on a 10 amp circuit. We have a 12+kw reverse cycle air conditioner, and the kitchen's oven has a direct 40 amp line to the fusebox. I probably use more power making lunch, and boiling the kettle for cups of coffee in one day, than running the Mac for a week.

 

[Happy_John]

If Apple updated the 2019 MP with all its upgradability and expandability, absolutely YES I'd buy one.
But the current MP offering, absolutely NO.

It’s not going to happen. :-( Even if Apple started buying CPUs from intel again (they won’t), Intel changed the form factor of Xeon chips, so the main board, chip mounts and heat sink would have to redesigned. Looking at the M2 Mac Pro, Apple is not interested in redesigning the components of the the Mac Pro - nit a big enough customer case to justify the cost. With the M2 they basically changed as little as possible of the 2019 components - hence an air cooling system that doesn’t make sense, and having covers and access points for RAM slots where there are no RAM slots. The Mac Pro case is lovely, but it doesn’t match the M2-focused comments inside it.

 

[Regulus67]

... and having covers and access points for RAM slots where there are no RAM slots.

This is where the two SSD modules are located now.

 

[RashyIsBackV2]

From an emotional standpoint, it would be sad if Apple abandons the mighty "flagship tower" they always had. But being honest, you can get the Studio with M4 Max with much stronger Single Score, comparable Multi Score, better GPU with RT+AV1, TB5, more convenient I/O, far less power draw, far smaller size and a smaller price. It's a no-brainer, unless Apple puts a M4/M5 Ultra into the tower, and you really need that performance and (very limited) internal expandability.

Tldr: I like the Mac Pro, but wouldn't bother, even as power-user. At least in 2025.

 

[theluggage]

Who says an Mx Trachcan would have a triangular thermal heat dissipation unit for an Mx ultra?

Because the "triangular thermal heat dissipation unit" is the only reason that the trashcan was, well, trashcan-shaped!

What you're asking for is just a circular (for no good reason) Mac Studio.

 

[m1maverick]

People need to stop engaging in memoryholing, using comforting fantasies about what they wish the 2013 was, and acknowledge what the 2013 actually was - a bad product.

I disagree in that I don't think it was a bad product. It was a bad professional product. Had Apple also released an expandable Mac Pro along the lines of the 2006-2012 and 2019 Mac Pros and called marketed (and called it something different) the 2013 Mac Pro along the lines of the Studio then I think we wouldn't be having this discussion (again).

 

[m1maverick]

Coming from 2019 Mac Pro, I'd say the next Mac Pro would need at least dGPU support, otherwise I would go for Mac Studio. In fact, if next Mac Pro gets M5 Extreme or a bigger chip than Ultra, that might have its own merits.

If that were the case then it would seem an M5 Extreme would be an artificial differentiation for the Mac Pro over a Studio (assuming the Studio chassis could properly cool this theoretical chip). IMO what makes a pro machine is not just having the fastest / most capable CPU but rather a faster / more capable system. Currently the 2023 Mac Pro is, IMO, slightly more capable than the Studio (ignoring for the fact that Mac Pro is using older technology than the Studio).

 

[theluggage]

I probably use more power making lunch, and boiling the kettle for cups of coffee in one day, than running the Mac for a week.

Which is how Apple Silicon loses one of its Unique Selling Points when applied to the "powerful tower workstation" market.

Laptops: better battery life.
Small form factor: the "small" bit + near-silent operation
Server room: when you've got 20 of the beggars running 24/7 tose 200Ws start to add up... (unfortunately, AWS, Google, Ampere are already there...)
Tower of Power: Uh... just get a coffee machine that only heats the water that you use.

And because of that, the Mac hasn't gone anywhere in more than a decade

Because of Apple Silicon? I doubt it.

Because MacOS UI has lost its lead and is turning into a form-over-function mess? (*cough* Liquid Glass?) Maybe.

Because people are tightening belts & Mac has nothing to offer laptop-wise below about $1000 (and heading skyward as soon as you try to match RAM and storage to their current PC)? Seems plausible. We'll see if the rumoured low cost laptop is actually low-cost...

Because whatever Apple do, Windows Users will stick with Windows even if MS stuff it with ads, force-install faulty upgrades while you are in the middle of a job, keep trying to resurrect Recall... I think we have a winner.

 

[mattspace]

I disagree in that I don't think it was a bad product. It was a bad professional product. Had Apple also released an expandable Mac Pro along the lines of the 2006-2012 and 2019 Mac Pros and called marketed (and called it something different) the 2013 Mac Pro along the lines of the Studio then I think we wouldn't be having this discussion (again).

Even if it was Mac Mini cheap, and called the Mac Extra, it would still be a bad computer. Consuming its GPUs, being a tall narrow device with lots of cabled I/O connecting high on its body, being a shape that meant it couldn't be mounted on its side (Like an XBox Series X, which has the same chimney, but keeps all the I/O in the bottom half of the device to keep leverage low down).

It wasn't bad as a Mac Pro, it was bad as a product.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Right, and if there was a theoretical M4 capable of doing the level of work the 4090 equipped machine could do, it would use just as much power doing it. At idle, AS is very low draw. But I'll also suggest you're quoting peak draw for the Intel system, as if it actually consumes that under most circumstances.

The consistent reporting on Apple Silicon laptops was that they burn through their batteries just as fast as the intel models they replaced, when people were actually doing serious work on them.

You do not make sense. Your claim "When you pin Apple Silicon to the wall with a 100% workload, it eats just as much power as everything else" is simply not true. The fact is that Apple's M-series are more efficient.

As to the statement "Apple Silicon laptops was that they burn through their batteries just as fast as the intel models they replaced," all I can say is A) that batteries are a separate discussion and B) that I own both [2011, 2016, 2023 MBPs] and strongly disagree with your implication that either of the Mac laptops "burn through their batteries." IMO Mac laptop/battery performance is quite good, but you are of course welcome to be wrong and disagree.

Anecdotal note: Of those three MBPs only the 2011 box ever had the battery wear out, and that was after ~7 years IIRC. Each of those MBPs was used every single day on both battery and on mains power until I got a newer model, except for a few backpacking trips.

An earlier pre-2010 MBP did have a its modular battery fail, quite dramatically. It literally swelled up right in front of me. I was coincidentally watching it as it went through airport security. Security did not notice, and I did not let on because I did not have time to deal with security personnel. I pulled the battery as soon as it was through security and did not take the swelling battery on the plane; the laptop was not damaged.

 

[MacHeritage]

Aside from flash storage everything else (except, maybe video ports because I don't know what that is) is easily handled via Thunderbolt / USB. In fact David Plumber (of Daves Garage) gave internal storage as the justification for buying his 2023 Mac Pro.

I don't like having a lot of extra large boxes (thunderbolt expansion cases), fan noise and cable clutter, like the 2013 Mac Pro was like when adding on, just to have basic expansions.

That is what a Mac Pro is for and it works really well if expansion is needed. Plus, it can all be contained in one sleek Mac Pro with wheels, if so desired.

 

[m1maverick]

It wasn't bad as a Mac Pro, it was bad as a product.

I disagree.

 

[Happy_John]

This is where the two SSD modules are located now.

View attachment 2528856

Yep, you're right, below is the 2019 equivalent. My bad. I thought the SSD was still in the same location as on the 2019.

I've never owned a 2019 Mac Pro, but I've opened one up and helped add components to one. I've never opened a 2023 "in the flesh".


It does show that they did the absolute minimum redesign of the mainboard, and no redesign at all of the enclosure or the fan / heat management system. On the one hand, you could say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", but I honestly take it as doing the absolute minimum to modify the 2019 design to kludge in the M2 Ultra.

As a tower, the 2019 is a lovely design. As was the 5,1 design for its time. I understand them reusing it. But it does show a lack of effort by the design on the 2023 MP compared to the 2019 MP.

I bang on about this a lot, but I do think it was a lost opportunity by Apple not to put the M2 Ultra SoC on a removable card, as the CPU / RAM tray was on the 5,1, then charge close the the price of a Mac Studio for a replacement / upgrade SoC card. It would have made the 2023 Mac Pro a more attractive proposition in that you could upgrade the SoC itself (by essentially buying a whole new computer, in effect) but keep you case, which really is the USP of the 2023 Mac Pro.

 

[fuchsdh]

They're the SSDs. The RAM slots (with covers) are on the other side of the backplane. The compartments with covers Yep, you're right, below is the 2019 equivalent. My bad. I thought the SSD was still in the same location as on the 2019.

I've never owned a 2019 Mac Pro, but I've opened one up and helped add components to one. I've never opened a 2023 "in the flesh".


It does show that they did the absolute minimum redesign of the mainboard, and no redesign at all of the enclosure or the fan / heat management system. On the on hand, you could say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", but I honestly take it as doing the absolute minimum to modify the 2019 design to kludge in the M2 Ultra.

As a tower, the 2019 is a lovely design. As was the 5,1 design for its time. I understand them reusing it. But it does show a lack of effort by the design on the 2023 MP compared to the 2019 MP.

I bang on about this a lot, but I do think it was a lost opportunity by Apple not to put the M2 Ultra SoC on a removable card, as the CPU / RAM tray was on the 5,1, then charge close the the price of a Mac Studio for a replacement / upgrade SoC card. It would have made the 2023 Mac Pro a more attractive proposition in that you could upgrade the SoC itself (by essentially buying a whole new computer, in effect) but keep you case, which really is the USP of the 2023 Mac Pro.

Yeah, doing a sort of daughtercard option to give a limited upgrade potential would have been interesting and justified the cost of the Mac Pro a bit more. But given that they just were slotting stuff in with the design of least resistance, it doesn't seem likely they would go through the effort and engineering that kind of bespoke solution. It's a shame, though.

 

[maxoakland]

I think Apple has made it less relevant than it could be. There's no reason it needs to be a small tower. When you need that much power, size isn't *that* important

Removing the ability to upgrade and add things like RAM and video cards is a huge knock against it. And this also massively increases the price for people who need a lot of RAM. And the price is already too high

 

[m1maverick]

I don't like having a lot of extra large boxes (thunderbolt expansion cases), fan noise and cable clutter, like the 2013 Mac Pro was like when adding on, just to have basic expansions.

That is what a Mac Pro is for and it works really well if expansion is needed. Plus, it can all be contained in one sleek Mac Pro with wheels, if so desired.

I am right there with you which is why I was never a proponent of the 2013 Mac Pro as a replacement for the cMP.

 

[avro707]

Because whatever Apple do, Windows Users will stick with Windows even if MS stuff it with ads, force-install faulty upgrades while you are in the middle of a job

Apple had its problems for mac pro users with PCI-E storage dropping away while you were using the machine.

That impacted me and many others here - causing huge inconvenience. It took a long time to be fixed as well.

Apple has its share of faulty upgrades as well which you could also acknowledge. Windows on the same machine had no issues with the PCI-E storage.

The 2013 MP was a nice looking thing, but not a Mac Pro. Not easy to expand, not easy to work on either.

The 2019 is the easiest to work on - excellent for RAM upgrades, only the GPU situation (created deliberately by Apple) and the no longer available SSD kits are a problem.

The Mac Pro of today is a windows workstation with dual Xeons, 4 GPUs and a lot of storage and RAM, running W11 Pro for Workstations.

 

[OS6-OSX]

Fixing on dual cheap and nasty video cards was stupid.

calling them Fire Pros when they were consumer tech Radeons was stupid.

The thermal chimney was stupid.

Making it round was stupid

to plug / unplug is stupid.

The chromed surface finish is stupid.

So you're saying Apple should have shipped t-ships with every nMP!
I remember the days of the nMP bashing! Flat 5 and I were in the middle of it! Those were the days!

 

[AF_APPLETALK]

...which worked really, really well for almost their entire product range, except for that one, shrinking, 1% niche that needed a big box'o'slots. Turns out, the iPad and iPhone were already doing tasks like image processing and video handling that would have been Mac Pro territory a few years back.


Depends what you mean by "form factor" - the "small non-expandable system relyng on Thunderbolt for i/o" does seem to have come of age with the Mac Mini/Studio. Maybe it would have worked better if they'd run it alongside an updated tower Mac Pro for a while - instead of letting the previous Mac Pro wither for a couple of years (it had been discontinued in Europe for want of a plastic fan guard).

However, the actual design of the trashcan "form factor" included the "CPU and two GPUs around a triangular chimney" concept (which led to the cylindrical shape) turned out to be a complete stinker. The market stuck with big, single-chip GPU cards that were 90% heatsink. Also, the elephant in the room at the time was that a lot of potential customers wanted NVIDIA and CUDA rather than AMD and OpenCL - which was ruled out by Politics rather than any technical issue.

OK, so the Mac Studio has somewhat redeemed the "small, sealed system" concept, but it rather depends on the low-power, system-on-a-chip (including a half-decent, power efficient GPU) design of Apple Silicon - which doesn't suit the traingular-core Trashcan concept.


No, because the problem wouldn't have just been the i9, but the single huge GPU that the i9 would have needed to make the system a contender. The trashcan design bet the farm on the CPU + 2 small/medium GPU formula.

Obviously, given that they managed to fit the i9 plus an OK GPU into the iMac - and a Xeon W + half-decent GPU into the iMac Pro they could have made a small, headless desktop i9 or Xeon Mac, but the trashcan design wouldn't have cut it.

Real problam is, though, the "Mac Pro" market seems like a very low priority for Apple (probably because it is small and shrinking). They keep releasing a model, neglecting it for years, then completely change course and target a new market. Vis:

1. 2006 Original "cheesegrater" Mac Pro - entry level was relatively affordable (for what you got) Xeon/PCIe towern "pickup truck" for anybody who needed a powerful, versatile Mac. Top-end options were pretty high-powered (and pricey). Became abandonware after ~2010 (plus, there's a whole story about the original 32 bit firmware models getting obsoleted pretty quickly).

2. Trashcan - a non-expandable "appliance" for FCP and other OpenCL-optimised workflows. Interesting idea but - certainly at the time - not really a replacement for the cheesegrater. Never got a significant update (beyond dropping the original entry model and shifting the others down a price notch).

3. 2017 iMac Pro. Now, apparently all "Pros" obviously want an all-in-one and never have more specialised display requirements. Right. I strongly suspect this was originally meant to be the replacement for the trashcan - the famous Apple U-turn press conference came a just the time when they might have been sharing iMac Pro designs with key developers/customers. Pretty clear that - at that stage - the iMP would have been in advanced development while the "mythical modular Mac Pro" was completely undefined. Of course, this also turned out to be a one-and-done (may have been some GPU updates?) and was overtaken CPU-wise by regular i9 iMacs.

(Also suggesting the "iMac was to be the new Mac Pro" theory: Apple nerfed the 2014 Mac Mini with a low-powered CPU and graphics, leaving the field clear for iMac to become the only viable medium-to-powerful Mac desktop system. Then - no upgrade/replacement for the Thunderbolt display, although the 2016 LG Ultrafine looks suspiciously like the innards of a new Apple-designed display abandoned and shoved in a plastic enclosure. All-in-one was obviously the preferred route ).

4. 2019 Mac Pro. The "Steampunk" design may be a reference to the late, lamented Cheesegrater but it's really aimed at a different market that wants multiple high-end GPUs and biblical amounts of memory. Spend $20k and you'll get something competitive with equivalently-specced PC hardware (if you compare like-for-like) - but the $6000 entry level is twice the price of the Trashcan and the base performance worse than a much cheaper iMac - only makes sense if you're going to spend another $10k on GPUs, RAM and storage.

5. 2023 Mac Pro. May look like a 2019 Mac Pro - but it's really just a Studio Ultra with (non-GPU) PCIe slots and a lot of fresh air in a hand-me-down Mac Pro case. There's a market, but its only a subset of the 2019 Mac Pro market. It's already overdue a processor bump and I suspect it's not a product for the ages.

All good points.

I completely agree about recycling the 2019 case, extremely wasteful. All that PCB and aluminum, and for what?

Something closer to the size of a Quadra 700 would make more sense in the era of AS. Just enough room for a few cards and a bit of storage expansion, which is all you can do with current monstrous design.

 

[Regulus67]

Yep, you're right, below is the 2019 equivalent. My bad. I thought the SSD was still in the same location as on the 2019.

I've never owned a 2019 Mac Pro, but I've opened one up and helped add components to one. I've never opened a 2023 "in the flesh".

I own two 2019 Mac Pros, and very nice to work on. I upgraded from 16 to 24-core (used) on one. And upgraded the SSD on both. First to 4TB directly from Apple.
And then found an 8TB kit brand new on ebay. Installed in the second machine.
I also got my two Pro W6800x Duos brand new from Amazon.

iFixIt gave it repairability 9/10.
Never seen the 2023 in real life either.

I will say the DFU restore process is easy. But installing macOS is not a smooth process. Was easy first time with macOS Monterey, on the 4TB kit. As I did not want to install macOS Ventura, which was the latest at that time.
But a year later when I got the second machine with the 8TB kit installed. It was very difficult. And I could not get any older macOS to download and install. But was forced to use the latest at that time, macOS Sonoma.

I have had better success later with two iMac Pros. And installed older macOSes, after upgrading the SSDs (used 2 and 4 TB kit). But they did not get the same macOS version, even if I tried to get macOS High Sierra. One got Mojave, the other got Catalina.

I bang on about this a lot, but I do think it was a lost opportunity by Apple not to put the M2 Ultra SoC on a removable card, as the CPU / RAM tray was on the 5,1, then charge close the the price of a Mac Studio for a replacement / upgrade SoC card.

Did Apple sell the dual CPU tray as a separate upgrade for the 5,1?

If Apple had a removable card/tray, like you suggest. How would that function? Slot in more memory? Or a chip with more CPU or GPU cores?
Or are you talking about a card that would fit in the 2019 model?

 

[Regulus67]

... In fact David Plumber (of Daves Garage) gave internal storage as the justification for buying his 2023 Mac Pro.

I saw his video as well. And I can see why some people might need the M2 Ultra Mac Pro.
He also used that machine in testing LLMs on different hardware. And it was a top machine for that use case, as it has a lot of unified memory, read GPU memory.
Now the Mac Studio m3 Ultra is of course much more capable in most areas

 

[Maigrais]

Yes, and the question of whether a Mac Pro is a valid option then will be a relevant one, but for a lot of people running Mac Pros, which (unless you have more money than sense) were bought for a particular professional purpose, and the machine still fits that purpose, it really isn’t. It’s a professional tool, and if it still meets a professional needs, then it still works.

Just because Apple declares a product “vintage” or “obsolete”, it doesn’t mean that product is automatically bricked.

I know a hell of a lot of people who are still happily running MP 5,1s. They’re not working specifically in the tech industry. The drawbacks of all Intel Mac Pros is not that it is an irrelevant machine or it is somehow worse because it is not new, but simply 1) their power consumption (which is a big issue) and 2) software compatibility ( which can be an issue, but not as much as people think. If you work in print design or in a recording studio, you might want to upgrade you 5,1, but you don’t need to.

The Apple Silicon Mac Pro is an incredibly niche machine. There are people who need very specific / proprietary PCIe card slots fir very specific use cases, or need immense amounts if RAM, but it’s a very small number. Apple clearly didn’t want to release an Apple Silicon Mac Pro at all, the Studio is clearly the spiritual successor to the Mac Pro, but they released one fir the reasons made in posts above 1) to appease a very specific user-base and 2) political reasons - the 2019 Mac Pro was the “Made in the USA” Mac, and the 7,1 ticks that box.

A new Mac Pro will be relevant to a very small customer-base, and irrelevant to the vast majority of customers. To be fair, any desktop Mac is irrelevant to the majority if Mac customers, as Mac desktop sales are dwarfed by Mac laptop sales. And iPhone sales are far larger than all Mac sakes combined.

Tw Mac Pro always were, and even more so today, is, irrelevant to the mojito ty if Apple’s customers.

Given that, blanket questions/statements like this “ Is the Mac Pro relevant in 2025” make no sense. Irrelevant to whom? No every Apple customer has identical priorities. The Mac Pro is now a niche a product as Apple makes.

I needed a Mac pro for my work in 2010. I don’t need an M2 Mac Pro in 2025. That’s me. Other people may be different.

It’s not a “one size fits all” situation. You can’t say a particular Mac relevant or irrelevant, you can only say if it is relevant or irrelevant for you and your use cases.

Today, there is nothing that an Apple MacBook Pro can’t handle. Trust me, I used to be a desktop avid desktop user. This new generation of Apple Silicone MacBook Pro will slice through anything you throw at it no matter your discipline. Plus they’re portable.

 

[Happy_John]

Did Apple sell the dual CPU tray as a separate upgrade for the 5,1?

That I do not know. It would be worth googling it. But obviously the CPUs were socketed and the RAM was slottable.

Apple would „sell” you a replacement Gray if you original tray failed, but they may have insisted you give them the broken one. I know Greg Gant ( Definitive Mac Pro Upgrade guy) complained about Apple not letting him keep the broken part of his Mac Pro 2019 when he needed a part replaced.

I have both a single and double CPU tray for my 5,1, but I bought the double second-hand, and I presume it came from a full MP 5,1 that was broken up for parts, maybe the backplane had failed.

If Apple had a removable card/tray, like you suggest. How would that function? Slot in more memory? Or a chip with more CPU or GPU cores?
Or are you talking about a card that would fit in the 2019 model?

No, absolutely not a card that would go onto a 2019 backplane. This would be a completely different design of backplane, although two thirds / three quarters could look identical to the mainboard in a 2023 Mac Pro.

I’d imagine the SoC being on a card that would itself be similiar to a xeon chip, nasilały a big Square, in that the SoC say in the centrę of the card, possibly with a NAND on the card itself for the equivalent of the EFI, but the OS itself would be located on the root SSD, and the back of the card is covered with pina that fits and then is clamped into a socket on the backplane. SO the whole SoC card ( not just the Soc) is similar to an intel/amd chip, and then a heatsink/cooling unit placed on top.

Or to visualise it another way, imagine the mainboard of a M4 mini or Studio with a ton of pins covering the whole of the underside to act as an interconbector that mounts parallel, not perpendicular, to the backplane of this hypothetical Mac Pro. IF you know the Raspberry Pi, think of it like a „hat”, but with a massive imterconnector, not just a small slot.

Obviously it wouldn’t be the same type of socket or be compatable with and AMD or Intel chips.

 

[iPadified]

Because the "triangular thermal heat dissipation unit" is the only reason that the trashcan was, well, trashcan-shaped!

What you're asking for is just a circular (for no good reason) Mac Studio.

Exactly! Reason: Beautiful and unobtrusive. Mac Studio is not, there is no imagination there and screams computer. Form matters or else we would still have only towers (for no good reason).