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Desktops (Apple) Apple Hardware

Report Claims That Apple Has Yet Again Put the Mac Pro 'On the Back Burner' (arstechnica.com) 22

Posted by BeauHD from the don't-get-your-hopes-up dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple's Power Mac and Mac Pro towers used to be the company's primary workstations, but it has been years since they were updated with the same regularity as the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. The Mac Pro has seen just four hardware updates in the last 15 years, and that's counting a 2012 refresh that was mostly identical to the 2010 version. Long-suffering Mac Pro buyers may have taken heart when Apple finally added an M2 Ultra processor to the tower in mid-2023, making it one of the very last Macs to switch from Intel to Apple Silicon -- surely this would mean that the computer would at least be updated once every year or two, like the Mac Studio has been? But Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says that Mac Pro buyers shouldn't get their hopes up for new hardware in 2026.

Gurman says that the tower is "on the back burner" at Apple and that the company is "focused on a new Mac Studio" for the next-generation M5 Ultra chip that is in the works. As we reported earlier this year, Apple doesn't have plans to design or release an M4 Ultra, and the Mac Studio refresh from this spring included an M3 Ultra alongside the M4 Max. Note that Gurman carefully stops short of saying we definitely won't see a Mac Pro update next year -- the emphasis on the Mac Studio merely "suggests the Mac Pro won't be updated in 2026 in a significant way," and internal sources tell him "Apple has largely written off the Mac Pro." The current Mac Pro does still use the M2 Ultra rather than the M3 Ultra, which indicates that Apple doesn't see the need to update its high-end desktop every time it releases a suitable chip. But all of Apple's other desktops -- the iMac, the Mac mini, and the Studio -- have skipped a silicon generation once since the M1 came out in 2020.
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Report Claims That Apple Has Yet Again Put the Mac Pro 'On the Back Burner' More

Report Claims That Apple Has Yet Again Put the Mac Pro 'On the Back Burner'

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  • I have a Mac Studio. I also have a Mac pro from the last Intel era that is full of memory, cores, SSDs and is basically a brick now.
    There's no reason for a computer to take up more space than a Mac Studio.

    • PCI Cards is the only reason. I have the same Mac Pro

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

      There's no reason for a computer to take up more space than a Mac Studio.

      Sure there is. When you want more power and performance for a lower price than anything Apple has ever released, or the ability and space to easily swap parts.

      • Valid point. That's actually what I did with the previous tower. Created a then-supercomputer at relatively low cost. Used it for a year like that, upgraded things like the graphics card, ran linux on it because Apple didn't support the hardware anymore. But then I got tired of debugging linux audio problems and bought the Mac Studio, which was way more powerful and had zero issues to troubleshoot.
        I am complaining about being in that hardware transition phase where a really powerful Intel machine looks like

  • The Mac Pro is about the slots (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheMiddleRoad ( 1153113 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2025 @05:33PM (#65803611)

    And there isn't much of a market for Macs with slots. Thunderbolt 5 takes care of a lot of IO, and if you need more, you're probably not going to use a Mac. Adding wide PCIE 5.0 to the Ultra 5 is going to take some work that is probably better spent on just getting it out the door without the I/O wasting space for 95% of users.

  • Zero Surprise (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WankerWeasel ( 875277 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2025 @06:10PM (#65803667)

    The Mac Studio largely filled the space. And let's be real, the Pro has been on the back burner for more than a decade. It's never been something they ever believed would sell in numbers.

  • The Mac IIci was on the market for over 3 years before it got replaced. You never see that kind of longevity anymore.

  • Apple used to be famous for bringing out new libraries to "revolutionize" computing, hounding developers to become dependent, then dumping them after a few years when they didn't get mentioned enough in the press. Lots of us from the Classic era got burned by embracing the uber-hyped QuickDraw3D or OpenDoc, for example.

    Now Apple seems to be keeping (mostly crappy, the last 15 years) software around, and abandoning hardware that doesn't make them immediately rich. Progress?

    I got into Macs around 1985 and ref

  • Garbage OS running garbage software on top of garbage hardware.

  • doesn't see the need to update its high-end desktop every time it releases a suitable chip

    Then it's not high end is it?

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