Per què Apple ha eliminat el Mac Pro després de vint anys

For almost 20 years, Apple sold a

computer called the Mac Pro. It was

their most powerful and pricey desktop

made for professionals. This [music]

past March, Apple stopped making it with

the model disappearing from their

website and the company confirming to

tech outlet 9to5 Mac that it has no

plans to build another. For most people,

this news was irrelevant. The Mac Pro

never sold in very high volume since it

was made [music] for a small market of

power users that could afford to spend

$6,000 or more on their machine. [music]

But within that market, its

discontinuation was a big deal since it

marked the end of a computing era that

began with the [music] original Power

Mac in 1994. In this video, I'll explain

the biggest factors that contributed to

Apple ending the Mac Pro line [music]

and what that means for power users who

may have wanted one. Speaking of things

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comments. All right, now back to the Mac

Pro. Now, most regular Apple users today

have probably never even used a Mac Pro.

So, let's start by clarifying what it

was and why it even existed. The Mac Pro

was one of the most powerful computers

Apple made. The original model came out

in 2006, replacing the Power Mac. And

while it featured a new design, it still

used the mini tower form factor, a term

used for any personal computer housed in

a tall rectangular case that was usually

placed next to or under your desk with a

monitor, keyboard, and mouse connected

by cables. This form factor was the most

practical, profitable choice for

manufacturers, and it became extremely

popular in the '90s. Many towers had

enough space to house all the standard

computer parts and often featured extra

slots in bays for additional hard

drives, disc drives, RAM sticks, and

graphics cards. They were also modular,

meaning users could replace parts if

they broke or were eventually outdated,

which was cheaper than buying a whole

new computer. All that internal space

also meant good airflow, so the

components stayed cool and ran reliably.

The tower essentially ensured that your

purchase was futureproof. But there were

downsides to it. They often featured

unappealing beige enclosures, and

accessing those internal parts could be

inconvenient. Typically, you had to

unscrew and remove a side panel, reach

inside the computer, and often feel your

way around to find the right cable to

disconnect. While setting one up meant

creating a tangled mess of cables for

the monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers,

printer, power, and networking. For most

ordinary people, mini towers weren't

something they necessarily liked. It

just happened to be the most affordable

option. That's why the industry was

shocked when Apple revealed the original

iMac in 1998. It combined the mini tower

and monitor into one enclosure, which

was a translucent blue instead of beige.

The design was so popular that iMac went

on to sell over 2 million units in its

first year, but that model was designed

for casual users. The optimal form

factor for Apple's most powerful Mac was

still the Mini Tower. So rather than

creating a radical new design for the

Power Mac G3, they just made some

thoughtful improvements like a more

appealing blue and white enclosure,

built-in handles for easy transport, and

the fold down slide door where pulling a

single latch would open up the machine

and give users easy access to every

internal component. No tools necessary.

You could even open the Power Mac while

it was running. Apple saved the more

radical redesign for the following year.

In July 2000, they revealed the PowerMac

G4 Cube, a tiny 8-in computer suspended

in a clear acrylic enclosure. It didn't

have a fan, so it was relatively quiet,

while the CD drive was on top, making

the computer resemble a toaster when a

disc was ejected. But the coolest part

was that all the internal electronics

could be lifted out using a handle on

the bottom. The G4 Cube was a huge

engineering and design achievement. But

unlike iMac, professional users didn't

care if their computer was big or small,

acrylic or beige. They just wanted it to

be powerful and expandable. And while

the G4 Cube had the same 500 MHz

processor as the G4 Tower, its graphics

performance suffered due to thermal

constraints from the passive cooling

system. Its compact size also left no

room for internal PCI slots and offered

few expandability options. It was also

priced $200 higher than a similarly

powered G4 Tower. For the vast majority

of Pro customers, the choice was easy.

The G4 Cube achieved just 150,000 unit

sales in its first year before being

discontinued, while the G4 Tower passed

800,000 sales during the same period.

Apple's marketing chief, Phil Schiller,

admitted that quote, "Cube owners love

their cubes, but most customers decided

to buy our powerful Power Mac G4 mini

towers instead." So, for the next 2

years, Apple focused on building the

most powerful mini tower they could,

which turned out to be the Power Mac G5

in 2003. It was the first personal

computer with a 64-bit processor, which

Apple called the fastest in the world.

But all that power came at a price. The

Power Mac G5 Cube ran hotter and drew

more wattage than any Mac before. Heat

is the enemy of a processor. When a chip

gets too hot, it has to throttle,

deliberately slowing itself down to

avoid overheating and damaging

components. So to keep it cool, the

Power Mac G5 was designed for maximum

air flow. Apple replaced its plastic

enclosure with aluminum, a far better

material for thermal conductivity. They

also covered the front and back in

perforations so air could be pushed

through without resistance. The

enclosure was divided into four

different thermal zones, each with its

own cooling system. A total of nine fans

were used, up from four on the previous

generation Power Mac. But because each

fan could be controlled independently,

the new model was twice as quiet. The

problem was all those fans weren't

enough for the high-end 2.5 GHz

configuration. So, Apple did something

pretty unusual for a consumer desktop.

They added a liquid cooling system to

remove excess heat and prevent

throttling. Now, typically, Apple would

debut a new chip in their desktops and

then add it to their laptops soon after,

but they ran into serious problems

trying to put the G5 chip into a laptop

since it would overheat so easily. They

never figured out that problem and no

PowerBook G5 was ever made. That meant

Apple had hit a thermal wall. If there

were to be a G6 chip, it would likely

run even hotter than the G5, which would

only make a bad situation worse. That's

when Steve Jobs realized chasing raw

power was a mistake. The more important

metric for a computer chip was

performance per watt, which put the

focus on power efficiency rather than

raw performance. So at their developer

conference in 2005, Jobs announced Apple

would abandon Power PC and switch to

Intel chips, saying, quote, "When we

look at the future road maps projected

out into mid 2006 and beyond, what we

see is the Power PC gives us sort of 15

units of performance per watt, but the

Intel road map in the future gives us

70. And so this tells us what we have to

do to transition five different computer

models to Intel. Apple predicted it

would take 18 to 24 months, but they

managed to do it in just seven. Starting

with the iMac in January 2006 and ending

with the Mac Pro in August. Customers

loved the new model by dropping the

Power PC architecture for dual core and

quadcore Intel Xeon processors. Apple

shattered previous performance

benchmarks while the re-engineered

interior featured even better airflow,

two optical disc drives, and four bays

for hard drives that could be removed

and installed easier than before.

This period is what I'd call peak Mac

Pro. It delivered everything power users

wanted at a cheaper price for the

higher-end configurations. The problem

was within a year, Apple's attention

shifted from Mac to iPhone. When it

launched in 2007, Apple was confident

that iPhone would disrupt the entire

tech industry and be the company's next

big product. Jobs even announced their

name change from Apple Computer to just

Apple to reflect their diverse product

lineup, which included several music

players and at that point, a smartphone.

But dropping the word computer from

their name made a lot of longtime Apple

users uncomfortable since it was

interpreted as a shift away from the

company's most powerful products, the

Mac, to less capable mobile devices.

During its first year, iPhone made up

just 0.5% of Apple's total revenue. But

by 2009, that number grew to 30.5%.

Almost matching the Mac at 32.4%.

Then at the beginning of 2010, Apple

introduced iPad, a device that could do

most of the casual tasks of a computer

in a more user-friendly way and at a

much lower price of just $499.

In June, during an interview at the All

Things Digital conference, Steve Jobs

was asked about the tablet form factor

and whether or not it could one day

replace laptop computers. He said,

quote, "When we were an agrarian nation,

all cars were trucks because that's what

you needed on the farm. But as America

started to move into those urban and

then suburban centers, cars got more

popular and innovations like automatic

transmission and power steering and

things that you didn't care about in a

truck as much started to become

paramount in cars. And now probably I

don't know what the statistics are,

maybe one out of every 25 vehicles or 30

vehicles is a truck where it used to be

100%. Personal computers are going to be

like trucks. That prediction turned out

to be pretty accurate. In 2006, there

was no alternative to the Mac. iPods

were popular, but all they did was play

music and video, which required a Mac or

PC to download. But by 2010, iPhone and

iPad were out selling Mac about 4:1, a

huge shift in just 4 years. Jobs also

mentioned the post PC era for the first

time during that 2010 interview, saying,

quote, "We like to talk about the postPC

era, but when it really starts to

happen, I think it's uncomfortable for a

lot of people." That statement was also

true. Throughout this period, you could

find Mac users on forums and in articles

complaining that Apple was putting more

effort into making new iPhone and iPad

models while the Mac was neglected.

Feelings about Apple became even more

complicated in 2011 when Steve Jobs

passed away and Tim Cook became CEO,

prompting a new concern. Could the

company still make innovative products

without their original visionary leader?

So, the company now faced two big

criticisms. First, Apple seemed less

interested in the Mac than ever? And

second, they may not be capable of

another breakthrough Mac model, even if

they tried. And the product many

longtime Apple users were waiting to

judge was the upcoming Mac Pro. By 2013,

it had been 7 years since its last major

update, quite a bit longer than the 3 to

4ear cycle in the 2000s.

So, when Apple finally revealed a new

one in June 2013, they were expected to

deliver something great. And at first

glance, it appeared they had. The new

Mac Pro featured the most dramatic

redesign in the product's history. A

small glossy black cylinder roughly 10

in tall built around a single unified

thermal core with dual workstation GPUs,

new Intel Xeon processors, fast

solidstate storage, and six Thunderbolt

2 ports. It was about 1/8 the size of

the old mini tower. The reveal was very

similar to the G4 Cube, a professional

desktop computer that had a new thermal

system, a much smaller size in a

beautiful shiny enclosure that could be

removed to expose the internals.

Although this introduction came with an

attempted micro drop moment during the

applause following Mac Pro's reveal,

Apple's marketing chief, Phil Schiller,

said, "Can't innovate anymore my ass."

>> It was an obvious shot at the narrative

that Apple had lost their way without

jobs. But that comment didn't age well

because despite its beautiful design,

this model turned out to be the worst

Mac Pro Apple ever made. The problems

were caused by its compact size. The

whole machine was organized around a

thermal core that was only meant to cool

two relatively average powered GPUs

running simultaneously. Apple had

predicted that the future of pro

computing was lots of smaller GPUs

working together. But things actually

went the opposite direction toward

single large powerful graphics cards.

The cylindrical form factor couldn't

physically accommodate that. There was

also no room for real expansion. The

previous mini tower let you pop the site

off and add drives, RAM, and PCIe cards.

The cylinder offered almost none of

that. Apple expected users to add all

those peripherals through Thunderbolt 2.

But the ecosystem of fast Thunderbolt

peripherals never materialized the way

they thought, leaving users with a mess

of cables and external boxes spraw

across their desks. Then there were the

reliability issues. Higher-end dual GPU

configurations ran hot and developed an

unusually high failure rate. Apple

eventually launched a repair program for

video issues on the late 2013 model.

Replacement GPUs were so expensive and

scarce that it was often cheaper just to

buy an entirely new machine. And just

like with the Power Mac G5, Apple had

already pushed the cylindrical Mac Pro

to its maximum thermal limit. So when a

more powerful Intel chip came out, which

ran even hotter, the Mac Pro couldn't

use it. This model actually became the

longest running Mac in history that went

without a meaningful update. Apple

continued selling it, but it felt like a

computer frozen in time. It wasn't able

to drive 5K external displays without a

complicated dual cable workaround, and

it was quickly beaten in everyday

singlethreaded performance by newer

chips Apple couldn't put in it. They'd

engineered a beautiful machine with

virtually zero expansion capabilities,

which was sort of the whole point of the

Mac Pro in the first place.

This mistake from Apple only validated

and amplified the previous criticism

from prousers. After four years, Apple

finally addressed the issue. In April

2017, the company invited five

journalists into its product realization

lab in Certino for an on there roundt

about the state of its Pro Max. Speaking

for Apple were Phil Schiller, software

chief Craig Federigi, and hardware VP

John Turnis. What they said amounted to

a public admission of failure. Schiller

told the room they were quote completely

rethinking the Mac Pro, that a new

design was in development, and

apologized for the long delay,

acknowledging that the lack of updates

had hurt prousers. Fedrigi said, quote,

"I think we designed ourselves into a

bit of a thermal corner, a rare

admission from a company that typically

defends their controversial design

decisions. Unfortunately, the updated

Mac Pro wouldn't arrive for another 2

years, so Apple released the iMac Pro to

fill the gap. In most ways, it was a

better value than the cylindrical Mac

Pro. With a $5,000 starting price, the

iMac Pro had a CPU that was 35% faster

than a comparable Mac Pro and a single

graphics card setup that ran 65% faster

than the single card performance of the

Mac Pro. The iMac also had updated

solidstate drives that were twice as

fast. But the downside was expansion.

iMac Pro didn't have user accessible

components like the Mac Pro. So

customers had to buy all the RAM and

storage space they need at the time of

purchase which Apple way overcharges for

compared to third parties. So while iMac

Pro delivered better performance, it

wasn't the all-around professional

desktop power users needed. When the new

Mac Pro finally arrived in June 2019,

professionals everywhere breathed a sigh

of relief. It was exactly the machine

they were hoping for. Apple abandoned

the cylindrical design and went back to

the triedand-true mini tower with a

large aluminum case featuring a new

lattice pattern on the front and back

that improved airflow by 20%. Instead of

the handles being integrated into the

aluminum enclosure, they were part of a

new steel frame that the case could be

removed from, giving users access to all

its internals from all sides. Its

graphics were also dramatically improved

thanks to Apple's new MPX module system,

which combined power, video, and data

routing into a single cable-free module.

This not only made installing GPUs

easier, but it allowed them to be deeply

integrated into the system. For example,

in a normal PC, Thunderbolt ports belong

to the motherboard, the main part that

everything else plugs into, while a

graphics card is an add-on you put in

separately, and it comes with its own

simpler video only ports. Because the

two aren't wired together in the right

way, the video your graphics card

produces can only come out of the card's

own ports. It can't travel backward into

the motherboard and come out of the

Thunderbolt ports. What Apple did was

build a special connector that pipes the

graphics card's video signal back into

the computer's main system. So, the

motherboard's Thunderbolt ports could

deliver the video the graphics cards

were generating. That way, every port,

whether it was on the card or the back

of the machine, behaved like a full

Thunderbolt port instead of two separate

outputs. The MPX module system also

featured a new way to cool the graphics

cards. Previously, each one had its own

fan, but Apple added large heat sinks to

each module that pulled heat away from

the cards and used the Mac Pros built-in

fans to do the cooling instead, allowing

it to accommodate four GPUs that ran

cooler with less fan noise.

The CPU was also a big improvement over

the previous model and even the iMac

Pro. It featured Intel's latest Cascade

Lake Xeon processors that could be

configured with up to 28 cores compared

to 18 on the iMac Pro and 12 on the

previous Mac Pro. But what really stood

out was its six channel memory

controller that supported 12 RAM modules

at 128 GB each, totaling 1.5 TB of

memory. That was an insane jump, even

compared to the 2-year-old iMac Pro,

which only supported four memory slots

at 64 GB each for a max of 128 GB. Apple

also gave the new Mac Pro eight PCIe

slots, up from zero on the previous

model, the previous record holder being

the Power Macintosh 9600 in 1997. And of

course, all these components were easily

serviceable, replaceable, and

upgradeable by the user. It was clear

that the new Mac Pro was designed to win

back the power users Apple had spent the

previous 6 years alienating, and for the

most part, it worked. Journalists called

it a return to form for Apple and the

workstation Apple should have been

making all along. The only negative

discussion was about its price. At

$6,000, it was the most expensive Mac

Pro ever, and its accessories were

ridiculously overpriced. Apple sold a

fourpack of wheels for $400. If you got

the Pro Display XDR, it basically cost

just as much as the Mac Pro itself since

it was priced at $5,000 and the stand

had to be purchased separately for an

additional $1,000. Apple was able to get

away with that since the Mac Pro only

appealed to a small customer base that

essentially had no other option. Now,

despite making a great Mac Pro for power

users who could afford it, Apple put

those customers in another awkward

position just one year later when they

announced that all their Macs would be

transitioning away from Intel to their

own custom chips. Customers who just

purchased the new Mac Pro felt like

their investment was already obsolete.

And since Apple said the process could

take 2 years, customers who hadn't

bought the new [clears throat] Mac Pro

yet wondered if they should just wait

longer for the new model. In the

meantime, a new type of desktop was in

development, the Mac Studio. It was

released in 2022 and could be configured

with the M1 Max or Apple's most powerful

chip at the time, the M1 Ultra, which

was essentially two of the Max chips

fused together. This made Mac Pro

customers even more confused since the

base model Mac Studio outperformed the

base model Mac Pro by almost every

metric. It was $4,000 cheaper, 40 to 75%

faster, and had twice the storage. But

the Mac Pro won when it came to

expandability since the studio didn't

have any user upgradeable components.

Eventually, 2023 came, meaning Apple's

2-year silicon transition window had

expired, and it left people wondering

whether the Mac Pro would actually be

updated or just discontinued. Inside

Apple, a similar debate was happening.

They weren't exactly sure what to do

with the Mac Pro. Most of its

advantages, like the MPX module system,

memory slots, and replaceable

components, would be made obsolete with

Apple's custom silicon since it

integrated the CPU, GPU, and RAM into a

single chipset, making it impossible to

plug in additional graphics cards or

memory. So to differentiate the upcoming

Mac Pro from other models, Apple began

developing a super powerful chip only

its thermal system could handle, the M2

Extreme, which was two M2 Ultra chips

fused together. The M2 Extreme would

have likely featured a 48 core CPU, a

152 core GPU, and up to 384 GB of RAM.

But manufacturing this chip was

prohibitively expensive. Apple could

only fit about 30 chips on a $20,000

silicon wafer. And because each chip was

essentially four dyes that had to be

fused together at four different edges,

it had a failure rate four times higher

than the M2 Ultra, which only fused

together two dieseS at one edge.

According to tech journalist Mark Gur,

putting an M2 Extreme chip in the Mac

Pro would have increased its starting

price from $6,000 to 10,000, something

Apple decided against. Instead, the 2023

Mac Pro featured the M2 Ultra, the same

chip available in the 2023 Mac Studio.

This caused people to wonder why the Mac

Pro even existed. It's $7,000 starting

price was $3,000 more than the M2 Ultra

Mac Studio, and it didn't deliver any

extra performance or upgrade options.

The only thing the Mac Pro added for

that money was its PCIe expansion slots

and extra ports. But by this point,

professionals were already using their

machines differently, mainly due to the

transition to Apple silicon. Expansion

had moved outside the enclosure. Fast

Thunderbolt connections meant lots of

pros just connected extra storage and

gear externally rather than using

internal slots and bays. So, most power

users bought the more affordable Mac

Studio instead, causing the Mac Pro's

tiny user base to shrink even further,

likely causing Apple to view the product

as irrelevant and eventually remove it

from the lineup completely. But I think

it's worth pointing out what we lost in

the transition from Intel chips to Apple

silicon and the discontinuation of Mac

Pro. We no longer have the ability to

open up our Macs and replace components.

My first MacBook 18 years ago had a

battery that could be accessed and

removed by hand. I could also replace

the hard drive and RAM with just a small

screwdriver. And eventually I did,

upgrading the hard drive to a solid

state drive, maxing out the RAM, and

replacing the battery once it couldn't

hold a charge anymore. Those upgrades

got me three to four more years of use

out of that MacBook. And it was actually

surprisingly affordable since I could

buy all those parts from third parties

who sell them for far less than Apple

charges. But now that's been lost. If

you want more storage or RAM, you have

to buy those upgrades at the time of

purchase and pay Apple's inflated

prices. Computers have essentially

become mobile devices. And there are

benefits to that like better efficiency,

battery life, performance, and more

compact designs. But it's also taken

away the expandability and internal

accessibility that longtime Mac users

will likely miss. All right, guys. I

hope you enjoyed finding out what

happened to the Mac Pro. This is Greg

with Apple Expplained. Thanks for

watching and I'll see you in the next