Enlarge / Apple's 2019 Mac Pro, a trypophobe's nightmare.

Apple

The Mac Pro is 1 of the fewer remaining Intel Macs with nary Apple Silicon replacement acceptable to go, adjacent though we're a small past the two-year deadline that CEO Tim Cook primitively acceptable for the modulation successful summertime 2020 (and to beryllium fair, it has been a hard-to-predict mates of years).

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that Apple continues to enactment connected a caller mentation of the Mac Pro, alongside different as-yet-unreplaced Intel Macs similar the higher-end Mac mini and the 27-inch iMac, but that a planned "M2 Extreme" spot that would person powered the Apple Silicon Mac Pro has "likely" been canceled.

The Extreme would person strapped 2 M2 Ultra chips together, successful the aforesaid mode that the existent M1 Ultra is simply a brace of interconnected M1 Max chips, but arsenic of this writing, Apple supposedly plans to vessel the caller Mac Pro with an M2 Ultra spot wrong and absorption connected "easy expandability for further memory, storage, and different components" to assistance the Mac Pro basal retired from the existing Mac Studio.

Waiting for quality successful the look of uncertainty isn't caller to Mac Pro holdouts; it has been a changeless for the past decade-plus. It has been a precise agelong clip since the Mac Pro was updated connected thing adjacent to a predictable cadence, particularly if you don't number partial refreshes similar the 2012 Mac Pro tower oregon the summation of new GPU options to the 2019 model. And each of the past 2 updates—the "trash can" Mac Pro successful 2013 and the reforged "cheese grater" mentation from 2019—have reflected a full displacement successful plan and strategy.

At this point, I'd similar Apple to decide: either perpetrate to a accordant strategy oregon imaginativeness for the Mac Pro and its spot successful the lineup oregon discontinue it.

A fading star

Enlarge / Apple's 2013 Mac Pro inactive supported a fewer niceties similar user-replaceable retention and upgradeable RAM, but it languished without updates for much than fractional a decade. Apple yet reversed people connected the design, but it was a large misstep.

Retiring the Mac Pro would person been unthinkable a mates of decades ago, erstwhile G3 and G4 Power Mac towers were priced, specced, and marketed much similar high-end user desktop computers than firm workstations. But it has been a agelong clip since that was true, and different Macs person stepped successful to capable that spread portion the Mac Pro has suffered done its individuality crisis. Apple's high-end nonrecreational bundle has besides faded during this era, and bundle packages from Premiere to After Effects to Blender to Autodesk Maya are either platform-agnostic oregon instrumentality vantage of hardware features similar the Nvidia-exclusive CUDA API that Apple nary longer offers.

The Mac Studio is astir apt the azygous champion statement against the continued beingness of the Mac Pro. It's the archetypal genuinely caller Mac plan of the Apple Silicon era, and it takes afloat vantage of the M1 (and soon, hopefully, the M2) series' show and powerfulness efficiency. It's small, it's incredibly efficient, it runs comparatively chill and quiet, and it manages to outperform maxed-out 2019 Mac Pro configurations successful galore workloads for little money.

It's thing that The Verge's Mac Studio review did a large occupation of highlighting—staffers utilizing apps similar Premiere, Audition, Photoshop, and After Effects, Avid Pro Tools, and Blender each had thing but bully things to accidental astir the Studio successful narration to the Intel Macs and Apple Silicon MacBooks they were utilizing to tally those apps time to day. Creating web contented isn't arsenic analyzable oregon demanding arsenic creating, say, 3D effects for a large movie oregon TV show, but that's a wide scope of creators who might person benefitted from a Mac Pro a decennary oregon 2 agone who decidedly don't request to see it today.

Apple inactive fields its ain suite of Mac-exclusive nonrecreational apps, including Final Cut Pro X, Motion, and Logic Pro. But the complaint astatine which these apps are updated (and the scope of the updates, erstwhile they bash come) has slowed and narrowed successful the past decennary astatine the aforesaid clip arsenic the Mac Pro has atrophied.

Earlier this year, a radical of 112 nonrecreational filmmakers signed an unfastened letter asking Apple to amended Final Cut's collaboration features, respond much rapidly to caller diagnostic requests and bash a amended occupation lobbying for the bundle wrong the movie industry. Even the creators who prefer to usage it successful this discourse "still can't take it" due to the fact that of existent and perceived shortcomings successful the app and a wide deficiency of expertise and cognition astir the app industry-wide. The Verge's video editors, likewise, "didn't privation to" assistance trial Final Cut Pro due to the fact that "none of them usage it."

Apple's different hardware succeeds partially due to the fact that it runs Apple bundle that gives radical things they can't get from different ecosystems. The reverse is existent for high-end Mac Pro-style nonrecreational workloads, which tally mostly successful apps that tally arsenic good (and, successful immoderate circumstantial cases, better) connected cheaper and much flexible Windows and Linux hardware, and this is reflected successful the hardware and bundle that existent VFX studios use.

Enlarge / A immense 2021 survey by the Visual Effects Society Technology Committee recovered that Linux and Windows are by acold the astir fashionable platforms for workstations, with Windows being favored somewhat successful smaller studios and Linux successful larger ones. The Mac's stock is minimal crossed the board.

A 2021 Studio Platform Survey Report tally by the Visual Effects Society Technology Committee surveyed astir 60,000 workstations crossed 88 studios of each antithetic sizes; Linux ran connected 60 percent of these workstations, portion Windows ran connected 29 percent and macOS accounted for conscionable 11 percent. The survey besides recovered that astir studios planned to summation their usage of Linux and Windows, portion astir planned to support their macOS usage astatine astir the aforesaid level.

None of this means that Apple should cede this marketplace to Lenovo, Dell, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and the rest, but Apple needs to beryllium much focused, consistent, and superior than it has been with the Mac Pro if it genuinely intends to vie here.