I don't see that happening at all, not based on what Apple has been putting out since the first M1 Macs.
But I hope you're right.
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Apple Working on Next-Gen Mac Studio and Mac Pro
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But I hope you're right.
You must be referring to CES 2034 because that's the next time January 9 falls on a MondayBTW Monday Jan 9th is when CES starts so there is a reason that MacRumors is busy generating all these articles on a Sunday for once.
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Considering if the M2 Ultra supports 192 GB, we should see a M3 Ultra handle 384GB Ram. Also the GPU now has AV1 hardware decoding, mesh shading and ray tracing.
Mac Pro will fail again as long as it's SoC without upgradability. Beside, there are no reasons to block upgradability especially for high-end uses as SoC does't take any advantages.
And who shrink the market? It's Apple themselves. Since Apple is trying to expand to game, 3D, AI, research, and more based on October event, they also need to make a better Mac Pro as well.
I saw the rumored rendering of the Mac Pro Mini. It's also very mobile when you add the Wheels; you can ride it down the hallway!
A new Mac Pro coming out a year after the last one? That would be pretty impressive; I don't think that's happened since the 2000s! 😮
What makes a chassis "designed for Apple silicon"...?
Yet Apple made MPX GPU modules for a limited market...
Mn Extreme (quad SoC) would have more than enough horsepower for most viewport interaction, an Apple silicon (GP)GPU could be used to send compute/render tasks to while the main SoC(s) continue viewport work...
The future of Apple graphics is Apple silicon/Metal, no room for third-party GPUs from AMD/Intel/Nvidia...
Mac Pro needs a quad-SoC Mn Extreme and Apple silicon (GP)GPUs...
I’m always amused at how Gurman reports product refreshes as if they’re major revelations.
Without thunderbolt 5 to drive a future pro motion 5k or 8k display I wouldn’t buy any Mac now.
What’s the likelihood of the M3 Ultra coming with a Thunderbolt 5 controller? I guess we’ll have to wait for M4 to get Thunderbolt 5. And with that, the possible timeframe for an updated Apple display basically goes in line with the M4 rollout timeframe.
Thing is, I can’t wait that long anymore. My 2017 iMac is about to die on me…
I guess it's actually just a tiny bit plausible now, since if they're redesigning M3 for N3E anyway (as per previous rumor) they could update the controller if deemed important.
The market for a $3,500 Vision Pro is also small. I guess Apple should scrap that too.
As usual, a statement of Gurman without any real context.
Computer sales worldwide went into a slump in 2022/2023. It was not Apple specific.
Reduction in sales of computers is not due to any single function/capability/spec/gimmick found in a computer line.
To suggest otherwise (as in the Gurman extract) is just tabloidism.
Reality: mobile devices are the dominant market worldwide. Mostly smartphones, then laptops, then tablets.
Desktop computers are becoming a niche. And yes, plenty of corporations (who insist their employees all congregate in one spot every day) still buy (soulless, boring) boxes to sit on (or under, or besides) employee desks, but some Windows machine that exists to run Excel does not need to be replaced very often. This is why office machines are part of overall economic trends. Nothing Apple, or any other computer maker, can do will overcome this utilitarian nature of the desktop computer.
And importantly, employees want laptops, and they want to work at home (and some companies are willing to do that.)
But the important bottom line in this: average human wants a smartphone they can carry. They don't want a box.
I keep repeating: the Day of the DIMM is over (in response to those who want Apple to make Macs like they used to.)
Now I add this: The Day of the Desktop is almost over.
The Mac Pro ceased to exist when they put a mobile soc in an expensive case and called it a Mac Pro
Why would Apple spend millions developing an entire new Chip Architecture and platform for a single niche machine that serves its smallest market segment? If they did this they would face numerous challenges with keeping the OS and app developers in line and tuned just to serve such a small market.
Apple is probably fine with the Mac Studio serving the overwhelming majority of its ‘prosumer’ market, with a smaller segment, mostly audio production, needing non graphics, PCI cards being served by the current Mac Pro.
Even back when the MacPro supported third party graphics, they never made a significant dent in the high end film post production studios or scientific markets which are all firmly entrenched in PC and unlikely to ever switch platforms.
Its possible they Apple may eventually have an ‘Ultimate’ version with 2 M-Ultra chips fused together, but this would have significant thermal issues to tackle, not to mention an astronomical cost for a chip that probably won’t sell significantly to offset the development.
More likely they may develop some form of GPU or RAM accelerator cards similar to the Afterburner card for Pro users - but adding third party Nvida or ATI graphics will never be an option on Apple Silicon.
IMO they need a more powerful chip for the Mac Pro. like an Extreme or whatever it was rumored.
Laptops are not that mobile, you can't walk around a company or outside and while standing perform work on a laptop like a iPhone or a iPad. Also your example of working at their desks during the day still applies more to a laptop user if they using some docking setup.
Maybe Apple should just give a nod to Pros and maintain an x86 Mac Pro. Skip Intel, go with Threadripper pro, where they can go up to 96 cores and 2TB of RAM, and pair with whatever AMD GPUs they can grab. Yes, it rains on the Apple Silicon parade, but let's be honest, they are entirely different segments of hardware. Not only that, they can charge Apple prices for all of it, while not having to force their consumer hardware into a demanding workstation situation. I think they could get away with it by clearly separating the configurations--Mac Pro for 32 core configurations and up. They probably never will do this for the usual Apple reasons. Apple Silicon is great for up-to Mac Studio, but the integrated design does not scale to true workstation demands, no matter how much they want to tell us 8GB on a Mac is like 16GB on a PC.
If one does detailed number crunching on the M2 Pro vs M3 Pro, the M2 has better performance but does have a lower max memory limit. The slowed buss speed (200 on M2 vs 150 on M3) was the reason I now have a M2 Pro Mac mini with 2TB SSD and 10Gb Ethernet as my file server to replace my 2018 Intel model from 2021.
That's why Mac market is keep shrinking and limiting only a few software. If hardware is not good enough, who would wish to support their software to Mac?