Originally published at: Apple Discontinues the Mac Pro for Good - TidBITS
After nearly 20 years, Apple has officially discontinued the Mac Pro, with no plans for future models, as first reported by Chance Miller at 9to5Mac. The move marks the end of an era for Apple’s most expandable desktop, although the Mac Pro had become something of an anachronism.
Early in its run, the Mac Pro was the choice of people like me who considered themselves professionals because they needed a bit more processing power, additional RAM to avoid swapping, faster (and less cluttered) internal storage, and support for multiple displays. I bought an early 2009 “cheese grater” Mac Pro for those reasons, paying $2279.
My Mac Pro now serves as an end table alongside the original Power Mac G5 it replaced. Can you guess which is which?
In 2013, Apple introduced the cylindrical “trash can” Mac Pro at $2999, abandoning the cheese grater’s PCIe expandability for a compact design that relied on Thunderbolt 2 (see “Can a Normal User Justify a Mac Pro?,” 21 April 2014). The following year, the 27-inch iMac with Retina display arrived—combining significant CPU power with an unbeatable screen, user-expandable RAM, and dual-display support—capturing many users who had previously bought Mac Pros (see “Apple Launches iMac with Retina Display, Refreshes Mac mini,” 16 October 2014 and “The Retina iMac: It’s All about the Screen,” 31 October 2014). The 27-inch iMac’s popularity left the Mac Pro’s audience limited to scientists and audio/video professionals who specifically needed PCIe cards, which the cylindrical Mac Pro couldn’t provide.
Apple acknowledged its design mistake in 2017 (see “Maca Culpa: Apple Admits Mac Pro Missteps and Promises More Transparency,” 4 April 2017), but took two more years to release the third-generation Mac Pro, which hearkened back to the cheese grater design, albeit with feet and optional wheels. That model was still Intel-based, but saw a massive price jump to $5999 (see “2019 Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR: Big Iron for Big Bucks,” 10 December 2019). In 2023, Apple finally brought the Mac Pro into the Apple silicon era with the M2 Ultra chip, boosting the price again to $6999. Yet even as Apple advanced through M3, M4, and now M5 generations, the Mac Pro remained stuck at the M2 Ultra.
With Apple silicon consolidating CPU, GPU, and memory onto a single chip, the traditional appeal of the Mac Pro to even its core audience of audio and video professionals—expanding RAM, adding PCIe cards, swapping out processors—largely vanished.
For the vast majority of users who need more power and connectivity than is provided by the Mac mini or MacBook Pro, the Mac Studio now offers equal or better performance than the Mac Pro at a significantly lower starting price ($1999) and in a smaller footprint (see “New Mac Studio and Studio Display Change Mac Buying Calculus,” 8 March 2022). That performance gap can only widen if the Mac Studio gains an M5 Ultra in its next refresh. The primary advantage the Mac Pro had over the Mac Studio was always its PCIe slot expandability, and Thunderbolt 5 now handles many tasks previously managed by PCIe.
For those who truly need supercomputer-level power—primarily for AI research—emerging support for RDMA over Thunderbolt 5 may allow multiple Mac Studios to be linked together.
As someone who moved away from the Mac Pro as Apple increased the distance between it and the consumer lineup, I have thoughts about what it means to serve a professional audience. After a 2014 and 2020 27-inch iMac with Retina display, I switched to a 14-inch MacBook Pro with a pair of Studio Displays (see “Switching from a 27-inch iMac to a 14-inch MacBook Pro: A Fresh Start,” 30 June 2025). It’s a good system, even a great system, but I stand by the points I made in “Apple: Design Macs for Other Types of Professionals” (5 March 2022) about how Apple still isn’t designing Macs for professionals in some ways. Yes, we now have the Studio Display, and Mac webcams are no longer criminally poor, but all Apple has done to improve screen ergonomics is give the Studio Display a $400 stand to add height adjustment—a few books work just as well. Keyboard and trackpad ergonomics haven’t improved, the edges of Mac laptops are still uncomfortably sharp, and there’s still no option for cellular connectivity in Mac laptops.
