After years of complaints and concerns that the Mac Pro was lagging behind the rest of the lineup, Apple has finally announced that their top-of-the-range computer will be getting a much-needed upgrade to Apple silicon.

Initially re-launched in July 2019, oddly close to the announcement of the first Apple silicon M1 chip just a year later in 2020, the Mac Pro 'cheese grater’ was conceived at a time of almost immediate obsolescence. Indeed, if you had bought the 2019 model only to find out a year later that Apple had firm plans to ditch Intel and move everything to their new, hyper efficient and performant own silicon, you would be excused for being a bit peeved.

So it was natural I suppose, that Apple had to drag out the lifespan of the dead-on-arrival 2019 Mac Pro, giving it a new lease of life only in June 2023 during WWDC at Apple HQ.

So what’s changed? On the outside, not a lot. In fact, you’d be forgiven for not being able to pick out the 2019 vs 2023 in a lineup. That’s not a bad thing, whilst initially divisive the ‘cheese grater’ design, as it’s colloquially known, has become something of a status symbol. Whether intentional or not, it screams ‘I have at least $6k to spend on a computer’. Personally I love it, and even made attempts to secure a knock-off Windows equivalent case at one point, before the crowd-funder went rogue and splashed all the backers cash on a life in Bali. More on that at another time. The only perceivable change would be to the IO on the rear of the device, which now has 6 thunderbolt ports in its top row, flanked by 2 HDMI 2.1 ports, 2 USB Type-A’s and a 3.5mm audio jack.

On top we still get two thunderbolt ports (making 8, in total), the power button and a convenient carry-handle which doubles as the mechanism to remove the side panels.

Spec and IO

It’s on the inside that the real upgrades exist. The new Mac Pro launches with the also-new M2 Ultra chip. Without boring you with all the technical jargon, the headline figures for the M2 Ultra are that it rocks 24 CPU cores, up to 76 GPU cores for graphics handling, as well as a whopping 192GB of RAM which can be accessed up to a lightning fast 800GB’s every second. All of this together apparently allows the Mac Pro to playback up to 22 streams of 8K Pro-Res video simultaneously. Now, I’m not sure who (if anyone) would ever need to do that, but it’s good to know that you could?

From an IO perspective, the eight thunderbolt ports can allow you to power up to eight 4K displays (at 240hz, no less) which is a phenomenal amount of bandwidth. Again, I’m not sure who needs to be able to do that, so this is definitely aimed at the bona-fide professional crowd, rather than the ‘prosumer’ or enthusiast. The inclusion of 2 HDMI 2.1 ports is welcomed, giving you the flexibility to connect to TV’s that lack DisplayPort or USB-C inputs.

On the inside the Mac Pro 2023 offers 7 PCI-E slots. Frustratingly these are PCI-E 4, not the latest version 5. Interestingly, of all the PCI devices they illustrated on-screen, none were Graphics Cards. Some are speculating this to mean that discrete GPUs will not be compatible with this new Mac Pro, which, if true, would be disappointing. 

Apple is infamous for touting hard-to-verify performance comparisons, using phrases like ‘the most powerful personal computer ever’ but one thing is rarely refuted when it comes to Apple silicon: the performance per watt, or the energy efficiency. You can probably beat the CPU and GPU performance of the M2 Ultra with high-end Intel, AMD and Nvidia chips - but not at the same efficiency as the Apple silicon, which gently sips on Watts whilst pumping out enormous amounts of computing power.

Pricing

This is where owners of the 2019 Pro might start to feel short-changed. Whilst the base price for 2023 Mac Pro has increased, from $5999 in 2019 to $6,999 in 2023 - it’s on the higher end where there’s a huge reduction. With the 2023, the specs (sans software and peripherals) tops out at around $12,200. That includes the $400 wheels for the case. Whereas the 2019 Intel model could be spec'd all the way up to a truly ridiculous $53,800! And what did you get for the extra 41 thousand dollars? Just 4 extra CPU cores from the Intel Xeon W, the same max-8GB of SSD storage, an Afterburner accelerator card (which, by the way, the M2 Ultra performs to the equivalent of 7-8 of these, according to Apple) and a ton more RAM. It’s the RAM that actually makes up the lion's share of that gaping price delta - the old model offering up to 1.5TB’s (with a ‘T) for a cool $25,000 premium. I can only imagine that Apple's ordering data showed their marketing team that few people chose that option, as they’re quite comfortable with the 2023 variant ‘only’ offering 192GB of shared memory. 

It’s safe to say that, especially with the Mac Studio, that the Mac Pro is aimed squarely at bona-fide professionals. In 2019 I think there was a case for high net-worth enthusiasts to splash on the Pro, but in 2023 with the existence of the Mac Studio (which can also be spec’d to don the M2 Ultra) for an enthusiast, non-professional to spring for the Pro would quite literally be throwing cash away. The only value in the Pro over the Studio is the empty PCI-E slots which professionals may need to add functionality and IO to their machine.

It’ll be interesting to see how this performs, and I’m sure there will be tech reviewers and YouTubers with more money than sense to buy both, top-spec models and run a Studio vs Pro showdown to really give us the low-down. I can’t wait.