Well, Apple kept their word on the new Mac Pro, well kind of, when they delivered a Mac Pro with an Apple silicon processor. However, it’s mostly a Mac Pro in name only.

Rumours had been swirling ever since Apple said the entire Mac family would transition to their Apple silicon processor. Will they, won’t they? How could they? All reasonable questions, which kept even the most informed Mac writers guessing. Then at WWDC2023, Apple unveiled the Mac Pro 2023, powered by a Silicon processor, and then promptly announced the completion of the transition to Apple Silicon. You could almost hear the sigh of relief from the Apple product team.

However, here’s the problem, Apple Silicon has its limits, and the new Mac Pro proves it. One of them is that the miraculous SoC is an introvert and doesn’t like sharing. It doesn’t like sharing memory, graphics processing, or a lot of other things that were the reason professionals loved the Mac Pro, because it was the most expandable Mac computer in the range.

The truth is that the Apple Silicon powered Mac Pro means Apple can say they delivered on their transition plan, but if this were a Kingdom, the King is now no more powerful than his eldest child. You might get some internal slots and a few extra connections, and an extra dose of power from the GPU part of the SoC, but other than that. It’s a lot of money for a bigger chassis you can put up to 6 Pro Tools HDX cards in, but is no more powerful than the Mac Studio, because they share the same chips.

Yet some professionals couldn’t bring themselves to consider that a block of aluminium, much smaller than their 2019 Mac Pro, is enough, and some. They kept wondering whether Apple would do with the Mac Pro, what they had done with every other Mac by injecting Silicon magic.

And therein lies the rub. Apple has become a victim of its own success. The Silicon processors are a modern-day technological miracle, performing way beyond what Apple ever achieved with Intel chips. They use less energy, generate less heat, and for that reason, make less noise because fans don’t need to work as hard. This means that the Mac Studio is the computing equivalent of a Ferrari for the price of a top-end BMW. They are, for a lot of audio professionals, the perfect machine.

Apple found itself between a rock and a hard place. The Mac Studio is more than enough for 95% of modern audio professionals, and because of the limits imposed with their system on a chip architecture, the Mac Pro was always going to end in tears, being unable to deliver an expandable top-of-the-range computer.

Digital Trends are suggesting that the new Mac Pro may be "dead on arrival”, according to this article, writing;

“Apple has backpedaled on what made the previous Mac Pro such a monumental step forward for the company, and it’s hamstrung the Mac Pro by forcing it onto its own silicon. There’s no doubt the M2 Ultra will be impressive when it launches, but the flexibility afforded by the previous generation isn’t present this time around.”

MacWorld say;

“The Apple silicon Mac Pro is a far cry from the Intel model it replaces. It costs $1,000 more at the low end and $40,000 less at the high end. It doesn’t have user-upgradeable RAM. There aren’t any $2,400 graphics card options at checkout. And the Afterburner card that was a $2,000 upgrade is now standard—and Apple says the M2 Ultra’s media engine is equal to seven of those cards.

But the Mac Pro is still the Mac Pro—and now it’s all Apple inside and out. The Mac Pro is a bit like the cherry on top of a delicious ice cream sundae that is the Mac lineup. Most users who need the power that a Mac Pro provides can turn to the Mac Studio, which is available with the same M2 Ultra chip, memory, and storage. It comes down to PCI slots, which are limited to audio and video I/O, networking, and storage cards. More than ever, the Mac Pro seems like a superfluous vestige of old Apple.”

Does this mean that Apple has failed? Not at all.

They decided to lose a battle and win the war. Even at its high price tag, the Mac Pro accounts for a tiny proportion of all income derived from Mac sales, so it’s better for Apple’s balance sheet to make the best possible Macs for the rest of their buyers. After all, this is where most of the income comes from, and Apple was never going to limit the other computers in the range to make the Mac Pro look good.

If you want to know how powerful the new Mac Studio is, then check out Mike Thornton’s excellent comparison article.

Will the Mac Pro 2023 sell? Of course, it will, but not in numbers that mean a lot to Apple’s bottom line. Read an Apple balance sheet, Macs sales have made up less than wearables in some periods, and the Mac Pro makes up a very small part of the Mac sales numbers.

This may be the last Mac Pro we see. Some audio professionals will mourn the fact that they won’t be able to buy a tower to put their cards in, but it’s unlikely Apple will continue to spend money on keeping the nostalgia alive.

Will you see the new Mac Pro in studios? Yes, but you’re more likely to see the Mac Studio. It’s the prince of Mac’s kingdom, and before long, it’s going to be king. God save the king!