The most expensive Mac you could get is no longer available on Apple’s website, as 9to5Mac reports that the “cheese grater” Mac Pro workstation has been discontinued. It had been a part of the lineup since replacing the Power Mac G5 in 2006 when Apple shifted from Arm to Intel processors, but it’s had the feeling of a vestigial limb ever since Apple dropped Intel for its own M-series chips.
The M2 Ultra edition of the Mac Pro launched three years ago, with Apple hardware exec and possible future CEO John Ternus saying that “for those users who need the versatility of internal expansion, Mac Pro combines PCIe slots with our most powerful chip.” But without support for adding a new GPU, many of the professionals who should’ve been in its target market told us that they didn’t want one.
The Mac Studio offered similar options without those slots for $3,000 less at the time. Now it stands as the most powerful machine in Apple’s lineup, with M4 Max and M3 Ultra-powered options available now and, likely, M5 Ultra variants on the way.
Apple has acknowledged that 2013’s “trash can” Mac Pro design put it into a thermal corner it couldn’t find a way out of, as large single-GPU cards became preferred over multiple GPUs. Pro users wanted more options, with Red Digital Cinema president Jarred Land stopping during a talk in 2018 to tell an Apple employee that “We need Nvidia support… it’s not good for the community to just be on one platform so please just think about it, please.” Apple addressed those needs at the time by going back to the tower, but now, it’s leaving the Mac Studio and Thunderbolt 5 as its primary option for customers who need to add something extra.