This post is meant to be more a conversational piece than either a prediction or a request for answers (as none of us know). Just curious how the rest of the community is feeling.
I, like many here, sprung for the 2019 MacPro. It was everything Apple didn’t make the MacPro refresh the first time time around with their trash can. I’ve been extremely happy with my box and, given it’s expandability, hope to use it for years to come…
Enter Apple silicon. These chips seems pretty great, and I’m thrilled with what they’re doing in this space. But out the old must go when the new comes in.
That 2017 cut off is uncomfortably close to the 2019 release date of these expensive boxes many of us own. Compound that with the fact that our expensive boxes now have chip architecture that’s being phased out? Color me nervous.
So how to my fellow MacPro owners feel? Think we’re sitting on a piece of tech that’s going to be obsolete in the beginning of its tenure, or am I fretting over something that won’t be an issue until the box is at the end of it’s life anyway?
Part of me wants to just sell my box now and cut my losses while I can (Apple will give me a whopping $1750 for it ) while the optimist in me hopes Apple will offer an “Apple Silicon Processor Upgrade” for all 2019 MacPros for the low low price of an arm, leg, and first born.
I just sold my trashcan for $700. that thing was a good investment
Anyhow, at least with the 2019 you can always use it with alternative OS, throw the most beefy 28? core Xeon in there and load it with like 1.5 TB of ram, and a nvidia gpu , could even run linux flame on it so its pretty flexible in that regard.
Exppenadibility and flexibility in hardware is more important than direkt support from apple imho.
yea Apple will phase out anything Intel pretty quickly I recon, no point in having to code for a platform you dont sell anymore, thats not Apples style, suprising enough that they supported the trashcan for so long.
you dont need the latest OS to do your work most likely but I get the panic factor.
I think in a few years the mac Pro 2019 will have aged “better” than the mac Studio… but thats just my guess, the fact alone that you can upgrade the GPUs… they have been getting better soo fast
I have a 2019 MacPro that I purchased in February 2020 and all I can say is that it has been a great investment. No complaints here. Yes it’ll probably be phased out but until that happens I’ll just keep running it until I no longer can. Technology is always moving fast and that will always be the case. It’s been a great machine and as I said in the beginning a great investment. When I’m ready and feel the machine can’t keep up anymore I’ll move onto something else. And as @finnjaeger said, upgrading the GPU’s is great!
Any computer will do what it currently does until it breaks. So you still have the computer you bought.
That said, when I installed flare on my M1 Max MacBook Pro, and it was faster at many things than the Mac Pro, I sold it immediately. When the M1 Ultra shipped, I was very glad I did.
Let’s hope that Autodesk really embraces the new architecture and performance continues to grow on the mac side.
Most of us complained about HP and Dell and Intel and how they dragged their feet and made underperforming computers for insane prices. And now at least we have options. And now we complain about progress. Sigh. I’ll never be really content will I.
The real lesson is that you should buy what you need. And if you need turnkey with an amazing experience, it’s gonna cost you $10k minimum. Probably $15k. Maybe $20k. If you’re willing to get your hands dirty then you can save half or more.
I’m happy with my purchase. It’s paid for itself many times over and I will likely sell it this week. And when i do I’m going to have a celebration of life with that box. It’s that special to me. Plus, private sales of good specced machines are still $5k-$9k. And Macsales will beat Apple’s trade in rates.
Apples stuff does last a long time. The hardware and build quality compared to its HP and Lenovo and Dells counterparts is incredible. And the Mac Pros upgradability and fixability, whilst expensive, is easy.
) while the optimist in me hopes Apple will offer an “Apple Silicon Processor Upgrade” for all 2019 MacPros for the low low price of an arm, leg, and first born.