Apple discontinues Mac Pro after 20 years — system had been in stuck in stasis with M2 Ultra since 2023

Apple has discontinued the Mac Pro, its most expandable workstation. Mentions of the system are being scrubbed from the company’s website and online store.

Apple confirmed to 9to5Mac that it no longer has plans to produce the hardware.

For many onlookers, this isn’t a huge surprise. Apple has had the Mac Pro on ice since its move to Apple Silicon in 2023. The tower has been stuck with the M2 Ultra ever since. The smaller Mac Studio has since taken over as the company’s flagship workstation with options for the M3 Ultra and M4 Max last year.

The Mac Pro’s last design refresh was in 2019, when the system still boasted Intel Xeon processors. The Mac Pro has a small but dedicated following, but it was clearly Apple’s lowest volume Mac and, starting at $6,999.99, was far more expensive than the Studio.

The Mac Pro was unique from the rest of the Apple Silicon lineup in that it continued to allow for expansion through PCIe slots. Apple seemingly kept the Mac Pro around to support video and sound editors who needed specialized add-in cards or a lot of extra storage. The M2 Ultra doesn’t support external graphics, so you can’t use a dedicated GPU.

Article continues below

The system has had a number of iconic form factors, including the long-lived “cheese grater” design of the original (similar to the Power Mac G5) and the bold “trash can” design that ultimately had issues with thermals (and, ironically, expandability).

But Apple has increasingly demoed the Mac Studio with a range of Thunderbolt accessories, and Thunderbolt 5 models can be connected to pool their SoCs’ resources together, which can create powerful clusters for AI workloads.

You can even rack mount the Mac Studio. While Apple doesn’t sell that option (it did for the Mac Pro), a number of enterprise IT vendors make 3U and 5U mounts to fit Apple’s new professional champ in server rooms.

Apple’s desktop lineup is now down to just three systems: the iMac, Mac Mini, and Mac Studio. Apple clearly isn’t abandoning pro users as a customer base, but it is dropping the most customizable Mac in favor of a more popular, streamlined device.

The system has had a number of iconic form factors, including the long-lived “cheese grater” design of the original (similar to the Power Mac G5) and the bold “trash can” design that ultimately had issues with thermals.

But Apple has increasingly demoed the Mac Studio with Thunderbolt accessories, and Thunderbolt 5 models can be connected together to pool its SoC’s resources together, which can be powerful for AI workloads.

You can even rack mount the Mac Studio. While Apple doesn’t sell that option (it did for the Mac Pro), a number of enterprise IT vendors make 3u and 5u mounts to fit Apple’s new professional champ in server rooms.

Apple’s desktop lineup is now just three systems: the iMac, Mac Mini, and Mac Studio. Apple clearly isn’t abandoning pro users as a customer base, but it is dropping the most customizable Mac in favor of a more popular, streamlined device.

Follow Tom’s Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.