Pro & Contra: Does the Mac Pro deserve a comeback?
Apple discontinued the sale of the Mac Pro in the spring. But don't professional Mac users need an expandable tower?
(Image: heise medien)
Power Mac, then Mac Pro: For a long time, a tower was also Apple's first choice for professionals. But the flagship had recently become a niche product that was no longer up-to-date. At the end of March, Apple unceremoniously discontinued the product line entirely. For particularly demanding users, the MacBook Pro and Mac Studio remain. Is the new line-up sufficient?
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PRO
A complete computer lineup should also include an expandable tower with plenty of space for drives and ample slots, without a thousand cables lying crisscrossed over the desk. Ideally, a quiet but efficient cooling system and a particularly powerful processor would work under the hood. Thanks to the Ultrafusion interposer, Apple can connect two SoCs at the silicon level, so why shouldn't four or eight of these chips be able to work together? And even if not, why offer the most powerful processor only in the Mac Studio, which offers no space for expansion?
All M-chips support PCIe: A RAID of multiple PCIe 5 SSDs would be many times faster than any Thunderbolt 5 SSD, and sound cards would work with almost no latency. For professional film and television studios – actually a domain of Apple and in-house programs like Final Cut Pro, Motion, or Compressor – special SDI cards are essential. Additional graphics cards would be useful not only for AI or cryptocurrencies, but also for scientific institutions and researchers. Ideally, the RAM should also not be soldered, but expandable by the user, but this will probably be conceptually impossible with Apple Silicon and its Unified Memory concept. Understandably, no one wants to spend so much money on a Mac Pro with an M2 Ultra that was launched in June 2023.
However, the small group of true pro users who can never have enough performance, storage space, and interfaces would gladly welcome an expandable Mac Pro. Macs have recently become very popular for running Large Language Models (LLM): A Mac Pro with one or more M5 Ultra chips would be the ideal machine for large AI models, instead of connecting multiple Mac Studios via Thunderbolt. In short: Apple would do well to offer a real Pro Mac for the much-touted professional environment. (jes)
The Pro & Contra comes from Mac & i issue 3/2026, available from May 29, 2026. The new issue can be purchased from Thursday in the heise shop – as a print magazine or as a PDF.
CONTRA
From a sober perspective, there are many reasons against an expandable Apple tower today. It starts with the architecture: Apple Silicon is designed as a System-on-a-Chip. CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, and Unified Memory are on a single package. This ensures enormous efficiency, low latency, and high memory bandwidth – but excludes expandability. Even if RAM could be added, it would be slower. Why should Apple compromise on its most expensive professional device and dilute the architecture?
Admittedly, the ability to exchange PCI graphics cards yourself would be charming. However, the interaction with the ARM architecture would be complex. Apple has long since turned its back on AMD and NVIDIA. The company would have to persuade graphics card manufacturers to release drivers for new chips again. Only a very few users would benefit from PCI GPUs. Apple Silicon's integrated GPU cores are tightly integrated with the Unified Memory and optimized for macOS, Metal, and Pro apps. The results are sufficient even for demanding users. In many benchmarks, Apple GPUs even keep up with those from AMD or NVIDIA. Apple's efficiency advantages are based on short signal paths and low heat development. A large tower with separate cards, a stronger power supply, and complex cooling partially negates these advantages.
The target group for whom a fully modular Mac Pro would make sense is probably too small for Apple and would involve high support and development effort. In parallel, the professional ecosystem has changed. Storage, I/O cards, or audio DSPs also work in external Thunderbolt enclosures. AI runs in the data center. Using protocols from Exo Labs, multiple Mac Studios and Mac Minis can be locally networked into clusters. In that case, a large tower is not needed. The Mac Pro had its golden age; it has earned its retirement. (hze)
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Last time on Pro & Contra: Did Apple destroy iWork? 
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