Apple Kills Mac Pro Desktop As Era Ends And Mac Studio Takes Over
If you have a glass of apple juice handy, pour one out for Apple's Mac Pro desktop, which is now discontinued. While there was not a public announcement, Apple made quick and quiet work of scrubbing the Mac Pro from its website, having removed both the product page and the option to buy one in its online store, and it's now as though it never existed in the first place.
This marks the end of a nearly two-decade era, with Apple having launched the Mac Pro back in August 2006. It went through several iterations over the years, including a redesign in 2019 that unintentionally (we hope) introduced a cheese grater aesthetic. Hey, at least it was better than being compared to a trash can, as was the case with the cylindrical design language introduced in December 2013.
The Mac Pro also saw a bunch of platform changes over the year. Early on, Apple's desktop tower featured various Intel Xeon processors, signaling a clear intent to promote the Mac Pro as a serious workstation.
That remained the case until its most recent refresh in June 2023, when Apple punted Intel from the Mac Pro and replaced the platform with its own M2 Ultra chip based on Arm's IP. That essentially completed Apple's transition to its own silicon.
Not without controversy, Apple sold a $699 wheels kit for the Mac Pro, which already had a starting price of $6,999. Bear in mind that this was long before the AI-driven memory shortage wreaked havoc on PC prices. Incidentally, the wheels kit is discontinued as well.
Now, sometimes when a product disappears from a website, it's in anticipation of a pending refresh. That is not the case with the Mac Pro and the pricey wheels kit. The folks at 9to5Mac claim to have received confirmation from Apple that there are no plans to update the Mac Pro in the future.
Why discontinue it now, though? Only Apple knows the real reason. It may have seen lackluster sales given the high cost of entry, with users opting instead for the comparatively affordable Mac Studio starting at $1,999 for the M4 Max version with 512GB of storage, and $3,999 for the M3 Ultra model with 1TB of storage.
