RIP Mac Pro: Apple’s workstation tower discontinued after 20-year run

So long, Mac Pro. Apple’s workstation tower, complete with its cheese grater grill and aluminum housing has been discontinued, marking the end of the Mac Pro nameplate that first debuted way back in 2006. If you tried to head to its product page now to buy one, you’ll instead be redirected back to the Mac page on the Apple Malaysia website.

The Mac Pro hasn’t been refreshed since 2023 of course, when Apple gave it their then-most powerful M2 Ultra processor inside the same chassis that first debuted back in 2019. Indeed, it’s perhaps more of a surprise that the Mac Pro was allowed to live this long, likely only kept around so that anyone with unique requirements can take advantage of the PCIe expansion slots. And even then, it’s not like you can add a dedicated GPU anyway as the M2 Ultra never supported external graphics.

It’s fair to say that for anyone needing a true Apple Silicon workstation, the Mac Studio has been the preferred way to go for quite some time now. But with the new Mac Studio now able to support Thunderbolt 5, it seems that it is finally time for the Mac Pro to be discontinued.

With the Mac Pro no longer around, that leaves Apple’s desktop lineup surprisingly streamlined. There’s the all-in-one iMac, the versatile Mac Mini and the powerful Mac Studio, catering to the needs of nearly everyone seeking a desktop running MacOS.

Mac Pro history

The original Mac Pro first showed up in 2006, with it replacing the previous Power Mac lineup. It featured an aluminum case with the sleek handle bars, with powerful Intel Xeon workstation processors under the hood.

Apple gave it incremental upgrades over the years before finally announcing the ‘trash can’ cylindrical Mac Pro in 2013. While certainly unique, the small chassis proved troublesome for Apple to upgrade and it never saw a refresh till the current generation Mac Pro debuted in 2019, with its new aluminum tower heavily inspired by the original Mac Pro.

Finally in 2023, Apple launched the Mac Pro with M2 Ultra. It was their most powerful Mac Pro yet sure, but the lack of upgradable memory and no external graphics support made it very hard to justify, especially when the Mac Studio can do just about everything the Mac Pro can except have PCIe slots.

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