R.I.P. Mac Pro. Image – 9 to 5 Mac
Well, most of us Mac Professionals and enthusiasts pretty much saw that coming. With no updates since the M2 Ultra version in 2023, it was pretty clear that Apple had lost interest in the Mac Pro, no updates were coming and its days were numbered. Towards the end of March 2026, Apple pulled the plug.
“Apple has discontinued the Mac Pro and has removed the machine from its website, reports 9to5Mac. Apple said it does not plan to design a new version of the Mac Pro, and no new model will be coming in the future.” – Mac Rumors
The design of Apple Silicon’s SOC, means theat even with PCIe slots, there was almost nothing that you could plug in except super niche specialty cards. You could not upgrade storage or RAM. It was a mighty beast while it lasted. Still rocking two ancient Mac Pro 5,1s.
“Ultimately, Apple needed to make a decision to either update the Mac Pro or discontinue it. Continuing to sell it with the M2 Ultra at such a high price was a disservice to Mac shoppers. I think Apple made the right call by discontinuing it and prioritizing the Mac Studio going forward.
“Of course, there will undoubtedly be some Mac Pro loyalists disappointed by today’s news. But the writing has been on the wall for a while.” – 9to5 Mac
Indeed, my two Classic Mac Pros are pretty aggressively upgraded and have remained viable. I am making this post on my 2012 Mac Pro 5,1. SSD booth drives. Mirrored Raid Data drives… an 8GB RX 580 GPU and 64 GB of RAM in Workstation One. Pampered and maintained, both of them still chunkn’ away and in excellent condition.
With the new M-series Apple Silicon Macs, you have to buy the heaviest iron you can afford – essentially the computer you think you’ll need in 2-5 years!
The Mac Pro 5’1 (last gen. before “trash can”) officially tops out at Mac OS Mojave, but with the OpenCore adaptation can be pushed to Catalina.
However, what’s beginning to happen, and accelerating, is that more and more software and applications are being deprecated on these older OS versions, forcing users (myself included) to consider new machines. Some of the software running on my M2 Pro MacBook Pro just won’t run on the classic MPs. Some websites are disabled, or a kind of a mess, in the max versions of Safari, Chrome, or Firefox that will run in Mojave.
From Macworld –
“Now that the Mac Pro is retired, the Mac Studio takes the crown as Apple’s fastest and most powerful desktop Mac. Apple is expected to update the current model with an M5 Ultra chip, which will bring a significant performance boost over the M3 Ultra. That might not arrive until WWDC, though.” – Jason Cross, Senior Editor, Macworld.
The Mac Studio has been positioned as the successor to the Mac Pro. And to be sure, it’s performance, despite the compact form factor, already surpasses the M2 Ultra version of the MP. This summer we’re expecting to see an M5 Max and M5 Ultra version of the Mac Studio. These will be terrifying little beasts.
My expectation, it will be announced at WWDC, but like other WWDC announcements, might not actually be shipping till the Fall, and may get a price bump due to rising RAM and SSD costs. There will almost certainly be more constrained configuration options.
The downside of course is that all expansion will of necessity be external via Thunderbolt, which has grown faster and more capable over its iterations. But the Apple Silicon Mac Pro had few expansion options, given the system-on-a-chip design. So even though it had PCIe slots, it did not accept GPUs, only a few specialized and niche cards. Linus Torvalds of Linus Tech Tips tried to put an current Nvidia GPU in a Apple Silicon Mac Pro, and the machine didn’t even “see” it. There were also no options to expand RAM, and limited ones for storage. It was also insanely expensive – tho’ maybe not as eye-watering as the previous Intel MPs, especially their highest tier configurations.
Apple discontinuing the Mac Pro came as no surprise to anyone paying attention. But if you still really want one, I expect refurbished and pre-owned MPs to start dropping in price presently. But they were SO costly, a new Mac Studio is probably still a better deal for most professional users
Ive been watching with some interest, as my two Classic MP tower machines are aging. I am being forced to do more and more work on the MacBook Pro. I just can’t get excited over the latest incremental bumps to iPhones that the tech media obsesses over. But I am very seriously looking at a Mac Studio possibly this summer.
As of this writing, I am sixty-seven – a professional Mac User since the 1980s. Retirement is absolutely on the horizon, and I am already beginning to “wind down” the Studio. I don’t plan to hard quit, but “tapering off” would be nice – if the economy allows it. My next computer will more than likely be “my retirement machine.”
So it really ought to be a good one.
Still, it‘s a little bit sad. The end of a once glorious era, gone quietly into the digital night.