"Regardless of what Apple does with the Mac Pro, the desktop makes less sense than ever in the Apple Silicon era. Part of the appeal of the early 2010s and the 2019 Mac Pro towers was their internal expandability, particularly with respect to storage, graphics cards, and RAM. But while the Apple Silicon Mac Pro does include six internal PCI Express slots, it supports neither RAM upgrades nor third-party GPUs from Nvidia, AMD, or Intel."
"That leaves even the most powerful of power users with few practical reasons to prefer a $7,000 Mac Pro tower to a $4,000 Mac Studio. And that would be true even if both desktops used the same chip-currently, the M3 Ultra Studio comes with more and newer CPU cores, newer GPU cores, and 32GB more RAM for that price, making the comparison even more lopsided."
"Mac Pro aside, the Mac should have a pretty active 2026. Every laptop other than the entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro should get an Apple M5 upgrade, with Pro and Max chips coming for the higher-end Pros. Those chips, plus the M5 Ultra, would give Apple all the ingredients it would need to refresh the iMac, Mac mini, and Mac Studio lineups as well."
Apple Silicon and Apple’s platform choices have reduced the desktop Mac's traditional advantages. The current Mac Pro has six PCI Express slots but prevents RAM upgrades and third-party GPUs from Nvidia, AMD, or Intel, limiting internal expandability. Thunderbolt 5 provides 120 Gbps transfer speeds that sufficiently support high-speed external storage, reducing the need for internal bays. The M3 Ultra–based Mac Studio offers newer CPU and GPU cores and 32GB more RAM at a lower price than the Mac Pro, undermining the Pro's value. Apple plans M5-family upgrades across most Macs in 2026 and a lower-cost MacBook with an iPhone-class chip.
Read at Ars Technica
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