After toying with the idea for over a decade, Apple has finally discontinued the Mac Pro tower. The company confirmed to 9to5Mac that the latest Mac Pro iteration — an M2 Ultra model that was first released in mid-2023 — will be its last for at least some time. There are no plans to make a second Mac Pro.
The Mac Pro’s shutdown should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. Reports late last year suggested that the Mac Pro had been placed “on the back burner,” but the desktop had apparently been in danger of falling off the stove since at least mid-2010, during a six-year period where the controversial cylindrical “trash can” Mac Pro design went without an update.
Apple briefly reimagined its Pro desktops in 2019 with a new design that hearkened back to more versatile, upgradeable, easier-to-handle versions of the Power Mac and Mac Pro. But by the time it was updated again four years later with the M2 Ultra, it was already clear that the idea of a huge and expandable Mac desktop was no longer in keeping with the Apple Silicon era. The demise of the desktop confirms that, at least in Apple’s estimation, the Mac Pro was trying to fill a niche that no longer exists.
The Mac Pro survives the M4 Max and M3 Ultra versions of the Mac Studio desktop, as well as the M4 Pro Mac mini. Earlier, the 27-inch iMac (2009-2020) and iMac Pro (2017-2017) had died.
fourth quadrant
When Steve Jobs returned to lead Apple in 1997, one of his early initiatives was to streamline and refocus the Mac product family, which at the time had grown into a vast and poorly differentiated maze of Quadras, Performas, Power Macintoshes, and even third-party systems. The initial focus was on a series of four computers to serve four market quadrants: a consumer laptop, a consumer desktop, a more powerful professional laptop, and a professional desktop.
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