After more than a decade of flirting with the idea, Apple has finally discontinued the Mac Pro tower. The company confirmed to 9to5Mac that the latest Mac Pro iteration—an M2 Ultra model first released in mid-2023—would be its last, at least for the time being. There are no plans to make another Mac Pro.
The discontinuation of the Mac Pro should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. Reporting from late last year suggested that the Mac Pro had been put “on the back burner,” but the desktop has clearly been in danger of falling off the stove since at least the mid-2010s, during the six-year period where the controversial cylindrical “trash can” Mac Pro design languished without updates.
Apple briefly rededicated itself to its pro desktop in 2019 with a new design that hearkened back to more versatile, upgradeable, be-handled versions of the Power Mac and Mac Pro. But by the time it was updated again with M2 Ultra four years later, it was already clear that the idea of a huge and expandable Mac desktop was out of step with the Apple Silicon era. The desktop’s demise confirms that, at least in Apple’s estimation, the Mac Pro was trying to fill a niche that no longer exists.
The Mac Pro is survived by the M4 Max and M3 Ultra versions of the Mac Studio desktop, as well as by the M4 Pro Mac mini. It was preceded in death by the 27-inch iMac (2009–2020) and the iMac Pro (2017–2017).
The 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 that point had grown into a sprawling and poorly differentiated maze of Quadras, Performas, Power Macintoshes, and even third-party systems. The initial focus was a lineup of four computers to serve four market quadrants: a consumer laptop, a consumer desktop, a more powerful professional laptop, and a professional desktop.