Apple has said that their upcoming Mac Pro
is supposed to be a modular system
and instead of a regular kind of component based build that we've seen with
like PC's and even the oldschool Mac Pro
There's a growing sense that this new Mac Pro is supposed to be a
stackable modular system, so you have kind of like a base unit
that has like your core components, and then you have modules
you can add on the top or beneath it
that would add extra functionality to the device
So in your base unit, you have stuff like your CPU, your RAM
and your storage. The CPU would probably be a Xeon processor
Apple always runs Xeon chips in their Pro desktop devices
So you get like 10, 16, maybe 20 core chips
And you're also running ECC RAM in here so that's
server grade memory. That's very expensive, but very reliable.
And I also think that they'll be running storage in that base module.
Not a lot if, you need crazy amounts of storage, you're gonna have to get like a different module.
But just enough for the OS and some basic applications and stuff like that
And that's it. There's nothing else
in that base unit other than those three things. And because
it doesn't have a GPU, you will need to buy a
module for your graphics, and that's kind of the beauty
of a modular system. If you're someone that has very
undemanding graphical needs
you can just get something lightweight, but if you want something that's more powerful,
you have the option of spending a lot more money and getting
a more powerful GPU for your system.
They're most likely gonna run AMD GPU's
Again, I don't see them with NVIDIA, they've actually
removed NVIDIA support even on the software side
From the latest version of MacOS, so if you're wanting
quadro cards, that's probably not gonna happen.
Uh, one thing that's kind of interesting is that MacOS
supports the use of multiple external GPU's
And the way that these graphics modulues could connect to the system
it is possible that they would be considered
external GPU's. Now normally when you think of external GPU's
They don't have great performance because we're running off Thunderbolt 3 connections
This connectivity is new, right, it could be a
completely different system and it could be very fast
It is possible that you can connect
two external GPU's to a base module, and you would have
great performance from that
for applications that can make use of multiple GPU's
And that's basically it, like you have your
computer in a stack and everything else that you would
need, like massive storage or a really high quality DAC
like all of those would be extra modules that you would purchase
and then add on to the stack
Now this isn't the first time we've seen
a company do a modular PC like this, right?
A few years ago we saw Acer do it, they had the Acer Revo
It wasn't particularly well polished. It looked kind of incomplete
But it was 2015 and they had a working modular
PC, and then a couple years ago
we saw HP do it. They had a product called the Elite Slice
And you could get a speaker module for it,
you could get an optical disk drive for it. I'll be honest, I don't see Apple
going with a disk drive on this new Mac Pro, but it is
possible, right? Modularity allows stuff like that
And we've even seen a patent from Microsoft,
where they were trying to make the Surface Studio a modular system
as well, even though that built in screen might be a little bit weird
But all of these systems
including that Microsoft Surface Studio have been built
more for like consumer grade products. The Mac Pro
will be the first kind of modular PC
or modular desktop that's ever been made for
the professional high-end market, and for Apple that's a
very small percentage of their user base. Like we're talking
way less than 1%, now the advantages
to a modular system
are quite evident, right? You get a very nice looking sytem that's easy
to upgrade, easy to use, and if anything goes wrong with
any of the individual modules, you can
remove it, get it repaired or replaced, then swap it
in and out like that. And also gives this product line
a potentially very long lifespan
as long as Apple continues to support it
Now, there are some negatives to
modular systems as well. The first one the biggest
one, is cost. When you have a system
like this, every single one of those modules has to have
a housing, or like a shell, as well as
the connection or some kind of interface for these different
modules to talk to one another, and the engineering cost
to make all this work is not cheap
and customers are gonna have to pay for that. So as an example
the camera that I use to shoot my videos is
made by a comapny called Red. They have a
modular camera system. And you can set up your camera
however you want it. You can build something lean, or you can go ham
and build something you would see on a movie set.
But, the moment the company makes
something new, like they have a new sensor
or a new screen, or a different module
you can switch out your old one
with the new upgraded part, but the components are very expensive,
and the company is good at locking you out from using other third
party devices, and the same thing would apply to
the Apple modular Mac Pro. They're gonna be expensive
and you can't just swap out a regular GPU
into this system, you have to use a dedicated
Apple certified GPU that connects to the system, so
as nice as it is, it's gonna have an Apple
price tag, like a professional Apple price tag
And then the other concern that I have for the modular sytem is
the power and thermal engineering
you have to do around this. Like every single one of the modules has to be
powered, and every single one of the modules has to be
individually cooled.
But I think that's something Apple's gotten better with for their desktop products.
But, that's the modular Mac Pro, at least how I'm
picturing it. I think this is how it's gonna be done.
I don't see them going with like the component build with the chassis
and stuff like that.
What do you think? Is this what you want?
Is this what you would use? I mean this is gonna
be crazy expensive, so very few people are gonna be buying this.
But, would you want to use something like this? Or would you prefer
a component based Mac Pro?