Mac Pro, Mac Studio, and Mac Clusters

by Rian

macOS 26.2 is expected to release a new Mac Cluster feature that runs on full Thunderbolt 5 bandwidth (80Gbps) compared to what is available now at 10Gbps. The coverages surrounding the end of Mac Pro line, which I happen to agree with, suspect Mac cluster update will be the final nail in the coffin for Mac Pro.

Previously on “The Death of Mac Pro”, the model was pronounced dead as Apple began transitioning to Apple Silicon, away from x86. Apple’s decision to use SoC chip in all of the Macs rendered Mac Pro paralyzed within the ecosystem, as the top tier chips were made available to Mac Studio unequivocally. Without dGPU support and x86, Mac Pro didn’t have much to stand on. The only use cases in the wild were for creative professionals who wanted a machine with several PCIe slots.

To some extent, it was expected of Apple to drop Mac Pro in favor of Thunderbolt clusters. Current cheese grater Mac Pro was announced with modularity in mind, and Mac cluster would be, by definition, more modular for professionals. More performance is guaranteed by adding more units, and many PCIe cards or equivalent can be used via Thunderbolt. It does have some technical hoops to jump through; not all tasks can be offloaded off to clusters, and some may find it fiddly to set it up in the first place.

Where does it leave regular users? Sales figure already testify MacBook Air and Mac Mini are more than powerful enough to satisfy average users. It’s the area such as gaming Mac is sitting in the limbo. Apple does showcase several interesting case studies, but it seems to miss the mark for AA or run of the mill games. Though, as a fan of RTS genre, it does make one wonder if it isn’t the game industry that is becoming polarized into two extremes; mid-budget simply has smaller targetable user base to begin with. Irregardless of games, there is some sizable gap between the base models and the pro models — and for Mac Mini, I wonder if there ever will be a Mac Mini with a Max chip.