Revisiting Apple's FAILED Mac Pro in 2024

Nearly 11 years ago Apple introduced their infamous 'trash can' Mac Pro. This ended up being ironic, as many pros considered it actually trash. But now, with the rise of Apple Silicon and M2 Ultra, prices for Intel Macs have been crashing HARD. So today let's reexamine this, the most powerful trash can mac pro build, to see if there's an argument to be made for it finally!

time stamps
0:00 Intro
2:32 Why did it fail?
4:05 Upgrades galore!
5:42 They're insanely cheap now
6:26 Should you buy one?
8:22 This thing is weird
11:10 F in chat

Gear:
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[Arnaud-DeClerck]

Apple silicon with that design? i say HELL YEAH 😁😁😁

[ProductivePM]

Luke, I just bought the 2013 Mac Pro with 12 cores, 64 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD. I love the industrial art of it. It looks so good on my desk. I could not be happier. I am not a maker of videos so it works great! Wishing you all the best, Luke!

[alexisa]

So... maybe someone can put a Mini-PC inside that beautiful case and make it functional 👀

[erotech]

But you don’t get 1TB storage and 64GB RAM with that Mac Mini! Just saying!

[AlexisBronchart]

💡 Try to fit the internals of a Mac Studio in there.

[carson]

I have a trash can Mac that I paid 300 dollars for. I used legacy patcher to get modern OS and I love it.

[aa]

It's currently my Plex server, but will eventually make it to my museum of failed Apple products, along with my Newton, G4 Cube, and FineWoven iPhone case.

[Ybalrid]

the true design successor of this thing is in my book the Mac Studio. It's sits somewhere int he middle of the ideas of the trascan and the G4 Cube

[JohnWindberg]

Too bad Apple has forgotten this lesson. The Apple Silicon machines are all incapable of upgrades. I really don't buy their argument that storage and ram need to be soldered on. I've been an Apple fan since the Apple IIe, but design decisions like that make me wonder.

[KrzysztofPiwowarczyk]

The trashcan Mac Pro's interior looks like hardware from an alien civilisation.

[budgetkeyboardist]

The one thing this video missed was RAM. For things like samplers in audio recording, having 64 GB of RAM is good, and having 8-16 Gb RAM in an M1 Mac Mini is simply nowhere near the neighborhood of enough.

[JohnSmith-zsow]

I'm a developer and I have a base M1 Mac mini, and a 128GB/1TB SSD Trashcan (which cost half as much). I set up a home lab on a budget. The M1 is fast for compilation, but won't run a decent size Kubernetes cluster. The whopping memory on the trashcan is great for Kubernetes and means that the slower CPU/graphics/SSD doesn't matter. Basically, I wouldn't be without either. Each is the correct tool for a particular job.

[GuilhermeMG]

It is the “Mac Studio” before Apple silicon! A huge difference is that we compare the Studio with Mac Minis instead of Mac Pros

[Noah-Lach]

Now that these are cheap, I'm going to buy one as a shelf piece. Might just use it to run my Plex server while I'm at it.

[MahelKhan]

They should definitely go back to this design. In 11~ years I'm sure they would've learnt how to keep it compact yet upgradeable

[minecraftcart]

The one place where it still has the lead is multi-monitor support. I think you can hook up like 6 displays to the Mac Pro. It may not be a “pro” computer anymore but for normal browser type things it works great!

[johnDingoFoxVelocity]

You know what's funny? I Own one of these.

Once you do the open patcher and the Ram grade and the SD upgrade, it works great.

[bitcrafter]

Sorry Luke, couldn't disagree more with you on this one. Doing video, not perfect, was perfect at the time. But it's still a photoshop workhorse, and it gave me 8 years or work before I retired it to a file server, which it still operates as, encoding non-essential video in the background while I do other things on Apple Silicon. For the price now, it can't be beaten. In fact, I just bought a newer 2019 model machine four weeks ago, for $300, just to get the D700's that I wanted for my 2013 machine, but decided to leave them in the 2019 computer. I now have two, one maxed 12-core, and one maxed 8-core. The new machine also came with a monitor, keyboard AND a mouse. Considering that just to buy the D700's was $400, I got everything and more. This little trash can NEVER gave me any problems, EVER, and was a solid working investment that paid for itself a thousand times over. It cost me over $5500 to purchase and probably grossed me over $1M in its lifetime, so I'd say it was worth the investment. I would typically burn out the CPU in five years. Sometimes it's not just about the numbers, but about the dollars. Is it perfect, NO. Was it great in my case, absolutely!! Would I buy one now? Well, I just did. And as a media server, I think it will be great. As a backup computer in the event that Apple Silicon will have a problem, I know it will get the job done, but just be a lot slower. LOL.

[BrunodeSouzaLino]

The trashcan Mac Pro is essentially G4 Cube 2: Electric Boogaloo.

[techandmore]

Here's a great idea for you Luke; how about retrofitting your old Mac Pro trash can with the components from an M1 Mac Mini ... the best of both?