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With perfect, almost uncanny timing, we published a post yesterday about the best Mac Pro setups — just hours before Apple officially discontinued the storied line of high-end machines. Oops!
The Mac Pro’s tower design — which allows users to upgrade its internal guts — can tenuously be traced all the way back to 1977’s Apple II, I suppose, which featured eight expansion slots.
Steve Wozniak, who more or less designed the entire machine himself, insisted on the slots, much to Steve Jobs’ chagrin.
Jobs preferred sealed, tamper-proof designs, but Wozniak viewed computers as consummate hackers’ tools and strongly believed users should be allowed, even encouraged, to extend their machines’ capabilities. Clearly, this spirit lived on.
The Mac Pro’s design progenitors were the Macintosh IIcx and Macintosh IIci, released one after the other in 1989. (The IIci was an upgraded, faster version.)
Both were giant, beige boxes that could be used flat or standing upright. They featured three NuBus slots for things like graphics acceleration and networking. These machines were hot tickets in the burgeoning desktop publishing revolution.
The first computer to bear the “Mac Pro” name arrived in 2006, and was the last machine in Apple’s lineup to switch from PowerPC processors to Intel.
It, too, was a hot ticket, but subsequent versions became steadily less and less popular and more and more niche.
More coffin nails were driven with the monster success of Apple silicon, which brought high-end power to much smaller — and much cheaper — computers.
So pour one out for the Mac Pro — it’s the end of an era. 😢
But I’m not really troubled. The future for Apple’s pro computers is the Mac Studio, and it’s a very worthy heir. (I’m typing on one now!)
Also in today’s newsletter:
You gotta hand it to Apple: The company knows how to play the middleman card. Apple devices are gonna be the gateway to data-center AIs, and it’s a brilliant move.
Showing the power of the tower design, the very first Mac clone was a tower of power from Radius. It was a success, much to the detriment of Apple.
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There’s new AirPods firmware out, but the automatic update process can be frustrating. Here’s how to force it.
A new Thunderbolt 5 dock keeps cool while serving up 17 ports — and includes a great feature that Mac power users will love. (Plus, it’s 22% off during Ugreen’s launch sale.)
— Leander Kahney, EIC.
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We had a fundamental belief that doing it right the first time was going to be easier than having to go back and fix it. And I cannot say strongly enough that the repercussions of that attitude are staggering. I've seen them again and again throughout my business life.
Today’s poll
Did you own a Mac clone?
Results from yesterday’s poll: Which Mac Pro design is your favorite?
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