Gadgetory

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?