Not much point for it anymore with the way Apple silicon works. Not putting in graphics cards, it doesn’t really use PCIe, RAM is on the chip. Internal storage drives seem like the only real benefit anymore and that’s probably not worth the cost.
I hear the Neo is more repairable than a lot of macs, but the whole idea of “everything on one chip” still feels like an anti-feature.
User replaceable components come at a performance costs. Everything in tech is a trade-off.
I’ve been working on Apple Silicon until about a year ago. When I switched to jobs, I switched to Windows operated machines. But I kept doing the same thing. The windows machine I use now has “basically the same spec” (same amount of RAM, same price range etc.) than the laptop before.
I am going nuts. I completely forgot the waiting and the “lemme just freeze for some time” behaviour. The difference between unified memory and standard bus is not only detectable in benchmarks.
Yes, I was pissed when Apple Silicon came out and they dropped repairability. I’m starting to think it might have been the right thing to do. But I haven’t been using windows for a decade. Maybe it’s just that fucking operating system. My company refuses to let me install Linux on that crappy laptop though.
Framework copped ALOT of flack over using an AMD chip with unified memory in their “desktop”.
A lot of that may just be the bloated shambling corpse that is windows.
Even my main PC immediately felt more responsive when I shifted to Linux a few months ago.
Unified memory is awesome. It lets you do things like handing over tasks to the GPU with zero overhead.
That means you can choose whether to do something on CPU or GPU based on which is more suitable for the task. With a traditional discrete GPU with it’s own VRAM you sometimes do things on the CPU even though the GPU would be better suited as the overhead of copying data to and from VRAM would negate any performance benefits of letting the GPU do it.
I feel like discrete GPUs could be so much faster at these kind of cross compute tasks through ReBAR/SAM if not for all the proprietary crap and half baked drivers. Unified is a view into that perfect world of what could be if we stopped with the monopolistic BS.
ReBAR may make things bit more efficient, but you still need to move data back and forth to VRAM over the slow PCIe bus.
This is not a huge problem for games, as it’s mostly sending data to VRAM that stays there for a long time, but it is a major bottleneck for many GPGPU tasks.
Since even Nvidia doesn’t seem to care about games anymore (and consoles have always used unified memory) I expect the discrete GPU to go the way of the dodo.
It’s just the operating system windows is bloated beyond belief. Most apps themselves are too. Especially if they are windows only
It’s just the operating system windows is bloated beyond belief. Most apps themselves are too. Especially if they are windows only
Computers have been good enough for years though, we just keep writing worse code. There is no good reason for a laptop with 8gb ram running Windows to need six seconds to rename a file, and that’s basically normal performance… especially if you have to have OneDrive on for work.
It’s not a direct correlation, though. It’s not always the case.
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PCIe slots help you with lots of things:
- fancy sound card
- fast networking
- upgrade to next generation ports years lager
Space for internal drives is also nice to have lots of storage.
Now you have to put everything into external enclosures leading to lots of cables, more power supplies, more mess, higher costs.
Yes, and the pros who use these for audio and video production were historically using a lot of specialty cards on PCIe but the impression I had was the support wasn’t great for the M-series Mac Pros, that the chips didn’t have good support for it because that was the only model using it
Apple neglecting its loyal core market of creative professionals.
There are now so many hubs like this one to make a Mac Studio of Mac mini work for a demanding setting with extra ports, faster networking, card readers, space for SSDs, more monitor connections, etc.
It’s a really crowded market of very similar products, some great, some pretty bad.
Not the best user experience.
Yes, it really has us back to the same problems we had with the trash can Mac Pros: adapter rat’s nests on our desks. Having no Macs with expandable internal storage I feel is a negative for heavy pro users.
Locally run LLMs on unified ram could be the one reason to do this, but this is a thin market and Apple is more about ecosystem for a wider audience.
Into the trash can, that’s grate
Apple cheese grater, now only $999!
And the wheels , too. It makes since if you get rid of the machine, you loose accessories, too. But if you owned a Mac Pro and decided you wanted wheels, the Apple made ones are gone. OWC has a rover kit, if you want one.
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/26/mac-pro-wheels-kit-discontinued/
Oh no! Not the $700 wheels!
