March 30, 2026
Cheese grater meets the shredder
Apple pulls the plug on its high-priced, oft-neglected Mac Pro desktop
Farewell, Cheese Grater: Apple axes the tower, fans feud over its fate
TLDR: Apple discontinued the Mac Pro tower with no successor planned, shifting focus to smaller, sealed desktops like Mac Studio. Commenters split between predicting a pricier comeback and declaring the pro tower obsolete—while meta-arguments over duplicate posts showed just how emotional Apple’s pro desktop legacy still is.
Apple just pulled the plug on its priciest desktop, the Mac Pro, and said there’s no replacement planned—a move confirmed by 9to5Mac. The internet instantly split into camps: the “saw this coming” crowd versus the “it’ll rise from the dead, cost even more” believers.
Commenters joked the iconic “cheese grater” is finally going in the dishwasher, while others flashed back to the 2013 “trash can” design—sleek, cool, and famously hard to upgrade. That’s the heart of the drama: old-school pros loved the big tower because it could be customized; the Apple Silicon era is all about sealed, speedy boxes like the Mac Studio. Fans argue the niche for a giant, expandable Mac is gone; skeptics fire back that Apple’s abandoning creative pros who still need slots, cards, and room to grow.
Meanwhile, the thread got delightfully messy. One user slapped a curt “[dupe]” on the whole thing, another scolded that it “should not be in the SCP,” and the meta-moderation bickering briefly overshadowed, well, the death of a product. Over on Ars Technica, the obit reads like the end of a long, on-again-off-again relationship. In the comments, it’s more like a custody battle: is the Mac Pro gone for good, or just waiting for a dramatic, pricier comeback?
Key Points
- •Apple has discontinued the Mac Pro tower, with the M2 Ultra (mid-2023) model being the last.
- •Apple confirmed to 9to5Mac that no replacement Mac Pro is planned.
- •The 2013 cylindrical Mac Pro’s tightly integrated design (Intel Xeon + dual AMD Radeon GPUs) limited upgradability and updates.
- •Apple returned to a modular tower in 2019, but Apple Silicon’s direction reduced the need for a large expandable desktop.
- •Current pro desktop offerings are the Mac Studio (M4 Max, M3 Ultra) and M4 Pro Mac mini; earlier desktops like the 27-inch iMac and iMac Pro are discontinued.