The Apple Mac Pro – the go-to computer for high-end music production – has been discontinuedThe Apple Mac Pro – long-regarded as the go-to machine of choice for high-end music production – looks to have been discontinued, and is no longer available on the Apple website.
The apparent discontinuation marks the end of a 20-year reign for the Mac Pro at the top of the performance hierarchy for Apple computers. 
Launched in 2006, the Mac Pro originally boasted a tower-style design, before adopting a cylindrical design from 2013, and subsequently being colloquially labelled the “trash can Mac Pro”. Six years later in 2019, Apple returned the Mac Pro to a “cheese-grater”-style tower design.

READ MORE: Which Apple Mac computer should you buy for music production?

During its 20-year tenure, the Apple Mac Pro became a staple of sophisticated recording studios and music-making setups. Its price tag rendered it prohibitive for more hobbyist producers, with the most recent model having a $5,999 base price, easily rising to five figures with custom configurations.
The Mac Pro’s dethroning now makes the Mac Studio the king of the Apple lineup in terms of performance, with the latest model billed as the “ultimate pro desktop”, sporting M4 Max/M3 Ultra chips. 
The base M4 Max Mac Studio starts at £2,099, while the M3 Ultra-equipped version starts at £4,199. For a fully configured M3 Ultra Mac Studio – with a 32-core CPU, 80-core GPU, 256GB memory, and 16TB storage – that’ll set you back a mere £12,299.
It’s fun to dream about owning a machine that powerful, but the truth is, for music producers, you don’t need nearly that much computing power.
Earlier this month, Apple unveiled its latest round of Apple laptops, including its M5 Pro and M5 Max-equipped MacBook Pros, and its cheapest MacBook model ever, the iPhone chip-loaded MacBook Neo. 
Even the new M5-loaded MacBook Pros might be overkill in terms of performance for the average music producer; generally speaking as a baseline, it’s recommended to have at least a quad-core processor plus at least 8GB RAM (with 16GB recommended as optimal). 
Those MacBook Pros would easily handle even the most demanding DAW projects, but what of the Neo? That comes with 8GB RAM as standard – meeting that baseline RAM requirement, but it might start to slow down as you get into the realm of more complex projects.
Fortunately, though, unless you’re a professional music producer working regularly with vast and demanding projects, springing for a kitted out Mac Studio is probably unnecessary, and you’ll get by just fine with a MacBook Pro.
Shop the latest range of Mac computers at Apple.
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