Comment by w-m
1 day ago
While the trash can generation was somewhat present and around, I don't think I ever saw a cheese grater in the flesh. Did it have any users? Were there any actual useful expansion cards? Did anybody continue buying this at all, after it didn't get the M3 Ultra bump, that the Mac Studio got last year?
I just replaced a 2009 MacPro
It had many hardware upgrades over the years - upgraded CPUs, 128GB RAM, 4TB NVME storage, a modern AMD GPU, USB3/c, thunderbolt, etc
The only reason it got replaced is because it became too much of a PITA to keep modern OSX running on it (via OCLP)
Replaced with an M4 Max Mac Studio, which is a nice and faster machine but with no ability to upgrade anything and much worse hardware resale value on M-series I'll have to replace it in 2-3 years
At the price of the Mac Pro you could buy two Mac Studios (at least) - one today and one three or more years in the future.
I'm a former 4,1 user, myself — replaced with an M2Pro mini Jan 2023 (finally retired fully 2025).
Absolutely recommend you purchase the 4-bay Terramaster external enclosure — gives you four SATA slots that are hot-swappable (unlike MacPro's). 10gbps via USB-C.
Are SMART attributes independently readable on that? (Or any multi-drive USB-C enclosures?)
2 replies →
If you were using a 2009 Mac Pro for work until a year or two ago then you seriously need to think about how much your time is worth and how much of your time you were wasting by "saving money" on not buying a new computer.
If you're self employed, the cost of equipment and depreciation make hanging on to that 2009 system even more of a poor choice.
If you were still using a 2009 system I don't see why you'd "have to replace in 2-3 years."
The cheese grater mac pros were very popular, in that people got them and continued to use them.
The most notable feature was that there were mac-specific graphics cards, and you could also run PC graphics cards (without a nice boot screen). They had a 1.4kw power supply I believe, and there was extra pcie power for higher-end graphics cards. You could upgrade the memory, add up to 6 or more sata hard disks (2 in dvd slot). You could run windows, dual booting if you wanted and apple supported the drivers.
The 2013 was kind of a joke. small and quiet, but expansion was minimal.
2019 looked beefy, but the expansion was more like a cash register for apple, not really democratic. There were 3rd party sata hard disk solutions,
the 2023 model was basically a joke. I think maybe the pcie slots were ok for nvme cards, not a lot else (unless apple made it).
nowadays an apple computer is more like an iphone - apple would prefer if everything was welded shut.
> nowadays an apple computer is more like an iphone - apple would prefer if everything was welded shut.
Funny timing to say that
https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-r...
My first non-Linux PC was a cheese grater, way overkill for my needs but served me well for many years.