Apple has finally pulled the plug on the Mac Pro, the high-end professional Mac that has been around for decades and a key corner of Jobs' famous 4-quadrant product strategy. And while it seems Apple has been trying to find a replacement for the top of the line computer for years, they may have finally succeeded. The writing was on the wall the moment Apple announced the two new monitors were both called Studio Displays.
When Jobs returned to Apple and began streamlining Apple's Mac product line (and killing every other Apple product), the Power Macintosh line was reduced to just two machines—the G3 Desktop and G3 Tower. These were soon replaced by the second fully redesigned Mac in the Jobs era after the iMac—the Power Mac G3 Blue & White Tower. Since the arrival of the PowerPC era and the release of the Power Mac in January 1999 there has been an expandable professional tower in the lineup. Until now.
At the same time Apple has tried three times to introduce a model just below the Power Mac/Mac Pro—a slotless variant of the Pro computer. First we had the Power Mac G4 Cube, a personal favourite of Jobs, and then Apple tried to replace the Mac Pro line with the trash can. Gorgeous though it was, the Mac Pro suffered from its lack of upgradability—and the heat produced by those Intel chips. Apple had to bring out an iMac Pro to bridge the gap while they "scrambled" to build what would become the last Mac Pro design—Jony Ive's 2019 Mac Pro. It took 6 years to go from the 2013 trash can to its expandable replacement. The Mac Pro was the last legacy machine to receive its Apple Silicon replacement, but after nearly 7 years, Ive's cheese grater was no more.