The newly released Mac Studio is a beast of a machine in a compact, neatly designed package. The insides are tiny, yet amazingly powerful.

Mac Studio with M1 Ultra crushes other Macs in benchmarks and real-world testing, from the MacBook Pros with Apple Silicon to top-of-the-line iMac Pros and Mac Pros.

So, with this new Mac Studio, what’s left for the upcoming Mac Pro, expected to hit this summer or fall at the latest?

There’s one missing feature about Mac Studio

Some have speculated that Mac Pro will come with the next-gen M2 chip. Could be.

Even if so, what’s the point of topping the power of the M1 Ultra?

In my opinion, Mac Studio is only missing out on one important aspect of a pro desktop machine.

Modularity.

The Mac Pro Upgrade

I fully expect the Mac Pro to come in a larger package for one particular reason. Modularity.

While the Mac Studio shines with incredible performance using a complete SoC, RAM and SSD being included in this package as well, the Mac Pro will be upgradeable.

SoCs have huge upsides. No lag, no connections that come with transmission losses, smaller footprint, to name a few. But SoCs have downsides as well. The biggest being the lack of upgrades. You can’t add more RAM or SSD space.

The Mac Pro will offer both, upgradeable RAM and switchable SSDs.

The bottom line

Mac Pro users are going to be happy with the upcoming refresh of Apple’s most powerful computer. It’s going to be a modular system, well-built and interestingly designed as usual, with an array of options for upgrades. It will therefore also sport a hefty price tag, surely doubling that of the M1 Ultra Mac Studio which starts at $4000.

Considering the cost of previous Mac Pros, however, which could easily reach prices of $20,000, anything under $10,000 is a good deal for professionals who need this kind of power and modularity.

For anyone else, Mac Studio is the only desktop machine they need. It offers enough power for pretty much any profession as is.