This Mac Pro rival crushes Apple’s workstation on performance and costs $10,000 less

Apple’s last x86 product needs a replacement before creatives decide to move on

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There was noMac Pro with an M2 Ultraintroduced in March 2023. It never came despite the clamor and the hopes ofApplefans that work in the creative industry and it is no surprise that some of them are planning to move to Windows altogether to ease their transition to newer and faster technology rather than waiting for upgrades that may or may not come. I surveyed the US Windowsworkstationmarket, looking at 17 companies, from boutique providers to global brands to find out the bestMac Proalternative and found one clear winner.

Thinkmate is not a household name (although one might confuse it withLenovo’s popular Thinkstation brand) but this boutique vendor covers the US, Canada, the UK and the EU. ItsVSX R5 760S1fitted the bill when looking for an alternative to the Mac Pro. What’s more, it is whisper-quiet thanks to a clever choice of components; the chassis is a dual-chamber one which, according to the vendor, “reduces heat and noise by increasing airflow efficiency and isolating the power supply from the rest of the system components”.

Windows vs Mac: The low down

Below is a table that compares the basic specification of Apple’s product versus its ThinkMate new nemesis.

On paper, Thinkmate’s workstation should easily trounce Apple’s Mac Pro. It has more compute power, sports a pair of the fastest graphics cards on the market, has better storage and a third more system memory. If that wasn’t enough the onsite warranty should win it by a whisker.

MacOS is where Apple has the upper hand. Itsoperating systemhas been fine tuned for the hardware (well perhaps a bit less for the x86-based Xeon) andLinuxsimply doesn’t compete but, the beauty with ThinkMate’s workstation is that you can always swap OSes (or run them in dual boot).

Could Apple be planning to release a refreshed Mac Pro at the forthcomingWWDCin June 2023? Maybe, but I won’t hold my breath till then. Perhaps a refreshed Mac Studio with an M2 Ultra or an M2 Max CPU will be what will finally put the x86 Mac Pro to rest.

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Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled inwebsite buildersandweb hostingwhen DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.

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