S-Tier: Jason Snell

April 2, 2026·1 hr 2 min·4 clips

Stephen argues Apple spent 20 years whittling down the Mac Pro's customer base through its own poor product decisions.

597 is nearly 600. Federico opens as keynote chairman, Stephen answers as annual chairman, and Mike gets pulled into a knowingly dumb leadership bit. The chairmen sound settled in. Before the main tech thread, they pick up listener feedback about nations run by two people and turn it into quick panel banter. Then Federico says a box arrived. The setup points toward what they call incredible follow-up, but the excerpt finds its center in the Mac Pro and one host's history with it. He bought the 2019 model. It arrived around early 2020, after he had the product manager on Mac Power Users, so the attachment makes sense. He calls the machine expensive and overkill, but also solid, expandable, packed with storage, and fun to own for several years. Then Apple Silicon changed the math. Seven months after that Mac Pro shipped, Apple announced the transition. Nine months after that, the first Apple Silicon Macs arrived. The resale clock started ticking. He describes selling it as a business decision, because keeping the tower meant watching its value drain away. The affection is still there. The argument is colder: the Mac had already been moving away from PC-style modularity as Apple leaned harder into integration. The 2013 Mac Pro hangs over the whole thing. It removed internal expansion, and the 2019 correction did not have long to rebuild trust before the M2 Ultra era narrowed expansion again. So the ending feels grim but predictable. The Mac Studio becomes the way forward, while slot-dependent audio capture and storage users are left as a smaller market with a real bummer on its hands. They close in pure Connected fashion, with a profile-word joke sliding from father and husband into blogger, podcaster, and project manager before one last sponsor thank-you.

As heard by us

A funny, clear-eyed look at the Mac Pro's fading role in the Apple Silicon era.

Connected's "S-Tier: Jason Snell" is strongest when the hosts turn the Mac Pro into a story about the Mac's retreat from modular computing. The best stretch tracks the 2019 model as something impressive, expensive, expandable, and short-lived in practical terms once Apple…

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Why you'd press play

If Apple Silicon killed your Mac Pro investment, the hosts of Connected lived that story too.

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