The Promising Journey of My 2013 “Trashcan” Mac Pro: A Bittersweet Ending
Finding new use cases for a 2013 Mac Pro ends on a dead end.
When I bought a Mac Pro last year, my initial use case was to run a homelab within VMware Fusion. Since VMware was bought by Broadcom, the free version of the VMware ESXi hypervisor is no longer available for download. Because of that, I’m left with a great machine that is not really useful. That is sad but also frustrating. But there is something even more frustrating that I wasn’t expecting.
My Mac Pro usually sits on my desk and is turned off. I recently tried to update apps on the Mac Pro and got this error.
According to this article, to regain the capability to update apps or download new ones, I would have to turn off Advanced Data Protection on my other devices (iPhone, iPad, etc.), which I’m unwilling to do. Now, I’m unable to keep this Mac up-to-date.
The only apps that can be installed are the ones that aren’t made available through the Mac App Store. This makes me wonder about the implications of Apple’s power on our devices.
Now what? Considering I already have a great NAS, a Synology 720+, I don’t need another one running with macOS. So, what else? I could run a media server but use InFuse on my Apple device for media consumption. Many apps that I depend on are coming from the Mac App Store. Maybe something like running a weather station app like WeatherCat would be a good candidate, but I would need to buy a weather station like this guy. I think it would be a bit gimmicky.
So, what’s next? It's increasingly clear: the future is the Apple Silicon Mac. There is no point in keeping an Intel-based Mac these days. I plan to sell my Mac Pro, upgrade to the upcoming M3-based Mac Studio, and keep the M1 Mac mini instead, which will fit perfectly on this Grovemade desk shelf. I could dedicate the Mac mini for office-only work, as I suggested in “New IT Rules at the Office Prompts Me to Revisit My Mac Usage at Home.”
Now it’s the time to write my next article in the “Remembering the Story Behind Every Apple Computer I Ever Owned” series. 😔 👨🏻💻
