They showed it being used for pro audio, but that's a niche that still uses expansion cards a lot. Keeping the current mac pro form factor enables a lot of niche use cases.
One question is whether the M1 chips have enough connectivity to efficiently handle as many expansion cards as the current pro. Even the Max version of the CPU is limited to 4 thunderbolt ports.
They showed it being used for pro audio, but that's a niche that still uses expansion cards a lot. Keeping the current mac pro form factor enables a lot of niche use cases.
One question is whether the M1 chips have enough connectivity to efficiently handle as many expansion cards as the current pro. Even the Max version of the CPU is limited to 4 thunderbolt ports.