Apple in June 2020 announced plans to dump big, hot, slow, inefficient Intel processors for fast, efficient Apple Silicon chips, the company said the move would take about two years. So, two and a half years later, where’s Apple’s new Mac Pro?
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
Apple had aimed to introduce the new Mac Pro by now, but the high-end machine has been held up for a number of reasons, including multiple changes to its features, a significant shift in the company’s plans for high-end processors and a potential relocation of its manufacturing…
The dual M1 Max chip ended up first launching in the Mac Studio as the M1 Ultra, and Apple decided to push back the Mac Pro to the M2 generation. The company then planned for the Mac Pro to come in two configurations: an M2 Ultra version and a double-M2 Ultra that I’ve dubbed the “M2 Extreme.”
The M2 Ultra chip is destined to have some serious specifications for professional users, including up to 24 CPU cores, 76 graphics cores and the ability to top out the machine with at least 192 gigabytes of memory.
An M2 Extreme chip would have doubled that to 48 CPU cores and 152 graphics cores. But here’s the bad news: The company has likely scrapped that higher-end configuration, which may disappoint Apple’s most demanding users — the photographers, editors and programmers who prize that kind of computing power… Instead, the Mac Pro is expected to rely on a new-generation M2 Ultra chip (rather than the M1 Ultra) and will retain one of its hallmark features: easy expandability for additional memory, storage and other components.
MacDailyNews Take: Gurman also figures that an “M2 Extreme” Mac Pro would probably have a starting cost of at least $10,000, which would make it extremely niche. An M2 Ultra Mac Pro would be plenty powerful and, easy expandability would be its hallmark and main point of differentiation over the Mac Studio.
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Apple is concentrating all its energy on its core produce – the Apple Car. No time for high end Macs or excellent home and theater audio or integrated networking products or Apple TV with integrated videoconferencing. No, the Apple Car and the Apple Citizen Surveillance Products lines are where the focus is.
The sarcasm is well said.
A decent amount of energy is being devoted to “media” involvement/creations. It seems like the past few yrs, there’s been almost constant notice of new releases and numerous awards for their productions. Producing sports seems to be gaining a lot of foci…NFL seemed to be a realistic possibility (up until last wk’s backing out).
Please Apple…be consistent with your claim to offer the indi security and include a SERIOUS privacy commitment. Anything other is being grandly inconsistent.
The latest generation of Intel and AMD processors pull ahead Apple silicon in terms of computational performance for a desktop platform. Apple silicon really shines for mobile phones, iPads, and laptops. In performance per watt Apple is the industry leader but apple’s current silicon design isn’t the best option for raw speed. Dedicated GPUs and CPUs with high power draw and liquid cooling requirements are much faster than any mobile design. So if apple did release a new Mac Pro based on M2’s its would a step sideways or backwards. The latest AMD server chip has 96 cores and 192 threads, when you hook that beast up with a RTX 4090 GPU, then Apple’s best attempt would be slow compared to what you can get from the dark side
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It’s in pipeline (but stuck for centuries….)
Apple had aimed to introduce the new Mac Pro by now, but the high-end machine has been held up for a number of reasons, including multiple changes to its features, a significant shift in the company’s plans for its processors and a potential relocation of its manufacturing . The dual M1 Max chip ended up first launching in the Mac Studio as the M1 Ultra, and Apple decided to push back the Mac Pro to the M2 generation .