According to rumors, Apple has scaled back its plans for the Apple Silicon Mac Pro, canceling the hyper-performing “M2 Extreme” chip due to costs. This means differentiation between the new Mac Pro and the current Mac Studio might be achieved by Apple holding the M2 out of the Mac Studio in favor of forthcoming Mac Pro.
Andrew Cunningham for Ars Technica:
“It wouldn’t make sense for Apple to offer an M2 Ultra Mac Studio and M2 Ultra Mac Pro at the same time,” Gurman writes in his newsletter (via MacRumors). “It’s more likely that Apple either never updates the Mac Studio or holds off until the M3 or M4 generation. At that point, the company may be able to better differentiate the Mac Studio from the Mac Pro.”
Whatever Apple ends up doing, it’s clear that the Apple Silicon era isn’t changing anything for Apple’s desktop users—it’s still hard to know when to expect hardware updates, and it’s hard to predict what you’ll get when they do arrive.
The M2 Mac mini showed up six months after the M2 versions of the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro, though the M1 versions of all three Macs were announced simultaneously. The 24-inch iMac (creeping up on its second birthday) may not get an M2 version at all, and there’s still conflicting evidence about whether Apple is planning a larger Apple Silicon iMac to replace the 27-inch Intel model or the iMac Pro. The new Mac Pro has already blown Apple’s original two-year Intel transition timeline.
MacDailyNews Take: We’d wait, if you can, to see the new Mac Pro (WWDC at the latest?) before buying a Mac Studio.
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I don’t think this makes any sense. The MacPro is about expandability as well as processing power. There is definitely room for a MacPro M2 and a Mac Studio M2. One has the ability to add additional CPUs, possibly some way to expand the memory, and ability add other storage and networking media and the other is a small, almost portable box at that SCREAMs. Couldn’t you have a MacPro that has two M2 Max chips connected in some proprietary way basically creating the M2 “Ultra”.
Agreed. Not updating one of your product lines because it would hurt the feelings of another product line is a completely brain-dead strategy. It almost always indicates a poorly thought out product line-up to begin with. Wasn’t this the main idiotic thinking when Apple was making Macs called “Centris,” “Perfoma,” “Quadra,” etc.?
even a theoretical M2 ultra is magnitudes slower then current AMD / Intel desktop and workstation CPUs/GPUs. Apple has masterfully sold the idea that their silicon is years ahead when in terms of actual performance Apple is now years behind.
If Apple refuses to design a desktop/workstation CPU option then they should update the MacPro with 4th Gen AMD threadrippers/ Heck even the Intel’s i9-13900KS desktop chip shames the M2 when power draw isn’t top priority.
At least Apple is honest. The article says Apple won’t make ab “M2 Extreme” chip due to costs. What they meant to say is lack of insane profits. The M2 extreme would have cut into apple’s 38% profit margin and its clear at this point Apple would much rather serve their corporate P/E ratio than nonsense about what professional users actual need.
I find this comment useful. I have no idea if a MacPro with Apple silicon is competitive with AMD or Intel – do you have any benchmarks or performance data to support you comments? You may be correct but I’ve not seen any “press” or benchmarks that attest to this. For my use which is Photoshop, MS Office, and Lightroom my 2019 MacBook Pro is still holding out but I have my eye on a new M2 16″ MacBook Pro and hope it will stop the endless fan noise and give me 6 – 10 hours of battery life which would be well worth the $4,200.
Cinebench R23 is a good real world benchmark test to measure real world performance. Because the R23 test puts the CPUs multicores under full load over a series of rendered frames, the test is good to test both speed and thermal’s. Apple marketing uses Cinebench R23 on its web site to show how new macs compare with older macs.
R23 Multicore benchmark
Apple Mac Pro 28-Core Intel Xeon 28,051
Apple M1 Ultra @ 3.20 GHz 23,566
Apple Mac mini M2 Pro (2023)
Apple M2 Pro (12 Core) @ 3.50 GHz 14,855
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X 65,112
Intel Core i9-13900-KS 40,998
Liquid cooled Thread-rippers score over 100,000.
AMD 4th Gen threadripper will have a higher base clock and offer 96 cores and should readily reach 100,000.
Apple needs to ether design a workstation CPU (never happen) or update the Pro machines with the latest AMD or intel offerings.
Click show more results: Apple M processors show up at 41st position
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cinebench_r23_multi_core-16
Tom, your questions have been answered. What say you?
Yes, @Ready PROS like myself who have been with Apple from the 1980s, fully realize Apple is behind in speed performance.
Not distracted by Apple shiny Mchips bling and integration talk of memory and system software. A convenient excuse for Apple to retreat yet again, and lock down computer innards from future user upgrades Pros rely upon.
Apple continues down this path shutting out Pro needs IGNORING PC REALITY and SADLY, will always be second fiddle under beancounter Cook. They have the money and tech resources of all time to lead, but not the will… 😔😢😭
Remember this is all rumor and guessing, the article starts off that way.
But.. it is possible that both Studio and Pro release with the same M2 Ultra chip. Apple wants these to be appliances, so here is a possible use case:
Mac Studio (solid state architecture), when you don’t need in-chassis expandability.
Mac Pro, when you do need in-chassis expandability.
What job is worth 100 million dollars or 50 million at that. The president of the United States makes 400,000 dollars in salary and even with the extras, house, security, travel, it does not come to 50,000,000.00 dollars. That is ridiculous. Look at the responsibility of the job of the president. No way a CEO comes close. No reason for salaries over a million dollars. Paying them that much is inflationary. I bet you can fine a bunch of people that would work for that and the money they make from stock dividend pay outs.
“No reason for salaries over a million dollars. Paying them that much is inflationary.”
Do you think the same standard should apply to sports athletes and movie stars. Do you have a reason why people that are genetic gifted and hard workers (biological and social entitlement) should have an absolute cap on the salaries they are paid. Would your limit on money earned also effect people that invent products or ideas. Would you also limit the payout of lottery tickets. The highest power ball winning was over 2.04 billion. What social effect does it have worship wealth at the alter of games and entertainment? I bet you can find a bunch of people that would work for that money.
hum so you have come up with a way that athletes can make money off of the ticket, clothing, video gaming and all other endeavors that the team is involved in. oh like the CEOs you are suggesting they are given and can but stock in their team, and based on how well they do or the revenue they bring in they can of course have that as income. or or, are you suggesting that these CEOs have a short time for their career and must endure physical and mental pain every time they suit up. and whatever money they make for say 5 to 7 years must last them 50, 60 years. how or why would you think I would equate somebody spending their money on a chance as a person who works at a company, the comparison is what? a CEO should be extremely happy with a million dollar salary. his or her income is not limited. let them take a chance buy a lottery ticket or let them buy shares in the company and make 100 million dollars off of the dividends because their work is so great. high dividends drive the share price and make for a very stable company.
Honestly, the M1 Mac Studio is good enough skipping one rev would probably be ok if Apple can deliver new silicon consistently enough and we got an M3 version. That said, it wouldn’t be the first time they made a stopgap product. Killing the Studio altogether though would be a mistake, though IMO, it’s a perfect fit for a great many higher end users that simply will never need Hollywood level performance. Seems as though they may have painted themselves into a corner on this one. The only good compromise I can see would be merging the Mini and Studio lines without crippling the capability of the latter. That doesn’t seem likely, either.
Bummer. I am waiting to buy the M2 Mac Studio. I almost never buy the first generation of something. $$$ ready, just need the product. Would probably buy the studio display, too.