Apple could have presented its first Mac Pro with Apple Silicon “months ago”, but the company decided differently because the top management wanted to wait for a new SoC generation. The Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman, who is considered to be well connected in Cupertino, made this astonishing claim in an interview.
Better an “M2 Extreme”
According to Gurman’s statements, which he made in an interview with a YouTuber, Apple is waiting for the “M2 Extreme”, which is not yet available. This is an improved variant of the current M2 chip currently used in the MacBook Air M2 and MacBook Pro 13 M2. Apparently, the company wanted to avoid building the now outdated M1, which has been available in different variants since 2020, into its workstation. Instead, the long-awaited new Mac Pro generation should be up to date right away.
That wouldn’t be unwise, since Apple tends to leave the workstation on the market for years. The current generation with Xeon equipment has been available since 2019, is only occasionally offered with improved graphics options and is sometimes slightly cheaper. The new Mac Pro with Apple Silicon is also interesting because it is still completely unclear how Apple will handle the expansion options. So far there are no expansion cards for the ARM Macs – whether there is a possibility to use PCIe variants has not yet been leaked. For example, Apple silicon machines still do not support eGPU graphics solutions.
When is Mac Pro coming – and what about Mac mini?
Apple already has a workstation with Apple silicon on offer: the Mac Studio presented this year, which can be equipped with up to M1 Ultra chips. However, this lacks any expandability, so you can call it a kind of drilled Mac mini. But expandability should be what sets the Mac Pro apart from all other Macs. According to Gurman, Apple planned to show the new Mac Pro at the WWDC 2022 developer conference.
Now it looks like the model will be presented by the end of the year. Apple would still stick to its own schedule. However, it is not to be expected that the machine will be sold in 2022, Gurman is more likely to expect early 2023. Meanwhile, the Bloomberg journalist has no good news for the Mac mini. This is said to not get an overhaul as it is very close to the Mac Studio. Instead, Apple could simply add an M2 chip to the existing model and keep the rest of the look.
