In his first Power On newsletter of 2023, Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman has several pieces of information regarding Apple’s upcoming product announcements. One of the gadgets he writes about is the long-anticipated Mac Pro with Apple silicon. Here’s what you need to know.
A new Mac Pro has been rumored since Apple announced it would start making its silicon. Then, last year, during the March event, the company teased it was working on a successor of this product, but no further comments were made after that.
As rumors went by, Apple was expected to introduce a high-end configuration of the Mac Pro with 48 CPU cores and 152 graphics cores, but it has reportedly been canceled. Now, Gurman says Apple plans to release a version with the M2 Ultra, which, according to him, makes unclear, beyond the machine’s expandability, why most users would buy it over the cheaper and smaller Mac Studio.
In addition, the once-rumored M2 Extreme processor is apparently canceled as well. Bloomberg’s journalist reports that the new Mac Pro will look identical to the 2019 model – it was once rumored to be half the size of the current generation.
Gurman continues:
It will also lack one key feature from the Intel version: user-upgradeable RAM. That’s because the memory is tied directly to the M2 Ultra’s motherboard. Still, there are two SSD storage slots and for graphics, media and networking cards.
This Mac Pro is expected to be announced in the coming months, most likely at a spring Mac event alongside high-end MacBook Pro models. A successor of the Pro Display XDR is also in the works, but Gurman doesn’t think Apple will announce it in 2023.
Without a new look, a new display, and a proper processor, it’s hard to imagine what will be the selling point of this Mac Pro, especially due to the high cost of the current Intel version.
