December 21st, 2022 at 5:16 AM
Apple originally announced a 2-year transition period in November 2020 for their Apple Silicon transition. This deadline has already been missed, and many are asking about when the Apple Silicon Mac Pro will arrive.
Reportedly, the M1 Extreme (what would have originally been the Mac Pro's first Apple-Silicon processor) was scrapped for various technical reasons. Apple was reportedly working on an M2 Extreme version, but now rumors are suggesting that this, too, has been cancelled (apparently due to prohibitively high prices that would have been required in their current price structure).
The M1 Ultra is already ludicrously powerful in the Mac Studio and can significantly outperform existing Intel Mac Pro models, but the Mac Pro still has other advantages over the Mac Studio, such as PCI-E and storage/RAM extensibility. Apple is apparently working on these with the Mac Pro, but this will require significant work to develop platforms to support, considering that their existing models are very locked down and do not support standard off-SOC RAM protocols, third-party GPUs, etc.
My feeling is that Apple is already capable of releasing Mac Pro models, but does not want to cannibalize existing offerings with the prices that they would have to charge to get the Mac Pro to sell. It's probably an example of where Apple's very locked-down strategy isn't working in their favor for some of the Pro systems that rely on more extensibility. My feeling is that Apple will probably wait another 6-12 months before releasing it, and it will probably coincide with price drops on some of the other parts of their lineup. Hopefully they release something sooner, but being that it's been canceled twice already, we may be waiting a little while longer.
Reportedly, the M1 Extreme (what would have originally been the Mac Pro's first Apple-Silicon processor) was scrapped for various technical reasons. Apple was reportedly working on an M2 Extreme version, but now rumors are suggesting that this, too, has been cancelled (apparently due to prohibitively high prices that would have been required in their current price structure).
The M1 Ultra is already ludicrously powerful in the Mac Studio and can significantly outperform existing Intel Mac Pro models, but the Mac Pro still has other advantages over the Mac Studio, such as PCI-E and storage/RAM extensibility. Apple is apparently working on these with the Mac Pro, but this will require significant work to develop platforms to support, considering that their existing models are very locked down and do not support standard off-SOC RAM protocols, third-party GPUs, etc.
My feeling is that Apple is already capable of releasing Mac Pro models, but does not want to cannibalize existing offerings with the prices that they would have to charge to get the Mac Pro to sell. It's probably an example of where Apple's very locked-down strategy isn't working in their favor for some of the Pro systems that rely on more extensibility. My feeling is that Apple will probably wait another 6-12 months before releasing it, and it will probably coincide with price drops on some of the other parts of their lineup. Hopefully they release something sooner, but being that it's been canceled twice already, we may be waiting a little while longer.