Apple’s current Mac Pro was introduced in 2019, but Apple has since moved all other Macs to their own chip architecture, starting with the M1 in 2020, followed by the M1 Pro, M1 Max, M1 Ultra, and finally the M2 in early 2022. The Mac Pro, which still uses an outdated Intel processor, looks very dated.

Therefore, the Mac Pro is expected to undergo a major upgrade soon, with Apple adding its own system-on-a-chip (SoC) to the workstation. This article brings together everything we hear about the new Mac Pro, so check back to this page to stay up to date on what might be coming up.

New Mac Pro release date

Back in June 2020, Apple said it planned to transition all of its Macs to its own chips within two years. Whether this is interpreted as two years since June 2020 or two years since Apple introduced the first M1 Mac: November 2022, Apple has missed its deadline. As Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who seems to have good sources, wrote in the December 2022 Power On newsletter: Apple is “behind schedule.”

The reason for the delay, according to Gurman, is “changes in the company’s chips and production plans.” Gurman believes this is due to the challenges Apple faced in developing its ideal chip combination that would allow the most expensive Mac Pro to have 48 CPU cores and 152 graphics cores. Gurman suggests that as a result of the “difficulty and cost” of producing Macs with this specification, Apple “probably abandoned this higher-end configuration”.

Gurman then clarified in January 2023 that “the high-performance Mac Pro configuration, the 48 CPU and 152 graphics core model, has been cancelled.” We will discuss processor options in more detail below.

So, when will we see this new Mac Pro? WWDC, Apple’s developer conference, was where the 2019 and 2013 Mac Pros (shipping later this year) were launched. So WWDC in June 2023 seems like a likely place for a new Mac Pro. However, this could happen even later this year: Apple has been known to launch Macs in October or November.

New Mac Pro: price

According to Gurman in a December 2022 newsletter, another issue affecting the development of the new Mac Pro is concern about how much consumers are willing to spend on a new machine.

Gurman writes, “Based on Apple’s current pricing structure, the Mac Pro M2 Extreme version will likely cost at least $10,000 – with no other upgrades – making it an extremely niche product that probably isn’t worth the development costs.” , engineering resources and that will require manufacturing throughput.”

The current Mac Pro starts at $5,999 / £5,499, but you can spend over $50k on the most expensive options. However, Gurman’s findings seem to suggest that Apple has ditched expensive options. He writes, “Based on Apple’s current pricing structure, the Mac Pro M2 Extreme version will likely cost at least $10,000 – with no other upgrades – making it an extremely niche product that probably isn’t worth the development costs.” , engineering resources. and the production throughput it will require.”

This is in contrast to the Mac Studio which starts at $1,999 / £1,999 for the M1 Max version, goes up to $3,999 / £3,999 for the M1 Ultra version and tops out at $7,999 / £7,999 pounds sterling if you specify it in full.

We imagine the Mac Pro will provide the upgradeability and customization that the Mac Studio lacks, which could justify a slightly higher price for similar specs. But it looks like it won’t have the super-expensive options of the 2019 model.

New Mac Pro: Design

Will the new Mac Pro have a new design? Gurman had previously reported that Apple would not abandon the current Mac Pro design, and in his first 2023 newsletter, Gurman wrote, “The new Mac Pro will look the same as the 2019 model.”

Keeping the same design seems likely given the issues Apple faced the last time it downsized the Mac Pro. We hope the company doesn’t make the same mistake twice and the new Mac Pro retains the proven design.

New Mac Pro Specifications

What can we expect from the new Mac Pro? Those Mac users for whom the Mac Pro is intended will be interested in the capabilities of the machine. Will Apple be able to create a processor that can compete with Intel’s workstation processors… and should it?

In a July 2022 Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman indicated that Apple will use the new M2 Extreme chip in the high-end Mac Pro, with the affordable M2 Ultra cheaper.

Later in a December newsletter, he elaborated that the M2 Ultra chip could offer 24 CPU cores, 76 graphics cores, and up to 192GB of memory, while the M2 Extreme chip could double that to 48 CPU cores and 152 graphics cores.

However, Gurman now believes that Apple abandoned this M2 Extreme chip “due to the complexity and cost of manufacturing a processor that is essentially a fusion of four M2 Max chips.”

We talk about expectations for the M2 chip series here: Apple M2 Chip: Everything you need to know.

The problem is, notes Mark Gurman in a January newsletter, that this would mean that the only reason for choosing Mac Pro over Mac Studio would be expandability. While the Mac Pro is expected to offer users the option to upgrade the SSD, media and network cards, it will not be possible to upgrade the memory because Apple’s M-series chips have integrated unified memory (RAM). . In addition, there are now rumors that it will also be impossible to update the graphics.

In a January 2023 tweet, Mark Gurman indicated that the new Mac Pro “may lack user-upgradable GPUs.”

It looks like the biggest difference between the M2 Ultra in Mac Pro and its counterpart in Mac Studio will be higher performance due to better cooling.

CPU

Right now, the maximum number of CPU cores you can get in a Mac Pro is 28 thanks to the Intel Xeon processor. The best Mac Studio can provide a 20 core processor. In comparison, AMD offers up to 64 processor cores for some of its high-end gaming PC chips.

We don’t yet know what the M2 Ultra will offer, but Gurman estimates that the M2 Ultra chip can offer 24 CPU cores and 76 graphics cores. If Apple were to offer a dual M2 Ultra, those numbers could be doubled, but that doesn’t seem to be in Apple’s plans anymore.

Check out how the M2 compares to the M1 Pro, Max and Ultra to see what that could mean.

Graphics

According to Gurman, the M2 Ultra could have 76 graphics cores. If Apple expanded on the M2 Extreme, we could see 152 graphics cores, but that looks unlikely right now.

Right now, the Intel Xeon Mac Pro can support up to two Radeon Pro W6900Xs with 32GB of GDDR6 memory each. It’s hard to make any comparisons, but we can see that the Mac Studio with the M1 Ultra compares favorably with the Mac Pro.

For example, in Geekbench 5, the M1 Ultra scored 23,870 in multi-core mode, compared to a 28-core Mac Pro with 20,027.

At the low end of graphics options, the Mac Pro M1 Ultra outperforms AMD graphics. In Geekbench 5, the Metal M1 Ultra scores 106263 and the AMD W5500X scores 41982, but when you go to higher graphics settings in the Mac Pro, where for example the AMD Radeon Pro W6900X scores 166946, the M1 Ultra can’t compete. .

But maybe it doesn’t matter. Since Apple seems to have come to the conclusion that the market for such a machine would be very niche and perhaps not worth the development effort if Gurman is correct in his analysis.

Unfortunately, according to Gurman’s post (above), the Mac Pro will not support external GPUs, so users won’t have the option to plug in an eGPU to improve the graphics experience.

RAM and storage

In his December 2022 newsletter, Gurman points out that Apple could “outperform [Mac Pro] at least 192 gigabytes of memory” if it comes with an M2 Ultra chip. If Apple decided to pair the two M2 Ultras, we might see support for 384GB of RAM.

However, the current Intel Mac Pro offers up to 1.5TB of DDR4 ECC memory in 12 user-accessible DIMM slots, which already places it higher than the new Mac Pro could theoretically be. But there’s another problem that professionals might want to avoid this machine: Apple doesn’t use conventional, user-upgradable RAM in Macs with M1 and M2 processors. Instead, it uses unified memory, which is very different. This RAM isn’t just soldered to the motherboard – it’s built directly into the chip, making it faster and more efficient. There are benefits, of course, but for users who require customization options, it may be necessary to offer slots so that the RAM can be upgraded like on older Macs. However, we don’t know if Apple will take this approach to the Mac Pro.

But it’s more likely that this is a dramatic rethinking of what a Pro desktop is. Unified memory is an important part of what makes the M1 and M2 series Macs so fast, but tying memory to a chip means expandability isn’t possible. If the buyer wants to increase the amount of RAM at the point of sale, this will increase the purchase price significantly. The Mac Pro already starts at $5,999, but if you buy RAM through Apple, the price could go up by $14,000.

Apple currently offers up to 8TB of storage for the Mac Pro and we expect the storage options to remain the same. Ports likely won’t change either, as Apple already offers four USB ports (two Thunderbolt 3 and two USB 3) and a pair of Ethernet ports. However, the Mac Pro has eight x16 sized PCIe slots that support many different types of PCIe cards, so you can easily add more ports. We assume that Apple will allow expansion slots on the M1 Mac Pro, but compatibility remains in question.

New Mac Pro: Professional Display

When Apple released the Mac Pro in 2019, it had an expensive companion: the $5,000 Pro Display XDR with an optional $1,000 stand. Apple is believed to be working on an update, although it may not come out at the same time as the Mac Pro. Read about the new XDR display in our separate rumor roundup.