During the “High Energy Transmission” spring new product launch on March 8th, Apple hinted at the upcoming refresh of the Mac Pro workstation, but the legendary iMac Pro all-in-one machine may disappear.
As you can see, the new Mac Studio console packs the powerful M1 Ultra chip into a more compact body, while also being more affordable than the Mac Pro. In contrast, the Intel Mac Pro models currently on sale are not only expensive, high power consumption, but also take up a lot of space.
Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, John Ternus, confirmed during the event that the company is working on a successor to the Intel (x86) Mac Pro, but it wasn’t the focus of the spring launch.
Apparently, the company is working hard to fulfill its promise of “transitioning from an x86 platform to self-developed Apple Silicon chips in two years.” But for the “two-step Intel/M-series chip” strategy that everyone has speculated, hope seems to have become slimmer.
Previous rumors about the Mac Pro chip claimed that Apple could equip it with a custom SoC with up to 40-core CPU + 128-core GPU. However, even the M1 Ultra with a ‘double spell’ design is only configured with a 20-core CPU + 64-core GPU.
With reference to the performance comparison data released at the press conference, it is possible to completely ignore the high-end Mac Pro based on Intel CPUs with only the Apple Silicon chips designed by “four spells”.
At the same time, Apple has hinted that only one Intel machine can be migrated to Apple Silicon, meaning the company hasn’t left much room for imagination (but not dead) for the fabled high-end iMac Pro all-in-one.
It was recently revealed that the company is working on a successor to the 27-inch iMac with an Apple Silicon chip designed to replace the now-discontinued 27-inch Intel iMac/iMac Pro line. Finally, no matter which way Apple chooses to refresh the iMac lineup, well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has hinted that it will arrive sometime in 2023.