On March 8, Apple released a new Mac Studio, equipped with a maximum of 20-core M1 Ultra processor, some performance indicators have exceeded the Intel processor version of the Mac Pro workstation.
However, at the end of the conference, Apple solemnly announced that the new Mac Pro will be released soon. It is foreseeable that the performance of Apple’s new Mac Pro will be further away from the Mac Studio. So, when will the new generation of Apple Top Stream arrive? At present, it is almost confirmed that it will be set at WWDC around June each year.
The old Mac Pros are equipped with Intel processors, up to 28-core Xeon W processors, optional 1.5TB memory, optional AMD Radeon series accelerator cards, and optional 8TB SSDs. It is not an exaggeration.
In contrast, although Mac Studio has surpassed the old Mac Pro in some performances of CPU/GPU through the new architecture, 128GB is still difficult to compete with 1.5TB in terms of memory capacity. It’s interesting to see how the Mac Pro with Arm chips will be configured.
WWDC is an annual worldwide developer conference held by Apple in the United States, which is also known as the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. The main purpose of the conference is to allow Apple to show developers the latest software and technology and occasionally release new models.
At each WWDC, Apple often chooses to announce the next-generation operating system (iOS, iPad OS, MacOS…). Although it has been the home of Intel processors in the past few years, since Apple launched the first generation of Apple Silicon in 2020, almost all of Apple’s Macs have switched to self-developed chips. It’s not hard to guess that Apple’s next-generation productivity masterpiece will be released with a new generation of macOS in a few months.
Let’s first sort out the products and release times predicted for the Mac product line in 2022:
- The original prediction for the spring conference was the high-end iMac (Pro) and Mac mini, but in the end these two became Mac Studio+Studio Display.
- WWDC: MacBook (Air), Mac Pro
- Fall launch: entry-level MacBook Pro
The complete transformation of Apple Silicon is expected to pay off this year, with the introduction of a range of new Mac models. Last month, Mark Gurman made a prediction for this year’s Apple Mac product line, and he is very optimistic about this year’s products. He believes that in 2022, there will be about seven Mac series products equipped with Apple Silicon.
He previously predicted that Apple would hold an event on March 8 that was expected to unveil at least the third-generation iPhone SE and fifth-generation iPad Air. There’s no indication that a new MacBook Air or Mac Pro will ship next month, so a Mac mini is the most likely outcome. Apple is then expected to hold another Mac product launch in May or June.
According to Gurman, Apple’s new products this year will be powered by the following processors:
- The brand new M2 chip
- Existing M1 Pro and M1 Max chips
- A doubled chip for the M1 Max (aka the M1 Ultra)
With the arrival of the all-new Mac Studio, the M1 Ultra has come to the surface, but unfortunately, it’s not the M2 that players are most looking forward to. And, how will these processors be distributed across the Mac lineup? Gurman expects at least seven new Macs to feature Apple Silicon in 2022:
- 13-inch MacBook Pro with M2 chip, designed to take over the 2020 version, positioned below the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros
- Mac mini with M1 series and M2 series
- 24-inch iMac with the M2 chip
- Redesigned MacBook Air with M2 chip
- Large-screen iMac Pro with M1 Pro and M1 Max chips
- The first Mac Pro to use Apple Silicon (the chip here is the equivalent of two or four M1 Max chips combined)
From this point of view, the legendary M2 chip will arrive as soon as the middle of the year, and the first models are nothing more than MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini, iMac, iMac Pro, but since the Mac Pro only uses similar M1 Ultra chip, then the Mac Pro will inevitably be the first to arrive.
Gurman believes that the main content of the second round of Mac conferences may focus on the new iMac Pro and the new Mac Pro equipped with “M1 Super Edition (maybe M1 Ultra or double M1 Ultra)”, then we can What to expect?
The M2’s CPU may be a bit more powerful than the M1’s, but the chip should still use the same eight-core architecture. However, GPUs may be boosted from 7 or 8 cores to 9 or 10 cores.
There will be two main versions of the Mac Pro chip: one that’s twice as big as the M1 Max (M1 Ultra) and one that’s quadruple (M1 Ultra×2). You can see 20 CPU cores and 64 GPU cores on the first chip, and 40 CPU cores and 128 GPU cores on the second chip.
Let’s take a bold guess. Apple’s Mac Pro 2022 will offer two main versions, similar to the M1 Max version and M1 Pro version of the MacBook Pro. Users can choose either model to customize, while the Mac Pro 2022 basic version is the existing one. The M1 Ultra has the same performance as the Mac Studio; the other is the M1 Ultra, which doubles again, and the Apple Mac Studio with excellent performance is likely to be surpassed once again.
It is worth mentioning that Gurman has also said that based on the Apple Silicon roadmap he has seen so far, it is expected that “Pro and Max versions of the M2” will be launched in 2023 with the first M3 when the new generation of Mac series will be launched again. How wonderful is it? Let’s wait and see!