If you ’ve been uneasily awaiting the launch of the Apple silicon Mac Pro and dream of the fastest Mac ever , you might be in for a letdown . Areportthis past weekend from Bloomberg ’s Mark Gurman said that Apple is having major trouble produce the so - called M2 Extreme cow chip that was supposed to power the new machine .
As a result , Gurman says , the top - of - the - lineMac Prowill likely have a slightly faster M2 Ultra splintering with 24 central processor cores and 76 GPU CORE . yield , that ’s still a very fast poker chip , but for Mac Pro vendee who have been waiting to see the next speed development of Apple silicon on the Mac , it ’s likely to be a disappointment . The gap between the Mac Pro and the next fastest Mac is supposed to be massive , and the check Gurman discover wo n’t be .
But all is not lose . Even without a demented fast chip , Apple can still make the Mac Pro the centerpiece of its Mac batting order . Here are three theme on how to call this major problem .
Keep Intel inside
The easy way to overcome its chip issue would be to just keep Intel around . The people who buy a Mac Pro would n’t necessarily care which company spend a penny the central processor as long as it ’s fast , and Intel throw hatful of newer Xeon W chips it could use .
It ’s not a wild notion . While Apple ’s Mac chips are ridiculously fast , many Mac Pro emptor would probably rather just replace one of their existing Intel Macs with a faster one than worry about the potential compatibility and expandability issues with a new Apple silicon machine .
Willis Lai / Foundry
Focus on expandability
The most interesting choice morsel in Gurman ’s theme was n’t the supposed cancellation of the Extreme Saratoga chip , it was his claim that the novel Mac Pro “ will retain one of its hallmark features : light expandability for extra memory , storage , and other element . ” That ’s a somewhat vague program line that ’s open to some reading , but it seems to indicate that the Mac Pro ’s processor will feature a raw architecture that does n’t use unified computer memory .
That alone will be a hefty selling point for the Mac Pro . No other Apple silicon - based Mac offers aftermarket upgrade in any way , so if user are able to add retentiveness and computer memory , that would unquestionably be a unique selling point . But what would make it more unique is if Apple trade the components itself . It would be pricey for certain , but if Apple sold RAM stick , SSDs , and standalone GPUs , it would surely cover up the fact that the Mac Pro is n’t as tight as everyone thought it would be .
Retire the Mac Studio
If the Mac Pro is only slightly faster than the topMac Studioconfiguration , perhaps Apple does n’t need to sell the Mac Studio anymore . It always felt like a stopgap machine , kind of like the iMac Pro – a powerful niche Mac that was make full the blank space between Mac Pro modeling . If the Mac Studio is a one - and - done machine , no one would be surprised or disquieted , specially if an updatedM2 Pro / M2 Max Mac miniand the rumorediMac Prorevival make it next year as well .
