Apple had an M1 Mac Pro ready and waiting for customers several months ago, but instead decided to scrap the project and wait for a new M2 'Extreme' Mac Pro coming later this year.
The revelation comes by way of prolific insider Mark Gurman of Bloomberg in an interview with Max Tech this week.
"They [Apple]... had an M1 Mac Pro ready to go months ago," said Gurman at the 27:56 minute mark. "But I guess they scrapped that to wait for the M2 'Pro' version," Gurman says he now believes that the new Mac Pro will be announced the end of the year and that it was supposed to be announced at WWDC 22. However, the new Mac Pro won't be released until 2023, along with a new iMac Pro also tipped for next year.
Gurman says he believes the chip will be called the "M2 Extreme", which will be the M2 Ultra doubled up the same way the Mac Studio has an M1 Max and M1 Ultra chip.
Gurman says the difficulty is that Apple has so much on its plate right now in terms of launches that it must balance resources both for production and the allocation of chips due to the global shortage, with priority going to devices like its best iPhones, including the upcoming A16 for the iPhone 14 Pro.
Apple's Mac Pro will be the last of its computers to make the Apple silicon transition, and in a rare move, the company confirmed that the device was on the way. At its March event, the company confirmed the Mac Pro would be the last device to make the transition.
Apple's new M2 chip delivers a staunch power upgrade on the previous M1 model, as evidenced in the new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. The company is expected to unveil new more powerful versions of that chip later this year, likely an M2 Pro, Max, and Ultra chip as per the M1 line, as well as the aforementioned Extreme chip Gurman mentions here. As noted, if Apple does announce an all-new Mac Pro later this year, it is likely to be ahead of a release several months down the line, rather than immediately.
