Once the most coveted as well as the most powerful Mac, the Mac Pro went through some lean years and was trounced by the Mac Studio. It doesn't look like it's coming back.
Despite recent rumors that there might yet be a newly updated Mac Pro in 2025, a new report says that Apple has all but abandoned the model. Bloomberg says there won't be an update either slipping in before the end of 2025, or at all in 2026.
That's partly because Apple has scrapped the expected M4 Ultra processor. It had been intending to launch that in a New Mac Pro, but that model has been dropped too.
Apple is, though, expected to launch an M5 Ultra as its next highest-end desktop processor — but reportedly it is not intending to release a Mac Pro with it. Instead, the claim is that Apple staff now see the Mac Studio as the effective top of the range.
How Apple got here
If it's true, it's not a surprise that Apple favors the Mac Studio over the Mac Pro because so does everyone else. Apple Silicon's introduction in 2020 changed everything, bringing close to Mac Pro-level performance to all Macs.
Then Apple surprised us all with the launch of the Mac Studio in 2022, the first all-new Mac in years. From then on, Apple had a lineup where the top model was beaten by the middle one.
By 2023, it was clear that the Mac Studio was the one to buy unless you had very specific needs, and a very large budget, to make the Mac Pro worthwhile.
Then, practically embarrassingly, it wasn't just the Mac Studio that was giving the Mac Pro a run for its money. The very highest end Mac Pro was up against the very lowest end Mac mini, and it wasn't always winning.
Added to this is the fact that the Mac Pro was the very last Mac to move to Apple Silicon and it has had barely any attention since.
So it can't be a surprise if Apple abandons the Mac Pro. Yet it would be a sad end to a range that started so extraordinarily well.
