The Mac Pro Is Dead, Long Live the Mac Studio
Toggle Dark Mode
Earlier this month, a new report outlined Apple’s expected 2026 Mac lineup. While it included all the usual suspects — from the MacBook Pro to the Mac mini — there were a couple of conspicuous omissions: the iMac and the Mac Pro.
While the iMac’s absence might simply reflect Apple’s staggered update cycle, the lack of any news on the Mac Pro feels more ominous, and now Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has confirmed that Apple may be preparing to put its beastliest machine out to pasture.
The Mac Pro has already had a strange and storied history. The first model arrived in 2006 as a successor to the Power Mac G5, rounding out Apple’s transition from the PowerPC era with a new desktop powerhouse based on an Intel Xeon chip. From 2006 to 2012, it received four CPU bumps, but otherwise retained the same design it had borrowed from its PowerPC predecessor.
In 2013, Apple changed things up, sparking controversy with a completely redesigned cylindrical version that became known as the “trash can” Mac Pro. While the design was attractive, it was a case of form over function, as the 2013 model was a self-contained unit that was neither upgradeable nor expandable. Ironically, the more versatile 2006 Mac Pro could match the 2013 model’s specs with aftermarket upgrades.
In 2017, Apple tacitly admitted that the Mac Pro was a bad idea and promised to do better. It released the iMac Pro later that year to tide pro customers over until it could finish a properly redesigned Mac Pro that would reflect the spirit of the original. In late 2019, it delivered the most powerful Mac ever — with a price tag to match.
This Mac Pro would also turn out to signal the end of an era. Less than a year later, everything changed when Apple unveiled its M1 chip, enabling a base model 13-inch MacBook Pro to beat out the entry-level Mac Pro in at least some basic scenarios.
When the souped-up versions of those chips — the M1 Pro and M1 Max — arrived the following year, it was clear the days of the Intel Mac Pro were numbered. Apple’s high-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models had many of the features of the Mac Pro’s Afterburner card — an optional and pricey add-on — built right in, and were powerful enough to let users edit multiple streams of 4K and 8K video with just a fraction of the power consumption of an Intel Mac.
Of course, that arguably wasn’t a problem, as everyone knew a more powerful Mac Pro was coming. Apple had promised to give its entire lineup the Apple Silicon treatment, and rumors of an M1 Ultra chip hinted at staggering levels of performance — and possibly even a successor to the iMac Pro as well.
Instead, Apple threw us a curveball. Since its M-series chips were significantly more efficient than their Intel counterparts, they didn’t require massive cases and fans to stay cool, which made a Mac Pro-style tower feel increasingly like a relic of the Intel era. Apple decided to prove that “powerful” doesn’t have to mean “big” and gave us the Mac Studio instead.
While Apple’s M1-powered Macs could already hold their own against most 2019 Mac Pro configurations, the Mac Studio’s M1 Ultra left them in the dust. With two M1 Max chips stacked together, it outperformed Apple’s $20,000 28-core Mac Pro at a fifth of the price and a fraction of the size.
Not for the first time, many found themselves questioning the Mac Pro’s future, especially when 2022 came and went without a new Mac Pro. However, Apple had promised to bring all of its Intel Macs into the realm of Apple Silicon, and that’s a promise it intended to keep.
During its June 2023 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple unveiled a next-generation Mac Studio featuring the M2 Ultra chip — this time, accompanied by a new Mac Pro.
In theory, the Apple Silicon Mac Pro would address the biggest complaint about the Mac Studio: the lack of expandability. In reality, the new system showed how much Apple had left the Intel world behind. Sure, it had the PCIe expansion slots that high-end users demanded, but there wasn’t much you could actually put into them. No support for external GPUs. No upgradeable RAM thanks to unified memory. What you bought was what you got.
Since the Mac Studio featured the same M2 Ultra chip, it could deliver the same performance in a smaller package. The Mac Pro had a better cooling system, which should have offered better sustained performance, but most tests revealed it made no practical difference.
In the end, most folks legitimately questioned the very existence of the M2 Mac Pro. It felt like a solution for a problem nobody had, and Gurman’s sources say that Apple has come to the same conclusion.
From what I’ve heard inside the company, Apple has largely written off the Mac Pro. The sentiment internally is that the Mac Studio now represents both the present and future of Apple’s professional desktop strategy.
Mark Gurman
Perhaps Apple’s strategy was merely transitional in the first place — to prove to folks who thought they needed a Mac Pro that the Mac Studio was every bit as capable. Either way, the Mac Studio has already moved on to an M3 Ultra chip, and it appears it will walk this new path alone. Gurman reports that a theoretical M4 Ultra chip—and the Mac Pro it would have powered—has been nixed. Instead, Apple is focusing on a next-gen M5 Ultra chip, which is reportedly destined solely for a future Mac Studio.
While we’re hesitant to ever say never — Apple rarely closes these doors entirely — this could very well be the Mac Pro’s final curtain — and a symbolic step into a new era of computing where bigger doesn’t mean better.
