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iOS 18 Leak Reveals Apple Tested MacBook Pros With M3 Ultra Chip

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Apple's highest-end M3 Ultra chip is currently limited to the Mac Studio, but a new leak has revealed that Apple tested the chip in the MacBook Pro as well.

Apple-MacBook-Pro-M4-hero.jpg

In a post today on the Chinese social media platform BiliBili, a user who we are not familiar with said that they found code references to unreleased 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with the M3 Ultra chip, in an internal build of iOS 18 running on an iPhone 16 engineering prototype. Specifically, they said that they found J514d and J516d codenames in a file located in the /AppleInternal/Diags/Tests/ folder.

J514 and J516 are the codenames for the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M3 Pro and M3 Max chips, which were introduced by Apple in October 2023. However, these particular codenames have a "d" suffix, which likely refers to an Ultra chip. For example, the Mac Studio with the M3 Ultra is codenamed J575d.

Apple has never released a MacBook Pro with an Ultra chip, so this is a noteworthy discovery.

Currently, the M3 Ultra is the fastest Mac chip that Apple has ever released. It features up to a 32-core CPU, up to an 80-core GPU, and support for up to 512GB of unified memory, so those could have been MacBook Pro specs in an alternate universe.

Instead, Apple updated the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chip options in October last year. Apple most likely decided not to make the M3 Ultra chip available in the MacBook Pro, potentially due to greater thermal and battery life impacts for laptops compared to desktop computers.

With the M4 Max, the MacBook Pro can be configured with up to a 16-core CPU, up to a 40-core GPU, and up to 128GB of unified memory.

All in all, it appears that Apple at least considered MacBook Pro models with the M3 Ultra chip, but it is unlikely that they will ever be released.

Article Link: iOS 18 Leak Reveals Apple Tested MacBook Pros With M3 Ultra Chip
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/05/23/ios-18-leak-macbook-pro-m3-ultra-chip/
Apple should do this, even if they would be immensely expensive and suffer for limited battery. This would still be amazing halo product that would destroy any comparisons to competition.

Add a ultra-only limited subtle color in there and this will become a magical status symbol in any cafe :)
 
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Well, the Ultra is double the size of the Max, isn’t it?
So if this “unfamiliar to us” leaker were correct, no way the current internals would support that.
Oh well, time will tell
 
Holy hell, this would be game over. This would be bigger than M1 introduction.

I'm thinking they need to wait until the M6 before they can get the power to battery ratio right.

The M3 Ultra chip, in its most powerful configuration, can draw up to 270 watts under full load. This is the maximum power consumption when the Mac Studio, equipped with the M3 Ultra, is operating at its peak. The M3 Ultra also has a much lower idle power consumption, around 9 watts.

Right now, the Legion 7i pro can push ~250 watts combined (75-90 for CPU, 175 for GPU). This requires to be connected to a power source though and a significant cooling solution so 5-7 lb laptop. I personally have the latest and it works really well, cool to the touch even when rendering Unreal Engine 5 renders. Love it, but i would switch to a mac if I could get 5080 performance.

If they can get the M5 or M6 Ultra down to 100-150 watts full load, they could do it.
 
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If this is actually true and it wasn’t just a caseless development platform which is likely given they typically launch first with the MBP, it almost certainly was a lower clocked variant equivalent to the M3 Ultra on Low Power Mode.

Apple literally can’t put a chip in a laptop that draws that desktop kind of power on battery due to flight regulations that limit the battery capacity. They are maxed out, no pun intended.
 
PotentPeas said:
Throw it in an 18" and I am sold. Bring back the giant tray-table laptops!
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Given how little my 14" MBP moves around, I'd gladly ditch it, my external monitor, and speakers for a robust 18" MBP on my laptop stand with my external mouse and keyboard as peripherals. As long as this monster weighed less than six pounds, that is.
 
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Apple could build a MacBook that uses 240 Watts and has crazy specs and a 16 inch screen. It would power down 3/4 of the CPU and GPU cores when on battery and run the full system only when plugged into power. Lots of people say they want this, but VERY FEW would actually pay for it.

It is always this way. I heard from an HP marketing person that the #1 most requested feature in an ink jet printer was a paper tray that holds a full package of paper. But in their test marketing, HP found that while people say they want this, few actually buy it when the feature is available because it adds cost, weight, and bulk.

So people on forums say they want stuff, but will they buy it? For the most part, the old M1 with 8GB RAM was overkill for what most people do.
 
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ChrisA said:
Apple could build a MacBook that uses 240 Watts and has crazy specs and a 16 inch screen. It would power down 3/4 of the CPU and GPU cores when on battery and run the full system only when plugged into power. Lots of people say they want this, but VERY FEW would actually pay for it.

It is always this way. I heard from an HP marketing person that the #1 most requested feature in an ink jet printer was a paper tray that holds a full package of paper. But in their test marketing, HP found that while people say they want this, few actually buy it when the feature is available because it adds cost, weight, and bulk.

So people on forums say they want stuff, but will they buy it? For the most part, the old M1 with 8GB RAM was overkill for what most people do.
Click to expand...
Since Apple Silicon they haven’t released anything that performs substantially worse on Battery vs. plugged in. That coupled with fan noise, barring some amazing breakthrough in cooling, means this would be severely clock limited if it even exists as a product.

I’d bet almost anything they used it as a testbed and it was never intended to be productized. Maybe 5-10 years from now once we get next generation battery tech fully rolled-out and process nodes shrink more.
 
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