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Top Stories: All-New Mac Pro in Testing, AirTag Updates, and More

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It's Christmas Eve, but that doesn't mean there hasn't been much in the way of Apple news and rumors in recent days as we've been hearing details about Apple's plans for the Mac Pro, iPhone SE, and more.

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In other news, Apple has detailed changes it made in a couple of recent AirTags firmware updates, while the company appears to have pulled back a new Home app architecture it began offering to users with iOS 16.2 and macOS Ventura 13.1. Read on below for details on these stories and more!

New Mac Pro in Testing, But 'M2 Extreme' Chip Likely Canceled

Apple continues to test an all-new Mac Pro with an M2 Ultra chip, but the company has likely abandoned plans to offer a higher-end "M2 Extreme" chip, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

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Gurman said the Mac Pro with the M2 Ultra chip will be available with up to a 24-core CPU, up to a 76-core GPU, and at least 192GB of RAM. Like the current Mac Pro, he expects the new model to remain expandable with additional memory, storage, and more.

The current Intel-based Mac Pro was released in December 2019 and starts at $5,999 in the United States. Barring any further delays, the new model will presumably launch in 2023.

Latest Rumors for Every Mac: When to Expect New Models

Beyond the Mac Pro, several other Macs are expected to be updated next year. For example, new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M2 Pro and M2 Max chips are expected to launch in early 2023. A new Mac mini with M2 chips is also rumored.

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This week, we recapped the latest rumors for every Mac that Apple sells, including the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro.

Apple Said to Cancel or Postpone iPhone SE 4

Apple plans to either cancel or postpone mass production of the fourth-generation iPhone SE, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

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Kuo originally expected the next iPhone SE to launch in 2024, but he said these plans are likely to change due to consistently lower-than-expected shipments of mid-to-low-end iPhone models, such as the third-generation iPhone SE, iPhone 13 mini, and iPhone 14 Plus.

Apple Pulls iOS 16.2 Option to Upgrade to New Home Architecture

One of iOS 16.2's key new features is the ability to upgrade to a new Home app architecture. While Apple hasn't shared details on exactly what the changes are, the company said the upgrade offers "improved performance and reliability" for HomeKit accessories.

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After some users who upgraded the Home app complained about technical issues, it appears that Apple has removed the option to upgrade the Home app for now.

Apple Reveals What's New in Latest AirTag Firmware Updates

Apple recently released two firmware updates for its AirTag accessory, and the company has since outlined what's new in the updates.

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One of the firmware updates introduces some features promised by Apple earlier this year to help prevent AirTags from being used for stalking purposes. The other update resolves an issue with the AirTag's accelerometer not activating in some scenarios.

The 'Trashcan' Mac Pro: Remembering One of Apple's Most Controversial Designs

This week marked the ninth anniversary of Apple releasing the so-called "trashcan" Mac Pro, providing an opportunity to reflect on one of Apple's most controversial hardware designs.

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While the "trashcan" Mac Pro had a beautiful design, it was not modular, leading to complaints from professional users about its lack of upgradeability over the years. The computer was discontinued in 2019.

MacRumors Newsletter

Each week, we publish an email newsletter like this highlighting the top Apple stories, making it a great way to get a bite-sized recap of the week hitting all of the major topics we've covered and tying together related stories for a big-picture view.

So if you want to have top stories like the above recap delivered to your email inbox each week, subscribe to our newsletter!

Article Link: Top Stories: All-New Mac Pro in Testing, AirTag Updates, and More
 
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https://www.macrumors.com/2022/12/24/top-stories-all-new-mac-pro-testing/
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MacRumors said:
Gurman said the Mac Pro with the M2 Ultra chip will be available with up to a 24-core CPU, up to a 76-core GPU, and at least 192GB of RAM. Like the current Mac Pro, he expects the new model to remain expandable with additional memory, storage, and more.
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Poor writing on the part of MacRumors, as the highlighted section reads as if 192GB of RAM is the minimum ("at least"), when the truth of it is that 192GB of RAM should be the maximum for a M2 Ultra SoC...?

If 192GB of RAM was the minimum, the base ASi Mac Pro would be well above the current (2019 Intel Mac Pro) US$5999 starting cost, which would be problematic for many..?
 
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I wonder if the issues with the M2 Extreme are related to the amount of IO that a Pro would need? An extreme would need quite a bit of interconnects between the sub chips. If you are trying to implement PCI-e, you might need these to talk to the outside world. The other issue I can think of would be latency. If you have something like 4 single M2 chips linked together, how much latency would you have when the corners were talking to each other? Would that cause bandwidth issues for the chip next door? At some point, the chips wind up spending more time talking across the die than they do actually talking to their own memory and cores.
 
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I think the Intel Mac Pro will be around for a while. Why would anyone go for a Mac Pro that is limited to 192GB RAM and an Ultra chip they can already get in a more affordable Mac Studio? I think the current Mac Pro supports 1.5TB of RAM. None of this makes any sense.
 
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BobSc said:
I had the trashcan Mac. It's design was OK. The Mac Studio's design is superb. Puts the trashcan to shame. The Studio's design is perfect. It is elegant.
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The Trashcan Mac Pro is an amazing design, but access to ports has always been such a pain and unfortunately cable management is difficult as well. You want to see the machine on your desk, but the backside has 8 cables connected to it and it's hard to make it look clean. It's almost like the Mac Studio design is better because it's so innocuous that you don't care about how beautiful it is and you just put it away off to the side or even under your desk.
 
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BobSc said:
I had the trashcan Mac. It's design was OK. The Mac Studio's design is superb. Puts the trashcan to shame. The Studio's design is perfect. It is elegant.
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I agree. Loads of ports on the back, convenience ports on the front along with a card reader. Dead quiet, even driving four displays, and barely gets warm. All in a nice compact package that feels solid with good heft.

Even the box it came in was cleverly designed.
 
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MacRumors said:
It's Christmas Eve, but that doesn't mean there hasn't been much in the way of Apple news and rumors in recent days as we've been hearing details about Apple's plans for the Mac Pro, iPhone SE, and more.
Click to expand...
Here’s wishing that all the delayed products come into the light during 2023. With all the recent rumor speculation it should be an amazing year. :)
 
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macduke said:
I think the Intel Mac Pro will be around for a while. Why would anyone go for a Mac Pro that is limited to 192GB RAM and an Ultra chip they can already get in a more affordable Mac Studio? I think the current Mac Pro supports 1.5TB of RAM. None of this makes any sense.
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Would be interesting if Apple just continued using Intel for this. For this one model, it actually still makes sense to use Intel because power essentially doesn’t matter.

I for one would still love to see them have at least one computer that can run x86 Windows, though as I type that sentence I realize it sounds increasingly old fashioned.
 
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I wish Apple would sell a computer for someone like me... As much as I enjoy being able to use FaceTime and iMessage, I refuse to buy a second computer just to complete the Apple ecosystem when the hardware is limited to specific purposes. If I can't put a top end NVIDIA GPU in a Mac and run Windows then I won't buy a Mac.

I guess I'll just stick to iPhones and AirPods...
 
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orderoftheditch said:
The trash can Mac Pro is what the Mac Studio should have been. The tall Mac Mini design is quite uninspiring, particularly for something Apple wants people to put on their desks.
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Agreed, the design is uninteresting. But I think they were going for this aesthetic, where the Studio matches the ASD and XDR. Plus it appears they wanted something squatter than than the Trashcan, so that it could sit below the bottom of the monitor.

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orderoftheditch said:
The trash can Mac Pro is what the Mac Studio should have been. The tall Mac Mini design is quite uninspiring, particularly for something Apple wants people to put on their desks.
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This, and the fact that there's still a gaping hole in Apple's offerings: a sub-$3000 modular workstation for prosumers. Many people don't need 28 cores and 1 TB of RAM, but they want a couple of PCIe slots, a couple of internal HD bays, and the ability to upgrade such components over the next 10-15 years. This is eminently feasible from any technical perspective - both that such a design can be built today (they did so 10 years ago) and that it can and should last for over a decade (taking a multi-decade perspective, computing power has generally plateaued and the gains are increasingly incremental).

Rather than truly putting power in the hands of the people, as was Apple's stated ideal in the first decades of its existence - whether that was ever truly the case is another debate - this ideal has taken a backseat to shareholder profits for a decade now. It's absolutely shameful.

When there exists any possibility Apple could remotely brick my computer, either by accident or on purpose, the calculus has completely shifted.

Absolutely shameful.
 
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BobSc said:
I had the trashcan Mac. It's design was OK. The Mac Studio's design is superb. Puts the trashcan to shame. The Studio's design is perfect. It is elegant.
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I have both.

An 8-core/32GB trashcan Mac Pro that I bought in early 2014 that was my main work computer until 2020 when it was "demoted" to backup computer since I upgraded to iMac Pro. Between those 6 years it was a workhorse for me. I consistently ran 3 VMs, including a "work" VM running Windows. It only started to feel slow after technologies move forward where apps demanded more and more RAM. A memory upgrade to 64GB in 2018 took care of ant slowness. I took a gig in 2020 working a a friend of a friend on a project. I didn't really want money, so I ask for a 18-core iMac Pro with 64GB RAM as payment for my work; as I needed something to run more VMs.

But I still love the design of the "trashcan" a lot. I actually don't use a lot of IO and GPU much. Much of my workflow is IT and DevOps related that needed to use a bunch of VMs. So I just need storage space and RAM. I single thunderbolt 3 link to a TB3 array of 2 TBs SSD served the storage requirement, and 64 GB RAM did enough for me.

2022, I started to regret not opting for 128GB RAM for the iMac Pro, but I also started to invest in the M1. I got a couple M1 Mac minis with 16GB RAM, M1 and M2 MacBook Air, and recently a Mac Studio Ultra.

This time I hope to future proof it a little with 4TB builtin storage and 128 GB of RAM. Had to switch from VMware Fusion to Parallels for VMs and am now evaluating it and comparing it against iMac Pro (performance, stability, consistent performance, etc.) before I officially migrate my main "work computer" to the Mac Studios.

I don't think the Mac Studio is ugly at all either and do think it's good looking - I like the Mac mini design, and the studio is a taller Mac mini for me. However, I do think the "trashcan" Mac looks better and it's so different and refreshing from the other Mac Design in aluminum black. Would have love a M1 Mac with that chassis. The M1 or M2 would solve any thermals throttling issues.
 
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