For the Mac Pro, why not simply put a 96-core EPYC AMD CPU in it with a RTX 4090 (if Apple can solve their politics with NVIDIA) while retaining user expandability and repairability for the Mac Pro. Since Mac Pro usually supports dual chips, Apple could even put a 192-core AMD CPU in it even.
Does Apple really believe the M2 Extreme would beat a 192-core AMD CPU and a RTX 4090? Heck, you can probably put multiple RTX 4090 in the Mac Pro even (if Apple solves their politics with NVIDIA).
For laptops, I get it. ARM offers nice battery life, but a Mac Pro has no battery life.
The answers are very simple.
The Mac Pro is an extremely, extremely niche product, certainly more niche than it’s ever been in it’s history.
Apple came out with the Mac Studio last year, which was right around $2000 and basically a Mac pro for people who didn’t want to shell out for a Mac Pro.
Sales projections show that Apple more than likely sold about 600,000 Mac Studio units in 2022.
And that was in a very, very good year for the Mac.
If a $2000 computer that can fit on anyone’s desk and isn’t going to be too cumbersome is only selling 600,000 units, imagine how many units the Mac pro is selling.
Half of that? Maybe a third?
The Mac Pro sells in extremely limited quantities.
Keeping around an X86 version of macOS just for the Mac Pro makes absolutely no sense, and would probably cause Apple to start losing money on that product.
If the massive cut off of 2013 through 2017 Macs that happened in the past three versions of macOS show anything, it’s that Apple wants to discontinue the X86 version of macOS as soon as possible.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see it all completely eradicated by 2025.
So keeping around basically an entire operating system just for one product that doesn’t even sell in the millions makes absolutely no financial sense.
And, this is very important to remember, at the end of the day Apple’s main goal always is and always has been to make profit.
That’s literally how and why they exist.
And out of all of the products that would not make Apple money, An AMD Mac Pro is definitely at the top of that list.
They have literally no incentive to make anything like that other than a couple complainers online hooting and hollering about non-upgradable ram and lack of BootCamp, two issues that don’t affect Apple’s profits at all.
Well… their integrated RAM upgrades are very expensive, but you get the point I’m trying to make.
Also, more symbolically, an AMD Mac Pro would be nothing but another product anchoring Apple to the outside world of other businesses. They definitely don’t like that, they want everything to be in house.
Apple wants to control everything, from the processor to the RAM, to the software to the modem, to (according to a rumor that literally just appeared today) the displays of their products.