With M2 Ultra Mac Pro, Apple Completes Apple Silicon Transition and No Longer Sells Intel-Based Macs

[MacRumors]

Apple today introduced an Apple silicon version of the Mac Pro that uses the new M2 Ultra chip, and with that update, Apple's transition to Apple silicon is now complete. The first Apple silicon Mac came out in 2020, and three years later, every Mac is using Apple-designed chips.

The Mac Pro was the last Mac that was still using older Intel chip technology, and with the launch of the new M2 Ultra model, the Intel versions have been discontinued.

Apple may still be selling refurbished Intel Macs through its online store for refurbished devices, but none of its current product lineup is using Intel's chip technology.

The M2 Ultra chip is available in both the Mac Pro and the Mac Studio, both of which can be preordered today and will launch next week. The M2 Ultra Mac Pro is priced starting at $7,000, while the M2 Ultra Mac Studio is priced starting at $4,000.

Article Link: With M2 Ultra Mac Pro, Apple Completes Apple Silicon Transition and No Longer Sells Intel-Based Macs

 

[tripsync]

this took that many years with zero design change? why does Mac Pro need the same giant heatsink? sounds like they messed up with a new design and just said "screw it, we'll just reuse the same old design"

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

This one is in the long run of the making. Congratulations Apple! Intel is history now!

 

[mongobongo]

What took them so long?

 

[anselpela]

It's quite interesting that after all this time, the AS Mac Pro amounted to an M2 Ultra chip with expandable storage and PCI slots. Wonder what happened to the 40-core chip that was supposedly ready 3 years ago.

 

[anselpela]

What took them so long?

I'm sure that pesky world wide chip shortage in the middle of their transition had nothing to do with it.

 

[KPOM]

The transition took 3 years (or 2.5 if you count from when they shipped the first M1 Macs). Not too bad considering everything that's gone on the last 3 years.

 

[tripsync]

I'm sure that pesky world wide chip shortage in the middle of their transition had nothing to do with it.

Mac Pro is an extremely low volume product. Nothing to do with chip shortage if they were able to ship 2 generations of other Macs and iPads with M chips.

 

[anselpela]

The "6 Pro XDR Displays" thing really cracks me up. Display technology is so far behind everything else. I mean really....six?! Can't you just make one display that's big enough?

 

[nwcs]

Probably sell the old intel one for the same price still.

 

[oldmacs]

this took that many years with zero design change? why does Mac Pro need the same giant heatsink? sounds like they messed up with a new design and just said "screw it, we'll just reuse the same old design"

As much as I love Apple silicon, one of the big arguments intel haters were using to justify the switch was that we’d get more frequent Mac updates, but as I and others predicted, that has very much not happened.

 

[anselpela]

Mac Pro is an extremely low volume product. Nothing to do with chip shortage.

That has nothing to do with why the chip shortage affected the transition speed.

 

[Samu25]

Would have made more sense with M3 chip, with the performance gains 3nm will supposedly bring 🤨

 

[jacobgkau]

A little disappointing the PCI Express version for the free slots is only 4.0 when 5.0 is the new/current thing.

 

[adamw]

Apple Silicon is the way to go. Goodbye Intel, you were too hot and not able to be significantly updated fast enough for my liking.

 

[Joe The Dragon]

What took them so long?

the real Mac Pro is not ready (needs the extreme chip)
But they needed to do something for the pros and get rid of the Intel systems.

 

[tripsync]

That has nothing to do with why the chip shortage affected the transition speed.

Hilariously wrong.

 

[anselpela]

As much as I love Apple silicon, one of the big arguments intel haters were using to justify the switch was that we’d get more frequent Mac updates, but as I and others predicted, that has very much not happened.

No idea why anyone would think that. Apple aggressively updates iPhone chips yearly because its a 200 billions dollar per year business. Not even remotely comparable to the Mac. Apple updates the Mac according to their own product schedule. Not anyone elses. Not before Intel, during Intel, or after Intel.

 

[TheWatchfulOne]

this took that many years with zero design change? why does Mac Pro need the same giant heatsink? sounds like they messed up with a new design and just said "screw it, we'll just reuse the same old design"

So they can continue selling the wheels they have already manufactured? 🤔

 

[Joe The Dragon]

A little disappointing the PCI Express version for the free slots is only 4.0 when 5.0 is the new/current thing.

need to wait for an cpu to get that. Now maybe the pci-e switch is ready for 5.0

 

[MikeX]

last mac pro was great for virtualization, we have so many virtual machines running on it and it is still superb fast with a lot of memory.

This one... I don't know the real use case.

 

[Xand&Roby]

Who cares? Apple computer is dead.

Today Apple is born of the 21º century, with only 24 years of delay.
Welcome back Sun Looking Glass, we've aged but you're finally here!

Goodbye, FINALLY, to these useless thousands of dollars screens.

Only one device that finally takes us into the century we are in and I can finally have the hope that my grandchildren will no longer have to deal with the computer science I was born with.

Finally the future of the 70s/80s has arrived!

 

[Will Co]

And so the clock now *really* starts to tick. I figure my Intel 2019 MBP 16 probably has *at most* two more operating systems of life left: Sonoma is a given (already announced) and perhaps the next after that. But I'm betting no more.

So should be OK for 12 months, maybe more. Hopefully in that time the "Windows Arm with Parallels or VMware" setup will have matured sufficiently for me to jump to AS and shift my Windows workloads. I have several tried and tested backup plans, but I'm really still hoping for one that centres around a single, portable laptop, which services both Apple and Windows workloads.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

the real Mac Pro is not ready (needs the extreme chip)
But they needed to do something for the pros and get rid of the Intel systems.

The New Mac Pro: It's the Mac Studio with PCIe slots but no support for GPGPUs you have invested in though the PCI-e slots and daughter card MX interfaces are the same.

 

[sw1tcher]

iMac event later this year? It's the only Mac stuck on M1 chip. Everything else is on M2