Five more M2-powered Macs are in the works, says well-connected journo

Apple Mac Studio (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

Apple is rumored to be working on five new Macs all with M2 chips inside.
A new Mac mini, new MacBook Pros, and a Mac Pro are on the horizon.
A refreshed Mac Studio could also be in the works.

Apple already has two M2-powered machines but it's still working on getting a further five into the market, according to a new report.

Writing as part of the weekly Power On newsletter, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that Apple still has plans to release five new M2 Macs, all using various iterations of the chip that already powers the latest 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.

In that newsletter, Gurman points to a pair of updated MacBook Pros as well as what could be a refreshed Mac Studio — Gurman calls the machine an "M2 Pro Mac mini," however.

The full list of Macs Gurman outs reads:

an M2 Mac mini.
an M2 Pro Mac mini.
M2 Pro and M2 Max 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros.
the M2 Ultra and M2 Extreme Mac Pro.

There's little doubt that the new Apple silicon Mac Pro would be the best Mac the company has ever made in terms of raw horsepower. That's also the final machine that's still running Intel chips and one that will finally see the end of Apple's migration away from the chipmaker.

All of the chips that Gurman mentions are likely to be M2-upgraded versions of their M1 counterparts except one — the M2 Extreme which is mentioned as the chip that will power a new Mac Pro. It isn't immediately clear what that will offer, but expectations are high. One report from last year has the new Mac Pro offering up to 128 GPU cores and 40 CPU cores, essentially doubling that of the M1 Ultra Mac Studio.

One question mark will of course surround that M2 Pro Mac mini. Apple's current M1 Mac mini is just that, a Mac mini with the M1 chip and no more. Apple may be leaning towards offering a new M2 Pro variant alongside the lower-power M2, or it could instead add the M2 Pro to a refreshed Mac Studio alongside M2 Max and M2 Ultra options.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.