Apple has nearly completed its transition to its own silicon. The last piece of the puzzle is the Mac Pro, which is supposed to be Apple’s most powerful computer. In the meantime, the company added one more step to the lineup in the form of the Mac Studio. While Apple gets ready to release the Apple Silicon Mac Pro, it appears the company is going to be careful about the differentiation between these two high-end Macs.
Mark Gurman, in his latest Power On newsletter, said that Apple may skip the M2 Ultra upgrade for the Mac Studio to avoid similarity with the Mac Pro.
Mac Studio likely to skip a generation
The Mac Studio may look like a Mac Mini, but it lands closer to Mac Pro in terms of performance. It launched with the M1 Ultra chip, which made it the most powerful Apple Silicon Mac to exist. Now that Apple is getting nearing the completion of its transition with the Apple Silicon-powered Mac Pro, it may not give an M2 Ultra refresh to the Mac Studio, according to Gurman.
Gurman said, “I wouldn't anticipate the introduction of a Mac Studio in the near future. The upcoming Mac Pro is very similar in functionality to the Mac Studio — and adds the M2 Ultra chip rather than the M1 Ultra. So it wouldn't make sense for Apple to offer an M2 Ultra Mac Studio and M2 Ultra Mac Pro at the same time. It's more likely that Apple either never updates the Mac Studio or holds off until the M3 or M4 generation. At that point, the company may be able to better differentiate the Mac Studio from the Mac Pro.”
Given the performance Apple’s own chips are offering, it makes sense the company can skip a generation or two for some products. The Mac Pro arguably needs to be the best Mac, so we should see it arrive with the most powerful Apple Silicon around, and the Mac Studio may stay selling with the current-gen chip for one or two more generations. In the meantime, the advent of M2 and M2 Pro to the new Mac mini make it a potent desktop force, as you can read in our M2 Mac mini-review.
