When Apple quietly discontinued the Mac Pro in March, pulling it from its website and steering professional users toward the Mac Studio instead, many assumed the writing had been on the wall for some time. But a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggests that Apple’s plans for its most powerful desktop computer were far more ambitious than anyone realized, and that the company came closer to releasing new models than previously known.
Writing in his Power On newsletter, Gurman reveals that Apple had two distinct Mac Pro models in development under the codenames J170 and J190, neither of which ever made it to market. The more surprising of the two, codenamed J170, was apparently powered by an Intel processor. This would have meant Apple was simultaneously developing new Intel-based hardware even as it was transitioning its entire lineup to its own custom silicon. According to Gurman, the Intel model was intended to address certain specialized use cases that Apple’s own chips could not fully cover at the time.
The second scrapped model, J190, was designed around an M3 Ultra chip and was reportedly slated to launch alongside an M3 Ultra version of the Mac Studio in early 2025. That project died alongside something even more intriguing. Gurman says Apple had actually developed both M2 Extreme and M3 Extreme chips before ultimately killing them over concerns about cost and demand. The so-called Extreme chip was supposed to sit above the Ultra tier in Apple’s silicon hierarchy and presumably would have served as the foundation for a truly next-generation Mac Pro.
With those projects now shelved, Gurman does not expect Apple to revive the Mac Pro anytime soon, if ever. Instead, the company appears focused on pushing the Mac Studio forward, with new models featuring M5 Ultra chips potentially arriving as early as this fall. For longtime fans of the Mac Pro, who valued its modularity and expandability, the discontinuation marks a bittersweet end to a product line that once represented the pinnacle of Apple’s computing ambitions.