Apple remains committed to completely dumping Intel chips

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A high-level Apple executive says an upgraded Mac Pro is on the way, even if he did so in a backhanded way.

The company’s VP of Worldwide Product Marketing said in an interview that his company has “a clear goal to transition fully to Apple silicon.” That’s an oblique reference to the Mac Pro, the only macOS computer still running an Intel processor. A replacement with an Apple M-series chip could be out in mere weeks.

No more Intel chips

At the launch of Apple silicon in 2020, the Mac-maker committed itself to a two-year transition away from Intel processors. But the process has taken longer than expected — in 2023, the Mac Pro still uses Intel chips. But that’s going to change, according to Apple’s Bob Borchers.

“We have a clear goal to transition fully to Apple silicon,” the exec said in an interview with India Today. “We’ve been very clear from the beginning that our goal is to take our entire product line to Apple silicon. And that’s something we intend to do.”

There actually have been some calls to keep the Mac Pro on Intel processors. Because of the Apple’s M-series’ unified memory architecture, the processors will apparently lack upgradable RAM and support for eGPUs. That wouldn’t be true for an Intel-based model. But Bob Borchers’ comment makes it obvious that’s not going to happen,

Mac Pro with Apple silicon is on the way

The most-recent version of the Mac Pro arrived in 2019, and a replacement could be unveiled before the end of March.

If it really is coming so soon, then Apple has done an unusually good job of keeping the specs under wraps. Little is known about this upcoming computer at this point.

The 2023 Mac Pro might have to depend on an Apple M2 Ultra processor, as the more powerful “M2 Extreme” chip reportedly has been canceled. The Ultra will top out at 24 CPU cores, 76 GPU cores and 192GB of RAM.

To compensate, the 2023 Mac Pro will be “cheaper and more efficient” than the earlier version. The current model starts at $6,000.