Apple last updated the Mac Pro in 2018 by introducing a new tower design. According to Bloomberg, the company is now set to unveil a new much smaller Mac Pro this year. New ARM based chips for the Mac are reportedly set to power the upcoming Mac Pro.
Last year, Apple announced that the Mac will be transitioning from Intel to Apple silicon over a period of two years. The company has already released the MacBook Pro, the 13” base MacBook Pro, and the Mac Mini – all powered by the M1 chip. M1 is Apple’s first chip for the Mac based on ARM architecture. The upcoming smaller Mac Pro will reportedly use a much faster and a much more capable chip.
Some people in the tech industry have speculated that the upcoming chip to power the new Mac Pro could possibly be named M1X. In the previous years, Apple has used “X” for the iPad chips which are much more powerful compared to their iPhone counterparts. In 2018, Apple launched the iPhone XS powered by the A12 Bionic chip and a month later, released the iPad Pro powered by the A12X chip – a beefed up version of the A12 Bionic.
The M1 chip is power efficient compared to major Intel chips. The upcoming powerful chips from Apple for the Mac will also be power efficient compared to high-end Intel desktop class chips. As a result, Apple will be able to create a much smaller Mac Pro compared to the current generation which is huge. Some have speculated that the new smaller Mac Pro could use a design similar to the old Power Mac G4 Cube.
Apple could unveil the new Mac Pro at its annual developers conference WWDC this year. It’s also possible that the company could save the release for its annual Mac hardware event late in the year.
