Lots of Intel Darwin contributions are going to dry up where Apple is supplying the momentum.Īpple has deprecated kernel extensions so where the new DriverKit development dollars are going to be spent is going to highly skew to M-series systems after the last intel Macs drop off the market. Kernel extensions are going away so even hacking the kernel is going to to get harder.
The Mac Pro 7,1 doesn't have as hackable firmware and Apple is going to turn off the spigot when the Mac Pro goes onto the Vintage/Obsolete list.
That is due in large part that the firmware is hackable and Apple is actively pouring lots of resources into new versions of Intel MacOS ( and new drivers for embedded GPUs that other new Macs were getting over time). those have helped extend the time at least as much as the trailing Mac Pro. The last Intel Mini is definitely getting replace quite late. The iMac 27" apparently got replaced late. A substantial number of those folks is more a liability than an asset to get Apple to extend the clock. Lots of Pros sit on macOS releases for about as long as they can. When the Mac Pro is last system standing, it will be on thin ice as far as making Apple spend lots more money to keep just it running. Decent chance the "countdown" clock will start when a Apple Silicon Mac Pro is release even if that system is not a direct replacement and Apple continues to sell side by side for a year or so.įrom reports the Intel Mini is going to disappear in late 2022. Apple is probably going to transition the Mac Pro 2019 (7,1) to Vintage/Obsolete as quickly as their rules allow. Just not enough volume to move the needle all by itself. The Intel Mac Pro all by itself can hold back the tide. If the crypto GPU card crash continues Apple's cards priced into falling prices on 6800/6900 isn't going to work well.
The cheapest path for both Apple and AMD is to add some general 6000 series optimizations and a few tweaks for the 6*50 cards and just let folks who need "single", non fabric connected GPUS just use those. )ĪMD also has lots of other irons in the fire than to sink effort in 2022 or very early 2023 into a dead end platform. ( many of these out of spec, too large cards to handle the heat aren't going to fit. Similarly if there are no Infinity Fabric links on the 7800 GPU SoC. If the 7900 is consuming up in the 400-500W range I'm not sure Apple is going to want to touch that. So plus/minus 6-9 months on new Mac Pro won't make any significant difference. Those cards wouldn't have helped the intel Mac Pro in 2022 whether Apple ships a AS Mac Pro in 2022 or not.Įxtremely unlikely that a 7000 series card could play any significant role as a 3-6 month "gap filler".
Apple is not likely at all to pay extra to jump to the front of the AMD GPU release line. If Apple was shooting for a 7700 and that lags a weeks, months behind the 7900/7800 then that would have been late Spring - early Summer 2023 anyway. If so, then perhaps already had a plan to use 7000 series GPUs to make that less painful for the intel model.ĭrivers for macOS lag on AMDGPU releases 1 or 2 quarters anyway. The crux would be whether Apple had previously planned to sell both the 'going stale' MP 2019 and the new Apple Silicon version side by side for 1-2 years. Squatting on the MP 2019 for 4-5 years would be easy. Apple squatted on the MP 2013 for 6 years.
If Apple had settled on limping along with unchanged hardware then limping along for 6 more months isn't a big deal. If Apple had no plans for a 7000 series MPX module then I highly doubt the next Mac Pro sliding has any impact there. If Apple's plan 1-2 years ago was to do 7000 series then it is probably still on track. So it is "not done in the first place" more so than "cancelled". Would not be surprising if Apple made 100's of prototypes but production wise it doesn't work. Like AirPower had a concept but not a solid product. If apple has composed a SoC packaging design that is way, way, way to hard to make in decent numbers then it was never really "all ready to go".
That doesn't 'smell' like a 100% fully baked, problem free infrastructure simply waiting on a speed bump SoC upgrade. maybe not even announce at end of 2022 ". The problem if go to the video where Gurman makes this "all done" characterization is that when asked when Apple will ship this M2 version it is "No not January. The AirPower was "all done and ready to go" too (Apple had even started to print up boxes to ship it) and it never got over the deep scrutiny of engineering and production validation. If it never made to to production validation testing or even engineering validation then never really made it out final 'green light' stage of approval. Reportedly there were multiple 'large' screen iMacs prototypes worked on. How it can be 'cancelled' if they are working on the M2 generation version? Delayed? Yes.