Apple Reportedly Worked on Two 'Extreme' Chips

Is this how it goes now?

Base < Pro < Max < Ultra < Extreme < Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

These could have gotten the MacPro over $100,000, finally. /s

The fact that Apple went so far as to develop these chips and then not release them is a massive bummer. They simply didn’t see a market for them, even after all the R&D.

Well, we don't know how well they actually performed and scaled. It is possible that they also offered nowhere near 2x the performance of the Ultras.

The fact that Apple went so far as to develop these chips and then not release them is a massive bummer. They simply didn’t see a market for them, even after all the R&D.

This goes to show how scalable apples’ silicon is.

It makes sense not to release it since that’s only one thing people wanted the Mac Pro for. They removed every other reason to get one.

Yeah, they shot themselves in the foot with the Mac Pro. Having upgradable RAM/Storage and expansion slots was the main seller. I wanted one when they talked about the 2019, but once they released it at those prices I noped out. They made it too expensive for a consumer that just wanted an upgradable machine. I understand having the higher tiers for real professionals, but the price for the base model was outrageous for what you got. Then Apple Silicon came along and they squandered it even further.

The Apple Silicon Mac Pro should have had a Modular CPU board, and allowed extra RAM be upgraded by the user beyond the unified memory. You pay for the fixed unified memory on the CPU board, then you can add more that's slower that gets used when the unified memory fills up. Then having plenty of storage bays, and adding support for aftermarket GPU's from AMD/Nvidia would have made the Mac Pro more worth it. The starting price would have been OK, with the modularity allowing you to replace the CPU board separately down the road without having to replace everything else. I would have paid the steep entry price if it meant 4 years later I could upgrade the CPU board from an M2Max to an M5 Max/Ultra, or even bought second hand upgrades from other people upgrading.

I know all that is a pipe dream that never would have happened. But I can dream.