AppleInsider reports that Apple is ready to unleash Penryn-based Mac Pros as soon as Intel can provide the new chips to Apple.
They'll also be amongst the first machines from any PC manufacturer to employ chips from Intel's upcoming Penryn family of 45-nanometer (nm) microprocessors -- specifically the upcoming Hi-k Xeons, which will be available in dual- and quad-core variants for workstations with front-side bus speeds of either 1333MHz or 1600MHz.
This article corroborates an Inquirer report which claimed that Apple was buying up high end (3.2GHz) Penryn processors this year, leaving little supply for other PC manufacturers.
AppleInsider believes that the new Mac Pro will top with an 8-core model utilizing two of these new 3.2GHz "Harpertown" 45-nm quad-core Xeons which offer a faster 1600MHz bus and 12MB of L2 cache. The new processor could offer up to 45% speed increases over existing Mac Pro processors for bandwidth-intensive applications.
The fate of the remainder of the Mac Pro line remains less certain, but Apple appears to have the option of a number of dual-core Penryn ("Wolfdale") processors that could find their way into the lower-end Mac Pros.
Apple once developed "M2 Extreme" and "M3 Extreme" chips for the Mac Pro, but it decided not to release them, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. He first reported on this topic in 2022, and he touched on it again in his Power On newsletter today.
"Extreme" chips would have had twice as many CPU and GPU cores as Apple's "Ultra" chips.
"The idea was to offer twice as many graphics and...
Apple developed two Mac Pro models in recent years that never made it to market, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
In his latest "Power On" newsletter, Gurman revealed that Apple internally developed two unreleased Mac Pro projects codenamed J170 and J190 before ultimately discontinuing the machine altogether.
As for new Mac Pro hardware, there were two additional models developed by...
Wednesday July 29, 2026 11:39 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple is developing an all-new operating system that is essentially a mix of tvOS, watchOS, and iOS, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
In a report this week, he said the operating system will feature a grid of icons, widgets, and apps, along with customizable clock faces.
The new software platform is intended for Apple's long-rumored smart home hub. With built-in facial recognition,...
Apple's first foldable iPhone, with a book-style design featuring a ~5.5-inch outer display and a ~7.8-inch inner display with a minimal crease down the middle.
