The Mac Pro is Apple’s most powerful Mac. Or at least, that’s the intention. But since its release in 2019, Apple has gone on to launch both the Mac Studio and new MacBooks with powerful chips that are banging on the $7,000 Mac Pro’s door. That means an update is in order.
Luckily, rumors and leaks indicate that a new Mac Pro should be launching at some point in 2025. If you’re wondering what it might look like and how powerful it could be, you’re in the right place, as we’ve gathered all the Mac Pro news we can find into one place. To see what’s on the horizon for Apple’s flagship desktop dominator, read on.
Price and release date
Many rumors have claimed that Apple wants to upgrade all of its Macs to run the same chip architecture (in this case, the M4 chip series), which will be the first time this has happened in years. If true, it means we can expect an update for the Mac Pro sooner rather than later.
As for a specific release date, Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman has predicted that Apple will release the new Mac Pro in the second half of 2025. Given Apple’s traditional launch schedule, that probably means sometime in the fall — perhaps at a Mac-focused event in October or November.
What about the price? The Mac Pro is Apple’s most expensive Mac, with prices starting at $6,999 for the tower model. We wouldn’t expect much movement on the price with the M4 version — as we’ll see, there probably won’t be many changes other than the chip itself, meaning a similar price to the M2 Ultra model is likely.
Design and features
The Mac Pro underwent an extensive redesign in 2019, transforming it from a small “trash can” design to a more traditional tower computer. But that chassis was made with extensive cooling systems for its Intel chips, which the latest model’s far more efficient Apple silicon chips don’t need so much.
Does that mean the M4-series Mac Pro could get a new look? It seems plausible. Modern Apple silicon chips are able to run much cooler and more efficiently than their Intel predecessors, meaning a large case stuffed with fans and airflow routes feels less necessary. Some of Apple’s other desktop computers — the Mac Studio and M4 Mac mini in particular — show that you can fit a lot of power into a tiny case. Could the Mac Pro follow suit?
Ultimately, that feels unlikely this time around. For one thing, rumors about a redesigned chassis are very thin on the ground at the moment. By this stage, you’d think we would have heard something, but there’s been nothing concrete on this topic.
The Mac Pro also has one compelling reason to keep a larger case: expansion. The Mac Pro has room for a host of expansion cards that can augment its features and performance (such as extra storage or faster networking). This is one of the main features that separates the Mac Pro from the Mac Studio, and you can’t shrink it down without losing some of that modularity — and encroaching on territory already occupied by the smaller Mac Studio.
Supercharged performance
While there are many uncertainties surrounding the next Mac Pro, you can bet the farm on Apple equipping it with an M4-series chip. Given the fact that the current Mac Pro only has an M2 Ultra option (and not, say, the M2 Max), we’d say it’s highly likely that the next one will offer an M4 Ultra chip, which will be Apple’s flagship chip.
According to Gurman, we can expect more cores — a 32-core CPU and an 80-core GPU, to be precise (something he previously expected in the M3 Ultra, which never arrived). That’s double the number of cores found in the top-end M4 Max chip, and it follows the pattern established by the M1 Ultra and M2 Ultra, which doubled the core counts of the M1 Max and M2 Max, respectively.
Another new feature would be hardware-accelerated ray tracing, which is enabled by Apple’s M4-series chips, but isn’t available with the Mac Pro’s M2 Ultra. And given Apple’s recent push into artificial intelligence (AI) with Apple Intelligence, an upgraded neural engine and better AI capabilities could well be in the cards.
Elsewhere, rumors have pointed toward a maximum unified memory configuration of 512GB — far higher than the current 192GB limit (although still less than the 1.5TB offered in the 2019 Intel Mac Pro).
Pro Display XDR
We’d be remiss to talk about the Mac Pro without touching on the Pro Display XDR, the monitor that Apple launched alongside the revamped Mac Pro in 2019. Seeing as this monitor is made specifically for the Mac Pro, it makes sense to examine whether it will alos be upgraded in 2025 — especially since it will have gone six years without a change when the new Mac Pro steps into the limelight.
Display industry expert Ross Young has stated that he believes the Pro Display XDR will launch in late 2025 or early 2026. That might sound odd at first — after all, If Apple is going to update this display, you’d think it would launch alongside the new Mac Pro. It’s hard to imagine Apple releasing the very expensive Mac Pro without a new monitor, prompting people to potentially buy the outdated Pro Display XDR, then launching a new high-end monitor a few months later, wasting people’s money in the process.
Yet, Young is not the only person to raise the prospect of a staggered release. Gurman said in 2022 that the Pro Display XDR could launch later than the Mac Pro, as Apple’s computer is “further along in development than the monitor.” That rumor is a few years old now, so things might have changed, but it’s something to consider regardless.
There’s also a chance that Apple passes over the Pro Display XDR entirely, leaving it unchanged for another product cycle. The company did this in 2023 when it refreshed the Mac Pro, so it’s not unheard of.
Still, there are some hints that a new Pro Display XDR is in the works. In 2022, Gurman stated that Apple was working on a new Pro Display XDR with a built-in chip, which is something that the current model lacks. The Studio Display, however, has a chip, and this controls Center Stage, spatial audio, and Siri voice commands, which it presumably could do in the Pro Display XDR.
Young also had more to say regarding the Pro Display XDR. After the M4 MacBook Pro was found to contain a quantum-dot screen, Young stated that the next Pro Display XDR will adopt the same screen technology. What’s unclear is whether this means Apple will ditch its mini-LED display tech and replace it with OLED (or perhaps even the Tandem OLED found in the latest iPad Pro).
Given the secretive nature of Apple’s future products, there have also been some rumors that could relate to either the Pro Display XDR or Apple’s Studio Display. For example, tech analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has claimed that Apple could launch a new high-end 27-inch monitor with mini-LED tech in 2025, but given that the Studio Display is the only Apple monitor to use this screen size, it’s not obvious if this product will be a new Pro Display XDR or an updated Studio Display.
Similarly, 9to5Mac has claimed to have information suggesting Apple is developing a monitor with a 7K resolution. This is apparently being positioned as a Studio Display, despite this resolution outclassing that of the 6K Pro Display XDR. Does this mean that Apple will rebrand the Pro Display XDR as a sort of high-end Studio Display? Or will Apple in turn upgrade the Pro Display XDR’s resolution, perhaps to something around 8K? None of that is clear at the moment.
Regardless of the confusing rumors, there are a few things that we’d like to see in a new Pro Display XDR (if and when it arrives). That includes a built-in webcam, speakers and microphones, a higher refresh rate with ProMotion, and upgraded ports that match the Thunderbolt 4 found in the latest M4 Macs. An OLED (or even Tandem OLED) upgrade would also be welcome, but if not, there’s always the mini-LED tech found in the current MacBook Pro.
