Joe Rossignol at MacRumors:

Apple this week upgraded its base model Mac Pro to include 512GB of storage and AMD’s Radeon Pro W5500X graphics for the same $5,999 starting price. Previously, this configuration included 256GB of storage and Radeon Pro 580X graphics. These changes apply to both the tower and rack versions of the Mac Pro.

It’s not the spec bump that has been rumored for the 2019 machine, but it’s something. Interestingly, the Trashcan got a similar update later in its life.

As a side note: I’ll be selling my 12-core Mac Pro after my M1 Max Mac Studio shows up in early April… but more on this later.

As previously noted, the 27-inch iMac is gone from Apple’s website, and John Ternus said the Mac Pro would be the final Mac to make the switch to Apple silicon.

I think this means the 27-inch iMac as we knew it is gone forever. In my mind, this leads to two questions:

First, does Apple intend the Mac Studio and Studio Display to act as the replacement for the high-end iMac? The last 27-inch Intel iMacs were no slouches, but the Mac Studio will still smoke them in terms of performance, after all.

The problem with this is price. The final 27-inch iMacs came in at:

• $1,799 (3.1 GHz)
• $1,999 (3.3 GHz)
• $2,299 (3.8 GHz)

The modular Mac Studio / Studio Display combo just can’t beat that pricing, with the cheapest setup possible coming in at $3,600. And that’s before you buy input devices.

(Of course, the combo of a Mac mini and Studio Display would be less, but with the M1 being the only Apple silicon option on that machine, it doesn’t play in the same sandbox as these other machines.)

I think it’s more likely that we see the iMac Pro resurrected as an all-in-one companion to the Mac Studio. This could take place even with Ternus’ wink-and-nod show at the end of today’s event.

I like the idea of the iMac really being the consumer desktop model — after all, that is where it started life way back in 1998. It was only in more recent years that the iMac really stretched upwards to meet the needs of professionals. An iMac Pro would put a cap on that upward reach and clarify things a bit from a branding perspective.

So, is the 27-inch iMac dead? Yes, yes it is. Does that mean Apple won’t release another high-end all-in-one at some point in the future? No, no it doesn’t.

There’s a lot to process today but here are two oddities:

• The 27-inch iMac is totally gone from Apple’s website, and at the end of the event, John Ternus said the Mac Pro was the final Mac to make the switch to Apple silicon.
• The Intel Mac mini is still for sale.

Chance Miller at 9to5Mac has outlined a new video by Luke Miani, who is reporting that the “Mac Studio” is a taller Mac mini, paired with a new display that looks like a larger 24-inch iMac.

Miani’s version of this display seems to not serve as the Pro Display XDR’s replacement, as was reported over the weekend. Miani has mixed track record on these things, but at least this version of the story makes more sense to me than what we’d previously seen.

With Apple’s spring event just around the corner, there’s a lot going on in the rumor world:

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says that he expects to see a more powerful Mac mini this week, alongside a new “more affordable” 27-inch external display.

Mark Gurman reported today that the display in question has been ready for months. This display seems to be much more mainstream display than the Pro Display XDR, and will lack mini-LED to keep the cost “down” to around $2,500.

That may not be the only display in the works at Apple, though. Filipe Espósito at 9to5Mac reported on Friday that Apple is working on a replacement for the Pro Display XDR. According to Espósito, this is dubbed the “Apple Studio Display,”¹ and clocks in at an even-nicer-than-the-XDR 7k resolution.

Back to Ming-Chi Kuo for a moment, though. He also says that the Mac Pro and iMac Pro are now coming in 2023. This is beyond the end of the “2 year transition” Apple announced for Apple silicon, but COVID-19 continues to wreck havoc on supply chains and working conditions around the world.

At 9to5Mac, Espósito also commented on future Mac hardware:

Based on information seen by 9to5Mac, the new Mac Studio is primarily based on the Mac mini, but with much more powerful hardware. Apple has two versions of Mac Studio under development. One features the M1 Max chip (the same as the 2021 MacBook Pro) and the other a variant of the Apple Silicon chip that is even more powerful than the current M1 Max.

I think it may be safe to assume something “more powerful than the current M1 Max” would end up in 2023’s iMac Pro or Mac Pro, but basing machine like this on the Mac mini is interesting.

At first, I thought this seemed like a bit of a miss, but then I remembered that Gurman and others have reported that a “half-sized” Mac Pro is in the works. Could the “Mac Studio” be this machine, slated to slot between the Mac mini and a larger Mac Pro that is more akin to what we have today?

Even with the half-sized Mac Pro smoke, all of this feels a bit weird to me. Would Apple launch a fourth desktop model, joining the Mac mini, iMac and Mac Pro?² That seems like dividing a pretty small pie into an unnecessary number of pieces, but as a desktop Mac user, it is certainly exciting to consider.

I struggle with the “Studio” name a bit here. I think it would be fun to see it return to the display lineup, but would Apple brand this new mid-range headless Mac³ with name of its new high-end display? If I had to guess, whatever this more-than-a-Mac-mini-but-not-a-Mac-Pro-either machine is, it won’t have Studio in the name.

But no one really knows, and that’s what makes all of this so much fun.

Mark Gurman:

Apple Inc. has set an April 11 deadline for corporate employees to return to in-person work, marking a key test of whether the tech giant can reestablish office life in the Zoom era.

Employees will be required to work from the office at least one day per week by that date, according to a memo sent by Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook on Friday. By three weeks after April 11, employees will be expected in the office twice per week. And on May 23, employees will need to be in the office at least three days a week — on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.