It might be time for Apple to throw in the towel on the Mac Pro

The Mac Pro is one of the few remaining Intel Macs with no Apple Silicon replacement ready to go, even though we're a little past the two-year deadline that CEO Tim Cook originally set for the transition in summer 2020 (and to be fair, it has been a hard-to-predict couple of years).

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that Apple continues to work on a new version of the Mac Pro, alongside other as-yet-unreplaced Intel Macs like the higher-end Mac mini and the 27-inch iMac, but that a planned M2 Extreme" chip that would have powered the Apple Silicon Mac Pro has likely" been canceled.

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Waiting for news in the face of uncertainty isn't new to Mac Pro holdouts; it has been a constant for the last decade-plus. It has been a very long time since the Mac Pro was updated on anything close to a predictable cadence, especially if you don't count partial refreshes like the 2012 Mac Pro tower or the addition of new GPU options to the 2019 model. And each of the last two updates-the trash can" Mac Pro in 2013 and the reforged cheese grater" version from 2019-have reflected a total shift in design and strategy.

At this point, I'd like Apple to decide: either commit to a consistent strategy or vision for the Mac Pro and its place in the lineup or retire it.

It sure has been a rough time for Mac Pro buyers. The reality of it is that desktop PCs - Apple or otherwise - just aren't really all that popular anymore compared to laptops, and this probably doubly counts for the very high end. Selling Mac Pros by the thousands simply doesn't make a whole lot of sense compared to the numbers Apple's other computers are shipping at.