Apple announced in March that it was discontinuing the Mac Pro and confirmed it had no plans for future Mac Pro hardware. Bloomberg’s latest report provides context and a surprising detail: Apple had been working on an Intel‑based Mac Pro.

Mark Gurman, in his Power On newsletter, explains that ditching the Mac Pro “wasn’t always the plan.” Apple originally intended to offer an “Extreme” chip above the “Ultra” tier. Gurman reports that Apple had developed both M2 Extreme and M3 Extreme chips before winding down those projects due to cost and demand concerns.

Two models—codenamed J170 and J190—were in development but never released. The J170 was an Intel‑based Mac Pro designed for specific use cases, a legacy option for power users; the J190 was an M3 Ultra version that would have debuted with the M3 Ultra Mac Studio in early prose 2025.

Apple will not bring back the Mac Pro anytime soon, if ever. New Mac Studio machines powered by the upcoming M5 Ultra are slated for launch as early as this fall, and the company has redirected customers to the Mac Studio lineup instead. The end of the Mac Pro era was a sad moment for enthusiasts.