But do we still need a Mac Pro?
No matter what Apple does with the Mac Pro, a desktop computer makes less sense than ever in the Apple Silicon era. Part of the appeal of Mac Pro Towers in the early 2010s and 2019 was their internal expandability, especially in terms of storage, graphics cards, and RAM. But while the Apple Silicon Mac Pro includes six internal PCI Express slots, it doesn't support upgradeable RAM or third-party GPUs from Nvidia, AMD, or Intel. Thunderbolt 5's 120Gbps data transfer speed is also more than enough to support high-speed external storage devices.
This leaves even the most experienced users with little practical reason to choose the $7,000 Mac Pro Tower over the $4,000 Mac Studio. And that would be true even if both desktops used the same chip—the M3 Ultra Studio currently comes with increasingly new CPU cores, new GPU cores, and 32GB more RAM for the price, making the comparison even more lopsided.
Apart from the Mac Pro, the Mac should be quite active in 2026. Any laptop except Entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro should get an Apple M5 update with Pro and Max chips for the more expensive Pro. These chips, along with the M5 Ultra, will give Apple everything it needs to update its iMac, Mac mini and Mac Studio lines.
Persistent rumors also indicate that Apple will introduce new, cheaper MacBook model with an iPhone-class chip inside, the device appears to be designed to replace the 2020 M1 MacBook Air, which Apple continues to sell through Walmart priced between $600 and $650. It remains to be seen whether this new MacBook will remain a Walmart exclusive or whether Apple also plans to offer the laptop through other retailers and its own store.
