In this context the absence of the 27 inch iMac was interesting. If these SoC were not deemed to be 'right' for the bigger iMac then possibly a more CPU focused / developer focused SoC may be in the works for the iMac?
I doubt they are going to make different chips for prosumer devices. They are going to spread out the M1 pro/max upgrade to the rest of the lineup at some point during the next year, so they can claim "full transition" through their quoted 2 years.
The wildcard is the actual mac pro. I suspect we aren't going to hear about mac pro until next Sept/Oct events, and super unclear what direction they are going to go. Maybe allowing config of multiple M1 max SOCs somehow working together. Seems complicated.
On reflection I think they've decided that their pro users want 'more GPU not more CPU' - they could easily have added a couple more CPU cores but it obviously wasn't a priority.
Agreed that it's hard to see how designing a CPU just for the Mac Pro would make any kind of economic sense but equally struggling to see what else they can do!
I think we will see iMac Pro with incredible performance. Mac Pros, maybe in the next years to come. It's a really high end product to release new specs. Plus, in they release it with M1 Max chips, what would be the difference? a nicer case and more upgrading slot? I don't see the advantage of power. I think Mac Pros will be upgraded like in 2 years ahead
They also have a limited headcount and resources so they wouldn't want to announce M1x/pro/max for all machines now and have employees be idle for the next 3 months.
Notebooks also have a higher profit margin, so they sell them to those who need to upgrade now. The lower-margin systems like Mini will come later. And the Mac Pro will either die or come with the next iteration of the chips.
Yup. Once I saw the 24" iMac I knew the 27" had had it's chips. 30" won't actually be much bigger than the 27" if the bezels shrink to almost nothing - which seems to be the trend.
