iOS 18 Leck reveals Apple tested MacBook professionals with M3 Ultra Chip

Apple's M3 Ultra Chip is currently limited to the Mac Studio. However, a new leak has shown that Apple also tested the chip in the MacBook Pro.

In today's contribution to the Chinese social media platform Bilibili, with which we are not familiar, she said that they found code references to unpublished 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with the M3 Ultra-Chip in an internal build by iOS 18 that is carried out on an iPhone 16-technical prototype. In particular, they said that they found J514D and J516D code names in a file in/Apple Bean/Diags/Tests/Folder.

J514 and J516 are the code names for the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M3 Pro and M3-Max chips that were introduced by Apple in October 2023. However, these special code names have a “D” suffix that probably refers to an ultra chip. For example, the Mac Studio with the M3 Ultra with the code name J575D.

Apple has never released a MacBook Pro with an ultra chip, so this is a remarkable discovery.

The M3 Ultra is currently the fastest Mac chip ever released. It has a 32-core CPU, up to an 80-core GPU and supports up to 512 GB uniform memory, so that this MacBook Pro-Specifications could have been in an alternative universe.

Instead, Apple updated the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M4, M4 Pro and M4 Max chip options in October last year. Apple has most likely decided not to make the M3 -Ultra chip in the MacBook Pro available, possibly due to the larger effects on the thermal and batterytress lifetime for laptops compared to desktop computers.

With the M4 Max, the MacBook Pro can be configured up to a 16-core CPU, up to a 40-core GPU and up to 128 GB of uniform storage.

All in all, Apple MacBook Pro models with the M3 Ultra Chip seem to be considering at least, but it is unlikely that they will ever be released.