There are many problems with this kind of source of information, however. His informants might see/get bits and pieces of information out of context and out of timeline. Apple is actively fighting leaks more than before and if you follow leaks like this you need to apply your own judgement and weigh it against other more or less sketchy data points.
Exactly, that's why I'm so confident Gurman is not leaking, just guessing based on what's he see (and understand) at the rearview, Gurman has no Electronics SOC background, even I'm not sure he has a formal Journalist degree. (IMHO not, please enlightenment me)
I can assure you that Gurman is not writing his predictions by looking in the rearview mirror. He gets his information from somewhere in the delivery chain.
Same as Kuo, Proser, and me.
Did you know I leaked here the trashcan Mac pro when Gurman and most ppl didn't expect an radical new form factor, I got then some DM from people I'm aware working at Apple legal, but I didn't break any law then.
The Mac Pro IMHO historically it's the most difficult apple products to gather r&d leaks.
As
@mattspace point out, Apple practice now is to ship different prototypes at different stages to software R&D as maybe the one from the OP alleged leak. But often apple deliberately leaks huge details in order to build expectations even froze the market as early hit in face a huge rival announcement (like was the iphone 4 'forgotten' at the pub).
But what tells me Gurman lacks any background and he's just speculating with whatever he understands and feel sure about (rearview mirror guessing), are his incoherence:
Just two quite clear (among many):
"Apple won't launch the M2 Extreme as it will require a number if M2 Max soc apple need to keep MBP production running...."
Has non sense, 1st a Mac pro may eat as much as 2 or 4 m2 max, (4 MBP) a but when ppl has made any row to purchase an Mac Pro, likely Mac pro to MBP sales ratio gap if bigger than 1:100 , add this apple even cut MBP orders on weak market. So I'm as Apple production manager likely would ask for ways to sell more m2 max products given the monster Mac Pro barely eats 4 at time on time.
"The Mac Pro to include PCIe (maybe dGPU), but keep the same M2 ultra SOC with soldered RAM as the Mac Studio with exactly same ram configurations",
Again he's just looking at the rearview (in a view from what he understands), first incoherence: having PCIe slots GPU capable but no discreet RAM, while Apple is consistent stingy miser about allowing diy upgrades, the Modular Mac (aka Mac Pro) always been an exception on the same reasons it exists, it's an professional product expensive which users often Taylor to it's particular workflows, current Mac Pro can hold 1.5 TB of ram, amount you don't need to post here, but in niche workflows are even barely usable, the ASi until now didn't include RCD chips, what is needed to interface CPU fabric with discreet ram modules, it doesn't add latency are more like electric noise filters, but even increasing latency slightly it won't tax the overall soc performance given the monster L2 cache ASi has (4mb), what is not clear is the GPU, M1 ASi lacks DMA at its thunderbolt ports which prevented it to run an eGPU by booting Linux, it maybe deliberated, or not I'm not sure, but thinking as the typical studio using a Mac Pro for rendering or vídeo production, it may prevents a huge portion (the most important) of user to acquire the Mac Pro, so the Mac Pro either should provide dDPU support (as it seems) or an alternative compute accelerator to replace it.
Finally the Mac Pro also it's an Apple Halo Show product, Apple marketing won't afford it to be worthless capable than the 7,1.
From my personal information gathering, I'm confident Apple to deliver both PCIe expansion and discreet ram DDR5, cues on the GPU issue are confusing but at least apple is working either on an accelerator card (similar afterburner) or enabling AMD GPUs at least as compute accelerators.
