[kscherer]

Chucker, your logic makes sense, but the naming structure/debut of Apple's A-series chipsets refutes it.

The iPhone consistently debuted with the Ax processor. A few months later (sometimes much later) an iPad would pop in with an AxX processor (specifically with more cores). The two were never side-by side, and sometimes there was an iPhone with, say, an A11, while the iPad Pro was running an A10X. So, it is not uncommon for the "slower" device to have a later-generation processor. However, the X-variant is still faster due to having a higher core count.

So, it makes sense to see an M1X with, say, 16 cores and 32 GPU cores (or something) drop into the MB Pro, while a slightly later MB Air update (new design?) gets the 8- or 12-core M2 with 8 or 12 GPU cores. The M1X is still going to be the faster of the two chips by virtue of its higher core-count. Then, in a few months the M2X would drop into a Pro update, and on and on. The setup makes sense to me.

And, yes, I still believe there will be an M2X Pro chip designation for the Mac Pro tower, and that chip will be behind all of them and seemingly make no sense next to the M3, except that the Pro chip will have ~20 and 40 CPU cores, and ~64 and 128 GPU cores.

I guess what I'm saying is that the Mx AS chips are going to get their performance numbers from core-counts more-so than letter designations, i.e. generational debut. The Pro stuff will always "seem" to be behind because of the letter designation, but will be far ahead based on core-count.

The previous iPad Pro is proof of that. The iPad Air (4th-gen) had the A14 Bionic while the iPad Pro (4th-gen) had the A12Z Bionic. The A12Z had more cores and the Pro was faster because of that. Thus, the letter designation should be somewhat ignored when it comes to core-performance, and only the core-count should be considered. Obviously, there are other generational touch-ups to the Neural Engine, the Secure Enclave, etc. to take into consideration, but these have thus far not been enough to overcome much higher CPU and GPU core-counts.