An Ultra variant of Apple's M5 SoC line-up has been rumored for a while now, specifically when it comes to Apple's Mac Studio, which has more or less become the brand's de-facto high-end desktop workstation lineup. Given that the M3 Ultra occupied the top position in Apple's chip line-up, it was expected that if Apple ever released an update to the Apple iMac Pro, it would feature the Ultra model of the current SoC family. However, thanks to a leaked kernel debug tool, courtesy of MacRumors, we now have tentative confirmation that the Apple iMac Pro will likely top out at an M5 Max instead of the rumored Ultra SoC. The software refers to an iMac identified by the codename J833c with a platform that goes by H17C, which has been associated with the M5 Max SoC. This suggests that the M5 Max iMac Pro is not only planned, but has already made it into testing.

The current generation iMac tops out at the M4 SoC, which is still an impressive performer, for what it is, but if the difference between the M4 and the M4 Max is anything to go by, an M5 Max-powered iMac Pro would mean stepping up from a 10-core GPU and 10-core CPU to a 16-core CPU and 40-core GPU, and that's just in terms of processing power. The iMac Pro will likely see a revival of the bigger 27-inch display, and it's also more than likely that Apple will also upgrade the display brightness and perhaps even its HDR performance, since rumors point to the iMac Pro being destined for professional and creative workspaces. Apple only recently released the base model M5 SoC, but the M5 Pro, Max, and Ultra are expected to launch at some point in Spring 2026.