When Apple revealed on Tuesday that the current Mac Pro will not see a major update and instead an all-new modular Mac Pro is being developed, the company stopped short of saying just when that decision was made and how long ago the new project started.

Apple said the modular Mac Pro won’t be available in 2017, but didn’t explicitly promise the new machine would be ready next year. OSNews managing editor Thom Holwerda believes the project actually started “only a few weeks ago” and won’t be complete as soon as we may expect.

Citing anonymous “people and sources who know their stuff” in his blog post, Holwerda writes that Apple’s decision “seems to have been made only in recent months” following professional user response to the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and the lack of Mac Pro updates.

Apple still sells versions of its previous cheaper MacBook Pro, for what it’s worth, and Apple did temporarily discount Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C accessories after pushback from MacBook Pro customers.

Apple said this at the time:

Back to Holwerda, he also writes that problems with the LG UltraFine 5K Display that Apple positioned as a successor to the discontinued Thunderbolt Display further pushed Apple to invest in its pro hardware. LG eventually resolved those issues, but a new Apple branded pro display is coming alongside the module Mac Pro according to the company.

The most interesting nugget in the piece doesn’t relate to when Apple decided to shift direction with the Mac Pro strategy but is instead this detail:

Apple already makes one version of its new MacBook Pro without a Touch Bar, although it’s positioned as an entry-level machine to hit a price point and not a more professional solution.

Separately, integrating the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil closely with macOS in such a way is a neat idea on its own regardless of the Mac Pro direction and timeline. People already do this with competing tablet products, and Astropad takes this same approach.

I’ve also made a small update to my original story. After reviewing the transcript — Apple never explicitly said Mac Pro would be next year. pic.twitter.com/gJ6hSgBKir

— Matthew Panzarino (@panzer) April 6, 2017