Apple Rumored to Announce New iPads This Week, But Gurman Says Release 'Won't Happen This Month'

[Chancha]

I guess I am thinking in terms of the processor roadmap rather than in terms of products released.

M2 was released in 2022, 1.5 years after M1. The M2 Pro/Max/Ultra came out in 2023. The M2 Mini got held back because the Mini was also getting the M2 Pro, so it makes sense to release the Mini with the Pro/Max chips.

I would expect M3 to come out this fall (1.5 years after M2) and then all the M3 Pro/Max/Ultras in the first half of 2024.

I somewhat agree, even without thinking there must be a fixed cycle for silicon updates, but seeing M2 > M3 taking as long as 2 years is quite alarming and that we all expected at least some M3 products to have already dropped by now.

Though looking back at this year's Mac launches, it was already retroactively "confirmed", judging by the Jan M2 mini / 14" 16" release videos, that they were intended to be announced in Oct / Nov 2022. There also had been numerous rumors in the past saying the release schedules had been pushed back for pretty much all Apple Silicon Macs after the initial M1 launch. It may have to do with COVID, the lockdown in China, and general supply chain voes, and then now the "recession" impacting Apple's marketing decisions.

It seems at the lower end of Apple Silicon, they may still enjoy a pretty decent TDP lead but you can't say the same with Pro / Max / Ultra, or even the not yet existing Extreme. If Apple were to remain competitive at raw computing power on the higher end of their offerings, they really need to roll out new generations sooner, especially considering the IPC gains and new hardware features we already see on A17pro. Thus this Gurman newsletter saying the 14" 16" may come sooner than the 13" 15" actually makes some sense, if the M3 is rolled out before this but on devices other than MBA, as in iMac, 13" touchbar, or even iPads.

 

[livmatus]

That doesn’t seem too realistic. We got the 13.6 m2 and the 15 m2 MacBook air this year. Apple bring out an m3 MacBook air in the same year does seem highly unlikely.

remember they both updated the Intel MBA and introduced the M1 MBA in 2020

 

[reverie]

I'll buy one if no jelly scroll, had to return my 6 because of it... other than that it was perfect.

Same, and I’ve found it worse for reading PDFs which is my main use case. The aspect ratio is too narrow. So I hope my iPad mini 5 will remain usable for several more year.

 

[reverie]

M1 > M2 was 19 months. This would imply an M3 release starting from January 2024. I’m still at a loss at people’s math saying 2023 here. In particular because, before Apple reduces the time between generations, they would need to contract the rollout time of each generation. The 15 inch M2 MBA came out 12 months after the first M2 model. People need time to buy these things before they get replaced. Watch how fast the M3 rollout happens and you’ll have an idea if M4 could be released before late 2025.

I also need to add another Gurman diss, sorry. He started the rumor. He had been saying October. Then to put out a retraction in mid October shouldn’t increase my confidence in him in any way. Macrumors used to be more clear about “ok we quote them, but they have a spotty track record”.

 

[reverie]

remember they both updated the Intel MBA and introduced the M1 MBA in 2020

Yeah, that was Intel. Now Apple have to do their own chips from scratch. That’s both good and bad for releases.
- Good: They can plan ahead and have a well-structured release pipeline.
- Bad: It’s a lot harder, so releases take longer.

 

[Digitalguy]

You seem to fail to grasp the critical difference between making products available that best suit customers' needs and doing things in the best interest of their clients. We all are Apple's customers, not Apple's clients.

That's a distorted way to interpret what I said, which you seem to be bothered by
By the way, Apple doesn't always "best suit customers' need" (English is not my main language so for me customers and clients are the same thing, but there is certainly a difference apparently). In some instances they don't if they think that they can make the most money by not doing it and still get away with it. They have managed to build a cult around them (and there are many sheeps worshipping them on these forums and justifing everything they do and seeing haters when people point it out to them) and so often they get away with that. Other companies have not be as capabale of building such a cult, so when they try to get away with it their customers react much more negatively...

 

[BeatCrazy]

I was OK with M2/M2 Pro iMac rumors until A17 Pro in the iPhone 15 Pro showed hardware enabled ray tracing. Now its seems better to wait for January or March introductions of first M3 SoC's or possibly when the M3 Pro shows up IMHO.

One could apply that same thought to IPadOS based game playing on the upcoming iPads, or other graphic content applications that make use of that.

Since M2 is based on A15 architecture, it’s likely that M3 would be based on A16. So no guarantees about ray tracing.

 

[antibolo]

Yet another dumbed down iPad.

Apple’s effort to not make the iPad usable as a professional device is killing it.

Give it e.g. a decent file browser, unlimited local file access, a full working terminal, downloadable and installable Apps, decent mouse cursor, cross app driver support.

Just like macOS, and it will flourish.

I would argue the iPad is flourishing more than the Mac these days. The Mac software ecosystem feels stale, despite the great hardware it seems that nobody wants to support Macs anymore (especially games).

 

[picpicmac]

it seems that nobody wants to support Macs anymore (especially games)

That depends in which circles you run.

There is a gaming-culture, for lack of a better description, among young (but not exclusively young) people who want to do first-person shooter simulations, or driving simulations, and so on.


Among that crowd there is no doubt that addiction to sitting in front of a screen has led hardware and software providers to push for high-frame rates and lifelike simulations (because the gamers want their shooting victims to look like real dead people????)

And in that culture Nvidia (and others) discovered their reason for being.

And then non-gaming software developers discovered that GPUs could be used as array processors for a whole lot of purposes, and thus we see the misnomered "AI" programs using development environments targeting these PC-based graphics systems.

Anyway, it has always, since the first Mac, been the case that the IBM-originated culture was the dominant one for software development. Once IBM made the move the English speaking business world decided that was the standard for personal computing.

Apple has been fighting uphill the entire time.

Many years ago, where I worked, a few of us had Macs, from the start of the Mac line. But over the years that became more and more difficult as headquarters pushed standardization in all things including computers.

 

[BeatCrazy]

Tomorrow feels like a good day for iPad press releases. They make good holiday gifts, and new marketing/fresh hardware always helps give a boost to Nov/Dec sales.

Gurman seems decent enough at predicting new features 1-2 months ahead of a known release cycle. But when it comes to predicting what/when products come out in a spring/summer/fall cycle, he's all over the place.

 

[Wildkraut]

I would argue the iPad is flourishing more than the Mac these days. The Mac software ecosystem feels stale, despite the great hardware it seems that nobody wants to support Macs anymore (especially games).

Games, Mac, not supported anymore? Heh
Macs always sucked and had a bad support for games, except for a few casual and older games, and it always will.
Nobody is going to buy a MacBook that throttles due to heat for $3k, that is also inferior to a $1500 Windows Gaming PC to play mainly games.
On top comes that PC hardware have a longer lifetime, simply because it can be upgraded, you can't upgrade any Apple device, you can't even upgrade the SSD or RAM anymore.
I also don't see a "normal income family" buying a $3k for each of their kids and one more for an adult.

Long story short, games will always be a Windows and Console thing, except casual games for mobile devices, which everybody owns anyway.

Okay the iPad is somewhat flourishing if you compare it to Android tablets, but it's far from the success it could have if Apple would care for professional features.

 

[antibolo]

Games, Mac, not supported anymore? Heh
Macs always sucked and had a bad support for games, except for a few casual and older games, and it always will.
Nobody is going to buy a MacBook that throttles due to heat for $3k, that is also inferior to a $1500 Windows Gaming PC to play mainly games.
On top comes that PC hardware have a longer lifetime, simply because it can be upgraded, you can't upgrade any Apple device, you can't even upgrade the SSD or RAM anymore.
I also don't see a "normal income family" buying a $3k for each of their kids and one more for an adult.

Long story short, games will always be a Windows and Console thing, except casual games for mobile devices, which everybody owns anyway.

Okay the iPad is somewhat flourishing if you compare it to Android tablets, but it's far from the success it could have if Apple would care for professional features.

Sounds like you'd be happier on another forum.

 

[Wildkraut]

Sounds like you'd be happier on another forum.

Nope, i use Apple hardware too, because i have to, they have all the right to exist.

They could have made it with Apple TV, but they failed.
It had no multi user profiles, no original Apple GamePad, well and Apple didn't care for games at all.

 

[Tagbert]

Since M2 is based on A15 architecture, it’s likely that M3 would be based on A16. So no guarantees about ray tracing.

All if the rumors put the M3 on 3nm, which would mean that it is based on the A17 cpu cores and presumably the A17 gpu cores, too.

 

[BeatCrazy]

All if the rumors put the M3 on 3nm, which would mean that it is based on the A17 cpu cores and presumably the A17 gpu cores, too.

They could just move to 3nm, just with the A16 architecture. That's what they did with the A10 -> A10X (16nm to 10nm)

 

[deconstruct60]

Since M2 is based on A15 architecture, it’s likely that M3 would be based on A16. So no guarantees about ray tracing.

Not really likely .

A9X -> A10X -> A12X -> A14X

As the bigger die option became more complex Apple started to skip A-series iterations that didn't bring a decent increase in transistor budget. ( e.g., a full node shrink or at least a 'half node' one). The M1 and M2 are playing same role in iPad Pro as the A14X/A12X played previously.

The A14 -> A15 was no substantive shrink at all. The A15 just bloated substantially bigger than the standard A-series norm ( normal is around ~82-89mm^2) . Some die sizes of 'plain' A series over several iterations.

A12 84mm^2 ( N7 )
A13 98mm^2 ( N7P )
A14 88mm^2 ( N5 )
A15 108mm^2 ( N5P )
A16 > 108mm^2 ( N4 'half' )


The M2 isn't really based on the A15 architecture as it is build with the same building blocks.

The even larger M-series dies like Max make less and less sense if just chasing die size bloat to move forward. They are already 'big' dies and going 'even bigger' has negative side effects. Those can leverage a shrink even more.


Apple can use same buildig blocks that the A17 used to make the M3 . There is zero technical requirement for them to be stuck on a old fab process for some dogma reason. In the A--X sequence there was no such dogma.

M2 likely 'reused' N5P because it was much safer path. The M1 didn't 'have to be successfully adopted'. Apple wanted it to be, but there was no guarantee. Over time the rollout of 3 (or 4) Mn generation dies will take longer as complexity grows and "Moore's Law' slows down. Not very likely that the whole M-series family stays on some "every 12 months" sequence that the A-series is on going forward.

 

[deconstruct60]

They could just move to 3nm, just with the A16 architecture. That's what they did with the A10 -> A10X (16nm to 10nm)

Two issues though.

1. Back in the A10 era Apple only had two dies to make/construct. Now they have 4 ( or 5 or 6 ). [ ignoring the Apple Watch S-series for a moment ]

2. 10nm was the new major node jump. A16's N4 is not a major node jump at all.
( Apple as doing a bit of a 'tick/tock' move there by holding the basic arch design constant and just doing a major shrink of what was already working for the A10X. The A10X was actually smaller than the A10. That was primarily the point. Took lessons learned there and fed that into aspects of the A11. )


Moving the 'Pro' and 'Max' dies to N4 won't help them much in managing die area bloat.

 

[Tagbert]

They could just move to 3nm, just with the A16 architecture. That's what they did with the A10 -> A10X (16nm to 10nm)

Why would they go backwards rather than just use their most current A17 cores? Just to keep the numbers sequential? Seems unlikely.

 

[BeatCrazy]

Why would they go backwards rather than just use their most current A17 cores? Just to keep the numbers sequential? Seems unlikely.

It's not 'backward', as the M1/M2 are based on architecture elements of the A14/A15 respectively.

We don't know about fab capacity, but certainly the priority is for all N3 A17 Pro chip production to go into iPhones. No one outside of Apple knows how many that leaves over for a (potential) M3 based on A17.

 

[deconstruct60]

We don't know about fab capacity, but certainly the priority is for all N3 A17 Pro chip production to go into iPhones. No one outside of Apple knows how many that leaves over for a (potential) M3 based on A17.

Capacity? Back in March

" ... The foundry will also grow the process output to 50,000-55,000 wafers monthly in March, with Apple being the main customer. ..."

Apple's Huge 3nm Chip Orders for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs Helping to Maintain TSMC's Fab Utilization Rates

Apple supplier TSMC is making strides to improve its production capacity for chips based on its cutting-edge 3-nanometer process technology,...

www.macrumors.com

45K per month is enough to do iPhone Pro ... it is NOT iphone production , just the Pro ... and something else. At one point because Intel's development went 'sideways' they too were going to be on N3 in 2023 also. By the end of the year there was likely going to be capacity to handle some else besides Apple.

Indeed from same article

" ... TSMC continues to improve its capacity utilization for 3nm process technology, which is expected to approach 50% at the end of March, the sources said. ..."

50% of the capacity was not being used at all back in the Spring. sitting there being used by nobody. So 'capacity shortage' isn't strongly indicated here.


Apple doesn't have to do all of the M3's at the same time. iMac ... then another after 2-3 months ... then another after a gap ... etc. The demand for 15 Pro's (and A17 Pro) is going to sag over time once past the 2024 New Year timeframe.

The other issue is that Apple has had A17 Pro being fabbed for a long time. Even if yields were 'bad' , if TSMC has been cranking them out at a 10-20K / month pace since February there is going to be some stockpile built that opens the door for a stream of something lese (like M3 ) in modest numbers.

 

[BeatCrazy]

Capacity? Back in March

" ... The foundry will also grow the process output to 50,000-55,000 wafers monthly in March, with Apple being the main customer. ..."

Apple's Huge 3nm Chip Orders for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs Helping to Maintain TSMC's Fab Utilization Rates

Apple supplier TSMC is making strides to improve its production capacity for chips based on its cutting-edge 3-nanometer process technology,...

www.macrumors.com

45K per month is enough to do iPhone Pro ... it is NOT iphone production , just the Pro ... and something else. At one point because Intel's development went 'sideways' they too were going to be on N3 in 2023 also. By the end of the year there was likely going to be capacity to handle some else besides Apple.

Indeed from same article

" ... TSMC continues to improve its capacity utilization for 3nm process technology, which is expected to approach 50% at the end of March, the sources said. ..."

50% of the capacity was not being used at all back in the Spring. sitting there being used by nobody. So 'capacity shortage' isn't strongly indicated here.


Apple doesn't have to do all of the M3's at the same time. iMac ... then another after 2-3 months ... then another after a gap ... etc. The demand for 15 Pro's (and A17 Pro) is going to sag over time once past the 2024 New Year timeframe.

The other issue is that Apple has had A17 Pro being fabbed for a long time. Even if yields were 'bad' , if TSMC has been cranking them out at a 10-20K / month pace since February there is going to be some stockpile built that opens the door for a stream of something lese (like M3 ) in modest numbers.

Regardless of wishful thinking, ain’t no M3 coming out this year.

 

[Realityck]

Regardless of wishful thinking, ain’t no M3 coming out this year.

While we have our doubts it's still a possibility.
M1 announced 11/10/2020
M2 announced 06/06/2022 (18 months, 27 days)
M3 announced using same time interval would make it approx. Dec 6 2023 (18 months). 27 days from that is Jan 2nd 2024.
Most have predicted the M3 base SoC would show up some time in 2024.

 

[JPack]

This only tells you how wrong non-Kuo and non-Gurman sources can be. Even 9to5Mac fell for it by corroborating with their “own sources.”

 

[BMcCoy]

Interestingly, the iPad 10th gen has just lost its ”New” label on the Apple website..

perhaps an update is on the way after all….

 

[JPack]

Interestingly, the iPad 10th gen has just lost its ”New” label on the Apple website..

perhaps an update is on the way after all….

It's expected because iPad is a year old.

Nothing in the AirPods or TV & Home category has a "New" tag on it, but it doesn't mean an update is on the way.