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M4 MacBook Pro Models Expected to Launch in Late 2024

rp2011 said:
I think it is safe to say that the Mac Studio will not be getting an off-the-shelf Max chip going forward, otherwise they would have already added an M3 Max or an M4 Max later this year. It was a great bargain getting a base Studio with the Max and 32GB memory and just upgrading the storage.

But yeah, I think moving forward it looks like the desktop Macs will have their own desktop-focused chips and not just appropriate the laptop ones. I think that this is a good strategy because now they have more competition with the former Nuvia team and everyone else forging forward with their own competitive ARM CPUs for both laptop and desktop.

Apple already screwed up letting the Nuvia thing happen in the first place, now they have to contend by moving extra hard to keep competition in the ARM space at bay
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You are making an assumption on the spec based on launch dates, but it could just be Apple is prioritising the volume sellers first and then filling the other gaps as inventory allows. Given Apple are the masters of maximising profits out of everything, I actually think its highly unlikely there will be any desltop specific chip, beyond perhaps an ultra chip for the very high end, where the cost of the computers will pay for the extra R&D. There is just no reason to make custom silicon for pro and max chips given the performance they can get from chips used on mobile devices now.
 
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to me this is going from one extreme to the other. in past the bumps and upgrade cycles were too long, now it’s getting out of hand with those yearly upgrade cycles we already know from mobile devices. really, does it make sense pushing a new CPU every year instead of relax the cycle and R&D new models that offer more than 10% benchmark scores? this especially would be welcome on the software side, really. who needs and wants a major release every year? at the time they introduce the new fancy OS, each predecessor has even after 5 point updates a backlog of bugs and issues. return to a reasonable lifecycle of the OS, polish and fix. 2, 3 or more years before release a new OS that usually breaks a lot of things, inevitably, always, as we are used to since years - ironically this affects almost everytime the beloved creatives - audio, music, video, graphics, print: when did some major release NOT break their tools? Quality and time for real R&D - then releasing the next big or one more thing we did not think of or knew we need it. Get rid of those attributes. M1, M3, A12, A15, Pro, Max, Plus, Air. What is that, Xiaomi or Lenovo or Apple?
 
Zeke92 said:
You already have 0 trade in value
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Surprisingly, Apple will give me $503 for it (i9 16/1T 16"). By the time the M4s are out it'll probably get half that, which is why I'm probably pulling the trigger this summer. It'll be a significant leap from Intel to any M processor so I'm not going to get hung up over getting the bleeding edge.
 
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It might be a good time for Apple's chip team to slow down releases of new chips.

Let the entire line up catch up, take a breath, before starting the process again.

No one benefits from yearly processor upgrades on desktop-grade chips for devices that last 3-5 years at least.
I'm not advocating forgetting about upgrades as happened a while back.
But doing so too regularly makes people go "well they upgraded 6 months ago, so i'll just wait another 6 months rather than buy now". If I dont upgrade my phone in the first 3 months, I wont in that 12 month cycle. Sales graphs show huge interest at release date and then massive tapering off. We dont need Mac and iPads to do the same.
 
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pksv said:
It's like 96GB on Commodore 64.
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That reminds me that I made most of my work for college on my C128 with 1.5 megabyte memory expansion for GEOS128. That was enough memory back then. Visually the printed results didn’t look much different than a black&white Pages document made on a 16GB Mac today.
😎
 
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Timing makes sense to release in the 2 weeks or so after MacOS Sequoia is released.

I am wondering whether the RAM definitions will start to change a bit. We know that the M4 iPad has 12 GB, but only reports 8 GB. I've also seen that the Apple LLM takes up 4 GB, so putting 2 & 2 together and getting 5, I'm wondering whether 4 GB will be reserved for Apple Intelligence features and the remaining 8 GB will be used for regular stuff.

It would not surprise me if the current 8 GB models that support Apple Intelligence (M1-M3, A17 Pro) devote half their RAM to the LLM and have to fall back on using 4 GB for regular system tasks (and thus the performance is pretty poor when using Apple Intelligence). Then all new devices (M4, A18Pro etc) come with 12 GB so the devices have 8 GB for system memory even when the LLM is chewing through 4 GB...
 
MacRumors said:


MacBook Pro models with an M4 chip are expected to launch in the fourth quarter of 2024, according to display analyst Ross Young. In a tweet for subscribers, Young said that panel shipments for new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models are set to begin in the third quarter of 2024, which suggests a launch toward the end of the year.

M4-Real-Feature-Red.jpg

Apple started its M4 chip refresh in May with the launch of the M4 iPad Pro, but the first Macs with M4 chips are also slated for a 2024 launch. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple will refresh both the MacBook Pro and Mac mini lineups this year.

The entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro is expected to get an M4 chip, while the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models will be updated with M4 Pro and M4 Max chips. The Mac mini will get M4 and M4 Pro chips. The MacBook Air, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro models won't be updated with M4 chips until 2025, and it is not yet clear when the iMac might see an update with the refreshed chip technology.

Apple's M4 chip is built on an upgraded 3-nanometer node, with Apple first introducing 3-nanometer technology with the M3 line. In Geekbench 6 benchmarks, the M4 chip is up to 25 percent faster than the M3 chip when it comes to multi-core performance, so we could see similar gains for the M4 Pro and M4 Max chips.

Aside from M4 chips, the upcoming MacBook Pro models are not expected to have significant feature updates. Apple is working on OLED display technology, but an OLED MacBook Pro is not expected until 2026 at the earliest.

Article Link: M4 MacBook Pro Models Expected to Launch in Late 2024
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I’ll be jumping straight in on day one with an M4 pro order upgrading from my M2 air Sticking with even number upgrades the boost is worth it every time
 
So the Mac Mini will be more powerful then the Studio for several months. I don’t buy that, not for a second.
 
CalMin said:
Agree. It's hard to tell between my wife's base M1, my M1Pro and my M2 Air. They all cruise through daily workloads. I know the benchmarks say otherwise, but only specialist activities such as Video Editing, Rendering, etc. can show a difference between any of the Apple silicon chips. If I was blinded as to which machine was connected to my monitor, I wouldn't be able to tell them apart!
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I can agree with this. Almost everyone would do fine with an M1 MacBook Air or an M1 iMac. I put that machine as a "need" device along with other devices like a base iPad 10'th gen or an iPhone 12 (pick your base on iPhone). Anything higher is a "want" device. I'm sitting pretty with an M3 Max MacBook Pro and do not need an upgrade. Will I upgrade? Depends on the cool factor of the M4 MBP, but I don't need an upgrade.

There are very few who "need" high end devices.
 
adamw said:
I look forward to seeing these M4 MacBook Pro models. I am sure many people here on this forum are also looking forward to M4 Mac models. I have an M3 MacBook Pro with an M3 Pro chip currently, but I am really waiting for the M4 Max or M4 Ultra chip in a revised Mac Studio and/or Mac Pro model.
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Out of curiosity, what application are you running that the M3 Pro chip is not fast enough?
 
kildraik said:
What a mess. Priorities are skewed.
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How? I fail to see it.
  • M3-gen MacBook Pro was announced Fall 2023
  • M3-gen MacBook Air was announced Spring 2024
So Apple will be updating (by units sold) 90% of their Macs—exactly one year later:
  • M4-gen MacBook Pro announced Fall 2024
  • M4-gen MacBook Air announced Spring 2025
Is updating 90% of their Macs (by units sold) one year later a skew of priorities?

No!

Sucks that the 4% (by numbers sold) desktop users have to wait... but if Apple manages the M4 Extreme chip for the Mac Pro, then it will all be worth it.
 
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Still rocking my 14" M1 Max - this is the longest I've ever had a computer for, and don't feel any need to upgrade unless it dies or more years pass. Very happy with Apple Silicone!
 
tobybrut said:
I can agree with this. Almost everyone would do fine with an M1 MacBook Air or an M1 iMac. I put that machine as a "need" device along with other devices like a base iPad 10'th gen or an iPhone 12 (pick your base on iPhone). Anything higher is a "want" device. I'm sitting pretty with an M3 Max MacBook Pro and do not need an upgrade. Will I upgrade? Depends on the cool factor of the M4 MBP, but I don't need an upgrade.

There are very few who "need" high end devices.
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I'm still in awe of the M3 Max MacBook Pro: it's incredible.
 
Not a popular opinion I’m sure but without OLED, this is just going to be another boring spec bump to a great but somewhat boring laptop
 
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CalMin said:
It's still a fine machine and probably worth running until it no longer serves your needs because Intel Macs aren't worth anything these days.
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I was looking at used Mac mini prices and found that the last of the intel minis are selling for more than the M1 minis. Why? Intel minis can run Windows and Linux. I don't know if this applies to laptops as well, I wasn't looking for one of those.

An M4 mini should drive down the price of used M1 minis, which is good for my needs. On the other hand, a Ryzen 7840 mini computer with 32 GB RAM and a terabyte SSD for $800 might make the jump to Linux worthwhile. It outperforms the M2 on most but not all benchmarks.
 
Yvan256 said:
2005 Core solo Mac mini? Wow, that's ancient, my friend! You really need to upgrade!

...

Sent from my mid-2010 Core 2 Duo Mac mini. 😜
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You could do a Core Duo CPU swap on that bad boy. The CPU comes out. I did this on mine!
 
PaperMag said:
Sucks that the 4% (by numbers sold) desktop users have to wait... but if Apple manages the M4 Extreme chip for the Mac Pro, then it will all be worth it.
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Low percentage is probably because Apple still doesn't have an answer to the high end PC market in many workflows. Ultra is still two mobile chips. Plus the Mac Pro was a slap in the face of pros. The EXACT SAME as a Mac Studio yet was $3,000. No motherboard/case design is worth that much of a markup.

Apple really has no interest in the desktop market. I was hoping things would be better with Apple silicon but it appears not. My M3 Max is already better than my M2 Ultra in many workflows. M4 Max will outclass their best desktop line and this is just getting laughable.
 
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