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Mac Trade-In Changes May Indicate New Model to Launch This Month
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I don't see anything M3 launching before Spring 2024.
No, it won’t. It would be monumentally stupid for Apple to release the iMac with only an M2 after all this time.
Lol. They released an M2 15" MBA a full year after the M2 SOC released. What's a few more months amongst friends?
Hard to say without knowing what those details are, but yes the iMac and iPad Air are by far the most likely.
My prediction is the 24" 2520p iMac will always be the last to be refreshed in the cycle (which I believe will be a two-year window, but we'll see soon enough). It's the only explanation for the iMac refresh delay that makes any sense. It's about costs and pricing, especially educational-institutional pricing. So it will be the M2 iMac this month, via press release/video, as others have said above.
The rumored 30" 3240p iMac Plus won't come until M3 Pro is released, probably a year from now.
What's a 2520p or 3240p? Why not call it by its common name 24" 4.5K & 30" 5.5K?
iMac will likely be refreshed to a M3 next year. It would be so bizarre to make it a M2 during the last 3 months of 2023 with a M3 chip being out within 1st 3 months of 2024.
Re: your first point, because it is more precise than 4.5K and 5.8K (which your "5.5K" misrepresents), and better illustrates the relationship to the original HD = 720p. Plus, "4.5K" is a marketing term invented by Apple, it's not a standard. 4K and 8K are television-industry nomenclature/standards, even though they have been adopted for displays. We've already got two different "6K" displays out there (Apple at 3384p and Dell at 3456p), it will become messier moving into higher resolutions. There's a sweet spot at 6400x3600 (3600p), what to call that? 6K+? 6.4K? 7K? For reference:
720p = HD = 1280x720
1080p = 1920x1080 (1.5x 720p)
1440p = 2560x1440 (2x 720p)
2160p = 4K = 3840x2160 (3x 720p; 2x 1080p)
2520p = 4.5K = 4480x2520 (3.5x 720p)
2880p = 5K = 5120x2880 (4x 720p)
3240p = 5760x3240 (4.5x 720p; 3x 1080p)
3600p = 6400x3600 (5x 720p)
4320p = 8K = 7680x4320 (6x 720p; 4x 1080p)
5040p = 8960x5040 (7x 720p)
5400p = 9600x5400 (7.5x 720p; 5x 1080p)
5760p = 10240x5760 (8x 720p)
Re: your second point, more power to you, but this is a discussion about what this unspecified confidential information about imminent changes to the (trade-in) lineup right now, this month, could be. I'm far from alone in thinking it's likely to be an M2 iMac and M2 iPad Air. Even you agree it can't be M3, so what is it then?
[Edit to add:] What is more likely, [1] that you're wrong about the M3 timeline and it's not coming until WWDC 2024, thereby exactly matching the A15-M2 timeline, or [2] M3 is being released this month?
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Funny, but I think Apple Silicon’s cooling profile would make a great basis for a new Cube. If they made an Anniversary Cube configured (and priced) closer to a mini than a luxury Mac, I think they would get quite a few buyers just for that retro vibe.
Still waiting for 30 inch iMac
Apple may be proceeding with plans to release a new Mac model this month, according to potentially related information obtained by MacRumors.
Details pertaining to imminent changes to Mac trade-ins provided to MacRumors by a verified source suggest that Apple will likely begin accepting new models for trade-in this month. Similar changes in June coincided with WWDC, when Apple began accepting trade-ins of the Mac Studio, 13-inch M2 MacBook Air, and 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro for credit towards new Apple product purchases. Apple simultaneously launched the 15-inch MacBook Air, second-generation Mac Studio, and Apple silicon Mac Pro. As such, it seems plausible that a similar, albeit smaller, expansion of the Macs Apple accepts for trade-in this month may correlate with the launch of at least one new machine around mid-October.
In July, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said October of this year could see the announcement of the first Macs with the M3 chip. He said that the 13-inch MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and 24-inch iMac are all candidates for potential release this month.
The as-yet-unannounced M3 chip is widely expected to be fabricated with TSMC's 3nm process for performance and power efficiency improvements compared to the current 5nm-based M2 chip, which debuted in June 2022. It will also likely feature an all new GPU with hardware ray-tracing, first introduced on the iPhone 15 Pro's A17 Pro chip last month.
In September, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that it seemed Apple will not launch new MacBook models with M3 series chips before the end of this year. This may mean that the most likely Mac to be announced is a refreshed 24-inch iMac with the M3 chip. The current model featuring the M1 chip has now been on sale for over two and a half years.
Article Link: Mac Trade-In Changes May Indicate New Model to Launch This Month
