Macs to Get AI-Focused M4 Chips Starting in Late 2024

[HobeSoundDarryl]

If Gurman doesn’t use “AI” there won’t be clicks…

He should sprinkle in some "hybrid cloud" to also draw in the last of the former buzzword. Maybe add a little "wheelhouse" and toss in a retro like paradigm too... mixed with Apples "machine learning"

Looking forward to the new paradigm wheelhouse Mac with Hybrid Cloud A.I. machine learning. Gotta, gotta, gotta have it!!!

 

[macduke]

Man, that notch on the MacBooks is underrated. It allows the entire status bar to be pushed up next to the webcam, giving you more screen space below.

While this is true, if it were gone, and they kept the same dimensions, you would have the same screen space and no notch. So not sure what your point is? The notch is very large compared to the hardware underneath. Could easily be a little dot. Fortunately for me I like dark mode and use a dark wallpaper so I hardly ever notice it. Except when I connect to my thunderbolt dock and two external monitors and it resets my wallpaper back to default with a white menubar at the top EVERY SINGLE TIME lol. What a stupid bug.

 

[BeatCrazy]

M4 will get exclusive AI functionality with next macos. M3 has a very slow neural engine, according Wikipedia it got ca. half the speed of the iPhone 15 pro.

View attachment 2367651

35 vs 18TOP is more a difference of how TOPS are measured (INT8 vs. INT16) than real-world performance.

 

[Pezimak]

If this is the case, and I don’t believe Gurman’s release schedule predictions as they are beyond useless, my dog could do better, then what would be the point in upgrading the Mac Studio and Pro with the M3 this year? They may as well wait and update them at the end of the year.

 

[Rigby]

What does AI-optimized mean ? Faster memory access ? more processing cores ? new intercores communication channels ? different cores ? less floating point, more fixed point processing power ?

It's probably mainly more cores for the neural engine to keep up with the competition. Intel just announced that their upcoming "Lunar Lake" laptop CPU will have a AI performance of around 100 TOPS total (about half each coming from NPU and GPU). For comparison, the neural engine in the M3 has ~18 TOPS.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Since Google is publicly stating that their future smartphone will require 24GB of RAM to run Artificial intelligence stuff — one can only guess how much RAM a regular computer will need to enter the ai realm

8GB of course!

...with a $240/month subscription to the new iCloud virtual A.I. RAM farm.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Well. RAM fans will be happy they're getting 512GB. The 1.5 TB+ fans will still cry it's not enough.

Funny thing is, a top spec'd consumer grade PC [Non-Workstation] tops at 256GB of DDR5 RAM support.

Zen 4 supports 6TB on EPYC per socket. The 256 GB limitation is set by the OEM vendor on consumer designed motherboards as they a vastly different target markets.

Threadripper Pro workstation boards support 2TB.

Mac Pro is a workstation grade product.

My hope: Mac Pro baseline 256 GB with

512 GB, 768 GB and 1 TB BTO options.

An In-House GPGPU daughter card as a secondary x16 slot card option as well with DP 2.1, HDMI 2.1 and TB 5.0 (on the card well as on the Tower) with a larger NPU on a chiplet design with dedicated HPC focused chiplet and Metal 3.0/4.0 shaders for much greater 3d model processing workflows, Logic/FCP workflows, etc.

In-House Professional audio daughter card full of DSPs and FPGA processing for Core Audio units to leverage.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I still think mini, mini Pro, and Studio will see M3 versions at WWDC. Probably also Mac Pro. It's about the same copy paste spec bump that Apple does for every generation and shouldn't cost them much.

But if mini, mini Pro, Mac Studio and Mac Pro skip M3 altogether then we'll see M4 versions of those no earlier than WWDC 2025.

Post every annual iPhone event, MBP and MBA are the Macs first in line to get the new chip generation so it would only be those two moving to M4 in late 2024 or early 2025.

It's just a number painted on a chip. Whatever comes out next could have M5 painted on the chip... or M10.

Rumors are that Apple is considering N3E as the switch to M4... and that Studio & Pro will launch as M4 even if the N3E chip is not a major hardware enhancement from the M3 chip. I buy the plausibility of flipping the order so that Ultra rolls out FIRST and base is LAST because they does- in fact- seem likely to drive more "record revenue and profit" for Apple Inc. Shareholders rejoice!

 

[Pezimak]

They already posted an 11-minute video of this a few days ago... headline being a potential flip in the order of rollouts, beginning with "ultra" and getting to "base" instead of "ultra" rolling out last as it has been. Here it is...

The key speculation is first M4 will be (N3E-based) M4 Ultra in Studio and Pro this summer, followed by MAX & PRO in MBpro this fall, followed by base M4 in the Macs that lean on it late 2024/early 2025. Why? One of the bigger keys is that there is more profit in the higher-end chips and rolling them out last motivated people to WAIT for the next generation which was always impending soon after Ultra. Next gen MAX has generally been close to prior gen ULTRA in key tests, so there was even some consumer sense in waiting and choosing MAX over ULTRA. Most simply: the window of time for ULTRA to be "most powerful Mac" has been relatively tight. Flipping the launch schedule makes it king for the entire year or so until the next ULTRA is released.

By flipping it to Ultra first-base last, those wanting "latest & greatest" will pay maximum money (and profit) for it and then it will step down to the less profitable versions of the same chip. Base will be rolling out close to the new next generation, so those most driven by "latest & greatest" would feel some pull to wait and then pay up for Ultra... or then MAX & PRO.

Whether there is merit to this speculation or not, when I see any rationalization that revolves around "more profit" for modern Apple Inc... I at least consider it more seriously than just dismissing it as a wild guess.

So they’ll update the Ultra Studio this summer but then not update the Max Studio till several months later? That makes no sense. But this is Gurman’s predictions……

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

sad that apple had to succumb to the marketing slop of AI

Cloud and variants of it like Hybrid Cloud was the big buzzword for several years. Apple rolled out iCloud.

Apple wanted "spatial computing" to be a next big buzzy thing, but A.I. may have surprised them. Expect "machine learning" to be rebranded as something like Apple A.I. Cores or similar... and maybe spatial to get prefixed with A.I. Spatial. Visit the campus and the restroom sign may say A.I. Men and A.I. Women... until the next buzzy concept seems to get some traction... then on to that.

The Quantum Computing phrase keeps percolating. It seems only a matter of time- whether they actually work out the intended quantum computing capabilities or not- tech marketing will jump on and run with that one... possibly next.

For chips??? Hello angstroms or similar.

Bring on that game-changing, A.I. Quantum Spatial Computing running on that lastest M6 synergized by the X angstrom process seamlessly linked to the hybrid cloud. That virtual-reality-like, paradigm-shifting, digital transformation is completely in my wheelhouse, moving the goalposts by getting empowered ducks in a row like some kind of biometric blockchain heightened by augmented reality software as a service. Can Apple think outside of the box or what with this drilled down, deep dive, more bang for the buck? Ping me! LOL. And shut up and take my money.

 

[xiJulian_]

Is a "16-core Neural Engine capable of executing over 18 trillion operations per second" not AI-focused enough?

 

[Realityck]

Sounds like maybe Apple are skipping updating Mac Pro + Studio with M3s and jumping straight to M4's - next year...

This resembles the same rumors that proclaimed the upcoming M3 was amazing over the M2 last year doesn't it? And what did that achieve people waited instead of buying Macs.

The M4 is not going to make Macs sell more, it's more about what Apple can do to convince consumers to make Macs more attractive for the price and real operating system improvements. Updating or repricing their existing displays would also help.

 

[unobtainium]

Presumably the M4 will fix the unpatchable security flaw in the M1-M3 chips?

 

[falainber]

Well. RAM fans will be happy they're getting 512GB. The 1.5 TB+ fans will still cry it's not enough.

Funny thing is, a top spec'd consumer grade PC [Non-Workstation] tops at 256GB of DDR5 RAM support.

Consumers don't need more RAM, professionals do. In PC world (X86), if one needs terabytes of RAM, he can get it. The Macs, on the other hand, are limited to consumers (and prosumers)

 

[Torty]

Presumably the M4 will fix the unpatchable security flaw in the M1-M3 chips?

There will always be a backdoor.

 

[suchnerve]

What’s absurd to me is that the “We need a Mac Pro with 1.5TB RAM!” criticisms have apparently fallen on deaf ears.

You’d think “A new Mac Pro should match or exceed the specs of the old Mac Pro models” would be a self-evident goal for which to aim. The last Intel Mac Pro supported 1.5TB RAM, so why not the Apple Silicon Mac Pro?

 

[bkendig]

With rumors of M4 coming in six months, who would buy an M2 Mac any more? (Unless you really need a new Mac RIGHT NOW)

 

[vorkosigan1]

I can't speak to compelling, but I can say that the M3 Pro processor is the first Mac to feel instantaneous in the UI since OS X came out.

 

[cocoua]

Lets see whats hapends with the max, ultra and extremme

 

[darngooddesign]

Because my M1 Max has the ugly notch which to this day I hate and the webcam isn’t even that good so they can change it

Just hide the notch. Easy peasy.

 

[darngooddesign]

hope not, just add faceID for quick open/login
Dont need another thin mac that overheat...current generations are well build, for all kind of performance

The Face ID components are twice as thick as the MBP's lid.

 

[suchnerve]

That “unpatchable security flaw” is just clickbait. It requires the exact same chunk of data to be repeatedly encrypted and decrypted while the SoC is being physically scanned the entire time, which would never happen in real life. Especially because the decryption step can only happen if the password has already been entered!

 

[JosephAW]

As long as AI doesn’t need internet access. Some of us are off grid.

 

[kingtj1971]

Now it's going to be AI everything because they don't know what else to market :/

Basically.... although AI is popping up everywhere in I.T. right now, so it follows the trajectory of the whole industry.

Personally? I'm more concerned that a CPU like this will just wind up used by some Apple-provided APIs to essentially become a "co processor" for Siri, or provide a way to run a local edition of it that integrates easily with your software.

Nobody I know was clamoring for that.

What would be cool is if it enables more things only being done in the cloud, via paid services, to run just as well as local applications on your machine. (For example, I just paid almost $100 for a 1 year subscription to Suno, a service that creates AI music with optional vocal tracks. I was impressed enough by it to give them my money, but they still give me only so many "credits" per month to use their cloud processing time on projects. Every single change or remix I do burns more credits up. I'd buy a new M4 Mac if something like Garageband or Logic Pro incorporated the same functionality, happening entirely on my Mac.)

 

[teknikal90]

Will the next MacBook Pro get a redesign it’s had 3 generations with the same look

typically it's 4 generations

2006 - 2008 macbook pro (carries over PB design) - 3 gens
2008 - 2011 unibody macbook pro - 4 gens
2012 - 2015 retina macbook pro - 4 gens
2016 - 2020 touchbar macbook pro - 5 gens
2021 - 2025 (?) miniLED macbook pro - 4 gens

I would think that this gen will actually last 5 gens, no more industrial design head at apple and they're stretched pretty thin now with so many product lines.