Expecting to see the new Airs by April 2025. Waiting to see whether Apple will have any new colours for the iMac
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When to Expect New M4 MacBook Air, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro Models
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and still comes with 8GB RAM and 256 SSD in 2025.
Computers and cameras will always have that issue.
But knowing a Studio update is (likely) a year away make some comfortable buying a Studio now. (imac is dying and won't last another year). As long as a new monitor doesn't come out in Autumn with a new mac mini announcement.
Will the m4 and m4PRO CPUs run cooler than their predecessors?
Even though they're more powerful, but also more efficient?
I'm thinking the answer is yes -- hence the smaller form factor on the upcoming Mini. Will it even have a fan?
If that's the case, I'm wondering if the Studio might be "slimmed down" a bit as well -- retaining the width/depth dimensions that it currently has, but perhaps a little "less tall" ???
Even though they're more powerful, but also more efficient?
I'm thinking the answer is yes -- hence the smaller form factor on the upcoming Mini. Will it even have a fan?
If that's the case, I'm wondering if the Studio might be "slimmed down" a bit as well -- retaining the width/depth dimensions that it currently has, but perhaps a little "less tall" ???
I think it’s hard to divine, at this point in Apple’s historical timeline, what is primarily a technological decision and what is purely about money. Apple’s gotten everyone used to a yearly upgrade cycle, which is positive for their bottom line, but not necessarily a salient engineering approach. So a lot of ”upgrades” are mostly superficial, while some occasionally represent genuine forward progress.
There is precedent, even in the Jobs era. Apple killed the iPod Mini in, what, 11 months? The Mini wasn’t a bad product, per se, but the Nano was technologically superior. Apple wanted to keep the iPod halo glowing and I think Jobs understood that biting the bullet on the Mini, even if all the development and tooling was done, was worth far more to Apple in the long run. A super Jobsian move. Now if that were occurring today, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple milk the Mini for another year or two, even as flash memory became more readily available and customers balked that Apple’s innovation was falling behind. Releasing products annually drives sales; letting other products languish saves money. It’s impossible to know which is which anymore.
Whatever the case, the M4 Studio is going to be 🔥🔥🔥!
I think it is still a pleasant surprise that Apple continues to make high end desktop Mac at all. It is all about high-end portability, handheld devices and associated services. That is the market segment that Apple has chosen to pursue.
As for high end desktop, follow the basic adage - Buy what you need, when you need it. If you’re looking for bragging rights on having on best/fastest desktop ever released, you represent such a trivial small market share that Apple just isn’t interested in your business.
Exactly.
Apple doesn't care if some people aren't buying high-end machines out of FOMO for single-core performance.
There is no need for high-end Macs to maintain single-core performance dominance at all, it is moot.
If you need high-end parallel performance, buy Apple's high-end systems. If you don't, Apple will happily sell you lower-end systems that sometimes offer newer features or faster single-core performance.
Apple clearly doesn't care if this strategy bothers anyone, as it is working fine for them.
I'm sure some people are buying M2 Ultra Studios right now because they do the job, independent of how M3s or soon to be released M4s might perform.
Apple's already dropped the high-end workstation market that requires lots of GPU grunt.
Apple just doesn't care about niche markets. It might suck to be in those niches, but at least there are Windows/Linux systems you can buy.
At least here in Italy haven't seen any refurb Studio yet
It is not artificially created — it’s the opposite. Indeed, it would be “artificially created” if Apple launched Pro/Max/Ultra all at the same time, because they would have to artificially delay the launch of Max while they wait for Ultra to be finished. It’s additional fabrication steps, not to mention additional testing. None of which can be completed until Max is ready.
Like @Chuckeee says above, it’s fairly miraculous (“a pleasant surprise”) Apple makes the Ultra at all. With the advent of Apple Intelligence, it’s maybe a bit less surprising, and maybe the economics could now support a dedicated foundation SoC (instead of using Max), but anyone who thinks Apple could (let alone should) launch the Ultra before the rest of the generation is either dreaming or just deliberately choosing to ignore reality.
What i've came to realize especially in the past few months with the entire M3 Mac Studio talk is just how uninformed many folks are on here when it comes to what product categories Apple makes most of its money from. People who buy Mac Studios are actually in these little bubbles where they think this is 20 years ago when desktop sales how more impact to a company of Apple's size at that time. Instead of bothering to read a 10-K like an investor would and combine that with a little critical thinking they just assume Mac Studios or the Pros are some massive money maker for Apple when their market cap is at over 3 trillion which makes no sense.
Apple stopped reporting on desktop vs laptop sales but last report from a 2012 10-k showed laptops generated close to 3 times the revenue and the desktop revenue percentage was plummeting(the actual desktop revenue didn't drop much....its just that it didn't grow and everything at Apple got massive blowing them out of the water). You can see by the graph below how narrow the desktop revenue % went 2004 to 2012. When people wonder why desktops were nearly abandoned besides iMacs in the 2014-2019 period thats basically it. Apple was growing at an insane rate and focused on all the growth areas(which is what you have to do when you run a publicly traded company with share holders, not trying to appease some guys on forums).
Yes we are lucky Apple even makes a high end desktop Mac. My general guess they are treating the high end Macs(especially Ultra) as halo products which represents the brand and is good for marketing and headlines(car companies do this with certain ultra high end models). The 2019 Mac Pro was a great example of this because Apple got tons of news headlines on the specs. Same thing with the 2013 trashcan, it got headlines because of look/design. Possible the 2025 summer unveiling might even be the same thing with the rumored "Extreme" tier chip Mark Gurman was talking about that was to be exclusive for the Mac Pro....something halo to show off for brand reasons to get headlines. If not they will have the Ultra.
@fathergll The way I interpret your posted graph is that in 2016 "Macs" (Assume iMac/Pro/Mini in 2016, no studio) had slightly more revenue than iPads and slightly less than services. If thats still holding I'd ask why iPad gets an M4 before Macs (of whichever type)? You claim Macs are a halo product but I'm not seeing any evidence of that.
To use your analogy, car companies "halo" products have by far the most power, luxury features, latest tech, latest design.
To use your analogy, car companies "halo" products have by far the most power, luxury features, latest tech, latest design.
Actually iPad Pro getting M4 could be genious. I think it makes the iPad look great and makes it sell amazing. While at the same its not "released" for OSX machines.
It could be the wind of the future, depending of how well they sell iPad Pro’s.
Hasn't it been ~1 year cycles so far with the Pro chips? M2 Pro was a little delayed so that resulted in a slightly longer M1=>M2 Pro cycle but M1 => M2 => M3 Pro have all been 1 year cycles, and if fall 2024 is rumored to be true for M4 Pro then it's again 1 year. I suppose they can slow down M5 release til 2026 but it still seems like it takes much too long to roll out a chip to the different products.
M1 November 2020
M2 June 2022 - 19 months
M3 October 2023 - 16 months
M4 May - 7 months
Given the accelerating schedule, I expect the M5 and M6 both to be released before the end of the year, and M7-M18 by the end of 2025!
Yes, it looks like a clear pattern at this point, and Apple specifically mentioned the MacBook Pro when talking about using the same "cadence" as the iPhone/iPad:
"But really the thing that we see, that the iPhone and the iPad have enjoyed over the years, is this idea that every generation gets the latest of our IPs, the latest CPU IP, the latest GPU, media engine, neural engine, and so on and so forth, and so now the Mac gets to be on that cadence too. [...] There is this relationship, if the fundamental chassis doesn’t change, any additional performance you draw, you deliver has to be done more efficiently, and so this is the first time the MacBook Pro gets to enjoy that and be on that same sort of cycle." [Anand Shimpi, September 2023]
M4 Pro/Max, if it comes in October, is just confirmation that M2 Pro/Max is the exception (China was in "Zero COVID" lockdown in 2022), and M1 Pro/Max and M3 Pro/Max are the rule:
M1 Pro/Max October 2021
M2 Pro/Max January 2023
M3 Pro/Max October 2023
M4 Pro/Max October 2024
As for the M5, it will be interesting to see when the M5 MacBook Air (Mac17,1 and Mac17,2) launches. My guess would be May or June, I think there are significant risks associated with aiming for earlier (March, for example), given TSMC's constraints as they ramp up manufacturing for each new node.
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I think this is where it moves from science (engineering) to the humanities (business), as it were. So iPad Pro gets the silicon-launch halo/boost in 2024, while MacBook Air had it in 2022 and will see it again in 2025. The iMac had it in 2023, four months late (probably also Zero COVID fallout?), but better late than never...
Here's to hoping we'll see improvement in the overall rollout timetable for all machines that are going to receive each generation, but it seems likely that these silicon-launch products will continue to be irregular. iMac skipped a generation, and now it looks like MacBook Air is going to do the same. The point is that those decisions are product-driven. Apple isn't trying to implement a set cadence in that respect, there are too many factors not in their control. Competition, for one. So they remain agile, or at least as agile as a trillion-dollar behemoth can be.
I think there is also a differences between
- What Apple's stretch goal is VS what they're OK with shipping
and
- What chips apple has available VS what Apple actually ships in products.
Has there actually been any rumours suggesting that the Spring 2025 MacBook Air would be M5?
I think Apple would like to move the M* chip series to a yearly cadence (shifting it from its fairly consistent 1.5 year cycle since they were labelled A*X chips), but only time will tell if Apple succeeds.
A yearly cadence will result in smaller change per chip generation, but minimal chip improvements are fine.
And definitely, Apple will skip shipping chip generations in everything but the MBP.
So if you're expecting yearly desktop updates, you will be disappointed.That "Macs" segment is a combination of portable(laptops) and desktops(majority of revenue is from Macbooks not desktops).
Apple combined portable and desktop into just the Mac segment starting in 2013 so you didn't actually technically know what the breakdown was since then but as you can see desktops were plummeting right before they stopped reporting it. There is a reason why Apple stopped reporting desktop revenue and it's because of how low it is and they combined it into the Mac category.
As you can see desktop revenue as a percentage really started going down compared to the Macbooks(portable) in the mid 2000s. Also even the video I linked to Maxtech video which is timestamped shows surveys that indicate how low desktop Macs are.
"Macs" which represent mostly Macbook revenue did indeed overtake iPad sales in 2016. This is the precise reason why M3s were aimed at Macbooks for the scary fast event as Apple makes most of it's Mac segment money and they skipped the high end desktops since they can't be a priority over Macbooks.
At the end of the day iPads still generate a lot more revenue than iMac, Mac Studio, Mac Pro and Mac Mini combined. iPads generate around 30 billion a year these days. Macs are in the 30-40 billion range. Assume desktop Macs are the exact same percentage as they were in 2012 which is 30%. That would mean the entire desktop Mac lineup is generating around 10 billion a year which puts it far less than iPads. Remember it's on the 10-k and iPads are deemed big enough to be it's own category that Apple(a 3 trillion dollar company) reports on it https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000320193/faab4555-c69b-438a-aaf7-e09305f87ca3.pdf
Here's a litmus test. Walk into an Apple stoe and count how many desktops you see verse Macbooks, iPads, iPhone, wearables. What devices are people mostly looking at.
I mean Halo cars that have little intention of making profit for a company. Extreme example Ford GT does not make Ford money.
Dodge Viper is another halo example. Article here is about how investing 80 million into a low volume sports car impacted the brand itself. The real money wasn't made from selling the Viper. "This is where the Viper’s halo effect began to emerge"
How the Dodge Viper Brought Chrysler Back From the Dead
The Viper wasn’t just an audacious American sports car. It was a daring declaration by then-vice-chairman Bob Lutz that Chrysler was back.
robbreport.com
Apple does similar things using the Mac Pro and the Pro Display XDR. There's a reason why Apple devoted half an hour showing off niche products like a $1000 stand and a Xeon workstation to an audienence were vast majority are not going to purchase. Apple knows these are low volume products that can't generated big numbers for revenue but Apple are masters of marketing and know the halo effect on showing these things off is good for the brand because it gets people talking.
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Exactly right.
And also of note: the Mac Pro halo status is not dependent on it being the newest chip generation, as long as it is "extra" in other aspects, especially cost.
Exactly right.
And also of note: the Mac Pro halo status is not dependent on it being the newest chip generation, as long as it is "extra" in other aspects, especially cost.
Yep. Its sounds silly but even the costs generates headlines. I still remember back in 2019 the Mac Pro was water cooler talk at my work which is Windows/Linux. No one had any interest in it but it was just fun to talk about. People were just going on Apples website specing out to 50k computer for fun.
Apple's top Mac Pro computer costs more than the average car
The tech company's products have always fetched a premium, but its latest high-end desktop is raising eyebrows
www.cbsnews.com
Apple’s new Mac Pro could cost you more than $52,000 | CNN Business
Apple’s new Mac Pro is about to go on sale. The top-of-the-line Mac, anticipated by power users for its jaw-dropping specs, and by Apple design fans for its cheese-grater-like appearance, will be available for preorders beginning Tuesday.
Apple unveils $5,999 Mac Pro computer aimed at professionals
With prices starting at $5,999, the new Mac Pro will rank as one of Apple’s most expensive – and powerful -- pieces of hardware when it goes on-sale this fall.
The 2023 Mac Pro was very 'unApple' like almost like an afterthought as they mostly did that to get off of Intel for good which a lot of people were let down as it looked to most people as just a really expensive Mac Studio(yes there are niche use cases for it but the core of the computer was the same and wasn't covered much). I suspect Apple may want to make a splash next year with the Mac Pro if they can come up with a crazy chip for it which will be sort of like when a brand shows off a cool supercar.
I don't believe so.
If the upcoming A18 is the generation after the M4, it seems plausible to me that the Air will ship around May and already feature the A18-derived M5. If, OTOH, the A18 corresponds with M4 (which it seems it will), then I think we'll have to wait longer for M5 products to arrive.
There have been definite rumors that the Spring 2025 MacBook
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