The 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air were updated last month with the M3 chip, and Apple dubbed that machine as the “best AI laptop for everyone.” This leaves only the Mac mini/Studio/Pro to be updated with the class of M3 chips. However, Mark Gurman suggests that Apple will debut the next generation of Apple Silicon chips for the Mac as soon as late 2024 with the primary focus being the advancements in AI.
This comes as no surprise as AI has been the new trend in technology, and this year’s WWDC is expected to mainly focus on AI as well.
If we look at the current generation’s M3 series of chips, Apple debuted those chips last October starting with the MacBook Pro and iMac. Apple later updated the MacBook Air with the base M3 chip as previously mentioned.
With the next generation of M-series chips, we may see Apple following the same pattern again. Gurman expects the series of M4 chips to debut around the October timeframe. The M4 chips will appear in the iMac, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini first, followed by the MacBook Air in the spring of 2025, the Mac Studio around the summer of 2025, and the Mac Pro later that year.
Gurman also said that the series of M4 chips is getting ready for production, and he broke down which variants will be used for several Mac models based on their codenames:
- The codename Donan refers to the standard M4 chip, which will be used in the base 14-inch MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, and base Mac mini.
- The codename Brava refers to both the M4 Pro/Max chips, which will be used in the high-end 14-inch MacBook Pro, 16-inch MacBook Pro, and high-end Mac mini.
- The codename Hidra suggests that the chip will be either an “Ultra” or “Extreme” tier as Gurman expected that chip to be designed for a future Mac Pro.
Since we’ve yet to see an update to the Mac Studio, Apple is developing variants of an M3-based chip, presumably an unreleased “M3 Ultra”, as well as another variation of the “M4 Brava” processor, which will presumably be a higher-spec M4 Max chip.
The highest tiers of M4 chips are also expected to have a huge boost in maximum unified memory with up to 512GB, which is over 2.5x the maximum limit for current Macs at 192GB. Since AI will be the primary focus for this next generation of chips, we can expect Apple to design a next-generation of Neural Engine for those chips with even more cores for more AI capabilities.
With the future release of the M4 chips, AI is going to be huge for the Mac.
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