According to Mark Gurman from Bloomberg, Apple has ramped up testing of four upcoming Mac models that will bebased on the next-generation M4 chip. As previously reported, we’re expecting Apple to update the MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and iMac with M4 chips later this fall with a possible announcement sometime in October as Apple has sometimes down in the past.
According to the developer logs, those four machines are equipped with regular M4 chips; three of them have a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU, and the last one has an entirely new configuration of the M4 chip that we’ve never seen before. That configuration is another binned variant with an 8-core CPU and an 8-core GPU. It’s also worth mentioning that all of those four Macs come equipped with either 16GB or 32GB of unified memory, so this indicates that Apple may be bumping up the base unified memory from 8GB to 16GB for the first time in over a decade. Apple has been heavily criticized for offering its base Mac models with 8GB of unified memory, particularly with the new entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro, which was introduced in October 2023.
Going back to the M4 chip configurations, the higher storage-tier models of the latest iPad Pro models (1TB/2TB) come with the fully-fledged M4 chip (10-core CPU/10-core GPU), so if history repeats itself, that configuration will make its way to the Mac mini, the 14-inch MacBook Pro, and the iMac with four USB-C ports as those machines have used such a variant of the base M-chip in the past. Since only the iMac with two USB-C ports has used the binned variant of the chip, it’s likely that that model will feature the binned M4 chip (8-core CPU and 8-core GPU).
The M4 Pro or M4 Max chips weren’t mentioned in Gurman’s report, but it’s possible that those higher-end chips didn’tappear in developer logs. Furthermore, it’s likely that we’ll see Macs with those higher-end chips really soon as prior rumors suggested, and here’s why. Back when Apple introduced the M2 chip with the redesigned MacBook Air, Apple held off on announcing the updated Mac mini because Apple wanted to introduce both models of that Mac with an M2 chip and an M2 Pro chip at the same time. As with the MacBook Pro, Apple waited until all three variants of the M3 chip were ready before it could announce both the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro with that class of chips at the same time. Otherwise, announcing a 14-inch MacBook Pro with M4 first would make the higher-end models with M3 Pro/Max chips a bit inferior from a marketing perspective.
Additionally, Apple is gearing up for a significant design for the Mac mini that’s expected to be smaller.
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