As Apple just debuted the M4 lineup of chips for the Macs, there’s always the next generation of Apple Silicon to look forward to. According to Ming-Chi Kuo, he expects Apple to start mass production for the M5 chip in the second half of next year, which is expected to make its debut in the next iPad Pro. The iPad Pro was last updated back in May of this year, and it packed the M4 chip, the incredible Ultra Retina XDR display, and support for the Apple Pencil Pro and redesigned Magic Keyboard. Nowadays, the iPad Pro gets refreshed approximately 1.5 years, so a release sometime in late 2025 will follow that update cycle. No hardware upgrades have been known for the upcoming iPad Pro, but Apple has indicated that it is considering turning the rear Apple logo to landscape orientation in line with the front-facing camera on most iPads today.
However, despite initial rumors that the M5 chip would adopt the more advanced 2nm process, Kuo declares that the M5 chip will still use the 3nm process, possibly in its 3rd generation as it may use the enhanced ARM architecture with TSMC’s System on Integrated Chip technology. So it will still be a solid improvement over the M4.
So when will the other Macs get the M5 chip? Currently, the M4 Ultra hasn’t been introduced yet, so it’s likely that Apple will debut that chip next summer for the next-generation Mac Studio and Mac Pro. When Apple debuts the M5 in the iPad Pro next fall, Apple will likely wait for several months into early 2026 to introduce the M5 Pro and M5 Max and introduce the first Macs with the M5 series of chips, which may likely be at least the Mac mini and MacBook Pro. Of course, this is just speculation, but Apple may follow the same rollout schedule for introducing new M-series chips for its iPad Pros and then Macs.
