Almost two months ago, Apple announced the first Macs with the M4 class of chips, yet there’s still more to look forward to down the road as Apple continues to improve upon its breakthrough Apple Silicon. According to reputable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple will begin rolling out its M5-based Macs starting sometime next year.
Kuo expects the base M5 chip to enter mass production in the first half of 2025, followed by the higher-end M5 Pro and M5 Max chips in the second half of the year. If anything, this rollout will likely be similar to Apple’s release schedule for its Mac lineup over the past few years. If we take a look at the M4 series, Apple introduced the base M4 chip back in May 2024 with the iPad Pro. Fast forward to October, Apple introduced the M4 Pro and M4 Max chips with the iMac, Mac mini, and MacBook Pro. We expect Apple to update the MacBook Air lineup with the M4 chips around the first quarter of spring, possibly ‘earlier’ than the iPhone SE 4 and iPad 11. This should come as no surprise as Apple updated the MacBook Air with the M3 chips several months after the MacBook Pro lineup was refreshed with the M3 family of chips. Both the Mac Studio and Mac Pro are expected to be refreshed with the M4 Max and the yet-to-be-announced M4 Ultra around next summer. I just hope that Apple won’t debut the base M5 chip too soon before the Mac Studio and Mac Pro receive the M4 Max/Ultra treatment.
So with the upcoming M5 family of chips, we can see a similar rollout like this:
- MacBook Pro with M5/Pro/Max – around October 2025
- MacBook Air with M5 – around spring 2026
- Mac Studio and Mac Pro with M5 Max or M5 Ultra – around summer 2026
Keep in mind that Apple’s desktop offerings don’t get refreshed as often as Apple’s laptop offerings. The iMac skipped the M2 chip, and the Mac mini skipped the M3 and M3 Pro chips.
Apple’s upcoming M5 family of chips is expected to feature the third-generation 3nm process, for incremental performance and power efficiency improvements across the board compared to the M4’s counterparts.
But that’s not all, Apple Intelligence servers are also expected to upgrade to the high-end, server-grade M5 chips as Apple has been developing such a class-leading chip as previously rumored. Currently, those servers are powered by the M2 Ultra chip. Also to top it all off, Apple is working on a discrete CPU and GPU design for the M5 Pro and beyond. So there’s a lot to look forward on the Mac side.
