Andrew Cunningham
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman thinks that Apple’s M4 chips for Macs are coming sooner somewhat than later—probably as early as “late this yr,” per a report from earlier this month. Now Gurman says Apple may fully skip the M3 technology for some Macs, most notably the Mac mini.
To be clear, Gurman would not have particular insider info confirming that Apple is planning to skip the M3 mini. However based mostly on Apple’s alleged late-2024-into-early-2025 timeline for the M4 mini, he believes that it is “most likely secure to say” that there is not sufficient house on the calendar for an M3 mini to be launched between every now and then.
This would not be the primary time an Apple Silicon Mac had skipped a chip technology—the 24-inch iMac was by no means up to date with the M2, as a substitute leaping straight from the M1 to the M3. The Mac Professional additionally skipped the M1 sequence, leapfrogging from Intel chips to the M2.
But when the M4 does come out by the tip of 2024, it might be a a lot sooner turnaround than we have seen for different Apple Silicon chips thus far. Roughly a yr and a half handed between the introduction of the primary M1 Macs in late 2020 and the primary M2 Macs in the summertime of 2022; about the identical period of time handed between mid-2022 and the late-2023 introduction of the primary M3 Macs. If Apple holds to a extra typical 18-month hole between the primary M3 Macs and the primary M4 Macs, there’s nonetheless loads of time for an M3-based Mac mini refresh to be launched.
Apple final up to date the Mac mini in January of 2022, changing the M1 mannequin with an M2 model and introducing a brand new variant with an M2 Professional chip that included extra Thunderbolt ports, higher exterior show assist, and higher CPU and GPU efficiency. Most of Apple’s desktops—each Mac minis, in addition to the Mac Studio and Mac Professional—are nonetheless utilizing Apple’s M2 chips, whereas the entire laptops and the iMac have gotten an M3 refresh at this level.
Gurman’s earlier reporting on the M4 means that will probably be an “AI-focused” chip sequence, which most likely means that it’s going to beef up the processors’ Neural Engine to energy the on-device generative AI options which can be anticipated to return with iOS 18 and Apple’s different main working system updates this yr. Apple already has a head begin on the PC ecosystem on this respect—the entire M-series chips and A-series chips going all the way in which again to 2017’s A11 Bionic have included a model of the Neural Engine. Intel and AMD’s processors have solely begun to incorporate related neural processing models (NPUs) throughout the final yr or so.
Gurman hasn’t reported on the M4 sequence’ specs, however he has stated it’s going to embody not less than three efficiency tiers: a base mannequin codenamed “Donan,” a midrange model codenamed “Brava,” and a high-end mannequin codenamed “Hidra.” It stays to be seen which of those chips would change the Professional, Max, and Extremely processors in current-generation M2 and M3 Macs.
