After Apple's busy January, the rest of the quarter may be quiet
Apple's flurry of January launches may be the company's last major releases for some time, with a lack of inbound new products expected for the second quarter meaning there could be quite a few months to wait for something new to surface.
The M2 Mac mini
Apple's unexpected January launches covered a number of areas, including the revival of the HomePod, the introduction of the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, an updated Mac mini, and new 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro units.
However, Apple's decision to launch so early in the year may dampen expectations for spring launches, which could mean no hardware introductions in March or the second quarter.
In 2022, Apple's spring launches included the 5G iPhone SE, the Mac Studio, and the Studio Display. According to Mark Gurman's "Power On" newsletter for Bloomberg, "there is no equivalent stream of new products coming in Q2 this year."
The early launches are apparently going to help make the Q1 results seem "a bit less painful" than they could've been. Wall Street is now apparently expecting Q1 revenue of $122.2 billion, which is a small decline and far from a "disaster," while Q2 is anticipated to be flat at $97.5 billion.
With Apple set to announce the critical holiday quarter earnings on February 2, it is likely that more opinion and reasoning behind the launches will be offered by CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri as part of the usual analyst conference call.
Read on AppleInsider
The M2 Mac mini
Apple's unexpected January launches covered a number of areas, including the revival of the HomePod, the introduction of the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, an updated Mac mini, and new 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro units.
However, Apple's decision to launch so early in the year may dampen expectations for spring launches, which could mean no hardware introductions in March or the second quarter.
In 2022, Apple's spring launches included the 5G iPhone SE, the Mac Studio, and the Studio Display. According to Mark Gurman's "Power On" newsletter for Bloomberg, "there is no equivalent stream of new products coming in Q2 this year."
The early launches are apparently going to help make the Q1 results seem "a bit less painful" than they could've been. Wall Street is now apparently expecting Q1 revenue of $122.2 billion, which is a small decline and far from a "disaster," while Q2 is anticipated to be flat at $97.5 billion.
With Apple set to announce the critical holiday quarter earnings on February 2, it is likely that more opinion and reasoning behind the launches will be offered by CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri as part of the usual analyst conference call.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
Also, iMac and Studio updates are likely for the Spring. To be done before they announce the Mac Pro at or around WWDC
Other candidates for Spring updates: AirPod Max, XDR Display, MacBook Air 15”, Classic Music App
I think it's interesting they still have the M1 (7-core GPU) MacBook Air on sale, alongside the M2 Air. It wouldn't be surprising if the iMac went the same way, with the M1 (8-core GPU) iMac on sale beside the M2 iMac. If the M2 iMac were to have M2 Pro/Max as well, then it could step into that role (clearing M2 inventory) in the future, after M3 rolls out.
If anything, all Gurman’s prediction really says is that the Mac Pro and Mac Studio refresh(es), while likely to be introduced in Q2 at WWDC, won't be available until later in the year. Same for new or refreshed displays, and of course the reality device. None of it will go on sale in Q2.
The other missing element, the M3 iMac and MacBook Air, wasn't expected by now. An October 2023 launch would just barely be inside the window of possibility for TSMC 3nm, and only if it is the first generation, N3. The weirdest thing about that was the M3 iMac. It was and still is a strange nugget of information. But I have to admit, it has held up so far. Very strange. My theory is in my comment above, that the iMac, like the MacBook Air, will be available with both older Apple Silicon (possibly only for Education) and current Apple Silicon. Supply chain issues threw this off, but going forward that's how it will be.
NOTE: There's also an assumption that Apple is going to be out in front, on the cutting edge of TSMC 3nm, but you've got to wonder about that. Changing manufacturing process nodes is expensive and problematic. Apple has a lot of experience with it (I count nine TSMC node changes in the A series since 2014), but the 3nm shift is a big change and thus a big risk. There's a possibility that M3/A17 won't be 3nm at all, but rather N4P. [Not N4X, however, that seems to be money-is-no-object HPC-server territory.] Although I think if that were the case, Apple would have tamped down the M3=N3 speculation by now.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmc-first-n3-chips-in-q1-2023-n3e-node-incoming
That's Q2 at the earliest. Anything Q2 or later would be fine, especially Macs as the unit volume is relatively low vs iPhone.
If N3 is shipping mid-Q2 (May), they have until September for iPhone volume and Apple can do what they did with iPhone 14 and put the old one in the low end.
I could see them doing the M3 Air in Q2 but there wouldn't be much harm in launching it in Q3 as it gives Apple time to complete the M2 lineup. Mac Studio, iMac and Mac Pro can be updated to M2 at the same time. WWDC is a good time to mention the end of the transition.
Given that M3 is the basis for all the other chips, if they have new features like hardware raytracing and other technology like frame generation (creating frames between other frames to double framerate), that would be worth an event in Q3 (October).
M1 benchmarks. Single core: 1651 Multicore: 5181
M2 benchmarks. Single core: 1951 Multicore: 9003
M2 Pro benchmarks. Single core: 1952 Multicore 15013.
Fantastic right? Actually, no.
To clarify:
Mx = Intel Core i3 and AMD Ryzen 3 (Apple has an advantage here)
Mx Pro = Intel Core i5 and AMD Ryzen 5 (a wash)
Mx Max = Intel Core i7 and AMD Ryzen 7 (Apple loses their advantage)
Mx Ultra = Intel Core i9 and AMD Ryzen 9 (Intel and AMD are clearly ahead)
Mx Extreme = Intel Xeon W and AMD Threadripper (the Extreme doesn't exist yet so ...)
I will grant you: the $599 Mac Mini is currently the best deal in computing. But despite TechRadar's "Apple now has no serious rivals in the computing space" claim ... the gap is a river, not an ocean or even a lake. An AMD Ryzen 5 6600H (6nm) benchmarks 1472 single core, 8054 multicore, offers RDNA2 graphics and you can get it in a mini-PC with 16 GB RAM for $589. And the AMD Ryzen 7040 series that AMD used to call out Apple over? It's 4nm Ryzen 5 7640HS with RDNA 3 graphics will be available in systems soon that will be in direct competition with the Mac Mini in a few months. (I won't list Intel here because Intel's Iris Xe graphics won't become competitive with Apple and AMD until Meteor Lake releases 4Q. More on that later.)
The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X loses to the M2 Pro in multicore (15013 to 11000) but it beats it in multicore: 2200 to 1952. The Intel Core i5-13600K beats the M2 Pro in both: single core as high as 2270 and multicore as high as 17300 on Geekbench. And that is a 10nm chip. Any guesses as to how fast the 7nm Core i5-14600K that launches 4Q2023 will be? And yes, Core i5/Ryzen 5 systems still cost less than the $1300 for an M2 Pro Mac Mini even when they have midlevel discrete GPUs like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060.
This is why it is better that the last batch of 5nm chips go to Apple's "low end products": the AMD and Intel competition in 2023 is cheaper and better. You may not want the premium products to wait on the 3nm M3 so that they won't be outclassed, but you can bet that Apple does. And before anyone brings up the "Apple gets much better power per watt" yes I am aware that tons of tech media types choose to take seriously "light thin devices with 12 hour battery life that barely need their fans are more important than single core and multicore performance because we say so" when it comes to laptops. With desktops? Nobody cares. If Mac desktops and workstations don't do software engineering optimization, rendering, 3D modeling, CAD etc. faster than Core i7 and Threadripper machines, then that is what the competition is going to buy.