M3 MacBook Air models may not arrive in October after all

AppleInsider

Without any context, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has declared that there may not be a M3 MacBook Air launch in October -- or at all in 2023.

The 2022 MacBook Air

The post on X is simple. All it says is, "It seems that Apple will not launch new MacBook models (equipped with M3 series processors) before the end of this year."

There's nothing to support the prediction, and Kuo gave no other indications in this post or any other. The rumor is the first of its kind, with the conventional wisdom suggesting that October was a likely debut time frame, perhaps in a press release rather than an event.

The M2 13-inch MacBook Air debuted on July 15, 2022. However, the M2 15-inch MacBook Air hit the shelves just after the 2023 WWDC.

As far as M1 to M2 goes, the M1 MacBook Air debuted in November 2020, with a 20-month gap between M1 and M2 models. October will mark 15 months from the M2 MacBook Air debut.

On August 27, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said something contradictory to Kuo's Friday report.

"The structure of the event, I'm told, will match the iPhone 14 launch: A prerecorded video will be shown online, as well as at an event at the company's headquarters," Gurman wrote. "There's also another launch occurring in October -- likely for the first M3 Macs -- but it's unclear if that will be positioned as a formal event."

A press release debut of new M3 Macs isn't unprecedented. The M2 MacBook Pro, and the M2 Mac mini models didn't have an event. And, historically, most Intel MacBook Pro and iMac spec bumps after a new chassis debuted hit the street after a press release.

Apple tends to make the 13-inch MacBook Pro, the 13-inch MacBook Air, and the Mac mini the first models to ship in a chip generation, and they are still good candidates this time around. The M2 Mac mini was released in January 2023 and at this point is well less than a year old.

Rumor Score: Possible

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Afarstar

Well fingers crossed for M3 iMac- I’m desperate!

wood1208

Is Mr. Kuo Apple's official spoke person ?

Mike Wuerthele

Afarstar said:

Well fingers crossed for M3 iMac- I’m desperate!

If there's no Air, I don't think the M3 will debut in the iMac.

A M2 iMac in October wouldn't surprise me though.

canukstorm

Mike Wuerthele said:

Afarstar said:

Well fingers crossed for M3 iMac- I’m desperate!

If there's no Air, I don't think the M3 will debut in the iMac.

A M2 iMac in October wouldn't surprise me though.

Via press release, I assume.

Mike Wuerthele

canukstorm said:

Mike Wuerthele said:

Afarstar said:

Well fingers crossed for M3 iMac- I’m desperate!

If there's no Air, I don't think the M3 will debut in the iMac.

A M2 iMac in October wouldn't surprise me though.

Via press release, I assume.

That's my guess.

Alex1N

Mike Wuerthele said:

Afarstar said:

Well fingers crossed for M3 iMac- I’m desperate!

If there's no Air, I don't think the M3 will debut in the iMac.

A M2 iMac in October wouldn't surprise me though.

Very disappointing, but not unexpected if that’s the case. The poor old iMac has become very much the poor relation in the Apple lineup.

timmillea

It looks like the M3 is subject to supply constraints. It makes sense to move its debut from the busiest quarter to January. Of course, there may be a few other spec tweaks that have slowed the rollout. 

tenthousandthings

A press-release launch of the M3 itself would, however, be unprecedented. I don’t think you’re suggesting that…

nubus

iPad Air could be a candidate for a silent update. Return it to an A-series processor (A16 or A17), reduce pricing (like what happened to MacBook Air 13"), and Apple is set for Christmas. But M3... TSMC 2nd generation 3nm is simply not yet ready. Doing the big M3 processors on 1st gen 3nm for cheap consumer products like iMac... not going to happen.

9secondkox2

Alex1N said:

Mike Wuerthele said:

Afarstar said:

Well fingers crossed for M3 iMac- I’m desperate!

If there's no Air, I don't think the M3 will debut in the iMac.

A M2 iMac in October wouldn't surprise me though.

Very disappointing, but not unexpected if that’s the case. The poor old iMac has become very much the poor relation in the Apple lineup.

Trading places with the formerly oft neglected mini. 

I suspect it has something to do with a shift in iMac strategy. Probably related to another redesign and return of the big iMac some time in the near future. But yeah, I could see an m2 release also just to look like things are moving ahead as the world awaits m3 offerings. 

tenthousandthings

nubus said:

iPad Air could be a candidate for a silent update. Return it to an A-series processor (A16 or A17), reduce pricing (like what happened to MacBook Air 13"), and Apple is set for Christmas. But M3... TSMC 2nd generation 3nm is simply not yet ready. Doing the big M3 processors on 1st gen 3nm for cheap consumer products like iMac... not going to happen.

Switching nodes midstream like that has only happened once in the history of Apple Silicon, between the A10 (TSMC 16nm) and A10X (TSMC 10nm). But you could be right, apparently N3 (name changed to N3B) is a one off, while N3E is the future of 3nm (N3P will be second-generation N3E). So yes, it seems possible M3 will be N3E. 

9secondkox2

One thing that puzzles me…

tsmc has been producing 90,000 - 100,000 wafers per month for a while now, so that’s going to be around 50,000,000 or more 3nm SOCs per month. 

And somehow that’s not enough? Even if you factor in let’s say a 50% failure rate, that’s still 25 million SOCs every month. This capacity has been increasing since this time a year ago and the phones have been being assembled for a year already with an estimate of 85-90 million iPhones shipped. That’s a ton of SOCs. Way more than a hit iPhone year plus iPad run Would need. 

And if it’s much less than 50% failure rate since things have improved, that’s quite a surplus of capacity - even with 10% of each wafer going to competitors. 

So where is the constraint? Or is it due to Apple switching from N3b tech to N3E? But isn’t that supposed to increase yield further? 

tenthousandthings

9secondkox2 said:

One thing that puzzles me…

tsmc has been producing 90,000 - 100,000 wafers per month for a while now, so that’s going to be around 50,000,000 or more 3nm SOCs per month. 

And somehow that’s not enough? Even if you factor in let’s say a 50% failure rate, that’s still 25 million SOCs every month. This capacity has been increasing since this time a year ago and the phones have been being assembled for a year already with an estimate of 85-90 million iPhones shipped. That’s a ton of SOCs. Way more than a hit iPhone year plus iPad run Would need. 

And if it’s much less than 50% failure rate since things have improved, that’s quite a surplus of capacity - even with 10% of each wafer going to competitors. 

So where is the constraint? Or is it due to Apple switching from N3b tech to N3E? But isn’t that supposed to increase yield further? 

I don’t think there is a constraint for Apple. It’s a new facility, this “Fab 18” that opened less than a year ago. There are something like a thousand steps in the process(es). TSMC published two papers recently that explain the differences between N3 (N3B) and N3E, and at least one major change was dropped (i.e., moved to N2) in the adjustment.

My guess is that N3 (N3B) was too Apple-specific, and so not flexible enough for other customers. Thus, N3E was born, postponing at least one of the ambitious changes that Apple used for A17. N3 is in high-volume production, but only for Apple. 

If I had to bet, I’d bet on M3 also being on N3. I think the rumor that they are switching to N3E is exactly that, a rumor. The two lines will merge in N2. The mysterious N3S may be a limited, second generation N3B (also Apple-only), used for A18. A19 and M4 will be on N2.

charlesn

The M3 MBA 13" rumor never made any sense. It would be like Apple upgrading the MBP 14" to a new processor but not the 16". My guess--not that Tim Cook is calling me with his plans--is that the both MBA models will get an M3 upgrade in the late spring next year. 

The iMac, however, is overdue for an upgrade, so I could see that being the first machine to get a base M3. It's curious to me that Apple never bothered to even bump it to the M2, not that the performance difference would have been significant, but it couldn't have hurt for marketing purposes. 

tenthousandthings

charlesn said:

The M3 MBA 13" rumor never made any sense. It would be like Apple upgrading the MBP 14" to a new processor but not the 16". My guess--not that Tim Cook is calling me with his plans--is that the both MBA models will get an M3 upgrade in the late spring next year. 

The iMac, however, is overdue for an upgrade, so I could see that being the first machine to get a base M3. It's curious to me that Apple never bothered to even bump it to the M2, not that the performance difference would have been significant, but it couldn't have hurt for marketing purposes. 

On the iMac, maybe it’s about pricing. By keeping it at M1 for as long as possible, they can sell it at a lower point. I think Mike is probably right that it will get M2 in October, and it wouldn’t be be crazy if Apple were to continue to offer the M1 as well, at a reduced price.

The recent budget, kid-friendly MacBook rumor could also do this, start with M1, but configurable with M2. 

That’s the thing about Apple Silicon—they have options. M1 is still perfectly functional—Apple could have three generations of M on sale at any given moment. 

tmay

9secondkox2 said:

One thing that puzzles me…

tsmc has been producing 90,000 - 100,000 wafers per month for a while now, so that’s going to be around 50,000,000 or more 3nm SOCs per month. 

And somehow that’s not enough? Even if you factor in let’s say a 50% failure rate, that’s still 25 million SOCs every month. This capacity has been increasing since this time a year ago and the phones have been being assembled for a year already with an estimate of 85-90 million iPhones shipped. That’s a ton of SOCs. Way more than a hit iPhone year plus iPad run Would need. 

And if it’s much less than 50% failure rate since things have improved, that’s quite a surplus of capacity - even with 10% of each wafer going to competitors. 

So where is the constraint? Or is it due to Apple switching from N3b tech to N3E? But isn’t that supposed to increase yield further? 

There was a post on The Register to the effect that there is a shortage of advanced packaging capacity, though this is primarily effecting GPU/AI  production.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/08/tsmc_ai_chip_crunch/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=article

According to Liu, TSMC is only able to meet about 80 percent of demand for its chip on wafer on substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology. This is used in some of the most advanced chips on the market today – particularly those that rely on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) which is ideal for AI workloads.

Liu expects this is a temporary bottleneck in the production of machine-learning accelerators and that additional CoWoS capacity should come online within a year and a half. Incidentally, TSMC recently announced plans to expand its advanced packaging capacity in Taiwan with a $3 billion facility at the Tongluo Science Park in Miaoli County.

I don't think that this is having any effect on Apple M2/M3 production, which requires interconnects to scale up, or we would have heard about it.

tenthousandthings

tmay said:

9secondkox2 said:

One thing that puzzles me…

tsmc has been producing 90,000 - 100,000 wafers per month for a while now, so that’s going to be around 50,000,000 or more 3nm SOCs per month. 

And somehow that’s not enough? Even if you factor in let’s say a 50% failure rate, that’s still 25 million SOCs every month. This capacity has been increasing since this time a year ago and the phones have been being assembled for a year already with an estimate of 85-90 million iPhones shipped. That’s a ton of SOCs. Way more than a hit iPhone year plus iPad run Would need. 

And if it’s much less than 50% failure rate since things have improved, that’s quite a surplus of capacity - even with 10% of each wafer going to competitors. 

So where is the constraint? Or is it due to Apple switching from N3b tech to N3E? But isn’t that supposed to increase yield further? 

There was a post on The Register to the effect that there is a shortage of advanced packaging capacity, though this is primarily effecting GPU/AI  production.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/08/tsmc_ai_chip_crunch/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=article

According to Liu, TSMC is only able to meet about 80 percent of demand for its chip on wafer on substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology. This is used in some of the most advanced chips on the market today – particularly those that rely on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) which is ideal for AI workloads.

Liu expects this is a temporary bottleneck in the production of machine-learning accelerators and that additional CoWoS capacity should come online within a year and a half. Incidentally, TSMC recently announced plans to expand its advanced packaging capacity in Taiwan with a $3 billion facility at the Tongluo Science Park in Miaoli County.

I don't think that this is having any effect on Apple M2/M3 production, which requires interconnects to scale up, or we would have heard about it.

TSMC just opened a new fab for this in June, which handles all types of their advanced packaging, including InFO which is what Apple uses for the Ultra:

https://pr.tsmc.com/english/news/3033

I don’t think Apple uses CoWoS, at least not in any current or expected products.

Marvin

charlesn said:

The M3 MBA 13" rumor never made any sense. It would be like Apple upgrading the MBP 14" to a new processor but not the 16". My guess--not that Tim Cook is calling me with his plans--is that the both MBA models will get an M3 upgrade in the late spring next year.

It would be a pretty early upgrade for the 15" MBA (4 months), even though the 13" is due an upgrade (15 months). Apple has made early upgrades a few times before but longer than 4 months apart.

A January upgrade (7 months) would be better for current 15" buyers, even if it extends the 13" upgrade cycle.

It's disappointing as it would have been good to see what's coming with M3 before Christmas, all we have to go on until then is the A17 chip.

This also means that M3 Pro/Max might not arrive until Summer/WWDC 24.