M3 MacBook Pro & MacBook Air edge closer to early 2024 release

AppleInsider

Apple's M3 lineup is getting closer to launch, with updated MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models hitting important engineering test stages as they head towards mass production.

2022 MacBook Air

The M3 range of Mac models is widely anticipated to arrive soon, with many looking towards the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lines for potential upgrades. In one report, it seems that both MacBook Pro models and MacBook Air units are arriving at very important stages of the production process.

According to Mark Gurman in his "Power On" newsletter for Bloomberg, the 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro equipped with M3 Pro and M3 Max chips are at the DVT stage. Standing for Design Validation Test, the stage is one that's close to the start of the models entering mass production.

Gurman believes that the progress points to a launch between early 2024 and spring 2024. If accurate, this roughly coincides with the January 2023 release of the 14-inch and 16-inch M2 MacBook Pro models. The 2023 flagship MacBook Pro models arrived 14 months after the M1 models hit shelves.

The 13-inch MacBook Air and 15-inch MacBook Air are a little behind the Pro models, having just entered EVT, or Engineering Verification Test. Gurman offers the timing would put the models as releasing between the spring and summer of 2024.

The report doesn't bode well for an Apple Silicon product launch before the end of 2023, as other leakers have proposed a fall launch seems unlikely for the M3 generation at all.

Read on AppleInsider

netguru2000

Isn't this from the same guy that said 13" M3 Air would be arriving sometime around... today?

libertyandfree

 There is zero marketing reasons to release the M3 series this calendar year.   Once the M3’s are announced there will be no more M2 upgrades.  Since the iMac is still using the M1 maybe Apple will be bumping the iMac to an M2 series before releasing the M3’s in 2024.  

tht

Hmm… you would think the M3 would be produced before the M3 Pro/Max. Smaller chip, TSMC N3 is still new, less risk with a smaller chip. The M2 MBA13 is 16 months old now. The M3 Ivan go into a whole lot of products: MBA, Mac mini, iMac, iPad Pro and the Vision Pro.

Like for every M3 Pro or M3 Max chip shipped, there is 10 M3 chips shipped. 

9secondkox2

tht said:

Hmm… you would think the M3 would be produced before the M3 Pro/Max. Smaller chip, TSMC N3 is still new, less risk with a smaller chip. The M2 MBA13 is 16 months old now. The M3 Ivan go into a whole lot of products: MBA, Mac mini, iMac, iPad Pro and the Vision Pro.

Like for every M3 Pro or M3 Max chip shipped, there is 10 M3 chips shipped. 

I don’t know. In the pc market, the cheap CPUs are the big sellers with high end systems more niche. But with apple, lots of customers opt for higher end systems. We see this even in the iPhone market. Would be great to see a true product spec breakdown of Mac sales numbers. I suspect the pro and max chips make up a much larger portion of the mix than many would suspect. That said, I don’t really expect max processors to arrive before base. I could see a simultaneous release though - so the vision pro can be viewed as its own special thing in its own window. Unfortunately, that seems to be the main thing messing with mac progress. 

tht

9secondkox2 said:

tht said:

Hmm… you would think the M3 would be produced before the M3 Pro/Max. Smaller chip, TSMC N3 is still new, less risk with a smaller chip. The M2 MBA13 is 16 months old now. The M3 Ivan go into a whole lot of products: MBA, Mac mini, iMac, iPad Pro and the Vision Pro.

Like for every M3 Pro or M3 Max chip shipped, there is 10 M3 chips shipped. 

I don’t know. In the pc market, the cheap CPUs are the big sellers with high end systems more niche. But with apple, lots of customers opt for higher end systems. We see this even in the iPhone market. Would be great to see a true product spec breakdown of Mac sales numbers. I suspect the pro and max chips make up a much larger portion of the mix than many would suspect. That said, I don’t really expect max processors to arrive before base. I could see a simultaneous release though - so the vision pro can be viewed as its own special thing in its own window. Unfortunately, that seems to be the main thing messing with mac progress. 

Apple's Mac ASP is about $1300 to $1500 depending on quarter. That likely means upwards of 60% to 70% of Mac sales are Mac mini, Macbook Airs and iMacs, probably with about 50% being MBA sales. It really is somewhere around 10-to-1 for M1/M2 versus their Pro/Max counterparts, especially with iPads shipping with Mx SoCs.

Hopefully, for the next round, an M2 MBA will start at $1000, an M1 iMac at $1000, and even an M2 Mac mini at $500, but this would be unlikely. Pricing is a big driver for when things can ship too. Apple has to wait for component prices to be right. For Pro Mac models, it's much more forgiving, so maybe that's the reason for the M3 Pro/Max systems being ahead of M3 systems.

charlesn

libertyandfree said:

 There is zero marketing reasons to release the M3 series this calendar year.   Once the M3’s are announced there will be no more M2 upgrades.  Since the iMac is still using the M1 maybe Apple will be bumping the iMac to an M2 series before releasing the M3’s in 2024.  

At least from a marketing perspective, the iMac is most in need of an upgrade, with 2.5 years passing since it was released. I wouldn't be surprised to see it get a base M3 this year because it is the only "current" product in the lineup still running the M1. (Yes, the OG MBA is still sold and still running the M1, but that's an older design intentionally kept in the lineup as a lower cost entry point.) Apple could have speed-bumped the iMac to a base M2 as early as the summer of '22, but failed to do so then or since, so it would make no sense to do it now when the base M2 is about to be replaced by M3. 

nubus

9secondkox2 said:

I don’t know. In the pc market, the cheap CPUs are the big sellers with high end systems more niche. But with apple, lots of customers opt for higher end systems. We see this even in the iPhone market. Would be great to see a true product spec breakdown of Mac sales numbers. I suspect the pro and max chips make up a much larger portion of the mix than many would suspect. That said, I don’t really expect max processors to arrive before base. I could see a simultaneous release though - so the vision pro can be viewed as its own special thing in its own window. Unfortunately, that seems to be the main thing messing with mac progress. 

There is a report that 77% of sales are laptops - 34% is Air (M1 + M2), and 43% is MBP - but that includes the 13". mini is 3% and studio 1%.
So... probably 55-60% is the base M-series variant.

It makes sense to launch from the top like Apple did in the past. The transition is over. Otherwise MBP sales will stop. And MBA doesn't need to be launched before "back-to-school" so better use 3nm production capacity on the high-margin products.

Afarstar

Where the f*** is an updated iMac? I need it NOW

9secondkox2

tht said:

9secondkox2 said:

tht said:

Hmm… you would think the M3 would be produced before the M3 Pro/Max. Smaller chip, TSMC N3 is still new, less risk with a smaller chip. The M2 MBA13 is 16 months old now. The M3 Ivan go into a whole lot of products: MBA, Mac mini, iMac, iPad Pro and the Vision Pro.

Like for every M3 Pro or M3 Max chip shipped, there is 10 M3 chips shipped. 

I don’t know. In the pc market, the cheap CPUs are the big sellers with high end systems more niche. But with apple, lots of customers opt for higher end systems. We see this even in the iPhone market. Would be great to see a true product spec breakdown of Mac sales numbers. I suspect the pro and max chips make up a much larger portion of the mix than many would suspect. That said, I don’t really expect max processors to arrive before base. I could see a simultaneous release though - so the vision pro can be viewed as its own special thing in its own window. Unfortunately, that seems to be the main thing messing with mac progress. 

Apple's Mac ASP is about $1300 to $1500 depending on quarter. That likely means upwards of 60% to 70% of Mac sales are Mac mini, Macbook Airs and iMacs, probably with about 50% being MBA sales. It really is somewhere around 10-to-1 for M1/M2 versus their Pro/Max counterparts, especially with iPads shipping with Mx SoCs.

Hopefully, for the next round, an M2 MBA will start at $1000, an M1 iMac at $1000, and even an M2 Mac mini at $500, but this would be unlikely. Pricing is a big driver for when things can ship too. Apple has to wait for component prices to be right. For Pro Mac models, it's much more forgiving, so maybe that's the reason for the M3 Pro/Max systems being ahead of M3 systems.

Again, that’s conjecture. I’d like to see some verifiable hard data before some of these “stats” coming from a couple forum members are believable. 

9secondkox2

nubus said:

9secondkox2 said:

I don’t know. In the pc market, the cheap CPUs are the big sellers with high end systems more niche. But with apple, lots of customers opt for higher end systems. We see this even in the iPhone market. Would be great to see a true product spec breakdown of Mac sales numbers. I suspect the pro and max chips make up a much larger portion of the mix than many would suspect. That said, I don’t really expect max processors to arrive before base. I could see a simultaneous release though - so the vision pro can be viewed as its own special thing in its own window. Unfortunately, that seems to be the main thing messing with mac progress. 

There is a report that 77% of sales are laptops - 34% is Air (M1 + M2), and 43% is MBP - but that includes the 13". mini is 3% and studio 1%.
So... probably 55-60% is the base M-series variant.

It makes sense to launch from the top like Apple did in the past. The transition is over. Otherwise MBP sales will stop. And MBA doesn't need to be launched before "back-to-school" so better use 3nm production capacity on the high-margin products.

It’s not a bad strategy to launch high performance models first, providing a halo effect for the lesser models to come. 

People can see the power and either buy in or decide, “I dont need that much power. Overkill for me. I’ll get the base model, etc.” 

it has seemed in Apple’s recent history thst when they launch a compelling “cheap” model, they don’t end up selling like Apple thought. 

The trouble with new M2x computers is that you pay an awful lot for every upgrade. Don’t see that getting any better until Apple gets more realistic with pricing. 

multimedia

I’m looking forward to an M3 Ultra Mac Studio next June announced at the 2024 WWDC. That’s the one I’m definitely going to buy.

charlesn

9secondkox2 said:

It’s not a bad strategy to launch high performance models first, providing a halo effect for the lesser models to come.

Hey, this can be your strategy when you launch your own computer company, but it's not Apple's strategy. They've been launching M chips starting with base models first and then following up later with more expensive Pro, Max, etc. versions. 

it has seemed in Apple’s recent history thst when they launch a compelling “cheap” model, they don’t end up selling like Apple thought. 

And your examples of recently failed "cheap models" that didn't sell what Apple thought are what, exactly? Apple's entry level products do really well as evidenced by the fact that they remain in production for years. 

The trouble with new M2x computers is that you pay an awful lot for every upgrade. Don’t see that getting any better until Apple gets more realistic with pricing. 

Yes, you're so right about pricing. The most successful consumer tech company ever--not to mention the most successful company in the history of companies as measured by market cap--is clearly being held back by pricing. If only they'd bring you in as a consultant, they might do better. 

Lothar_49

My beloved 27" retina iMac is 8 years old!  It is maxxed out in RAM as well as enhanced internal SSD's.  But I cannot upgrade much on it lately, still stuck on Big Sur! MS Word and other vital software unable to be updated. Where is this planned M3 iMac (larger than 24" screen)? The M1 or even an M2 24" screen iMac are not what I am waiting for, I want something that has legs and will not have to be replaced after three years!  There has to be a huge pent-up demand for a larger M3 based iMac.