Inbound M4 Mac updates rumored to arrive as early as October 28

AppleInsider

Apple's next wave of product launches could happen as soon as October 28, with M4 Mac models arriving as part of a very busy week for the company.

The current Mac mini design

Apple is expected to be introducing new Mac updates in the near future, including a New Mac mini and upgrades to the 14-inch MacBook Pro and the 16-inch MacBook Pro. While the exact timing isn't known, it could possibly be just a week away.

In an X post on Tuesday, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman outlined Apple's week from October 28 to November 1. The week starts with the introduction of Apple Intelligence as part of Apple's operating system releases on Monday, while the earnings results will occur on October 31.

However, Gurman adds that there will be an "M4 Mac launch" between the other two events. At face value, that would mean launches happening between Monday, October 28 or Wednesday, October 30.

Given that Apple generally likes to announce new hardware at about 9AM ET, we're guessing October 29. Furthermore, Apple has a history of preferring to hold events and product launches on a Tuesday, making that the most likely day for hardware introductions.

It is still unclear whether Apple will hold an actual event for the Mac launches, or will proceed with a press release-based introduction.



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mike1

AppleInsider said:

Given that Apple generally likes to announce new hardware at about 9AM ET, we're guessing October 29. Furthermore, Apple has a history of preferring to hold events and product launches on a Tuesday, making that the most likely day for hardware introductions.

It is still unclear whether Apple will hold an actual event for the Mac launches, or will proceed with a press release-based introduction.

Not true at all. Press release-only announcements might drop at 9:00, at market open on the east coast, but Apple events always start at 1:00pm eastern time.

mpantone

Apple live events usually start at 1pm ET but not always.

That said when an event has a live component Apple typically sends the invitation email in advance to give people time to book travel. Since the pandemic Apple has leaned to giving two weeks notice. Prior to the pandemic it was typically one week.

We are already past the moment when Apple would normally would send out an e-mail for a hosted live event. In my opinion this points to a likely press release-only launch.

Tech media has been speculating on an October event for months and now with each passing day the likelihood of a live hosted event drops. If they intended on hosting an event with hands-on demo session after a launch video on Tuesday the 29th, the e-mail invitations would have gone out on the 15th.

Since iOS 18.1 and Sequoia 15.1 are slated to release on Monday the 28th it would make sense for Apple to close the Store early Tuesday morning, drop some press releases and reopen the Store with the newly announced products.

edited October 2024

mike1

I'm thinking it's possible the iMac may be refreshed too. Many of the configurations and colors (other than silver) have lead times that are 2-6 weeks out.

saarek

I wonder what the odds are on them releasing a real Apple Silicon Mac Pro with an M4 Extreme (of whatever they end up calling it) configuration.

edited October 2024

mpantone

saarek said:

I wonder what the odds are on them releasing a real Apple Silicon Mac Pro with an M4 Extreme (of whatever the end up calling it) configuration.

In 2024? About 0.1%, maybe less.

In 2025? Higher chance as long as they don't discontinue the Mac Pro product. With Apple Silicon there are no discrete GPU add-in cards so the spaciousness and capacity of the Mac Pro chassis is largely useless.

There aren't many usage cases that favor a Mac Pro over a Mac Studio at this point. If they can put an M-series Max or Ultra SoC in the Studio, that's probably covers over 95% of their high-end market. Note that there have been no credible rumors about the impending release of M4 Max or Ultra silicon. We're probably still 6-9 months away from that. You can look forward to it when the rumor mill starts churning out speculation but we haven't see any of that.

Heck, we haven't seen any M4 Macs yet with vanilla or Pro chips let alone the higher-end silicon. One thing that's clear, Apple Engineering doesn't have the bandwidth to push out all four M-series chip variants at the same time.

edited October 2024

entropys

Sigh, I guess have to wait for autumn 2025 for the M4 MBAs

mpantone

entropys said:

Sigh, I guess have to wait for autumn 2025 for the M4 MBAs

Probably not that long. MacBook Airs use the entry level silicon not the Pro, Max or Ultra variants. Plus they are the top selling Mac models in unit sales. If Apple doesn't release an M4 MBA in the next couple weeks, I'm guessing they will show up sometime in Q1 2025.

My guess is that the latter half of 2025 will be used more for rolling out Mac products that feature Max and Ultra variants, plus the initial products that feature vanilla M5 chips.

Moreover Apple announced the M4 iPad Pro in May of this year. Releasing the M4 MBA 15 months after the chip's debut makes zero sense.

edited October 2024

dutchlord

Still waiting for a M4 27 inch iMac…..

danox

If Apple doesn’t offer upgrades to the M4 processor to the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, the mini’s or the 24 inch iMac before the end of the year you simply will not sell any more Mac’s than you sold last year at this time, when Apple upgraded the iPad Pro to the M4 low and behold, they sold one and a half billion dollar’s more product in the quarter which is about $6 billion in the calendar year, in these rough times every little bit counts, by not upgrading. Apple is leaving billions on the table.

The higher end MacBook Pro Max and the Studio Ultra’s M4, and even the seemingly ill fated Mac Pro are vital to giving developers, high bandwidth and big gpu usable memory towards helping developers in the emerging AI areas, right now Apple has a hardware advantage big gpu memory, powerful, high bandwidth, low power usage, and for Apple cheap and comparison to their competition. Hopefully they won’t squander that advantage right now no one is close to offering what they can offer on the laptop or desktop in this area, M4 MacBook Pro Max with 192 gigs and M4 Mac Studios with 256 gigs, there are many very smart people around the world looking to get their hands on or at least considering Apple Silicon hardware but that consideration disappears if you don’t offer the hardware in a timely manner.

https://www.simplymac.com/macbooks/apple-m-series-chips-explained

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240507452955/en/Apple-introduces-M4-chip

https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/140l0im/apple_has_an_excellent_hardware_base_for_local/

edited October 2024

macgui

AI said
Given that Apple generally likes to announce new hardware at about 9AM ET...

This is completely true. Note the mention of generally and announce. That's not a mention of an event which almost always starts at 10:00AM PT and usually on Tuesdays. Usually.

I don't see a mini being event worthy at this point unless there was a radical change in the form factor and performance. The same with updating MacBooks. No new form factor then it's a press release. I want an Apple Studio Display but 32" not 27". That would be even worthy.  I'm not holding my breath. 

saarek

mpantone said:

saarek said:

I wonder what the odds are on them releasing a real Apple Silicon Mac Pro with an M4 Extreme (of whatever the end up calling it) configuration.

In 2024? About 0.1%, maybe less.

In 2025? Higher chance as long as they don't discontinue the Mac Pro product. With Apple Silicon there are no discrete GPU add-in cards so the spaciousness and capacity of the Mac Pro chassis is largely useless.

There aren't many usage cases that favor a Mac Pro over a Mac Studio at this point. If they can put an M-series Max or Ultra SoC in the Studio, that's probably covers over 95% of their high-end market. Note that there have been no credible rumors about the impending release of M4 Max or Ultra silicon. We're probably still 6-9 months away from that. You can look forward to it when the rumor mill starts churning out speculation but we haven't see any of that.

Heck, we haven't seen any M4 Macs yet with vanilla or Pro chips let alone the higher-end silicon. One thing that's clear, Apple Engineering doesn't have the bandwidth to push out all four M-series chip variants at the same time.

I’d assumed they would have skipped the M3 line for the Pro desktops. 

The process being used is having issues in terms of yield and it was a rather disappointing update in terms of performance, at least from the Pro version point of view, where they appear to have severely nerfed it to push people to the Max version.

mpantone

saarek said:

mpantone said:

saarek said:

I wonder what the odds are on them releasing a real Apple Silicon Mac Pro with an M4 Extreme (of whatever the end up calling it) configuration.

In 2024? About 0.1%, maybe less.

In 2025? Higher chance as long as they don't discontinue the Mac Pro product. With Apple Silicon there are no discrete GPU add-in cards so the spaciousness and capacity of the Mac Pro chassis is largely useless.

There aren't many usage cases that favor a Mac Pro over a Mac Studio at this point. If they can put an M-series Max or Ultra SoC in the Studio, that's probably covers over 95% of their high-end market. Note that there have been no credible rumors about the impending release of M4 Max or Ultra silicon. We're probably still 6-9 months away from that. You can look forward to it when the rumor mill starts churning out speculation but we haven't see any of that.

Heck, we haven't seen any M4 Macs yet with vanilla or Pro chips let alone the higher-end silicon. One thing that's clear, Apple Engineering doesn't have the bandwidth to push out all four M-series chip variants at the same time.

I’d assumed they would have skipped the M3 line for the Pro desktops. 

The process being used is having issues in terms of yield and it was a rather disappointing update in terms of performance, at least from the Pro version point of view, where they appear to have severely nerfed it to push people to the Max version.

I'm no expert on semiconductor manufacturing but my understanding is the process node used for the M3 series SoCs was very expensive for what it yielded. One of the tech media sites I read speculated that Apple spent $1 billion taping out M3 silicon. In hindsight M3 is going to be regarded as some sort of stopgap stepping stone to the M4. Sure, M3 was faster than M2 but Apple paid dearly for that performance bump.

My guess is that Apple is fiscally motivated to move past M3 as quickly as possible and just leave it as a brief and unpleasant chapter. It's worth pointing out that they made no effort to release an M3 Ultra. Perhaps this was intentional from the beginning but in any case the future is clearly M4 for Macs.

warren21

Hoping for a new ATV. Looking to upgrade my first gen 4K.