MacBook Pro rumored to get Apple Silicon M5 before iPad Pro
When consumers will see the debut of M5-based devices from Apple is coming into focus, and the shift will likely start with Apple's MacBook Pro lineup.
The next MacBook Air could be the first model to sport an M5 processor.
A new report from Bloomberg suggests that Apple will start releasing Macs with the M5 processor beginning in the fall of 2025. Ahead of that, the company is expected to launch M4-based MacBook Air models as soon as March, followed by M4 updates to the Mac Studio and Mac Pro.
Those latter products seem likely to be announced around the time of Apple's WWDC event in June. Following that event, the transition to the M5 chip will likely begin in the fall.
Also according to the report, the M5 will come to new MacBook Pro models expected in the fall of 2025. The last two MacBook Pro updates have been in the October and November timeframe, so the timing works out.
The M5 is expected to come to the iPad Pro sometime in late 2025 or early 2026.
Other Mac models are likely receive the M5 updates as part of their normal release cycles. This would make the Mac mini and iMac possible to see M5 upgrades before the end of 2025.
The Mac-first emphasis marks a change from the way the M4 cycle was handled, with that chip first debuting in the iPad Pro before coming to the Mac lineup. The M5 is also likely to power the next revision of the Apple Vision Pro.
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Comments
So, either we will have M4 Ultra as a monolithic die or we may have M5 with interconnects which in that case, it may be later than we hope for.
I am hopeful that Apple has redesigned the Ultra, Mac Pro and added a possible new Mac server to go into future for the next five or six years. I hope that is the reason for the delay the possibilities with AI is only going to accelerate, particularly at the desktop local level.
Not sure why people think the Ultra variant is so important as far as release schedule? The Ultra variant will always be the last and be released much later than all the others. They are extremely expensive in cost and are used in the lowest volume systems. Production runs are usually limited when it comes to new processes. Using those limited runs to produce an SoC that takes much more space on a platter and can possibly have many more defects early in production, before all the kinks can be worked out, is a waste of time and money.
CPU core count will top out at 24, which 8 more performance cores than the Max, while the GPU core count could reach as high as 96, which is more than double the Max. This would bring the Ultra more in line with top end of an x64/Nvidia combination.