tenthousandthings

mjtomlin said:

9secondkox2 said:

Kinda feeling Apple will buck history here and update quite a few Mac’s this year to m4 status for multiple reasons:

a) it cleans up the generational mess over the last couple of years. 

b) it puts further distance between apple silicon and Qualcomm’s disingenuous comparisons. 

C) it allows for Apple Intelligence to shine on all Mac’s, showcasing Apple as the AI leader. 

Between a and b, apple gets seen as the place to go for top tier ai. 

D) M3 is/was expensive to fab.

Personally I think Apple will make the most of the M3 line until it becomes cost effective to ditch it. Sticking those SoC's in their highest selling systems; laptops and iMac is an indication that's what's going on here, especially after debuting the M4 in the latest iPad Pro. Any new Macs from this point forward will have the M4, and I think all of the aforementioned systems will be the last to get upgraded to it.

This year (after macOS Sequoia is released) we'll see the rest of the "low sales" systems get upgraded to the M4...

Mac mini M4/Pro
Mac Studio M4 Max/Ultra
Mac Pro M4 Ultra

Then next Spring/Summer, the others will get updated. (And with the debut of the iMac M4, we'll finally get back the larger iMac Pro M4 Pro/Max)

IMHO, this is missing one key factor, which is the possibility that, with the M3 generation, Apple has put the MacBook Pro onto a set cadence, with M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max configurations all launching at the same time. I think Apple wants to establish that expectation, much like the iPhone Pro. It may not always be annual like the iPhone Pro, but it will be consistent. MacBook Pro will get the Pro and the Max first, in every M generation. Apple has been working toward this throughout the transition, they've said several times that it was a goal (Anand Shimpi in particular, but also others), and I think M3 achieved that.

M4 will test this hypothesis. Like @mjtomlin, I think the Mini has been moved onto a continuum with the Studio and the Pro. The three headless Macs will all be updated together going forward. The Mini's special role in the transition as both the first Apple silicon Mac (the Developer Transition Kit) and the last Intel Mac (to be discontinued) is over and done with.

I share everyone's desire for every Mac to get M4. I think iMac and MacBook Air are both important. When they get redesigns, they will again lead the way, but refreshes will always wait until after the MacBook Pro.

The Mini/Studio/Pro timing depends on factors that are simply not known. I said this in the other recent thread, and it bears repeating. The M1/M2 Ultra is an engineering marvel. The TSMC advanced-packaging technology Apple used for UltraFusion was cutting edge. M1 Ultra was the first product to use chip-first InFO-LSI packaging, far ahead of anyone else (Nvidia is just now introducing it, in Blackwell via CoWoS-L, which incorporates InFO-LSI into chip-last packaging).

So, if Apple is still using InFO-LSI for M4 Ultra, then it could come this year. That would be really fun. But I don't think Apple will stand still. TSMC and its partners in the 3DFabric Alliance have been pouring money into advanced packaging, tens of billions of dollars over the past few years. Obviously, you can't fully develop the Ultra until the Max is finished. Even if they drop the link between the Max and the Ultra, and produce a dedicated SoC for UltraFusion 2.0, it's going to take time. I think March 2025 is the earliest we should expect it, but more likely WWDC.

CurtisHight said:

Chris_Pelham said:

Well, the M3 wouldn’t support iPad Pro’s new screen and they apparently had enough M4 chips ready so we got an M4 iPad Pro. As others have said, it may take them additional months to have enough M4’s to update all the other lines as well as to manufactures the M4 Pro, Max, and Ultra chips.  One other possible explanation for a delay could be that Apple wants to include Thunderbolt 5 in some or all of these models and bring out an updated Studio Display to take advantage.

While Apple does sometimes just update a particular spec, it seems like when they multiple advancements at hand, they like to roll them out all at once rather than piecemeal. I couldn’t really see Apple announcing M4 (but not M4 Pro, Max, and Ultra) desktops now and then 4-9 months later adding those faster chips along with Thunderbolt 5 and whatever else might be upgraded. Probably there is not that much demand for the base model Studios and Mac Pros? And the advancement of the M4 would not be much news if it is slower than the high-end M2s so who would upgrade to that rather than wait a few more months for the truly high-power models? I get that its frustrating to know that the M4 is out and yet we seemingly won’t be able to use it in a Mac for awhile, but we can also see it as, you know, Christmas came early for the iPad Pro, the glass is half full rather than half empty, and lots more goodies are coming soon!

I can’t judge a “delay”, but for my interest, intent, and investment, Thunderbolt 5 is primary. M4 is a step on the road toward this destination. (Somewhat similarly with the Vision Pro, with the current state of the technology, I am happy to offload the processing and power supply, and maybe EyeSight, too, but please sport the highest quality main display).

The conventional wisdom says it is too soon for Thunderbolt 5, but apparently there are two additional Thunderbolt controllers in M4 versus M3. That seems promising, but I don’t know if it has been substantiated, or what it might mean.

March 2025 will be exactly three years since the launch of the Mac Studio and the M1 Ultra.

The M3 family caters to Apple's most important macOS hardware (MacBook Air/Pro, also iMac), and it will get another moment in the sun when Sequoia shows it's as good or better than the A17 Pro with regard to Apple Intelligence.

M3 also stands as real-world evidence that Apple intends to keep the monolithic (base, Pro, Max) M-series silicon on pace with TSMC's logic roadmap, like the A-series, which means annual updates. We should be celebrating that.

M3 also proves Apple is not going to keep the Ultra on the same cadence. I think there is enough flexibility in the upcoming N3P -> N2 -> N2P -> A16 progression that Apple could use an 18-month average for the Ultra, rather than 24-month. So it will skip every third generation, not every other generation.

M4, then, will be the first step in the next step [!] for the Ultra. One thing that is poorly understood in general is just how cutting-edge UltraFusion was. M1 Ultra was the first product to use InFO-LSI (TSMC's answer to Intel's EMIB) advanced packaging, before Nvidia, before anyone. Like years ahead, not just months. But TSMC hasn't been standing still in the interim: 3DFabric has also been progressing. There will be announcements about this in September again this year. UltraFusion 2 could be on the horizon.

Apple isn't dragging its feet, as some of the comments above suggest. It's quite the opposite. They're pushing the envelope for both performance and efficiency.

Someone elsewhere referred to Gurman as “Mark Schrödinger” which is apt.

But yes, if there aren’t any rumors at this point then there isn’t anything coming. It’s too soon for the Studio and Pro, and too late for the Mini.

I think Apple will relax and let Qualcomm kill, once and for all, the idea that RAM should be replaceable after purchase (Dell is using the euphemism “integrated RAM,” LOL) in an efficient laptop. HP is charging $150 to double the RAM (16GB to 32GB, the only two options for the OmniBook) in the Qualcomm SoC. So now Apple’s approach to memory and upgrade pricing doesn’t seem quite so outrageous.

I think there are two main possibilities:

[1] The M3 Ultra was built and will go into the Studio and Pro at WWDC. The M4 launch was an anomaly created by a combination of need (tandem OLED) and opportunity (N3E).

[2] The M3 Ultra was not built. The M4 launch was not an anomaly, and M4 Pro on N3E will launch at WWDC in the Mac Mini. M4 Max and M4 Ultra will launch together in late 2024 or early 2025 on N3P.