Apple is moving to an iPhone-style release schedule for Macs, with new processor generations annually. That means M4 iMacs, Mac Minis and MacBook Pros later this year.
This is a busy time of year for Apple. We've got the iPhone 16 launch on 9 September, we've got the AirPods 4 expected to launch then or soon afterwards, and now Apple is apparently testing not one but four M4-powered Macs that it hopes to launch in October 2024.
As we reported earlier this year, Apple is moving to an iPhone-style release schedule for Macs with new processor generations coming annually. That means we can expect lots of Mac updates every Autumn, with launches occurring once the iPhone launch dust has settled.
That's not all. For the first time, the new Macs will reportedly come with 16GB of unified memory as the default. That's double the current 8GB and addresses one of the few criticisms of Apple's M-series Macs.
According to the report, which comes from Bloomberg, the machines being tested all have "base-level M4 chips" – so it doesn't look like we'll see Macs with the M4 Pro or Max variants just yet. But as we know from the iPad Pro M4, even the base M4s are screamingly fast.
What M4 Macs is Apple making?
The report says that Apple is planning to stick M4s into two of the MacBook Pros, most likely the 14 and 16 inch models, which isn't a surprise: the MacBook Pro always at the head of the queue when it comes to new Mac processors. But Apple is also planning to upgrade the Mac mini and the iMac at the same time.
According to Bloomberg, which has seen developers' logs detailing the machines being tested, three of the Macs have 10-core CPUs and 10-core GPUs; the fourth has eight of each, which isn't an M4 setup we've seen previously. All four will have either 16GB or 32GB of memory.
The lack of M4 Pro and M4 Max chips in the logs doesn't mean that Apple isn't making them. But it's possible that Apple plans to release the standard M4 Macs first and the even more powerful ones slightly later with even more cores and even more memory. Given that Apple called the M3s "scary fast", that means the next versions should be truly terrifying.
