Much attention has been directed over the past few months at Apple’s latest range of Macs with M3 processors. MacBook Pro models with the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max appeared in fall 2023 alongside an M3 iMac, while the MacBook Air gained access to the new chips earlier this month. But Cupertino’s engineers are already thinking about the next generation of Apple silicon, and have reportedly begun formal development of the first M4 machines.
The news was dropped in a throwaway comment at the end of a Q&A session run by Bloomberg’s leaker-analyst Mark Gurman (via MacRumors). Most of the discussion centered on the recently abandoned Apple Car project and the company’s future plans for the automobile software space, but in the very last post before things were called to a halt Gurman wrote: “But maybe I will snap up an M4 MacBook Pro, which by the way, just started formal development.”
It must have been maddening for the Q&A participants to get an explosive nugget like that and not be able to follow up on it. What, for example, is the identity or at least reliability of Gurman’s source for this claim? What’s the timeframe for a release? Does this mean Apple won’t be releasing any more M3 machines? (The latter seems unlikely, given that we haven’t yet got a Mac mini, Mac Studio, or Mac Pro with M3 processors… but it’s always possible that one or more of them will skip a silicon generation.)
Unsurprisingly, given that it only just started “formal development,” we don’t know much about the M4 generation at this point. Last month, however, we covered a report suggesting the M4 and A18 processors will get enhanced AI capabilities. We’ve also heard that the M4 might use TSMC’s 2nm process, an improvement on the 3nm process used on current chips… although it’s more likely that this will be implemented on a later generation from 2026 onwards.
Apple’s usual cadence for chip generation releases is, as MacRumors notes, one generation every year and a half. The M1 was announced in fall 2020, the M2 in summer 2022, and the M3 in fall 2023. If that trend continues (and there is a theory that we’ll instead get something by the end of this year), we shouldn’t expect any M4 news until spring/summer 2025, which leaves plenty of time for more M3 Macs to roll out. For more information on those, check out our regularly updated new Mac mini and new Mac Studio superguides.
Author: David Price, Editor, Macworld
David has been writing about technology for well over two decades, and got on board the Apple hype train when covering the original iPhone launch in 2007. He is an enthusiastic Apple Watch evangelist and feels that the HomePod is misunderstood.