Apple
According to a report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is preparing a new batch of Macs to launch “between late spring and summer.”
The most important of the three would be a 15-inch MacBook Air, but a new Mac Pro refresh would complete the Mac’s transition from Intel’s CPUs and AMD’s GPUs to Apple Silicon, and a new 13-inch MacBook Air would also be in the pipeline. cards can sit. Apple is also said to be planning a new 24-inch iMac that could be the first of its Macs to use the next-generation M3 chip.
The 15-inch MacBook Air would be a new product category for Apple: a laptop with a larger screen that costs less than a MacBook Pro. Apple’s consumer-oriented laptops – from the old PowerPC iBook to the first Intel MacBooks to the current MacBook Air – all ranged between 11 and 13 inches. The 15- to 17-inch PowerBook and MacBook Pro models always required higher CPU and GPU power, which drove up the price; the cheapest MacBook Air starts at $999, while the cheapest 16-inch MacBook Pro costs $2,499.
There’s plenty of room in Apple’s lineup for a model in between these two extremes for people who want to fit more on the screen at once or who need text and graphics larger for easier viewing.
Gurman’s report contains few details about the new 13-inch MacBook Air beyond the fact that it exists. It could be a new model with an M3 chip, although the M2 model was just released in July and the gap between the M1 and M2 Air was closer to a year and a half. It could also be an M2-flavored update to the $999 MacBook Air with no notches, along the lines of the M2 version of the 13-inch MacBook Pro.
But Gurman seems more confident that the new iMac will include the M3, given that “Apple developed the next iMac on the same timeline as the M3 chip.” This new iMac is said to look similar to the current M1 model, from the 24-inch screen to the available color options, but “some of its internal components” will be “moved and redesigned.”
The new iMac is “in an advanced stage of development” and is likely to launch in the second half of 2023. Those still waiting for a replacement for the beloved 27-inch iMac will have to wait; Gurman has said Apple is still working on a larger iMac, but this report only mentions the 24-inch model.
As for the Mac Pro, there are no new details beyond the possible spring-to-summer release timeline. Apple has already missed the two-year transition deadline it set for Apple Silicon Macs in 2020, but plans for the new Mac Pro have reportedly shifted as development progresses. It was originally supposed to have a unique super-high-end Apple Silicon chip, but those plans were scrapped and Gurman says the version we’re likely to get will be based on an M2 Ultra, a follow-up to the M1 Ultra on the Mac Studio desktop.
While the new Mac Pro reportedly has room for user-upgradable storage, the tightly integrated design of Apple Silicon chips makes external graphics cards and expandable RAM much less likely. Apple could skip an M2 update for the Mac Studio to give the new Mac Pro a better raison d’être.