Apple’s First M4 Macs Reportedly Arrive This Fall with Focus on AI

According to a leak, Apple will launch Macs with AI-focused M4 chips sometime this year.

Bloomberg sources claim the M4 will “highlight artificial intelligence” and come in three or more versions, much like the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max do today. The company also wants to show how they’ll tie into the next release of macOS.

The debut would largely mirror Apple’s M3 rollout last October. Apple’s first M4 Macs would include 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros, the iMac, as well as the Mac mini (which hasn’t been updated since 2022). MacBook Air, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro refreshes would appear throughout 2025.

The M4 generation may be particularly important for Mac Pro users,?Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman said. Apple is reportedly eager to “beef up” the workstation criticism about the M2 Max and Ultra chips’ limitations, including a maximum 192GB of RAM. The company may support up to 512GB of memory that would be a boon for audiovisual editing and similarly intensive tasks.

Apple is expected to use an updated 3-nanometer manufacturing process for M4. Given the AI focus, it’s also poised to offer a greatly improved Neural Engine with more cores.

The details aren’t official, and Gurman cautioned that Apple’s plans might change. The company doesn’t usually comment on rumors or speculation.

However, they come as Apple is devoting much more attention to AI amid an industry boom. Apple introduced the MacBook Air M3 in March as the “best consumer laptop for AI,” and Senior VP of Marketing Greg Joswiak has teased that the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will preview many AI-related software features.

Mark your calendars for #WWDC24, June 10-14. It’s going to be Absolutely Incredible! pic.twitter.com/YIln5972ZD

— Greg Joswiak (@gregjoz) March 26, 2024

Apple is also dealing with accusations that it has been slow to embrace AI compared to other tech heavyweights. Microsoft was quick to adopt generative AI based on OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and is building Copilot into everything from Windows through to its Edge browser. Google has rapidly iterated on its own platform, following Bard with Gemini models (which may be used in iOS)that are useful across a range of devices and services.

The M4 and the next macOS release could potentially address this gap. They might not only enable more AI features, but provide a significant jump in performance for those technologies. That may be crucial when chips like Intel’s Core Ultra series and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite are speeding up AI on Windows-based PCs.