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The next-gen Apple Macs with the M4 Pro chip are apparently underway. Now that the iPhone 16 launch event is over, Apple’s next focus is rumored to be its Mac event, which is expected to take place in the coming weeks.
While Apple isn’t forthcoming about revealing plans for the upcoming event, rumors suggest that the iPhone maker will upgrade some of the high-end MacBook Pro and Mac Mini ranges with the AI-focused M4 Pro chip.
The Apple Mac M4 Pro chip is expected to be similar to that featured in the iPad Pro but with a more powerful processor and graphics processing unit. The new chip will also bring many On-device AI features to the Macs.
Here is everything you need to know about Apple’s next-gen Mac M4 Pro chip, including the features, specs, and expected release date.
What is the Mac M4 Pro chip?
The Mac M4 Pro chip is a next-generation Apple silicon system-on-chip (SoC) expected to feature in some upcoming Apple high-end laptops.
According to a recent newsletter by Bloomberg’s Correspondent, Mark Gurman, the Apple Mac M4 Pro chip will power the upcoming high-end 14-inch MacBook Pro and the revamped, smaller Mac mini that Apple is rumored to release before the end of the year.
Mac M4 Pro Chip Release Date
The Mac M4 Pro chip’s release date is expected to be October 2024. Back in April this year, Gurman shared an Apple roadmap that shows that the M4 Pro chip will be updated in the higher-end MacBook Pros and Mac mini — and the new iPad 11th generation — between the end of 2024 and early 2025.
However, Gurman’s newsletter this September suggests that the Mac M4 Pro chip release date could be closer than expected, and can happen in a matter of weeks.
He stated in a tweet in late August that Apple will most certainly stick to the usual pattern and won’t make the announcement until the devices are ready to ship.
All these Mac M4 Pro chip rumors point towards an October launch, but we will have to wait to see an official announcement from Apple in the coming weeks.
There are also new iPads in the works, including an upgraded mini. They’re on deck for Apple’s October event alongside the M4 Macs. https://t.co/F0iRgsxMOS
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) September 6, 2024
Mac M4 Pro Chip Features
Artificial intelligence is undoubtedly the point of attraction in today’s product releases, and Apple isn’t indifferent about using AI to enhance the capability of its devices.
The M4 Pro chip, unlike its predecessor, the M3 Pro, is expected to bring many on-device AI features to the Mac line. Aside from having more CPU and GPU cores, the Mac M4 Pro chip is touted as more efficient than the standard M4 chip in the iPad Pro, which Apple boldly claimed can outperform any chip in an AI PC today.
While the M4 chip features a new display engine that offers better precision, color accuracy, and brightness uniformity in the iPad Pro, the Mac M4 Pro chip, is expected to be more advanced, courtesy of more transistors and GPU cores.
As such, the new chip is likely to deliver faster performance for Mac users on more graphics-intensive tasks. The new chip could also make it easy to run multiple resource-heavy applications simultaneously on Mac without performance degradation.
Other features like hardware-accelerated mesh shading are also expected to be built into the Mac M4 Pro GPU, and this will deliver greater capability and efficiency in geometry processing to enable more visually complex scenes in games and graphics-intensive apps.
Even with its impressive neural processing power and workloads, the Mac M4 Pro chip design is expected to have little impact on the battery life and app memory.
Mac M4 Pro Chip Specs
CPU and GPU improvements for the Mac M4 Pro aren’t yet known, but Apple will want to open the door for advanced Apple Intelligence features which the company is leveraging to market their next product lines.
For context, the current M3 Pro chip has up to 12-core CPU and up to 18-core GPU, and any improvement on these parameters in the Mac M4 Pro will see the core numbers surpass those benchmarks.
The Mac M4 Pro chip transistors may also feature more than 40 billion transistors, up from the 37 billion we have in the Mac M3 Pro. These transistors, like in the standard M4 chip variant, may be built using a second-generation 3-nanometer technology that further advances the power efficiency of Apple silicon.
The NPU core of the Mac M4 Pro chip may likely remain 16-core, similar to what we have in the standard variant. This upgraded 16-core NPU is Apple’s most powerful Neural Engine, capable of up to 38 trillion operations per second (TOPS) — approximately 60x faster than the first Neural Engine in A11 Bionic.
Along with next-generation machine learning (ML) accelerators in the CPU, a high-performance GPU, and higher-bandwidth unified memory, the Neural Engine of the Mac M4 chip will be very powerful for AI tasks.
Mac M4 Pro vs Mac M4: Specs Comparison
While both products are yet to be released, here is how the chip components will likely compare in specifications.
| Features/Specs | Mac M4 | Mac M4 Pro (Expected)? |
|---|---|---|
| Transistor Count | 28 billion transistors | May feature more than 40 billion transistors |
| CPU | 10-core CPU (up to four performance cores and six efficiency cores | May feature 11-core or 12-core CPU |
| GPU | 10-core GPU | Expected 14-core or 18-core GPU |
| Neural Engine? | 16-core neural engine – 38 trillion operations per second | 16-core neural engine – 38 trillion operations per second (expected) |
| Memory? | 120GB/sec bandwidth with 8 controllers | More than 153GB/sec bandwidth with 12 controllers (expected ) |
| Release Dates | October 2024 (expected) | October 2024 (expected) |
| Starting Price? | May start at $1,599 or over | May start at over $1,999 |
Mac M4 Pro Chip Price
The Mac M4 Pro chip is expected to have a price tag similar to that of the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M3 Pro chip, starting at $1,999.
Our prediction is based on the fact that Apple didn’t think it necessary to bump the price of the iPad Pro 2024, which was the first device to feature the standard M4 chip.
Nonetheless, final pricing for the Mac M4 Pro may be subject to adjustments, depending on the specific Apple Intelligence features it incorporates.
The Bottom Line
The Mac M4 Pro chip promises a major leap in AI functionality, and this will be good news for Apple fans who are AI advocates.
The rumored GPU and NPU improvements in the upcoming chip will make the processor a powerful internal component for the next-generation MacBook Pro. While there are no official details on the M4 Pro specs yet, we expect that the chip will be more efficient than the standard M4 chip. We will keep you abreast as new information on this powerful Mac M4 Pro chip trickles in.
