Forget the new MacBook Airs – Apple might already be working on M4 MacBook Pros

MacBook Pro 14-inch (M3, 2023)
(Image credit: Future)

Following the recent release of more laptops with the M3 chip – new MacBook Air models as you’ve doubtless seen – we’ve heard that Apple has already started work on a MacBook with the M4 SoC.

This is the case according to regular leaker Mark Gurman, who made the revelation during a live blog Q&A on Bloomberg.

The session was mostly about the apparently canned Apple Car, but other topics were discussed, including a brief mention of the MacBook Pro M4, prompted by a question about what Gurman’s first Apple product was.

The reply to that – a blue iPod mini circa 2005 – was followed by some additional info, namely that Gurman now has a MacBook Pro 16-inch with M1 Max chip, and sees no reason to upgrade to the M3 Max.

Gurman then said: “But maybe I will snap up an M4 MacBook Pro, which by the way, just started formal development.”


Analysis: M4 for early 2025?

So, work is officially underway on the MacBook Pro M4 – and while this is all just rumor for the moment, Gurman is generally a pretty reliable source on all things Apple.

With roughly a year and a half between the M1, M2, and M3 getting launched, if we assume Apple will run with a similar gap when it comes to the M4, this new MacBook Pro should arrive in the first half of 2025 at some point.

Is it possible we could see a MacBook Pro M4 later this year? Some have certainly wondered about that, but with the formal development process only just having started, that seems very unlikely.

Apple will have something to pull out of the bag later this year, anyway – the M3 Ultra. The latest rumor is that this new even faster spin on the M3 could appear at WWDC in June 2024 (in a Mac Studio).

As mentioned at the outset, Apple just unleashed new MacBook Air 13-inch and 15-inch models with M3 silicon inside, and both are seriously impressive thin-and-light laptops. The M4 variant of this range is going to be further out still, of course.

Via Wccftech

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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).