Apple is going to be holding an “exciting week of announcements” starting tomorrow, confirmed by Apple marketing exec Greg Joswiak. Although the announcements will focus on the first M4 Macs, rumors for several other Apple products are circulating. Today, we aim to clarify what you shouldn’t expect this week.
MacBook Air with M4
While the MacBook Air is one of Apple’s more popular Macs, it will not be jumping on the M4 bandwagon quite yet. Apple refreshed the MacBook Air with the M3 chip in March this year, and Apple expected to stick to that schedule again with M4.
So, unfortunately, we won’t be seeing Apple’s thinnest and lightest computer get their most efficient chipset until next March. That is, unless, you consider the iPad Pro to be a computer, in which case its had M4 for a while.
M4 Ultra Macs
While Apple’s high end computers with Ultra chipsets are still on the M2 family of chips, we still aren’t expecting them to jump to M4 quite yet, as nice as it would be. The Mac Studio and Mac Pro won’t be updated until later in 2025, after the new MacBook Airs, according to Mark Gurman from Bloomberg:
Mac Studio will receive the component between March and June. I expect a Mac Pro with the highest-end M4 offering to be released between June and fall of next year.
Entry-level iPad
Many anticipated a refresh for the iPad 11 this year, ideally with support for Apple Intelligence. However, delays happened, and now Apple likely won’t update its cheapest tablet until next spring.
Display analyst Ross Young and Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman both corroborated this, with Young stating that panel shipments will be starting this month, suggesting a spring release.
So, while 2024 was expected to be the year of Apple refreshing every iPad, given the fact that there were zero iPad refreshes in 2023, it does seem certain that the cheapest iPad won’t see a 2024 update.
Wrap up
Alongside all of the aforementioned products, you should also expect iPhone SE 4, iPad Air, AirTag 2, and Apple’s first ever smart home display to launch next spring. However, everyone expected those to launch in the spring from the start.
As a reminder, Apple plans to ship the M4 MacBook Pro, M4 Mac mini, and M4 iMac starting tomorrow. These announcements will also be accompanied by the launch of iOS 18.1 to the public, with the first Apple Intelligence features for iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, and iPhone 16 Pro users.
Are you excited for Apple’s exciting week of announcements, or are you waiting for the spring? Let us know in the comments.
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