Hardware was noticeably absent at this year’s WWDC, but that does not mean Apple isn’t going to release new Macs. According to display analyst Ross Young, there are strong indications that M4 MacBook Pro models, in addition to new Mac Minis, will come out in Q4. Here’s what we know.
WWDC 2024 was all about AI – in disguise
Compared to Google, Meta, and Microsoft, Apple seems to have been taken by surprise by the surge of AI in recent years. While the company has sometimes just waited out trends and then introduced features with its own spin on them, it appears that the tidal wave that is generative AI completely blindsided them.
So, expectations were sky-high at WWDC 2024. Apple introduced iOS 18, macOS 16 (named Sequoia), and updates for the operating systems for Apple Watches, iPads, and their VR production, Apple Vision Pro. To many analysts’ surprise, Apple rarely mentioned AI, and when it did, they renamed it to Apple Intelligence.
In both iOS 18 and macOS 16, Apple Intelligence will bring features like text summaries, automated replies, image generation, and even text generation and research through GPT-4o, where Apple collaborates with OpenAI. Shortly before WWDC 2024, Apple introduced the new iPad Pro, both with an OLED display and their new line of CPUs, M4. That makes it very likely that we’ll soon see M4 MacBook Pro models!
M4 Macbook Pro – What we can expect
Having only recently updated its line of professional laptops to the latest generation of Apple Silicon CPUs M3, it was unlikely that Apple would introduce M4 MacBook Pro models at WWDC. But both Marc Gurman, analyst at Bloomberg and one of the most trusted sources on all things Apple leaks, and display analyst Ross Young believe that M4 MacBook Pro models will come this year.
While we only know about the M4 CPU in the latest iPad Pro, there is enough evidence from past generations to speculate on the upcoming models. Compared to M3, the base M4 model has nine CPU cores instead of eight CPU cores and ten GPU cores instead of eight GPU cores.
M4 MacBook Pro models are expected to arrive in 14-inch and 16-inch sizes, with M4 and M4 Pro CPUs in the former and M4 Pro and M4 Max CPUs in the latter. M4 Pro is likely to come with up to 14 CPU cores, depending on the Macbook model, while the M4 Max will likely bring up to 18 CPU cores. What’s most interesting for music producers, however, is the number of performance cores for each model. Furthermore, the maximum amount of RAM will likely increase to 48 GB for Pro and possibly 256 GB for M4 Max.
When will the M4 MacBook Pro models arrive?
While Gurman has already stated a while back that Apple will likely release M4 MacBook Pro and Mac Mini models this year, display analyst Ross Young recently issued a tweet for subscribers that narrows this down to Q4. Young claims that shipments of panels for both the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models are expected in early Q3 of 2024. Which would make a release in Q4, usually in October for new Apple products, very likely!
How Apple will include AI features in its news models remains to be seen. What’s much more important for music producers, however, besides the performance cores, is if the next version of macOS might finally be one that won’t break plugins. Because on this end, Apple’s recent track record isn’t the best.
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