5 things to expect from Apple’s new M4 Macs announcement next week
Apple will unveil its new Macs during “an exciting week of announcements.”
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Apple will unveil its new Macs during “an exciting week of announcements.”
Apple will have some important news to share next week. On Monday, the company will officially release the first batch of Apple Intelligence features via iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and MacOS Sequpia 15.1 updates.
In addition, Apple is unveiling updated MacBooks across a few categories.
Apple Marketing Manager Greg Joswek said in a post on X that the company has “an exciting week of announcements ahead, starting on Monday morning.”
This means that Apple isn’t holding a separate event for the autumn Mac release and will instead probably announce all of the new devices via a press release, just as it did with the iPad mini.
We’ve already covered what we’re likely to see at Apple’s October event, and here is a recap with a list of the rumored devices and features.
M4, M4 Pro and M4 Max chips
Apple is expected to unveil 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros on Monday, while updated MacBook Airs are due to arrive at the beginning of next year.
The new Macs' most important update is Apple’s custom M4 chips, which will result in faster performance. The M4 debuted this year with the launch of the iPad Pro, though enhanced versions of the new chip, the M4 Pro and M4 Max, which will power mid-range and high-end Mac configurations, have not yet been released.
How fast will the M4 MacBooks be?
Earlier, Apple said that the M4 chip will be around 25% faster than the M3. Meanwhile, entries on Geekbench show that the Mac with a 10-core CPU earned a single-core score of 3864 and a multi-core score of 15288, a 26.7% and 30.6% improvement over the M3, respectively.
MacBook Pros with base 16GB of RAM
After launching M3 MacBooks with the base version of 8GB of RAM, Apple faced criticism for such a low configuration, especially considering the growing importance of RAM in handling AI applications.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company will finally launch a base-model Mac with 16GB of RAM.
It will be interesting to see whether this will result in a price increase.
One more Thunderbolt Port
One of the MacBook Pro models was already reviewed before the official launch. Surprisingly, the Russian YouTube channel Wylsacom posted a review of a new MacBook Pro that appears to be legitimate.
It revealed that the new MacBook Pro had three Thunderbolt ports compared to two in the previous models, confirming earlier speculations. One more change is that the new port is Thunderbolt 4, offering higher-speed data transfer and the ability to connect more external monitors than the previous one.
Redesigned Mac mini
Rumors suggest that one of Apple's announcements should focus on its most affordable Mac, the Mac mini, which hasn’t had a major revamp in years.
Apple’s Mac mini is likely to become the smallest computer in the company’s history and may be similar in size to Apple TV. It should also ditch the USB-A port and come with an additional USB-C port instead.
The redesigned Mac mini is expected to be powered by M4 chips, even though last year’s version featured M2 chips, as opposed to M3 chips in MacBook Pro models.
Refreshed iMac and accessories
The iMac is also expected to get a faster chip, and this appears to be the only major change. We may see some design tweaks or new color options, but the rest of the iMac specs will likely stay the same.
In addition, Apple is reportedly preparing refreshed accessories for iMacs: the Magic Mouse 2, Magic Trackpad 2, and several Magic Keyboards. The company is also trying to update devices with EU-compliant ports and accessories with USB-C ports instead of Lightning ports.