M4 MacBook Air could launch sooner than expected

After display analyst Ross Young published a post on X saying Apple suppliers would start shipping the panels for the new M4 MacBook Air and the low-cost iPad 11 in October, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman now reports that Apple plans to release the new MacBook models sooner than expected.

While the journalist originally predicted the M4 MacBook Air models would launch around WWDC 2025, he now claims Apple will introduce the new models in the first quarter of next year. If that's the case, the company could be preparing a spring event with several announcements, including these Macs, an entry-level iPad 11, the long-rumored iPhone SE 4, and even the second-generation AirTag.

Apple first introduced the M4 chip in May with the new iPad Pro. While the company is expected to host an October event for new Macs and iPads, it seems the Cupertino company will focus on the M4 MacBook Pro (with M4 Pro and M4 Max variants), the M4 Mac mini (with M4 and M4 Pro options), a new iMac, and a refreshed iPad mini.

According to Apple, the M4 chip has a powerful new CPU with 4 performance cores, 6 efficiency cores, next-gen ML generators, and up to 50% faster CPU compared to the M2. With a 10-core GPU, it offers Dynamic Caching and hardware ray tracing. M4 can deliver the same performance as the M2 with just half the power. The Neural Engine comes with a 16-core design, running up to 38 trillion operations per second. It’s 60x faster than Apple’s first Neural Engine.

The M4 Pro and M4 Max variants should be even more powerful than that. An M4 Ultra is expected to launch later next year with new iterations of the Mac Studio and, possibly, the Mac Pro.

BGR will let you know once we learn more about Apple's plans.

The post M4 MacBook Air could launch sooner than expected appeared first on BGR.

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M4 MacBook Air could launch sooner than expected originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 19 Sep 2024 at 16:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.