M4-Powered MacBooks Are Likely Releasing Next Month

The fall season means it’s time for Apple to refresh its entire product lineup. Like every year, it introduced its new iPhone series in September, along with a pair of AirPods and a renewed Apple Watch series. Next month, in October, it’s rumored to unveil its MacBook lineup with the new M4 chip (seen on the latest iPad Pro) powering everything on the menu.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that the M4 Macbook overhaul will likely happen “in the coming weeks.” Looking at the past couple of years, this seems possible since October is usually the month Apple reserves for its Macbook releases. The new M4 series, including the M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chips, will power the upcoming slate of Mac hardware releases. These SoCs will be AI-focused and introduced along with a gamut of Apple Intelligence features, making this upgrade very AI-heavy. 

Gurman predicts a new budget 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro codenamed J604. Two higher-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro options (J614 and J616) are also hitting the shelves. These will purportedly sport the M4 Pro and M4 Max chips, becoming the lineup’s premium options. There will also be a new iMac (J623) with the M4 chip now powering it. 9to5Mac guesses a switch to Type-C for the iMac, too, as it’s still running on a Lightning cable, which the EU is not happy about.

The shrunken Mac Mini (J773) will likely see two new SoC variants, M4 and M4 Pro. If the Mac Mini update predictions are true, it will be an exciting leap since it completely skipped the M3 lineup and upgraded to an M2 Pro in its most recent January 2023 revamp.

You’d likely need to wait for the first quarter of 2025 for the MacBook Airs. Gurman predicts an M4 upgrade of the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Airs (J713 and J715) “by the spring.” The M4 releases are going to continue well into 2025, with the Mac Studio (J575) allegedly launching around the middle of the year and the Mac Pro (J704) coming out towards the end of the next year. According to 9to5Mac, these might be the first devices to debut the M4 Ultra chip and a low-end M4 Max variant for the Mac Studio.

We don’t have much intel on the iPad, but apparently, new, lower-end iPads will be released alongside the MacBook Pros next month. These will likely include an upgraded mini version.