Apple is said to be accelerating work on the next generation of Apple silicon chips that will bring dramatic AI performance enhancements to the Mac. The company’s upcoming M4 family of chips will usher in a revamp for the entire Mac lineup by the end of this year and throughout 2025, according to a new Bloomberg report.
The tentatively-named M4 chip is reportedly nearing mass production just a few months after Apple introduced the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips powering the current iMac, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro. The M4 family of chips will enable a big leap in on-device AI performance for the Mac and boost a jump in its memory capabilities which is crucial for AI models and processing.
Like its predecessors, the M4 chip will be available in at least three different configurations that likely represent the M4 Pro, M4 Max, and M4 Ultra. The M4 family will reach every available Mac model, including the Mac mini, Mac Pro, Mac Studio, iMac, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro.
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Apple first plans to update the iMac, Mac mini, and MacBook Pro towards the end of this year. The MacBook Air will receive the M4 chip by the spring of 2025, following an upgrade for the Mac Studio by summer, and a refresh to the Mac Pro by the end of 2025.
Apple plans to heavily tout the AI capabilities of the M4 series as a major selling point for the new chips and accompanying Mac models. The new chips will make use of the AI features Apple plans to announce with macOS 15 at WWDC 2024. The highest-end M4 chip could feature as much as 512 gigabytes of unified memory, more than twice the maximum 192 gigabytes capacity of the M2 Ultra.
The report adds that Apple is also planning a similar hardware boost for the AI capabilities of the iPhone 16’s chip. Those upgrades will help the iPhone 16 lineup take advantage of the rumored iOS 18 AI features, which are said to be a major focus of WWDC 2024 in June.
With iOS 18, AI features will span many areas of the highly-anticipated iOS upgrade, including Siri, Messages, Safari, Apple Music, Keynotes, and more. Most of these features will also make their way to macOS 15. Apple’s hardware AI push is seen as crucial for its planned AI features that will mostly run on-device. Apple is in talks with Google, OpenAI, and Baidu to use their infrastructure for more demanding AI tasks that will run server-side.
