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mikethebigo

macrumors 68020
May 25, 2009
2,391
1,494
I personally think yes, late this year we will see M4 devices announced. It is too expensive and wasteful for Apple to stay on the N3B process longer than they have to.
 
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chrismu

macrumors member
Dec 5, 2021
75
79
Obviously hard to say, but I think the plan is according to current rumors:

- M3 MacBook Air in March
- M3 Ultra Mac Studio either at WWDC (according to trendforce) or in the second half of 2024 (according to Mark Gurman)

If the M3 Ultra is not released at WWDC and instead pushed back to later this year, I don’t think we would get M4 MacBook Pro’s this year, if it is released at WWDC though, that would leave space for a MacBook Pro refresh in October or November.

So far, there has not been any regularity with Apple chip upgrades, so we really don’t know, I hope they don’t refresh the MacBook Pro yearly though and instead make bigger improvements every 18 months or so. What speaks against that is that we got yearly updates since 2021, if we assume M2 Pro/Max were planned for late 2022.
 
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throAU

macrumors G3
Feb 13, 2012
9,201
7,354
Perth, Western Australia
M3 is not a downgrade compared to M2.
"BUT ON PAPER THE MEMORY BANDWIDTH IS WORESSSSEE!!!!!111!"

As above, the M3 is not a downgrade. It's faster in almost everything and par in some things. Truth is the M1 Pro and M2 Pro machines probably have more bandwidth than they can reasonably use - the numbers just were what they were because 100GB/sec was not enough and 200GB/sec was the next step (at the time) with more memory channels.

Overall it is a massive upgrade if you consider the new faster GPU also has RT support.
 
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Fitzman

macrumors newbie
Nov 25, 2023
20
30
Yes, I believe the M4 will come out later this fall in 2024. There has been signs and talk about Apple getting back to a yearly cycle on most (not all) of their devices like they had been prior to 2020. To do this, they'd need to have their M-series of chips to be released on a yearly basis like the A-series for the Iphones. Every tech company releases most of their devices on a yearly basis as well so it makes perfect sense to me.
 
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Beau10

macrumors 65816
Apr 6, 2008
1,406
732
US based digital nomad
I'd put money on it being more likely than not. N3E is committed for iPhone 16 and Apple will like to want to get off the expensive N3B process ASAP.

It appears Apple is trying for annual MPB updates and likely the M2 was delayed due to 3nm production confusion while the M3 was course corrected to being back on schedule.
 

Faize

macrumors regular
Sep 23, 2011
113
27
"BUT ON PAPER THE MEMORY BANDWIDTH IS WORESSSSEE!!!!!111!"

As above, the M3 is not a downgrade. It's faster in almost everything and par in some things. Truth is the M1 Pro and M2 Pro machines probably have more bandwidth than they can reasonably use - the numbers just were what they were because 100GB/sec was not enough and 200GB/sec was the next step (at the time) with more memory channels.

Overall it is a massive upgrade if you consider the new faster GPU also has RT support.
It does make me wonder why Apple stuck with old LPDDR5-6400 for a third time/year though. Upgrading to LPDDR5X-7500 would've helped mitigate the reduction in bus width.
 

Kotsos81

macrumors member
Dec 26, 2023
40
31
I want to upgrade mine from 2014 intel based, but I heard m3 is a downgrade compared to m2 and I dont want to get an m2. I guess I should wait a few more months.
M3 is definitely an upgrade compared to M2 and a massive one in some aspects, no question about it.
 

Kotsos81

macrumors member
Dec 26, 2023
40
31
It does make me wonder why Apple stuck with old LPDDR5-6400 for a third time/year though. Upgrading to LPDDR5X-7500 would've helped mitigate the reduction in bus width.
I can only assume due to the higher cost, but that's just an assumption.
 
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UbuntuFu

macrumors 6502
Aug 16, 2007
282
196
I won't be surprised if the M4 Pro MBP is released in the first quarter of 2025. I have a silver base M1 Pro 16-inch but I'm not buying another MBP until there's a bigger update, like OLED display, FaceID or design change.
 

JPack

macrumors G5
Mar 27, 2017
13,544
26,169
Doubt it'll be 2024.

N3B may be expensive, but you know what's more expensive? Designing a chip for N3B, which costs around $1B. Sounds simple to just move to M4, but that's a lot of money. Apple needs to sell enough Macs and iPads to recover that $1B NRE cost first.

N3E uses very different design rules, so you can't just port over from N3B.
 

Closingracer

macrumors 601
Jul 13, 2010
4,317
1,849
I won't be surprised if the M4 Pro MBP is released in the first quarter of 2025. I have a silver base M1 Pro 16-inch but I'm not buying another MBP until there's a bigger update, like OLED display, FaceID or design change.
I actually jumped onto the Mini LED train because I heard rumors of OLED now with my M3 Pro MBP. I love OLED but with the OLED screens I checked out on the windows laptops I don't see any brighter than 500 nits. I find mini led great and if I really want to use OLED I can hook it up to my LG OLED monitor at home.
 
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