Will the Vision Pro suck all the oxygen out of Apple’s upcoming HEDT offerings in 2024?
Between the Vision Pro launch and delayed chip upgrades, 2024 could be a quiet year for the Mac. Despite that, there are still a few reasons to be hopeful.
www.digitaltrends.com
That article has several weak=as-water insights there pretending to be thoughtful analysis. It is more click bait than forecasting.
" ... And speaking of the M3 Ultra, I wouldn’t be surprised if this also slips to next year, given how long it took for the M2 Ultra to launch after the M2. ..."
is basically rubbish. The Mx Ultra timing is very likely timed after the appearance of the Mx Max ; not the 'plain' Mx (which is a very substantively different die). If Apple is having 'Max-es' made then getting to 'Ultras' made isn't a huge leap. For example:
M1 Max ( in MPB 14/16" October 2021 ) ---> M1 Ultra ( in Mac Studio March 2022 ) about 4-5 months later.
M2 Max ( in MPB 14/16" Janurary 2023 ) --> M2 Ultra ( in MS and MP 2023 ) about 5-6 months later.
rumours about Mac Studio in June 2024 ... surprise , surprise , surprise about 8 months later (pretty close to 5-6 month range).
How that is indicative of a slide into 2025 is just all smoke. The pattern for the Ultra this time is likely going to be a bit slower than the other two, but mainly because there will probably be a ramp of M3 Pro and M3 dies going on at the same time. MBA will get an update ( in late Spring or so). [ pretty good chance iPad Pro goes M3 first since the iPads basically 'missed' all of 2023. ] And ditto for the Mini. Plus N3B wafers take longer to 'bake' . ( it is like driving a heavy loaded freight train or a super oil tanker ... takes a while to get going on new direction. ) .
How Apple shipped the M3 , M3 Pro , and M3 Max at about the same time should bust the myth that there 'has to be' some long, long , long delay to bigger packages. It is more a matter of timing of what Apple wants to do (and amount of 'excess' TSMC capacity available. Probably helped that Intel flaked on a relatively large amount of N3B consumption in 2023 .) than 'big packages always have to come a huge time later.'
Next up ... new Mac are doomed if don't get a OLED screen. That is just nonsense. Apple's track record is slowly adopting panel changes. ( gap years between Retina macbook books and new Mini-LED panels is quite long. ACD 30" sold for around 8 years . The Thunderbolt display sold for around 8 years. The 5K display ... sold for more than several years . etc. etc. )
The iMac Pro (big screen) isn't coming soon. Pretty good chance will never come. Apple has state they have shipped the large screen intel iMac replacement. It is the Studio. There are no good signs that Apple wants to ship a large screen iMac for many of the same reasons folks in Mac Pro forums ranted on how the Intel iMac Pro wasn't a good replacement for the Intel Mac Pro. Even the 24" iMac went almost 3 years without an update. The iMac is
NOT Apple's primary desktop product anymore. The laptops as 'good enough desktop' for most people is primary push (single cable docked to a larger USB-C monitor is a 'desktop' solution) . The Mini , Mini Pro , Studio are next up ( also docked to a larger screens of various price points). The iMac is now in the status the Intel Mini was for last decade or so before transition ( updated every 4-5 years as somewhat of a hobby product with a niche audience. )
If Apple thought they 'needed' an iMac Pro to soak up enough next gen XDR panels to make producing that component a worthy investment .. maybe a low volume iMac Pro comes back to iterate about at Display update pace. But the legacy affordable iMac 27" that folks keep clamoring for ... that is probably dead. Folks are doing clickbait stuff by loosely attaching the old product to these "new iMac Pro" stuff that Gurman seems to be addicted to. Especially if Apple can sell enough Studio Displays and XDRs to be respectively profitable.
If the Mac Pro gets a 'bigger than Ulra' option then a 4-6 gap between it and the studio wouldn't be surprising any more than the Max -> Ultra gap is. Wait for the demand bubble for the common share subcomponent subside and than allocative more of the chip volume to the larger package that uses more of the subcomponent. The chip volume isn't going down ... just to which products the chips are allocated to. ( same way iPad Pro is going to consume M3's later. )
Even if it doesn't have a 'larger SoC' option it depends upon the avaialable flow of M3 Ulra Packages available. The closer to May-October window get limited TSMC fab capacity could get allocated to iPhone SoCs is sharing the same production line. If the Mac Studio can consume all of the desktop Mac/Ultra allocation then Apple would delay the Mac Pro ( as likely smaller volume option).
Churning the Mx Ultra Chip packages on a yearly basis pretty likely doesn't make any economic sense at all. There are really no "hand me down" targets with substantive volume for the Ultra sized package to go into. Bigger packages have even higher R&D overhead to recoup through return on investment. Very big package GPU dies are not killed off yearly. Even smaller Mac Studio Ultra + MP Ultra volumes make even less sense to kill off on a yearly basis.
Long term the Mac Pro is pretty likely going to get onto a M-odd or M-even pattern. For example M2-gen , M4-gen , M6-gen. Of the M2 was a quirk and it is M3-gen , M5-gen , M7-gen. That would put them on pace for 2-2.5 year iteration cycles. Given Apple's track record over the last couple of decades ( roughly 3 , 6 , and 4 years) would represent a substantive improvement. The exception for yearly is largely delusional. It is not who Apple 'is'. That is more iPhone sibling envy than anything grounded in reality. ( again good click bait ... boo hoo Macs aren't getting iPhone update rate ... )
" ... That roughly 15-month cadence means we could see another version with the M3 Ultra towards the end of 2024. ..."
Mac Studio 'end of 2024'. Probably not. Same reasons it wasn't 12 months that Apple replaced M2 Max with M3 Max in the laptops. Apple more likely going to use MP to soak up lingering M2 Max dies and probably move the Studio onto the M3-gen in June. Once the initial MBP Max demand bubble starts to subside Apple either has wafers (for another Max like sized consumption if there are 'desktop max' dies) or just plain Max dies laying around. Doesn't make sense to delay shipping those anymore than to build enough inventory to mostly cover another launch demand bubble. [ the M3 MBP 14/16" have not seen any of the large backlog shipping delays that the M1 generation saw. Very little indication that Apple is behind on Max die production at all. ]
Only thing pointing to end of 2024 would be if Apple ran out of access of N3B fab capacity allocation . Intel is reportedly on track to soak up N3B production in 2024. Apple is unlikely to have more capacity than they asked for in 2H 2024, but doubtful they will be getting 'under' what they asked for. All Apple has to do is stagger the induction of products that both use the Ultra to 'fit' whatever allocation they get. (e.g., can move Studio 'up' in year by moving 'Mac Pro' back. ) . Also pretty good chance there is some 'Next generation Apple GPU architecture' features that Apple is going to further re-enforce at WWDC 2024 that would be useful to demo on a "Ultra". If the Ultra is still just two Maxes 'glued' together, there is about
zero upside in delaying that since the Max is over 6 months old at that point.
" ... For example, the
Mac mini had to wait three years between its M1 and M2 versions, ..."
Nov 2020 M1 Mini
Jan 2023 M2 Mini
Not really 3 years. More like 26 months ( 2 years plus 2 months which is lots closer to ~2 than ~3 ). Just a little over two. Also several indications that Mini was suppose to be in November 2022 but slid ( a global pandemic causing delays .. .image that. ).
An again not particularly counting on when the plain M2 really shipped. July 2022. And also
grossly ignoring that the Mini picked up the M2 Pro ... which shipped in Jan 2023 ... so
not really delayed on that front at all. [ What was odd is why Apple waited so long to put a Mx Pro in the Mini chassis in the first place. ]. But the Mini is now coupled to the Mx Pro just as much as it is to the plain Mx. Both the plain and Pro M3 being out likely means that the Mini is pretty likely not going to suffer much more than a 6 month delay in getting out. Depends in part upon the scramble of other consumers of the two SoCs to settle down.
If the iPad Pro is going to soak up M3's in the spring and there is a MBA 13/15" M3 consumption in the Spring then the Mini could slide a bit over 6 months to June ( couple it to the Mac Studio). But > 2 years??? Likely not after the SoCs that it would be based on are already shipping.
Only a three Mac products got moved onto the M3 in 2023 ( iMac 24" , MBP 14" , MBP 16"). It is pretty likely that 2024 will see the rest ( i.e., the majority) of the line up moved to M3 gen variants . Which is activity. It may not be 'hype revolution' activity, but their are Mac updates. Apple's new GPU arch is substantively significant. These aren't 'nothing' updates.
The MBA has some quirks because the MBA 15" came out so late and Apple probably wants to sync that up with the MBA 13" for M3. So sometime 1H 2024 they'll likely do that. ( likely another pandemic hiccup that probably isn't worth projecting iteration rates into the future on. )
The Vision Pro isn't likely going to push Mac stuff off kilter in 2024 if the original, pre-pandemic plan was to roll VP out in 2023. The VP's M2 SoC doesn't really impeded the Mac at all ( which is transitioning to M3 generations this year). The R1 chip has had no material impact on getting revised M3 Pro which is more decoupled from M3 Max out the door in a timely fashion.
The R1 should impact the delusion of Apple running off and doing a Mac Pro only SoC. The M3 forked more off M3 Max and R1 and larger breadth of SoCs for other , far more higher volume products points to the threshold for "new die" being much higher than Mac Pro only run rates.
