That Apple is continuing to push its 13-inch MacBook Pro still surprises me. When Tim Cook and his team introduce the M3 chipset, the consumer-focused MacBook Pro will join the MacBook Air. The disappointment isn’t the continued presence of the M3 Pro, but the delay to these new laptops.
The Apple Silicon project was introduced with the M1 chipset in late 2020 (although it was previewed at that year’s WWDC). The M2 chipset was introduced eighteen months later at WWDC 2022, alongside the M2 MacBook Air and the inexplicable 13-inch MacBook Pro.
Wind the clock forward another eighteen months, and you get to late 2023 for the release of the M3 chipset. Given the chatter around an update to the smallest MacBook Pro, the numbers do match up, but that single data point is outweighed by countless more suggesting that, while the M3 chipset will debut on the MacBook Air and a consumer-focused MacBook Pro, these won’t be in any commercial products until early 2024.
Yet the numbers can be read another way, and given how risk-averse Apple can sometimes be with its releases, it feels more likely that the early 2024 date will be for the M3 chipset itself, which would delay the new Air and consumer Pro laptops into the bargain. And if you are going for early 2024, then surely you hold back the release of your new chipset to the moment you have the focus of all your developers, namely WWDC 2024?
Note that the then-unnamed Apple Silicon chipset and the move to ARM away from x86 was announced at WWDC 2020, and the M2 was announced at WWDC 2022… why not the M3 at WWDC 2024 alongside the new consumer laptops with the M3 chipset? After all, WWDC 2022 saw the M2 MacBook Air and M2 MacBook Pro.
That also gives the distinctive M2-powered MacBook Air 15-inch one year on the market before an M3 variant presumably demotes it. Any MacBook investment will be significant, and nobody wants their new laptop to be superseded within a few months of their purchase.
What that means is the holiday season at the end of the year will be dominated by the older M2 laptops, and a few months after, Apple will refresh the consumer laptop range of the macOS.
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