Apple has so far been trailing in the generative AI race but the company is looking to catch up with a brand new lineup of Macs with artificial intelligence capabilities, powered by M4 chips. According to a new report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, this new chip will come in three main versions: Donan, Brava, and Hidra.
These chips will update Apple’s entire Mac lineup – a low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro, high-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros, iMac, and Mac minis – the whole lot. It will be a relatively quick refresh for the MacBook Pros when they land since the latest models only arrived last October. But the Mac mini was last upgraded in January 2023 so an update is due.
The M4 timeline
That said, if you’re expecting these new PCs to fly out of the assembly line over the next few weeks, you might want to tone your expectations down a notch. The M4 lineup of chips is only nearing production at this stage and it does usually take several months for companies like Apple to pile up enough stock.
According to Gurman’s sources, Apple is targeting a staggered release schedule for the updated Macs, commencing late this year and extending into early 2025. The initial wave will encompass new iMacs, a low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro, high-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros, and Mac minis – all powered by the M4 chips.
However, the rollout doesn’t stop there. Throughout 2025, Apple plans to introduce additional M4-equipped models, including updates to the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air by spring, the Mac Studio around mid-year, and the highly anticipated Mac Pro later in the year.
Three versions of M4
Moving on to the chip variants, the Donan is coming to the entry-level MacBook Pro, the new MacBook Airs and a low-end version of the Mac mini, while the Brava chips will run the high-end MacBook Pros and a pricier version of the Mac mini. For the Mac Studio, Apple is testing versions with both a still-unreleased M3-era chip and a variation of the M4 Brava processor.
The highest-end Apple desktop, the Mac Pro, is set to get the new Hidra chip. Apple is reportedly also exploring the possibility of allowing these highest-end Mac desktops to support up to a half-terabyte of memory. This would mark a significant improvement over the current Mac Studio and Mac Pro, which top out at 192 gigabytes – a far cry from the previous Intel-based Mac Pro’s capability to handle up to 1.5 terabytes of off-the-shelf memory.
Apple’s generative AI pursuit
Increased memory seems to be a theme for upcoming Apple devices. An older report speculated that the iPhone 16 series will offer more RAM or storage or both to enable on-device AI experiences, similar to the Pixel 8 Pro and the Galaxy S24 series.
Speaking of AI, June’s WWDC conference is likely to be all about new generative AI-powered experiences across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. Apple has been including what it likes to call the Neural Engine in its chipsets for several years now, so it’d be interesting to see if it has any additional hardware planned for the extremely resource-intensive generative AI technology – or if it’s simply going to beef up the NPU up. A large swathe of the upcoming genAI features are expected to run on-device so a hardware upgrade seems necessary.
Apple’s ARM architecture overhaul for its Mac lineup has been quite the jump from the previous x86-based Intel chips powering those devices. However, subsequent performance improvements have been marginal, hovering around the 30 percent mark. Maybe a generative AI boost is all the lineup needs to push stagnating sales.