Updated July 4th: article originally posted July 1st.
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 MacBook Pro, but the delay to these new laptops.
Update: Sunday July 2nd: While production on the next Apple Silicon chip is cited as the reason for the delay, it may have an unintended joys consequence. Apple is working hard to push its mixed reality system to developers and consumers. Part of that will be bringing elements of the various operating systems closer together in hardware and software. This leads to a newly published Apple patent called “Visual Object Receptacle”: Jack Purcher reports:
“While the patent figures look very outdated at this point in time, remember that this is a utility patent and not a design patent. So Apple’s patent figures simply convey the basic concepts of a 3D interface and not one that will be the end product. With Apple Vision Pro having been introduced, we’re now able to see Apple’s vision of a true 3D interface for a headset. Bringing some form of it to a future version of macOS could very well materialize in the future, hence Apple’s update.”
No doubt there will be more innovations added to macOS as Apple releases the Vision Pro headset, which has been announced as being early in 2024. There’s a good chance that this goes alongside new Mac hardware. A touchscreen is expected in the near future, but more hardware to work alongside realityOS cannot be discounted. In this case, the delayed release may be of benefit if you decide to wait for the new hardware to arrive rather than pick up the current generation at any point during 2023.
Update: Tuesday July 4th: Curiously, Apple has quietly lifted one specification in the MacBook Air. Following the introduction of the 15-inch MacBook Air, eagle-eyed Apple fans spotted its support for Bluetooth 5.3. This offers faster and more reliable connections with peripherals and accessories, as well as being more energy efficient.
It turns out that, without fanfare, the 13-inch model has also picked up this upgrade. And if you’re wondering about the 13-inch MacBook Pro then keep wondering. Apple still lists its consumer-focused MacBook Pro with the older and slower standard.
Maybe the M3 model will benefit?
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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