Apple May Be Prepping M3 MacBook Air For Summer Launch
The ongoing year won't just be about iPhones serving fancy changes like a button-free design, periscope zoom camera, and a USB-C port that replaces the Lightning connector. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, 2023 will witness the launch of some remarkable new Mac machines powered by the upcoming M3 series processors.
The M3 silicon will reportedly be based on the 3nm process, a major leap compared to the M2 lineup built using the 5nm fabrication tech. Of course, just like its M1 and M2 predecessors, the M3 lineup will also include multiple variants that could serve as many as 40 compute cores with massive upgrades in performance and efficiency.
Among the first wave of Macs expected to come armed with an M3-series processor is the iMac refresh. Expected to debut in the second half of 2023, the upcoming Apple desktop will reportedly hawk the same design and 24-inch screen size as its predecessor but will have some internal re-arrangement inside the chassis.
A whole lot of M3 fun
Bloomberg's report also mentions that "Apple is scheduled to launch about three new Macs between late spring and summer." The most notable product among them will be a 15-inch version of the MacBook Air, which is expected to sit above the current-gen 13.3-inch MacBook Air, both in terms of size and asking price — assuming the rumors and reports prove true, of course. Reportedly carrying the internal codename J515, it is somewhat unclear whether this laptop will offer an M2 or M3 series chip, but it would ultimately depend on the launch window in 2023.
What seems certain is that Apple also is planning a minor refresh for the 13.3-inch model, which is expected to embrace the M3 series silicon. An OLED iPad Pro with the M3 silicon is also reportedly lined up for 2024, while Pro and Max variants will be powering the updated 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro trims next year if the leaks are accurate.
Finally, we have the highly anticipated Mac Pro successor allegedly slated for a 2023 debut, which is going to finish Apple's transition away from Intel to its own ARM chips. The upcoming Mac Pro will draw power from the M2 Ultra processor, which is rumored to come crammed with up to 24 CPU cores, 76 GPU cores, and the bandwidth for up to 192 GB of unified memory.