The M2 processor is certainly impressive, as we talked about in our recent review of the MacBook Air, but there’s more powerful Apple silicon on the horizon. In Bloomberg’s Power On newsletter, originally published by 9to5Mac, Mark Gurman writes that Apple plans to launch new MacBook Pros equipped with M2 Pro and M2 Max as early as this fall.
In April, Gurman initially warned us of the M2 Pro and M2 Max when he reported that the company was preparing its next-generation M2 chips and testing “at least nine different Macs with four different versions of the processor.” This time, according to Gurman, 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros with high-powered M2 chips will arrive earlier than expected, sometime between this fall of 2022 and next spring of 2023.
Gurman also hinted that the overall design of the MacBook Pro equipped with the new processors would likely “stay about the same” as last year’s update.
New MacBooks with supercharged M2 chips could be marketed differently to M1 devices, which are still available for purchase and continue to be praised as good performance for everyday tasks. Gurman says the focus of M2 chips will be primarily “on the graphics side,” which is a strategy similar to the normal M2 processor. As we pointed out in our review of the hardware-equipped 13-inch MacBook Pro, the M2 has (optional) two additional GPU cores compared to the normal M1, plus a faster neural engine. Apple also claims that the M2 has 18% faster CPU performance and 35% faster GPU speeds. This is just the usual version of the chip: it will be interesting to see the scores of the M2 Pro and M2 Max processors.
While Gurman tells us to look to the fall of 2022, the “internal expectation” extends into the spring of 2023 to accommodate any supply chain shortages. In the bulletin, Gurman admits that “it’s hard to predict exactly when they’ll hit store shelves.” But if you’re saving your money for a more powerful MacBook Pro, maybe waiting a bit will be worth it in this case.