Why have a launch event when it’s possible to have a launch week? Apple has a new strategy to market its new products — have a week of announcements. Greg Joswiak’s Apple’s senior vice-president of worldwide marketing, said in a social media post: “Mac your calendars! We have an exciting week of announcements ahead, starting Monday morning.” Some of the new products are expected to have the M4 chip.

The M4 chip was first announced in May with the launch of the iPad Pro and updates include improvements to processing for artificial intelligence tasks, besides a bump up to CPU speed. The launches are coming close on the heels of new iPhones, Apple Watches and AirPods in September, besides the new iPad Mini earlier this month.

Apple has teased an "exciting week of announcements" for Mac starting next week

Next week, the general public should be getting a feel of Apple Intelligence, which will include Writing Tools for rewriting, proofreading, and summarising, plus a newly-designed Siri, new Photos app features such as Clean Up, and live transcriptions of phone calls and voice memos. Features like ChatGPT search integrations, Genmoji, Image Playground and Visual Intelligence will “roll out later this year and in the months following”.

Power of M4

Next on the agenda, according to Bloomberg, will be the iMac, MacBook Pro and Mac Mini. It will help if some of the devices come powered by the M4 chip because it’s efficient in running AI features, though the current set of Macs can also handle the tasks.

This time around, Apple has resorted to a staggered approach in launching M4 devices. Usually, we get to see Apple first releasing its latest chips in Mac computers but this year, it first appeared on the iPad Pro in May. It makes one ask the question (again): “What is a computer?”

We already have a feel of what the M4 can deliver, thanks to the iPad Pro. On that particular device, the M4 chip comes with a 10-core CPU and a 10-GPU (up from the 8-core CPU in the M3 chip), which helps to give it a bit more power in all sorts of workloads. There is a significant improvement over Apple’s previous iPad Pros and, of course, other tablets. The reason for the success can well be the second-generation 3nm process used to manufacture the chip, which Apple says is more efficient than its previous efforts. The M4 also contains an updated Neural Engine that can perform up to 38 trillion operations per second (TOPS). And that makes it more powerful than any neural processing unit in any AI PC.

There have been reports of the base version of the M4 chip coming with the iMac, a low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro and the entry-level Mac Mini. A higher-end, Pro variant will be included in a more premium version of the new Mini model. The more premium MacBook Pro may get higher-performing versions of the M4 chip as well.

How big an improvement are we talking about? A sizeable improvement. All we want is more memory in these laptops, thus making it even better at handling multitasking and demanding workflows.

In terms of design, the Mac Mini is expected to get a redesign, approaching the size of the Apple TV set-top box. Apple is also expected to refresh its Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad accessories, all coming with USB-C charging instead of the Lightning port.

The road beyond next week

Bloomberg has reported that Apple is nearing production of updated MacBook Airs with M4 chips for release early next year, a follow-up to the slew of new Macs that are coming next week.

The next MacBook Air models will reportedly look similar to the current design, launched in 2022, but will include the new M4 chip generation, says Mark Gurman. The report mentions that the device will come in 13-inch and 15-inch options.

That’s not all. We may get to see a new high-end Mac Studio, a desktop machine aimed at professionals. It will probably debut between March and June.

It appears that the Cupertino-based company is already planning the next iPhone, which will be thinner. There may also be a new home device with a small screen sometime next year. And did we mention a new iPhone SE?