It seems Apple’s M3 Mac lineup is almost complete, as the company might be planning to skip an M3 Mac mini in favor of a better M4 Mac mini coming later this year or early 2025. This comes after Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman reported that Apple is already producing the next M4 processors, as it aims to start updating its Macs later this year.
The journalist believes Cupertino might update all Mac models with the M4 chip, including the iMac and the Mac Pro. With a small timeframe between the release of new M3 Macs and M4 models, Gurman said in his latest Power On newsletter that there is no “room for M3 models to come out before then, so it’s probably safe to say that those Mac desktops will skip the M3 generation.”
While Apple released improved M2 Mac mini models with an M2 Pro variation with extra Thunderbolt 4 ports and HDMI 2.1, it makes sense if the company waits a little longer to release a new version of the company’s most budget Mac.
For example, with the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models, Apple isn’t comparing the M3 chip with its predecessor but with the M1 processor and the last Intel chips that powered Apple devices almost half a decade ago.
With that, users might not find it compelling to update their Mac mini with the M3 chip, as its processing power would be similar to the M2 models. In addition, the M4 processor is reportedly focused on built-in AI features, which means this upgrade will likely be more expressive, as macOS 15 is said to bring several new artificial intelligence functions.
That said, it’s unclear if Apple plans to update the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro with M3 variants, as the last chip that needs to be introduced is a possible M3 Ultra processor focused on these desktops. Thankfully, it won’t take long until we discover Apple’s plans, as WWDC is just around the corner, and it was during the Worldwide Developer Conference that Apple unveiled these computers in the past couple of years.
