Samuel Axon
For months, there have been rumors that Apple would launch new, M2-based Macs—specifically MacBook Pro and Mac mini models with new M2 Pro or M2 Max chips—sometime before the end of this year. But now two usually reliable insiders and Apple CEO Tim Cook are signaling that those new computers will arrive sometime in early March instead.
During a recent call with investors last week, Cook began a sentence with “as we approach the holiday season, with our product lineup set,” suggesting that there will be no new hardware announcements from Apple in 2022.
Further, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo tweeted several weeks back that he expects the new MacBook Pro models in early 2023.
Following Cook’s investor call, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman stated in his weekly newsletter on Sunday that the new Macs will likely arrive in early March.
Gurman wrote that Apple plans to time the launch of the new hardware closely with the release of macOS Ventura 13.3 and iOS 16.3, which is expected sometime in February or March. He also predicted that iOS 16.2 would hit sometime this December. As for the Mac hardware, Gurman claims that the new laptops won’t have a new design or major new features that distinguish them from 2021’s 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros, but they will include Apple’s next-generation Pro and Max chips, the M2 Pro and M2 Max.
He says the M2 Max will have 12 CPU cores and 38 GPU cores, up from 10 and 32, respectively, in the M1 Max seen in the last MacBook Pro update, which came in late 2021. Apple introduced the lower-end sibling to the M2 Max, the M2, earlier this year in the latest MacBook Air redesign and in a mysteriously still-around 13-inch MacBook Pro. The M2 has since made its way into the iPad Pro, with more products likely to come.
