Apple has only just announced the launch of its M2-based 15-inch MacBook Air, but the company is already working on the machine’s successor. A 15-inch Air with an M3 processor is expected to launch sometime in 2024, according to the prolific leaker Mark Gurman.
In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, the Bloomberg reporter responded to speculation about the choice of processor in the new Air. The M2 chip, after all, is a year old, first appearing in the 13-inch Pro and Air laptops announced at WWDC 2022. It seems like a strange choice for the machine Apple described this month as “the world’s best 15-inch laptop.”
Realistically it was always possible that WWDC 2023 would come too soon for the M3, given that the M2 arrived more than 18 months after the M1. (Some pundits predicted that the cycle would become annual, like the iPhone, but that supposition was evidently wrong.) But there have been plenty of smaller advances since last summer, including Pro, Max, and most recently Ultra editions of the M2 chip. The new 15-inch MacBook Air doesn’t get access to any of these, not even as a build-to-order option, and it may start to seem less of a future-proofed option once 2024 rolls around.
Expectations are high for Apple silicon’s M3 generation. Whereas M2 was a cautious and incremental upgrade on the M1, M3 will reportedly adopt the 3-nanometer chip process (in contrast to the M1 and M2’s 5-nanometer process) and thereby unlock reduced power consumption and increased speed. It’s less clear when the next generation will launch; given that the mighty and infrequently updated Mac Pro has just been equipped with M2-gen silicon, our best guess is that the M3 is still about a year away.
The chip probably won’t land on the MacBook Air first, however. Gurman says Apple is working on an M3-based iMac and 13-inch MacBook Pro, and the former will launch early in 2024, he says.
The M2 15-inch MacBook Air is available for preorder now and begins shipping on Tuesday, June 13.
