For the first time in a decade, Apple is set to upgrade its entire Mac Lineup with a single-generation chip – the M4.
Even though the M1 chip was released four years ago, Apple did not at that time, or since then, attempt to upgrade the entire Mac lineup with the latest generation of its chip.
For example, when Apple introduced the M1, it left out the Mac Pro, and when the M2 was released, it skipped the iMac.
Last week, Apple introduced the first Macs with M4: MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac mini.
Noteworthy upgrades include more Thunderbolt ports, nano-texture display options, and Center Stage camera upgrades.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has suggested that by mid-2025, Apple will add the M4 chip to the MacBook Air, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro.
The M4 chip promises significant performance upgrades. In the MacBook Pro, the M4 chip reportedly runs 1.8 times faster than the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro in gigapixel photo editing and 3.4 times faster in rendering complex scenes in Blender. It also includes a 16-core Neural Engine, which operates three times faster than the M1.
The more powerful M4 Pro chip meanwhile reportedly delivers a big boost in both single-core and multi-core performance. The Mac mini with the M4 Pro is now the fastest desktop Mac Apple has, surpassing even the M2 Ultra in CPU power.
Apple’s push to revamp its Mac lineup comes as a new generation of Copilot+ PCs began to reach retailers earlier this year.
A report by Canalys last month indicated that Macs have experienced a significant 17.5 per cent drop in worldwide annual growth over the past quarter.
Canalys says that sales of Macs dropped to 5.1 million units in the third quarter of 2024, compared to 6.2 million units the same quarter from the same period last year, which therefore resulted in a 1.8 per cent drop in its PC market share.
Apple is therefore believed to hold a 7.7 per cent market share within the third quarter of this year, and is at the bottom of the five top PC brands.
That list is led by Lenovo which had a 24.8 per cent share, followed by HP (20.4 per cent), Dell (14.8 per cent) and Asus (8.3 per cent).
