Apple reportedly prioritizing M4 MacBook Air production for early 2025 launch – new Mac Studio could take a backseat

(Image credit: Apple)

Apple’s highly anticipated M4 MacBook Air models are rumored to be in production for launch in 2025, with the brand’s M4 Mac Studio reportedly now being pushed back and becoming a secondary focus.

This rumor comes from well-known Apple hardware leaker Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, months after Apple’s reveal of the brand-new M4 chip, which delivers a dramatic jump in performance across multiple devices – the original announcement showcased the power of the new chip, which we further discuss in our M4 iPad Pro review, improving on the M3’s 10-core GPU and introducing a new CPU with 10 cores.

The new leak suggests that the M4 chip could be present within upcoming new Mac mini and Mac Studio models, but the MacBook Air may be the sole focus for now going into 2025. Apple reportedly has no plans to change the design of the MacBook Air models, with the M4 chip being the primary upgrade.

So what’s the schedule?

As reported by Gurman, Apple had originally planned to work on the enhanced Mac Studio alongside the aforementioned M4 MacBook Air in early 2025. This schedule has apparently now changed to a period between March and June next year – if Gurman is correct, this would be after the expected launch of the MacBook Air M4 models.

Considering the dropping sales of Mac devices, it’s no surprise to see Apple stepping up production of updated MacBook Air models for early next year – if the M4 iPad Pro is anything to go by, then anyone getting their hands on the upcoming laptops should expect substantial performance improvements over the M3 MacBook Air.

The unannounced M4 MacBook Pro is also expected to be unveiled at some point, with a potential reveal in the coming days – though this is only based on different leaks from Gurman. We expect Apple to also reveal new M4 Max chips alongside the upcoming MacBook Pro models, which we anticipate will offer a significant improvement over the M3 Max.

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Isaiah is a Staff Writer for the Computing channel at TechRadar. He's spent over two years writing about all things tech, specifically games on PC, consoles, and handhelds. He started off at GameRant in 2022 after graduating from Birmingham City University in the same year, before writing at PC Guide which included work on deals articles, reviews, and news on PC products such as GPUs, CPUs, monitors, and more. He spends most of his time finding out about the exciting new features of upcoming GPUs, and is passionate about new game releases on PC, hoping that the ports aren't a complete mess.