M4 Max chip leaked by Apple itself – CPU is likely to power new MacBook Pro laptops that are about to be revealed

An Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch 2023 sitting on a table
(Image credit: Future)

Apple’s week of Mac-related announcements should build to a crescendo today with the launch of the MacBook Pro M4, and these laptops will carry not just the vanilla M4 and M4 Pro chips, but also the M4 Max, according to a freshly spotted clue.

Developer Charlie Joseph posted on X to highlight the presence of an image asset showing the ‘M4 Max’ chip which was briefly on Apple’s website – as you might expect, it was quickly removed.

So, it looks like someone at Apple was a bit careless here, and Joseph managed to spot the asset that’d been sneaked up in the background, with well-known leaker Mark Gurman subsequently flagging this up.

It’s a strong clue that we are about to see the M4 Max, as noted, which is rumored to be offered with higher-end MacBook Pro models.


MacBook Pro 14 M3 Max (2023) being held in a hand

(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)

Analysis: Another strong hope – unified RAM loadouts

What else can we say about the incoming MacBook Pro M4, aside from the likelihood it will offer options on the base M4 chip, plus M4 Pro (already seen in the Mac mini, revealed yesterday) and M4 Max (which will be new and exclusive to the Pro laptops)? Well, we’d be amazed if Apple didn’t equip the new MacBook Pro 14-inch with 16GB of RAM at the entry-level (as is already the case with the 16-inch flavor).

That’s because both the iMac M4 (which was revealed first this week, on Monday) and Mac mini M4 have 16GB of Unified Memory at the very minimum, so it would be a ridiculous decision not to equip a laptop aimed at professional users with this amount of RAM (as previously rumored). Especially as it seems to be necessary for Apple Intelligence, the new AI abilities that the M4 is designed around (partly, anyway, with a much peppier NPU on board this time around).

While Apple Intelligence can run with 8GB of RAM (as seen on the iPad Pro), this isn’t ideal, and it may leave you lean for memory when running multiple apps on a Mac – particularly in the future, as AI functionality is doubtless developed further by Apple.

Via Wccftech

You might also like

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).