New MacBook Pro models are in production, report claims

Developers at Apple Park met the new processors

Now you’ve got your iPhone on order and updated your existing kit to iOS 16, get ready for Apple’s next ride as the company gets ready for its much-anticipated October event. And Apple’s supply chain is already churning out new MacBook Pro models, according to the ever active Apple rumor machine.

The new Macs are coming, Digitimes claims

Digitimes tells us new MacBook Pros are rolling off the production line now, even as shipments of the company’s existing models decline a little. The publication also claims Apple will see some decline in shipments this year but will experience the smallest decline among all six of the biggest PC vendors.

In other words, while Apple is feeling some pain as the economic outlook continues to decay, it is feeling far less pain than competitors.

The report anticipates Apple will ship around the same number of Macs across the rest of the year as it shipped in 2021. If that’s true it may be worth noting Apple told us it shipped $10.8 billion value in Macs in the final quarter last year. It also tells us that while competitors saw shipment volumes fall by up to 50% YoY, Apple is still “pulling in orders”. Its suppliers, meanwhile, are seeing the benefit of deferred orders as COVID restrictions are relaxed in some markets and production capacity catches up with demand.

What’s coming down the line?

We’re expecting Apple to continue its shift to M2 family chips in the next MacBook Pro. At present there’s speculation this means the company will shift to M2 Pro and M2 Max chips for its 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros. These systems are likely to deliver even more bang for the buck, given the tremendous performance boost delivered by the M2 Mac mini and MacBook Air.

As expected, the M2 chip is a 5-nanometer chip, just like the M1. Apple’s silicon development teams have still managed to yield further optimizations in the processor, which brings an 18 percent faster CPU, 35 percent more powerful GPU, and 40 percent faster Neural Engine.

Apple’s silicon development wizards have also managed to find a way to give the chips 50 percent more memory bandwidth compared to M1, and up to 24GB of fast unified memory. And all of this is provided in processors that are even more energy efficient.

“M2 starts the second generation of M-series chips and goes beyond the remarkable features of M1,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies, announcing the first M2 systems earlier this year.

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