Remember when I wrote the piece about why you should wait for the M2 Pro and M2 Max MacBook Pros? Well, Apple wants to put me in as awkward of a position as possible, as according to Digitimes, these have been “delayed once again.”
What’s going on?
It all started with claims from unnamed supply chain sources, which state that MacBook shipments will be down by nearly half in the first quarter of 2023. This is obviously the time when we were all expecting to see the new pro line systems drop, so any reductions of predictions here indicate that there’s trouble brewing. This already comes hot on the heels of what Apple’s CFO Luca Maestri called a “challenging year,” which would see “Mac revenue decline substantially..during the December quarter.” So, why is Apple shooting itself in the foot here? And when can we expect these delayed MacBook Pros to finally come out?
Outlook: when can we expect to buy one?
While there is no revised launch window provided in the report, it’s worth noting two things that may give us a rough idea. In late December, Apple’s chip supplier TSMC started working on 3-nanometer chipsets, and in its current 5-nanometer state, Gurman claimed the chips will only offer marginal performance gains. Could Apple be waiting a little longer for the new chips to make a bigger splash when compared to the powerful likes of 13th Gen Intel CPUs and the RTX 40 Series Laptop GPUs? Maybe. Typically, this turnaround process from production to launch has taken roughly 10 months in the past, but there have been outliers where Apple has really put the pedal to the metal and spun out innovations faster. So…maybe summer or (at the latest), early Q3? One can dream. However, this delay does mean an M1 Pro MacBook Pro is still a pretty worthwhile purchase for a bit longer!
