Apple Mac Studio with M4 Ultra SoC Reportedly Delayed, MacBook Air Remains on Schedule

Apple’s M4-equipped MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and 24″ iMac lineups are set to debut next week. The M4 family of desktop-class SoCs, which will soon be joined by the M4 Pro and M4 Max, is likely to bring substantial performance improvements to the aforementioned Mac models. If the recently leaked benchmarks are anything to go by, the M4-powered lineup appears poised to outperform Intel’s “Lago Lunare” rather comfortably, while bringing the heat to AMD’s “Aureola della Strige” as well as Intel’s upcoming “Arrow Lake-H”-powered notebooks.

For those interested in the thin-and-light segment, the MacBook Air has always presented itself as a very decent option. According to recent reports by Mark Gurman, the M4-equipped MacBook Air is scheduled for launch sometime during January to March of 2025, with mass production set to start soon. The Mac Studio, which was supposedly slated to launch alongside the MacBook Air, is now delayed by a few months and will possibly see the light of day during the second quarter of 2025.

Although the passively cooled MacBook Air with the M4 SoC will not be as performant under sustained loads as its actively cooled “Pro” sibling, it should, tuttavia, feature a significant performance improvement compared to Intel’s Core Ultra 9 288V-powered systems. The Mac Studio, d'altronde, will be powered by the M4 Max and M4 Ultra SoCs, both of which are expected to be strong performers with impressive generational improvements, considering the standard M4’s Cinebench performance.

Interestingly, an M4-flavoured Mac Pro is also said to be in development, with a rumored launch date during the middle of 2025, right around the time for WWDC. This is quite plausible, considering that Apple generally prefers to unveil “Pro” Macs during its annual WWDC event. The M2 Ultra-powered Mac Pro was widely criticized for not being powerful enough, which may not be the case this time around. Rumor has it that Apple is hard at work to make the Mac Pro more powerful, thanks to a top-tier M4 SoC codenamed “Hidra” that may be marketed as the M4 Ultra, or perhaps even the M4 Extreme with even more CPU and GPU cores.