Apple has been releasing a slew of new Mac products recently, as the firm transitions away from Intel CPUs and toward its own Apple Silicon chips. After introducing MacBook notebooks powered by the M1 CPU a few years ago, it is now time for a revamp.
The Cupertino-based technology behemoth was said to have announced a new MacBook Air powered by the M2 processor at its March event a few days ago. That didn't happen, and there's now an update on when the gadget may become official.
According to the most recent reports, the new Apple MacBook Air has been delayed and will now be available in the second half of this year. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports in the Power On newsletter that Apple planned to introduce the new MacBook Air with "an all-new design, MagSafe, the M2 processor, and more" around the end of 2021 or early 2022, but that this deadline has now been pushed back to the second half of 2022.
Not only that, but he believes that the next 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro versions will be released next year, in 2023, and will be powered by the M2 Pro or M2 Max CPUs.
According to another rumour from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple might begin mass production of the new MacBook Air in the late second or early third quarter. This is consistent with the launch taking place in the second part of this year.
To summarise, the next 13-inch MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models are scheduled to arrive in H2 2022 and to go on sale soon after they are revealed. They are most likely to be powered by Apple Silicon's next-generation M2 chipset.
Along with the new MacBook models, the firm is likely to release a new Mac Mini powered by the M2 CPU. Given that the M1-powered Mac devices were initially announced in 2020 and new versions are expected to appear this year, this would imply that the company's Mac portfolio has a two-year upgrade cycle.
