Apple M4 MacBook Pro, Mac mini, iMac Launch Details; iOS 18.2 ChatGPT Testing

Apple kicks off a Mac overhaul this week that centers on new M4 chips. Also: a low-end iPad is slated for next year; the company shows growing interest in glucose tracking; iOS 18.2 software with AI upgrades goes into testing; and Apple makes headway on a home device.

Last week in Power On: Apple’s latest iPad mini highlights the company’s secret artificial intelligence advantage.

Four years ago, Apple Inc.’s Mac got one of the biggest overhauls in its history: a move from Intel Corp. chips to in-house processors. Now it’s time for another seismic shift. Starting this week, the company will begin adding the M4 processor to the Mac lineup, helping set the stage for Apple’s artificial intelligence era.

First introduced as part of the iPad Pro in May, the M4 chip will be a significant leap for the Mac, particularly for handling AI tasks and gaming. The central processing unit will see a jump in core counts compared with the M3 family. And, as iPad Pro users can attest, the M4 chip should bring a dramatic improvement in day-to-day use from older models.

This week, Apple will unveil a 24-inch iMac and two versions of a revamped Mac mini, as well as a new 16-inch MacBook Pro and both low- and high-end configurations of that laptop’s 14-inch model. The iMac will come with an entry-level M4, while the Mac mini will get versions with the base chip and the M4 Pro. The MacBook Pro, meanwhile, will sport higher-end M4 flavors.

For Apple Intelligence and other AI tasks, the chip’s Neural Engine will bring advantages to all three Macs. The Neural Engine in the M2 — which the Mac mini currently has — can process 15.8 trillion operations per second, or TOPS. The component in the M3 in the iMac and MacBook Pro can run up to 18 TOPS. The M4 will nearly double the capability in all of those Macs, reaching 38 TOPS.

The Mac mini also will get ray tracing for the first time, gaining a graphics technique that brings more realistic images. That should be a boon for gamers, especially if Apple ever gets the Mac’s gaming library into better shape. The Mac Studio and Mac Pro are also due to get similar capabilities next year, when they jump from the M2 to the M4.

In terms of overall CPU performance, the gains over M3 models should be noticeable but not stunning. If you’re coming from an M1 machine, however, the improvement could feel as significant as that first shift from Intel machines to Apple chips.

To get a sense of what’s coming, it helps to reflect on the M4 chips in the iPad Pro:

For at least the base-level MacBook Pro, it appears that Apple may skip that nine-core CPU configuration and only produce versions with the 10-core unit. For the first time, Apple is also likely to start shipping at least some low-end Macs with 16 gigabytes of memory at minimum. Apple Intelligence, coming on Monday, only requires 8 gigabytes, but it could use up to a few gigabytes at a time, which won’t leave much for other tasks.

While the high-end processors in the MacBook Pro will be the highlight of the launch, the Mac mini will be getting a rare makeover. The model will be smaller — approaching the size of an Apple TV set-top box — and will include two ports on the front (like the Mac Studio) and, at least on some versions, another three on the back. People familiar with the product believe it’s the most impressive Mac yet to use Apple’s in-house silicon because of the combination of its size and power.

The new Mac mini marks the first update to the product since the January 2023 refresh. With the MacBook Pro, Apple has set a pattern of updating it every fall. The initial high-end Apple silicon version launched in late 2021, and an early 2023 model was actually meant for the tail end of 2022. There was one in late 2023 and now another in fall 2024. I would imagine there will be an M5 version in the latter part of 2025.

As for the iMac, the new model will represent a bit of a strategy shift. After launching the M1 version in spring 2021, Apple didn’t touch the machine again until late 2023 — when it offered the M3 variant. Now it’s being refreshed again 12 months later. It appears the M4 chip is so important to Apple and its AI ambitions that it wants to bring the chip to its entire Mac line — the first time Apple has done an end-to-end overhaul since switching to homegrown processors.

As I reported this past week, the MacBook Air will get the base-level M4 chip between January and March, and the Mac Studio will receive the component between March and June. I expect a Mac Pro with the highest-end M4 offering to be released between June and fall of next year.

The manner by which Apple is rolling out the Macs is also interesting. Since the pandemic, Apple has debuted new products with a polished video presentation that amounts to a 30-minute to 2-hour advertisement. More recently, Apple started inviting its favorite members of the press to watch the video live at its headquarters.

Last October, the company aired the Mac launch video from a venue in New York City. Then in May, it showed the iPad launch video from its new offices in London. In all of those cases, Apple sent out invitations in advance.

This time, Apple is doing something a bit different. Early last week, it privately invited certain media members and creators to a venue in Los Angeles for hands-on briefings this coming Wednesday.

Last Thursday, after my reports of the imminent launch, Apple marketing chief Greg Joswiak confirmed the overhaul was coming. He said announcements would begin on Monday morning and last the week.

That means that Apple will probably introduce new Macs on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday — with the hands-on sessions beginning right after the final announcement. It’s an unusual strategy but not a first. The last time Apple announced products three days in a row was in 2019, when it launched an iPad mini and Air, a new iMac and updated AirPods in consecutive days.

New low-end iPad to join the revamped Apple tablet family next year. Less than a year ago, Apple’s iPad line was deep in a rut. Despite previously calling the product “the future of personal computing,” the company hadn’t updated the iPad in 1 ½ years — the longest drought in the tablet’s history. Things have seriously changed since then. The iPad Pro became Apple’s first device to get the M4 chip, the iPad Air now has a 13-inch screen option, and the mini version was updated to support Apple Intelligence.

Earlier this year, Apple also cut the price of its lowest-end iPad to $349. Now, I’m told that the company is deep in development of an 11th generation of that model. It will have roughly the same design as the current version from 2022, while getting a speed boost. This model is scheduled to be released around the same time as the new iPhone SE and iPad Air in the spring.

As for when to expect the next iPad Pro, the company has historically updated that device every 18 months or so. Given that the M5 chip is expected to arrive around the end of next year, it seems likely that the next iPad Pro won’t debut until late 2025 or the first half of 2026. I would count out there being other major changes, since the current design is only six months old.

Apple makes advances in effort to counter diabetes. Since around 2010, Apple has been working on a top-secret project to develop a noninvasive glucose monitor. The hope is to let diabetics get a sense of their blood sugar without pricking their skin — a revolution in the effort to combat that disease.

The company has made major advancements over the past couple of years and proved the feasibility of the technology internally. Still, it will likely be several years before a product is ready. The feature also will probably start by just telling users whether they might be prediabetic (a stage that can lead to diabetes), rather than providing an actual blood-sugar reading.

In the meantime, Apple is exploring other ways to help prevent Type 2 diabetes — the most common form of the disease. Earlier this year, the company secretly tested an app aimed at prediabetics that allowed people to log their food intake and connect to third-party blood-sugar monitors to get a sense of how certain meals affect their glucose levels.

Apple’s app was designed to encourage lifestyle changes to help keep blood-sugar levels down. The test was on employees, and the software will probably never launch publicly. But it will almost certainly inform the no-prick sensor project and end up — one day — as a feature in the Apple Health app.

The real Apple Intelligence begins beta testing. It’s been well established that the first version of Apple Intelligence, launching this week, won’t be groundbreaking. But iOS 18.2 — an update coming in December — is shaping up to be a more significant advance. The first beta test was released last week and it brings features like Genmoji (Apple’s AI-generator emoji), the Image Playground app and enhancements to Writing Tools. There also will be Visual Intelligence on the iPhone 16, letting the device glean information about your surrounding environment, and the long-awaited integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot.

So far, this upcoming release looks great and could be a game changer for how people perceive Apple Intelligence. The company is certainly still well behind its tech peers in AI and has to rely on a third-party chatbot rather than having its own system. But the integration with OpenAI and image-generation tools will finally give consumers the kind of modern AI services that they’ve been clamoring for.

One thing to note: The settings panel within Apple Intelligence for enabling ChatGPT support seems to suggest that a number of different chatbots will eventually be added. Google’s Gemini is expected to take one of those slots: Apple and that company have been hashing out a deal for months. And I’d expect more chatbots in the future. The big question is whether each of these options will require an individual agreement with Apple or if they’ll be available in the App Store.

In my tests, the ChatGPT integration worked quite well. It’s baked into the Siri digital assistant, including the text option Type to Siri (you invoke this by double tapping on the bottom of the device’s screen). But the real highlight is Image Playground. This lets you create custom images of people based on photos in your library. You also can draw on preset themes and type different ideas into the generator. This taps into Genmoji, a system for creating your own emoji in text messages and elsewhere.

If you’re wondering about the broader effort to overhaul Siri, you may have to wait. Apple has been working on features that let Siri use personal context to better handle requests and analyze what’s on a user’s screen. But this capability probably won’t come until iOS 18.4, which may not land until around March. That being said, iOS 18.2 is a positive step for Apple Intelligence and finally makes it seem, well, intelligent.

Apple’s upcoming home smart display will include old school iMac-like base. Apple is making progress developing its next entirely new product — a smart home screen — and it may be a little smaller than expected. The device will have a square display, I’m told, and be about the size of two iPhones side by side. The screen is positioned at an angle on a small base, making it reminiscent of the circular bottom of the iMac G4 from a couple of decades ago. It’s possible that the base will include speakers, essentially turning the device into a HomePod with a screen.

The small size fits with the idea that the product will be relatively cheap and easy to have in different rooms of the home. The device will run a new operating system that will include some iPad-like apps, including FaceTime, Notes and Calendar. It’s also meant to be well-suited to videos and photo slideshows. The device’s primary purpose, though, will be serving as a hub that can control various smart home accessories.

When it launches next year, the product will be the first of two smart displays to hit the market. A higher-end device will have a larger screen controlled via a robotic limb — a format designed for higher-end videoconferencing, media playback and smart home control. This more upscale product, likely to be priced closer to $1,000, probably won’t hit the market before 2026. As I wrote earlier this month, Apple is hoping these devices help it finally make a dent in the smart home market.

Oct. 31 — Apple set to report earnings. The company will deliver results for its September quarter at the end of this month, giving investors and analysts a sense of how the iPhone 16 is doing so far. Wall Street is expecting revenue of about $94.2 billion in the period, in line with Apple’s guidance during its previous earnings report. That represents a 5% increase from the year-earlier period. The quarter includes about a week or so of sales of the latest iPhones, Apple Watches and AirPods — so it’s an important picture of how the new products are selling.

(Answers to the below are shown in the subscriber-only version of this newsletter.)

Q: What do you make of the report that Apple is winding down production of the Vision Pro?Q: Who should upgrade to the new Macs?Q: What are your thoughts on the iPhone 16’s exclusive new Visual Intelligence feature?

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I’m on Signal at markgurman.01; Telegram at GurmanMark; or ProtonMail at [email protected].

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