New MacBook Airs and Mac Pro may be on the way this Spring or Summer 2023

Mark Gurman, in this weeks’s Power On newsletter, states that Apple is planning to release three new Macs between late spring and summer. These three models are likely to be the 15-inch MacBook Air (codenamed J515), the Mac Pro with Apple’s own chips (J180), and the update to the 13-inch MacBook Air (J513). The main question is which processors will be in these new Macs. Gurman believes that the Mac Pro will have the M2 Ultra, which will offer up to 24 CPU cores, 76 graphics cores and the capacity to give the machine up to 192 gigabytes of memory. We also know that Apple has designed the next iMac on the same timeline as the M3 chip, suggesting it could be one of the first M3-based machines.

It is uncertain what chip will be in the new MacBook Air models. If those machines launch in a few months with the M2 chip, they will become outdated quickly from a CPU standpoint. Therefore, it is possible that Apple is getting ready for the new Airs to be M3 machines. The M2 chip was developed as a stopgap processor before the M3, which will be the first time Apple is transferring from 5-nanometer chip process technology to a 3-nanometer design for the Mac, bringing a major increase in performance and power efficiency. Last year, Apple introduced the first M2 chip at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June. If Apple follows last year’s schedule, it would make sense for the M3 chip and the new MacBook Air to be presented at WWDC 2023. The company could then follow up with the M3 iMac later in the year and M3 Pro and M3 Max-based MacBook Pros in 2024.