Apple was previously reported to commence mass production of its M4 MacBook Pro lineup in the fourth quarter of this year, with a notable display analyst estimating that the mini-LED panels belonging to both the 14-inch and 16-inch models were slated to be delivered in either July or August. Based on this timeline and the latest evidence of what appears to be an alleged retail box belonging to the smaller M4 MacBook Pro, Apple could be gearing up to announce new machines pretty soon.
Retail box may belong to the higher-tier version, as this M4 MacBook Pro is said to feature 16GB unified RAM and 512GB of solid-state storage
The image was shared by ShrimpApplePro, who says that he was sent the image but advises his followers to treat the information with a pinch of salt. Then again, looking at the specifications of the M4 MacBook Pro, we are inclined to believe that this is the real deal. For instance, the M4 SoC is paired with 16GB of unified RAM coupled with 512GB of NVMe storage. Additionally, if you zoom into the image, you can have a better look at the rest of the specifications.
While some of the text is illegible, we can see that the M4 chipset in the new MacBook Pro will feature a 10-core and a 10-core CPU, which are the same specifications as the SoC running in the top-end OLED iPad Pro. Apart from the new Apple Silicon, the rest of the hardware appears consistent with the M3 models, suggesting that the company will not employ a design change, which is somewhat acceptable.
Given that the base model of the M3 MacBook Pro ships with 8GB unified RAM and 512GB of storage, it is possible that the retail box we are looking at belongs to a higher configuration of the M4 MacBook Pro. Apple has a nasty habit of offering insanely low memory options, even on premium portable Macs, but we have our fingers crossed that these specifications belong to the base model.
Aside from the M4, Apple was previously reported to be prepping the M4 Pro and M4 Max for the top-end versions, and we cannot wait to see them in action. In a previous Geekbench 6, we witnessed that the M4 made easy work of the M3 Pro and the Snapdragon X Elite, with even the 9-core CPU version running circles around the M3 and M2 in both single-core and multi-core tests. We have also mentioned that the new Apple Silicon adopts the ARMv9 architecture, which supports Scalable Matrix Extension (SME).
This helps the M4 to run complex workloads more efficiently, suggesting that gaming and multi-threaded performance will receive a major boost compared to previous releases. Now all that remains is to either wait for the official announcement or if you are one of the impatient types, search through Amazon for an excellent deal on one of Apple’s current-generation M3 MacBook Pro models, which start from just $1,299.
News Source: ShrimpApplePro