Apple pushes ahead with 15-inch M2 MacBook Air and 12-inch M2 MacBook

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Apple may broaden its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lineup to capture more market share.
Apple appears to want to broaden its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lineup to capture more market share.
Photo: Apple

Apple is developing new form factors and planning upgrades for its MacBook lineup, Bloomberg reported Thursday. That should result in a 15-inch M2 MacBook Air and a new version of a 12-inch M2 MacBook arriving by late 2023 or early 2024.

And, likely sooner than that, we could see faster chips in the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.

New MacBook sizes and upgrades are coming this year and next

Apple is working on a 15-inch MacBook Air that could come out as soon as early spring 2023, according to Bloomberg. It reportedly will be “a wider version of the 13.6-inch MacBook Air” rolled out at WWDC22.

And it will also be the first 15-inch MacBook Air, the largest in the line’s 14-year history. The soon-to-be-released 13.6-inch MacBook Air is currently the largest.

The company mulled releasing the 15-inch MacBook Air alongside the redesigned 13.16-inch model this year, but “shelved those plans to focus on the 13.6-inch version.”

This comes after Display Supply Chain Consultants analyst Ross Young said a 15-inch MacBook Air could arrive in 2023.

Bloomberg noted Cupertino also is working on a new 12-inch M-series MacBook:

Apple has also begun work on a new 12-inch laptop and is considering launching it at the end of 2023 or in early 2024. If Apple moves forward with the release, it would represent the company’s smallest laptop since it discontinued the 12-inch MacBook in 2019.

Apple produced the 12-inch Retina MacBook from 2015 to 2019.

Upgrades coming in 2022 … probably

Lastly, upgrades for the existing 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M2 Pro and M2 Max chipsets should come along before the end of 2022.

The report said the new models, code-named J414 and J416, probably won’t be “radically new products.” Instead, they could be updated versions of the existing MacBook Pro models with faster chips.

“The M2 Max chip in the next high-end MacBook Pros will include 12 main processing cores and up to 38 graphics cores, up from a maximum of 10 processing cores and 32 graphics cores in the current models,” Bloomberg said.

The report cautioned that while a 2022 release is possible, the new MacBooks could slip to early 2023.

Bloomberg also noted Apple continues to develop a new Mac mini and Mac Pro with more powerful Apple silicon chips. The MacBook news follows reports of an upcoming 14.1-inch iPad Pro, which would be the company’s largest tablet ever.

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