The more I think about it the more I find it kind of odd yet somewhat endearing that we have so much of our lives determined by the orbit of the planet. Not so much things that are actually affected by it like seasons and its impacts on ecology, but on a yearly scale we had software updates, new hardware and financial reconciliation. Things that all feel so abstract and yet are tied to the cycle of our rock spinning around the sun. The druids approve!
So I have no issue when something like a laptop being pushed back, it was all very arbitrary anyway. Can they release is a Mars based yearly cadence?
lordnacho · 47m ago
Isn't this one of those "how Roman roads determined our rail gauge" things?
Seasons -> harvest -> traditions freeze working/holidaying times -> kids start school a certain time -> gotta sell them computers to be ready at those times.
Something like that, in a million different ways.
cnst · 58m ago
I'm writing this on a 16GB M1 MacBook Air, but I've gotten disillusioned with macOS and Macs.
When everything is done in a browser, the biggest differentiator on a laptop would be monitor and peripheral support, and Apple is behind the competition.
macOS has no support for daisy-chaining with DP MST, no support for a second monitor (new to M1, the 2020 Intel model does support dual external monitors), no way to turn-off antialiasing, limited ports, RAM and storage options, limited repair and expansion options.
Why exactly do we even still use macOS anyways?
Even the cheapest Chromebook laptops have better monitor support and better expandability, at 1/10th the cost.
cosmic_cheese · 49m ago
No support for MST daisy chaining is unfortunate, but not really a dealbreaker since most users spending a lot of time at a desk are using either a standalone dock (e.g. CalDigit TS4) or a monitor that has a dock built in (like Dell’s U2724DE) which also achieves one-cable multimonitor (+charging). The limit on number of monitors isn’t an issue on the newer low end models.
On the hardware side of things, the big differentiators are build quality and battery life. To get either as good as is found on MacBooks you’re likely to be spending about as much in the x86 world. Those dirt cheap Chromebooks in particular are miserable to use.
goosedragons · 7m ago
MST makes getting a dock cheaper. It's very cheap to get a hub or dock that can do two or even three monitors over MST, with power pass through and a few extra USB ports for a mouse and keyboard or printer. Like $30-$50. Maybe you spend another $50 for a decent extra charger to go with it.
On Mac you basically HAVE to get an expensive $200+ TB dock to get a one cable multi-mon setup.
The new M4 MBAs can still only do two external screens at a time. It's better but the competition can do more.
cosmic_cheese · 53m ago
Really, they could probably get away with selling M4 devices for another couple cycles. As far as performance is concerned, even going back to the M1, the only group feeling inadequacies large enough to make upgrading a “must” are those whose needs sit within spitting distance of cusp of consumer/prosumer computing. Battery life is still industry leading with only a handful of competitors just recently being able to claim similar real world numbers (thanks mostly to Lunar Lake, which isn’t available for many models and comes at the cost of some performance).
I’ve used both M1 Max and M4 Max machines extensively and while the latter is a good deal faster, it’s only really noticeable with longer sustained tasks and particularly large projects. The high-RAM variants of M1 models in particular should continue to be quite servicable for some time to come.
tracker1 · 1h ago
If I were to guess, it's likely that sales projections are down right now, and they're hoping by keeping the existing line a bit longer, new buyer numbers will be larger in the spring. Most people don't upgrade every generation and a lot of people are still running M1/M2 devices.
I would also speculate that there may be some growing pains for the n2 production from TSMC, and/or a desire to get there in the AZ fab production before launch to avoid tariffs hitting their bottom line. They'd rather pay 12-20% more for just the CPU than eat large tariffs on the full cost. I don't think they'd be able to significantly raise prices further based on tariffs, like some other companies with smaller margins are forced to do, on order to be competitive.
kingkongjaffa · 1h ago
Yeah I’m on an M1 and it’s still outstanding.
The only motivation to upgrade is battery degradation or getting more RAM to run larger LLM models locally.
Analemma_ · 1h ago
I upgraded from an M1 to an M4 MBP recently and although the performance gains were mostly incremental, the matte screen (fucking finally Apple) is really nice and a good reason to upgrade if you ever plan on using it in a brightly-lit area. It’s a must-have.
ChrisMarshallNY · 53m ago
I run an M4Pro Mini, connected to an LG 49" ultrawide. I have an M1Max MBP, collecting dust, upstairs.
Frankly, the MBP is still an excellent machine, but I don't travel, anymore, and this big honker that is as wide as my desk, has me spoiled.
tracker1 · 39m ago
I switch to 45" UWQHD myself.. slightly taller with bigger pixels for work and enjoy it immensely. I've had a few issues where my vision got dramatically worse a couple years ago so even my 32" 1440p was a struggle at times.
With this display, it's similar to two 4:3 aspect displays in my typical use... my IDE or Code pinned on one side, my browser or another app on the right.
Overall, it's been pretty great.
wmf · 1h ago
N2 production in Arizona won't start for years. Also I'm expecting M5 to be on N3.
tracker1 · 15m ago
s/N2/N3, in any case... the planned node.
behnamoh · 2h ago
Apple seems to overlook how much timing matters for Mac sales in academia. Macs—especially MacBooks—absolutely dominate among professors (I’d guess ~90% in my department).
The academic fiscal year often ends in Aug/Sep, and new faculty usually get a “technology fund” for buying their first computer. A lot of us use that to get the latest Mac. Historically, Apple’s October refresh was just late enough to miss that budget window, but people would still wait a month or two for the new models.
If they push announcements even further (as the article suggests—early 2026), it’s a different story. New hires can’t wait half a year with no laptop, so they’ll just buy whatever’s top-of-the-line right now. For research folks who need GPU power, that could easily mean a 5090-based laptop instead of a Mac.
titanomachy · 2h ago
To a first approximation, 100% of Apple’s customers are not university professors.
Detrytus · 1h ago
What about university students? They also start their classes in September, and while they have no "budgeting deadline", they still need to buy some computer around that time.
chasd00 · 1h ago
> What about university students?
interestingly, i have a teen that will be heading off to college in a couple years. My plan is to send him off to the dorm with a Macbook and not his gaming rig heh. Although, inevitably, it will be up to him to decide how to make the best use of his time..
cvwright · 1h ago
I think Apple has historically used the college student market to clear out their remaining stock of last year’s MacBooks. Otherwise why release the new models just after classes have started?
maratc · 1h ago
Nothing changes about them, as (previously) new Apple MacBooks weren't available until October, more than a month after their classes start.
whizzter · 1h ago
I think it might just be the other way around, if they front-loaded a lot of inventory shipments before tariffs were due to hit they might be loaded with unusually high inventory levels that needs shifting and will be hard to do so at price if a new model is out.
Add to this the recent economic uncertainty and prospective buyers might just have been holding up purchases (thus further adding to inventory if they already front-loaded before tariffs).
As for people buying powerful machines that could be worth going to a 5090 based machine instead, they're probably a fairly small part of the Mac purchaser market in the big picture.
ryao · 58m ago
They could just buy the M4 models.
sys_64738 · 1h ago
Is anybody buying x86 based laptops nowadays? It seems that there are few advantages over ARM based Windows/Linux or the M-series laptops.
lenerdenator · 1h ago
Most people buying laptops, probably.
The advantage is all of that legacy software that some process relies on and hasn't been meaningfully updated in 10+ years and won't be ported over to the ARM processors that you damned kids are running on because back in my day we paid for one copy of x86 software and that got us through 10 winters, dammit.
wmf · 1h ago
Windows on ARM doesn't work well and has very low sales.
SwamyM · 1h ago
Most of corporate America is still primarily using x86 systems.
criddell · 1h ago
I think that's still most of what Dell, HP, and Lenovo sell.
unethical_ban · 1h ago
Link me to a reliable brand of ARM laptop that runs Linux and is high performance!
I'm enjoying my framework AMD laptop although the battery life with suspend is miserable.
Unfortunately the AMD models don't support real sleep, only "nap," like a tablet. Guess how I found out?
Our Intel Framework does, although you might need to use Linux to utilize it.
moralestapia · 2h ago
They would just buy the M4? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The average user, even the "power user", does not care/know the difference between an M4 and whatever the M5 will be.
behnamoh · 2h ago
Like I said, most people want something that's the "latest"; M4 is already one year old.
wrt the second part of your comment: Academics care about speed, RAM, battery life, the ability to run the latest AI models at a decent speed (M4 is still relatively slow).
mrweasel · 53m ago
Most of academics write papers, they care about none of those things.
Unless you work on AI, which most don't, then you don't care that the M4 is a little slow for that purpose. The academics who are working on large dataset frequently have access to cluster computers or large servers running in the university datacenter... or frequently sits under their desk, because they have trust issues.
nickthegreek · 1h ago
m4 laptop checks the boxes on ram options (albiet a high price) and battery life.
The m4 macbook is running AI slow compared too..... what competitive alternative?
I'm impressed at how fast gpt-oss-20b ran on my m2 24gb system.
AceJohnny2 · 1h ago
> (M4 is still relatively slow).
How does it compare to Windows laptops?
cromka · 1h ago
But as you said, 90% use Apple anyway, so why would Apple bother at all?
maratc · 1h ago
"There's a rumor about certain Apple product and it says that the previous rumor about same product was wrong."
crinkly · 2h ago
Good. Hopefully we're going back to more sensible and sustainable 2-3 year cycles.
thewebguyd · 1h ago
Would be nice to do that for OS releases too. I feel like the yearly macOS releases are too ambitious at this point, and Apple's software quality is suffering. 2-3 year cycles would be much more sustainable. Hardware is good enough now to not need a new release ever year.
mrweasel · 50m ago
5+ years for home users and systems administrators. I have a 2020 M1 MacBook Air, it's fine for everything I need. The only issue is, as other points out, the external monitor issue. Only one monitor, and certainly no daisy chaining of displays.
crinkly · 17m ago
Yep that. I just upgraded my M1 Pro MBP to an M4 Pro MBP and I can’t tell the difference really. I’ll leave it 6 years this time.
cnst · 1h ago
How's a "2-3 year cycle" sensible or sustainable?
Who's forcing you to get every upgrade every year?
The yearly releases make a lot of sense for everybody, because then you can upgrade on your own schedule, instead of delaying the upgrade because the product was released a full 2 years ago, at a time your older one is on its last breath.
In fact, yearly releases are then also more sustainable, too, since the purchasing would be spread out to each year (on an as-needed basis), instead of having a month-long cycle every 3 years, necessitating the extra infrastructure all along the way (from the stores to manufacturing to shipping).
davidf18 · 2h ago
It is from July 10.
No comments yet
evtothedev · 2h ago
My completely uninformed bet is that with the release of open source GPT, they're planning to embed this on all laptops. That will require a huge bump in the baseline specs, and therefore you have cascading delays.
reaperducer · 2h ago
My completely uninformed bet
If you're completely uninformed, why post at all? What value do you add to the conversation?
Lammy · 2h ago
There's nothing wrong with speculation that's clearly labeled as speculation.
nickthegreek · 1h ago
There certainly can be. Reputation risk/being canceled, misinformation spreading, ethicial/legal issues depending on the topic, public opinion influence, authority problems, not understanding the community you are participating in, etc.
So I have no issue when something like a laptop being pushed back, it was all very arbitrary anyway. Can they release is a Mars based yearly cadence?
Seasons -> harvest -> traditions freeze working/holidaying times -> kids start school a certain time -> gotta sell them computers to be ready at those times.
Something like that, in a million different ways.
When everything is done in a browser, the biggest differentiator on a laptop would be monitor and peripheral support, and Apple is behind the competition.
macOS has no support for daisy-chaining with DP MST, no support for a second monitor (new to M1, the 2020 Intel model does support dual external monitors), no way to turn-off antialiasing, limited ports, RAM and storage options, limited repair and expansion options.
Why exactly do we even still use macOS anyways?
Even the cheapest Chromebook laptops have better monitor support and better expandability, at 1/10th the cost.
On the hardware side of things, the big differentiators are build quality and battery life. To get either as good as is found on MacBooks you’re likely to be spending about as much in the x86 world. Those dirt cheap Chromebooks in particular are miserable to use.
On Mac you basically HAVE to get an expensive $200+ TB dock to get a one cable multi-mon setup.
The new M4 MBAs can still only do two external screens at a time. It's better but the competition can do more.
I’ve used both M1 Max and M4 Max machines extensively and while the latter is a good deal faster, it’s only really noticeable with longer sustained tasks and particularly large projects. The high-RAM variants of M1 models in particular should continue to be quite servicable for some time to come.
I would also speculate that there may be some growing pains for the n2 production from TSMC, and/or a desire to get there in the AZ fab production before launch to avoid tariffs hitting their bottom line. They'd rather pay 12-20% more for just the CPU than eat large tariffs on the full cost. I don't think they'd be able to significantly raise prices further based on tariffs, like some other companies with smaller margins are forced to do, on order to be competitive.
The only motivation to upgrade is battery degradation or getting more RAM to run larger LLM models locally.
Frankly, the MBP is still an excellent machine, but I don't travel, anymore, and this big honker that is as wide as my desk, has me spoiled.
With this display, it's similar to two 4:3 aspect displays in my typical use... my IDE or Code pinned on one side, my browser or another app on the right.
Overall, it's been pretty great.
The academic fiscal year often ends in Aug/Sep, and new faculty usually get a “technology fund” for buying their first computer. A lot of us use that to get the latest Mac. Historically, Apple’s October refresh was just late enough to miss that budget window, but people would still wait a month or two for the new models.
If they push announcements even further (as the article suggests—early 2026), it’s a different story. New hires can’t wait half a year with no laptop, so they’ll just buy whatever’s top-of-the-line right now. For research folks who need GPU power, that could easily mean a 5090-based laptop instead of a Mac.
interestingly, i have a teen that will be heading off to college in a couple years. My plan is to send him off to the dorm with a Macbook and not his gaming rig heh. Although, inevitably, it will be up to him to decide how to make the best use of his time..
Add to this the recent economic uncertainty and prospective buyers might just have been holding up purchases (thus further adding to inventory if they already front-loaded before tariffs).
As for people buying powerful machines that could be worth going to a 5090 based machine instead, they're probably a fairly small part of the Mac purchaser market in the big picture.
The advantage is all of that legacy software that some process relies on and hasn't been meaningfully updated in 10+ years and won't be ported over to the ARM processors that you damned kids are running on because back in my day we paid for one copy of x86 software and that got us through 10 winters, dammit.
I'm enjoying my framework AMD laptop although the battery life with suspend is miserable.
Our Intel Framework does, although you might need to use Linux to utilize it.
The average user, even the "power user", does not care/know the difference between an M4 and whatever the M5 will be.
wrt the second part of your comment: Academics care about speed, RAM, battery life, the ability to run the latest AI models at a decent speed (M4 is still relatively slow).
Unless you work on AI, which most don't, then you don't care that the M4 is a little slow for that purpose. The academics who are working on large dataset frequently have access to cluster computers or large servers running in the university datacenter... or frequently sits under their desk, because they have trust issues.
The m4 macbook is running AI slow compared too..... what competitive alternative?
I'm impressed at how fast gpt-oss-20b ran on my m2 24gb system.
How does it compare to Windows laptops?
Who's forcing you to get every upgrade every year?
The yearly releases make a lot of sense for everybody, because then you can upgrade on your own schedule, instead of delaying the upgrade because the product was released a full 2 years ago, at a time your older one is on its last breath.
In fact, yearly releases are then also more sustainable, too, since the purchasing would be spread out to each year (on an as-needed basis), instead of having a month-long cycle every 3 years, necessitating the extra infrastructure all along the way (from the stores to manufacturing to shipping).
No comments yet
If you're completely uninformed, why post at all? What value do you add to the conversation?