The Mac in 2025: Small updates and big hopes

M4 MacBook Air

The model that kicks off the 2025 Mac releases will be the M4 upgrade to the MacBook Air, which will likely land between January and March. The current M3 MacBook Air was released in March 2024, so the M4 model will arrive about a year later.

With the 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro, Apple introduced other changes to go along with the new chip: an additional Thunderbolt/USB 4 port, an increase in RAM from 8GB to 16GB, an option for Nano-texture glass, and a Space Black color option. Rumors have indicated that the M4 MacBook Air will be little more than a chip upgrade, but any of these options could make an appearance.

However, there’s one functional change that will likely arrive with the M4 MacBook Air With the M3 MacBook Air, you can run up to two external displays (one at 6K/60Hz, the other at 5K/60Hz) with the laptop closed. The M4 chip in the MacBook Pro has more robust support, where you can run two external displays in addition to the laptop’s display, for a total of three usable screens.

Now, maybe thermal considerations prevent the M4 in the MacBook Air from having the same support as the M4 in the MacBook Pro, but we still think it’s a likely upgrade. Also, Apple upgraded the M3 MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM during the M4 Mac release, so it’s a lock that the M4 MacBook Air will start at 16GB, too.

Read more about the M4 MacBook Air

M4 Max/Ultra Mac Studio

The current Mac Studio has an M2 Max/Ultra chip and was released in 2023, so it’s overdue for an update and will get one in 2024. Reports have stated that the M4 Max and Ultra Mac Studio will be released in the first half of the year, perhaps at a spring event in March or at WWDC in June.

The new Mac Studio will feature the debut of the M4 Ultra, Apple’s top-end chip, which was absent from the M3 family. Apple’s Ultra chips are basically two Max chips with an interconnect, so we can look at the M4 Max to get an idea of what we could see in the M4 Ultra: a 32-core CPU, an 80-core GPU, a 32-core Neural Engine, and 96GB of RAM to start. Even if the M4 Ultra Mac Studio changes the design and has slightly different specs, it’s going to be a powerful machine.

Another nice upgrade for the Mac Studio is Thunderbolt 5 support, which made its debut in the M4 Pro/Max MacBook Pro. Thunderbolt 5 offers up to 120Gbps throughput, though you must have Thunderbolt 5 devices (and cables) to take full advantage of the bandwidth.

Read more about the M4 Mac Studio

M4 Ultra Mac Pro

Since the M2 Ultra is no longer the fastest Apple chip (surpassed by the M4 Pro and M4 Max), Apple needs to do something about the Mac Pro. According to reports, that something won’t happen until the latter part of 2025.

As mentioned with the Mac Studio, the M4 Ultra should be a beast of a chip and Apple will implement Thunderbolt 5, which will be a boon to media professionals who rely on Thunderbolt 5 devices for production.

Foundry

As for the tower design, it sounds as though Apple will stick with the same design–at least we haven’t heard any reports to the contrary. The current design is fine and even though it will be six years old by the time the new Mac Pro is released, it doesn’t seem dated. However, with the improvements in efficiency and heat dissipation, and the removal of RAM slots, It would be nice to see Apple do something different with the design, perhaps with a smaller enclosure.

Read more about the M4 Ultra Mac Pro.

New Apple displays

The current Apple Studio Display will be three years old in March 2025. The current Pro Display XDR will turn six years old in 2025 as well. These displays need to be updated, the Pro Display XDR, especially. The M4 MacBook Pro features mini-LED displays that use quantum dot technology to improve color accuracy. That sounds ideal for a new ProDisplay XDR, along with a ProMotion-style higher refresh rate. The launch of a new display is harder to pin down, but we expect the Studio Display alongside the Mac Studio and the Pro Display XDR to arrive with the new Mac Pro.

Foundry

M5 processor

How can we be talking about M5 Macs when the M4 is barely a month old? With the Apple transition over and development moving fast, reports say that M5/M5 Pro/M5 Max upgrades to the MacBook Pro could happen a year from now. Another recent report said that Apple is also planning to release an M5 iPad Pro next year.

The M5, M5 Pro, and M5 Max are expected to provide an incremental boost over the M4 series they will replace. That likely means an increase between 15 and 25 percent.

Reports about the Mac’s M5 have focused on the MacBook Pro and not mentioned the Mac mini and iMac. It’s possible Apple could forego M5 upgrades for the Mac mini and iMac as it has previously skipped chip generations for those Macs in the past.

Longshot: A bigger iMac

For years, there have been reports that Apple has an iMac larger than the current 24-inch iMac in development, but the company has not decided on when or whether it will be released. Some older rumors put its release around 2025, so It could be ready by the later part of next year–which would mean it would have an M5 chip.

Dominik Tomaszewski/IDG

Speculation is that this larger iMac wouldn’t just be a larger display, but a pro-level computer that follows the footsteps of the late iMac Pro. That could mean a Pro or Max chip, Thunderbolt 5 support, and a 32-inch (or larger) display that would make for a great high-end all-in-one and a fantastic 2025 surprise.

Read the rumors about the new Mac Pro.