Intel Launches Haswell Processors Ahead of WWDC Mac Updates

haswell_chipIntel today officially announced the launch of its latest family of Core processors, formerly known as "Haswell". The new processors are making their way into a number of new computers, and are expected to be included in Apple's next-generation Macs, some of which are likely to make their debuts at next week's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

The new chips offer significant improvements in integrated graphics performance, as well as modest CPU performance improvements and a major effort toward increasing battery life in notebooks.

Delivering Intel's largest generation-over-generation gain in battery life enablement in company history, 4th generation Intel Core processors can bring an 50 percent improvement in battery life over the previous generation in active workloads when watching movies or surfing the Internet, and two to three times improvement in standby battery life. For some systems coming to market this year, over 9 hours of active use battery life or 10 to 13 days of standby with fresh data on a single charge is expected.

Ars Technica has been providing overviews of the new chips, beginning with the quad-core desktop and notebook chips that were unveiled over the weekend. That group included six Core i7 and six Core i5 chips for desktop machines, as well as ten varieties of Core i7 notebook chips.

All of the mobile parts being announced today belong to the i7 family and, like their desktop counterparts, they're all quad-core chips with Hyperthreading enabled. The differences here come in the suffixes: the MX and MQ parts (reversed from Ivy Bridge's QM and QX suffixes) come with the Intel HD 4600 GPU, while most of the HQ parts come with the faster Iris Pro 5200 GPU.

With today's announcement of dual-core Haswell chips highlighted by AnandTech, the picture for Apple's notebook lineup comes into more focus. Intel has emphasized mobile chips for this round of dual-core launches, a move that will likely see the chips showing in updated MacBook Airs and 13-inch MacBook Pros as soon as next week.

A notebook refresh is expected to be the hardware highlight of WWDC alongside previews of OS X 10.9 and iOS 7. The latest rumors suggest that Apple may even be able to slim down the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, which is currently slightly thicker than its 15-inch sibling. Less substantial tweaks are expected for the MacBook Air, although the move to Haswell should offer significant performance improvements in certain areas.

Related Roundups: MacBook Pro, MacBook Air
Related Forums: MacBook Pro, MacBook Air

Popular Stories

iOS 26

iOS 26.1 Coming Soon: New Features for Your iPhone and Release Date

Monday October 27, 2025 7:55 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more. Below, we outline key details about iOS 26.1. Release Date Given that Apple has yet to seed an iOS 26.1 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, the...
iOS 26 Maps Glass

Apple Reportedly Moving Ahead With Ads in Maps App

Sunday October 26, 2025 6:22 am PDT by
Apple Maps could feature integrated ads as soon as next year, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports. In his latest "Power On" newsletter, Gurman said that Apple's plan to bring more ads to iOS is moving "gaining traction," with the Maps app being next in line. The project will apparently give restaurants and other businesses the option to pay to have their details featured more prominently in...
maxresdefault

Apple TV 4K Could Still Launch Before 2025 Ends: All the Rumored Features

Monday October 27, 2025 4:51 pm PDT by
Apple is designing an updated version of the Apple TV 4K, and rumors suggest that it could come out sometime in the next couple of months. We're not expecting a major overhaul with design changes, but even a simple chip upgrade will bring major improvements to Apple's set-top box. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. We've rounded up all the latest Apple TV rumors. ...
iOS 26 Battery Glass Feature

iOS 26.1 Beta Liquid Glass Battery Drain Test: Tinted vs Clear Mode

Friday October 24, 2025 2:30 pm PDT by
In the fourth iOS 26.1 beta, Apple added a "Tinted" option that reduces the translucency of Liquid Glass for those who prefer a more opaque look. I saw some comments wondering whether the setting might preserve battery life, so I thought I'd do some testing. Test Settings I did four separate tests using the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and I kept the parameters as similar as possible. Here are the...
M6 MacBook Pro Feature 1

M6 MacBook Pro: Release Date, Pricing, and What to Expect

Monday October 27, 2025 9:15 am PDT by
Apple this month refreshed the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model with its new M5 chip, and higher-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are expected to follow in early 2026. However, these machines will represent the final update to the current design, with Apple reportedly developing a completely new version of the MacBook Pro packed with next-generation hardware...
iOS 26

6 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 26.1

Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:22 am PDT by
Apple is about to drop iOS 26.1, the first major point release since iOS 26 was rolled out in September, and there are at least six notable changes and improvements to look forward to. We've rounded them up below. Apple has already provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 26.1, which means Apple will likely roll out the update to all compatible...
iOS 26

iOS 26.1 Coming Soon With These 8 New Features for Your iPhone

Wednesday October 22, 2025 6:15 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more. iOS 26.1 is currently in beta testing. The update will likely be released in the first half of November, and it is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and newer, but some...
iOS 26

Apple Seeds iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1, and macOS Tahoe 26.1 Release Candidates

Tuesday October 28, 2025 1:07 pm PDT by
Apple today provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate versions of upcoming iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1, macOS Tahoe 26.1, tvOS 26.1, watchOS 26.1, and visionOS 26.1 updates for testing purposes. The RCs betas come a week after Apple released the fourth betas. The new betas can be downloaded from the Settings app on a compatible device by going to General > Software...
swift for android

Developers Can Now Make Android Apps With Apple's Swift

Sunday October 26, 2025 4:23 am PDT by
The first preview release of the Swift SDK for Android was published this week, allowing developers to build Android apps in Swift with official tooling and making it easier to share code across iOS and Android. The SDK enables Android apps to be built in Swift using officially supported tooling rather than community workarounds. In June, it was announced that Apple's Swift programming...

Top Rated Comments

Pentad Avatar
162 months ago
Can't wait for the Apple ARM version of the MacBooks

:rolleyes: Do you realize the disaster this would be?
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
GREEN4U Avatar
162 months ago
Haswell is such an ugly name. It sounds like a high school principal or something.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
barkmonster Avatar
162 months ago
Can't wait for the Apple ARM version of the MacBooks

I can't really see any sense in them switching to proprietary chips significantly slower than Intel and designed as integrated CPU/GPUs for tablets and phones :-)
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
TheHateMachine Avatar
162 months ago
Can't wait for the Apple ARM version of the MacBooks
Yea I cannot wait for under powered chips that will introduce a myriad of software compatibility issues for a small power advantage and to stick it to Intel.

:rolleyes:

The latest rumors suggest that Apple may even be able to slim down (https://www.macrumors.com/2013/06/02/slimmer-13-retina-macbook-pro-dual-mic-macbook-air-expected-at-wwdc/) the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, which is currently slightly thicker than its 15-inch sibling.
This is really stupid if this rumor is true. Instead of increasing battery longevity due to the decreased power draw, they might cut the battery down to make the laptop slimmer and have the current battery life?
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
charlituna Avatar
162 months ago


PS i hope apple has been listening to their customers, bring us raw power as well as the magic of apple!
And RIP to stupidly overpriced upgrades to our MAC - like charging 200% on SSD is criminal!

After what 35 years, you expect Apple to start listening to customers.

Thanks for the laugh
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
milo Avatar
162 months ago
Well then this news will not please you. Haswell will have nothing to do with the Mac Pro this year. If the Mac Pro is updated this year it would be with the Ivy Bridge Xeons when they are available.
Haswell (v3) is the generation after ivy bridge (v2, and ivy bridge xeons have been available for a while). In fact, if you click on the intel announcement, it actually mentions Xeon E3-1200 v3 as part of today's introduction.

The E5 needed for dual cpu Mac Pros is still a couple months off, but next week Apple could announce new MP with E5/dual versions shipping later but E3 quads shipping immediately.

The one downside to the new generation of chips is that so far they don't have a version of the single socket xeon that's more than four cores. Are those expected later? Or will people have to buy the dual versions even for single socket 6 (or more) core?
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)