Gurman: Apple Planning M2 Pro Mac Mini, New Apple TV With A14 Chip, Revamped HomePod With S8 Chip, and More

In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg, Mark Gurman outlined additional M2 Macs on Apple's product roadmap, including new Mac mini models with M2 and M2 Pro chips, new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, and a new Mac Pro tower with M2 Ultra and "M2 Extreme" chips.

m2 mac mini screen feature
Following the M2 series of Macs, Gurman said the first M3 series of Macs will include an updated 13-inch MacBook Air, an all-new 15-inch MacBook Air, a new iMac, and potentially a new 12-inch notebook that is "still in early development."

Gurman said Apple is developing several additional devices that could launch later this year and beyond, including a new Apple TV with an A14 chip and an increased 4GB of RAM, a new HomePod with the same S8 chip coming to the Apple Watch Series 8, an AR/VR headset that may have an M2 chip and 16GB of RAM, iPad Pro models with the M2 chip, a new low-end iPad with an A14 chip and a USB-C port, new AirPods Pro, and more.

Gurman said the new HomePod will be closer to the original in terms of size and feature an updated display on the top of the speaker:

The new Apple TV, code-named J255, is in development with an A14 chip and an additional gigabyte of RAM. That compares with the A12 chip announced as part of the 2021 Apple TV last year and could be useful for additional gaming capabilities rolling out in tvOS 16.

The HomePod, code-named B620, will run the same S8 chip coming to the watches and will be closer to the original HomePod in terms of size and audio performance rather than a new HomePod mini. The new HomePod will have an updated display on top and there's even been some talk of multi-touch functionality.

As for the S8 chip for the Apple Watch Series 8 and new HomePod, Gurman said he was told it will have the same specifications as the S7 and S6 chips in previous models. Gurman said the S8 chip may also be used in the next Apple Watch SE.

Gurman also reiterated that he expects Apple to release a larger iPad with a 14-inch to 15-inch display within the next two years.

Related Roundups: Mac mini, Apple TV, HomePod

Top Rated Comments

topmounter Avatar
24 months ago
I'm ready for the M2 Mini.
Score: 42 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Shanghaichica Avatar
24 months ago
New HomePod and new Apple TV are instant buys for me.
Score: 24 Votes (Like | Disagree)
August West Avatar
24 months ago
I've been holding off replacing my 2012 mini on the hope they stick the m2 chip in the basic mini. My 2012 will stop getting security updates for Catalina this fall so I guess I'll wait and see what happens. Hate to buy a 2 year old design since I hang onto my gear as long as possible.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
fwmireault Avatar
24 months ago

and a new Mac Pro tower with M2 Ultra and "M2 Extreme" chips.
Its weird tant Apple had the luxury to plan their chip naming scheme and chose such confusing and overlapping names like Pro, Max, Ultra, Extreme. From a customer perspective, these name are not particularly great to know which one is appropriate to their needs. Arguably, people in the market for an M2 Ultra or M2 Extreme chip will probably already know what they need, but still, I think Apple could have chosen something more simple and coherent

But other than this minor detail, I’m very curious to se the capabilities of this M2 Extreme chip, even if I’m far from needing one
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
senttoschool Avatar
24 months ago
If Apple can release M2 Pro/Max in Q4 of this year, that means they plan to update base M, Pro, Max every year. An annual update cadence would be incredible.

The reason M2 was late had nothing to do with the chip design being late. It had to do with waiting for the Macbook Air redesign to launch.

People say M2's performance improvement over the M1 was small (~18% CPU, 35% GPU, 40% Neural Engine). But if you're getting this improvement every year, it will leave Intel and AMD in the dust.

The iPhone pays for Mac chips. Mac chips are simply using whatever CPU, GPU, NE cores were in the last iPhone. This strategy makes it extremely cost effective for Apple to update Mac chips annually.
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Firefighter2021 Avatar
24 months ago
they should release apple tv 4k with M1 chip
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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