Apple's MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch with M4 CPUs are now in mass production, report claims

Apple's MacBook Pro M4 models rumored to launch later this year are entering mass production according to a new report.

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The rumor mill strongly believes the MacBook Pro is going to be powered up with the M4 chip later this year (Image Credit: Apple)

This comes from DigiTimes - so add a fair pinch of seasoning, though the site does provide reliable enough supply chain-related info at times - as flagged by MacRumors.

Apparently, Apple is readying to fire up the production lines to manufacture MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch laptops with M4 Pro and M4 Max processors in August, so the likelihood is that this has now begun, or is very much imminent.

This aligns with other rumors about Apple's MacBook Pro plans, as aired by Mark Gurman on numerous occasions, and also another reliable Apple leaker, Ross Young (of Display Supply Chain Consultants), who has previously informed us that screens for these laptops have been shipping since July.

Gurman most recently insisted that Apple is now testing four M4 Mac models (without specifying exactly which ones), and also dropped a truly exciting hint - that all of these machines might have at least 16GB of RAM with the entry-level model. In other words, no more MacBook Pro 14-inch with a paltry allocation of 8GB of unified memory (we hope).

Mac attack

In theory, then, Apple is on track for a MacBook Pro M4 reveal in the near future, probably in October (alongside Mac mini and iMac M4 refreshes).

This rumor specifically mentioning MacBook Pro laptops equipped with M4 Pro and M4 Max chips also dispels any suggestion that maybe Apple might only roll out models with the vanilla M4 SoC later in 2024.

That was a theory floating about due to the lack of any mention of those CPUs in Gurman's leak about the four Macs in testing. We weren't buying that piece of speculation anyway, mind, but this rules it out (though that said, we don't know which rumors are correct, of course - all of this remains guesswork to some extent).

If you were wondering about the MacBook Air M4, that's supposedly not turning up until 2025 - alongside the Mac Pro and Mac Studio. The really interesting part will be whether that suggested move to 16GB for a bare minimum - which is just a hint dropped in a leak, mind - applies to all Apple's devices, including the MacBook Air M4.

Clearly, it's about time that the MacBook Pro moved away from models with just 8GB of system memory, especially with the advent of Apple Intelligence, which will likely lead to more taxing workloads that need ample RAM (as is the case with Copilot+ PCs already).