Apple to launch MacBooks, iMac and Mac Mini with new M2 chip in 2022: Report

Apple is expected to launch several MacBooks with a new ARM-based M2 chip sometime in 2022, said Mark Gurman of Bloomberg in his weekly newsletter. According to Gurman, the new chip will retain the 8-core architecture of its predecessor the M1, but is likely to be a bit speedier than it. “Graphics may get a boost, though, from seven or eight cores to nine or 10,” he added.  

Gurman believes Apple will launch a 13-inch MacBook Pro with an M2 chip as the successor to the 2020 model and as a third option to the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro. Apple can also launch a Mac Mini, 24-inch iMac and a redesigned MacBook Air with an M2 chip, he added.  

The upgraded version of the M2 chip in the Pro and Max versions, just like the predecessor M1, can be expected in 2023 alongside the first M3 chip, said Gurman.  

Apple’s decision to develop chips in house for its Mac PCs was an extension of the company’s philosophy of having more control over the hardware side of things as it has over the software. It led Apple to walk away from the tried-and-tested Intel chips that had been powering Mac devices for decades in favour of in-house ARM based chip.  

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However, the first gen M1 chip that was used in the 13-inch MacBook Pro (2020) and later in MacBook Air notebooks and even the iPad Pro tablet turned out to be a big letdown as many users and reviewers found its performance to be quite underwhelming and not up to the mark for heavy workload.  

Apple addressed these concerns when it launched the upgraded version of M1 in M1 Pro and M1 Max in October 2021. The former offered 70% upgrade in CPU and 2 times increase in GPU performance over the M1, while the latter was 3.5 times faster than the predecessor.