Apple's MacBook Air M4 launch could be just over the horizon, as a new leak indicates that an upcoming MacBook Air will feature the new M4 chip.
As seen by MacRumors, a private account on X revealed identifiers of an M4 chip to be used in a MacBook Air. This source suggests that a MacBook Air 13-inch and MacBook Air 15-inch will use a chip named "T8132," which is another name for the M4 chip.
While no date is given, it adds more fuel to the fire that an M4 MacBook Air is set to arrive soon. Recently, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman suggested the new Air models could arrive soon, seeing as stock for the MacBook Air is “dwindling at Apple retail stores." This is generally a sign that stores are making room for new stock.
Signs of new MacBook Airs equipped with M4 chips arrived late last year, with Gurman claiming Apple is manufacturing 13-inch and 15-inch models and display analyst Ross Young stating display shipments would begin in October.
With word of an iPhone SE 4 set to arrive as soon as this week, Apple could follow up this announcement with the M4 MacBook Air over the next few weeks. While Gurman suggests that the M4 Air, along with new iPads and iPad Air models, would arrive sometime "during the first half of 2025,” low stock of previous-gen models at retailers shows that the launch could be closer than we think.
What's more, this would correspond to the M3 MacBook Air announcement, taking place on March 4. If the M4 Air follows suit, then we should see Apple reveal the 13-inch and 15-inch models arrive around this time.
For now, there's no official release date for Apple's 2025 MacBook Air models, but their launch may not be too far away.
MacBook Air M4: What's new?
We've heard M4 MacBook Air models had been in the works since late last year, with rumors suggesting that it will keep the same design as the M3 models but instead come with a upgraded M4 chip. The power of M4 in the latest MacBook Pro M4 and iPad Pro M4 impressed us, boasting a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU and a Neural Engine that can hit 38 TOPS (trillions of operations per second).
This means the M4 Air models will see more of a minor upgrade, sticking with the same design but coming with more processing power, along with performance more suited to Apple Intelligence.
Since MacBook Air models is a fanless laptop, it's performance is expected to dip compared to its MacBook Pro M4 sibling — coming with internal fans to handle heat.
This hardly comes as surprise, though, and considering the M3 MacBook Air still knocks it out of the park in terms of performance compared to even the best laptops, we've expecting great performance gains in the MacBook Air M4 when it finally arrives.
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