Three new Mac mannequin identifiers had been lately added to a Discover My configuration file on Apple’s backend, as found by Nicolás Álvarez (through @aaronp613).
The brand new identifiers are Mac14,8, Mac14,13, and Mac14,14, and so they seem in a listing alongside Mac14,3 and Mac14,12, the identifiers for the most recent M2 and M2 Professional Mac mini fashions. The record in Apple’s configuration file pertains to overriding “separation monitoring,” which suggests these may very well be desktop Mac fashions that don’t have to be actively tracked through Discover My for separation from the consumer as transportable Macs do.
Precisely what these new Mac fashions are is unclear, as Apple has lately shifted from utilizing extra particular mannequin identifiers like “MacBookAir10,1” to generic “Mac”-based ones that may apply to any member of the household. Essentially the most imminent desktop Mac replace we’re anticipating is the Mac Professional, though Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman believes it will not be able to launch at WWDC in June.
Gurman additionally believes the Mac Studio won’t see an replace till high-end members of M3 chip household are prepared, and that appears unlikely till maybe early 2024. With the Mac mini having simply been up to date in January, the one different obvious chance for a desktop Mac replace is the iMac, however that too is not anticipated to be up to date till M3 chips can be found within the latter a part of this yr on the soonest.
Additionally it is unclear simply what number of product strains these three new mannequin identifiers signify. As seen with the Mac mini and different latest Macs, fashions with a number of chip choices can have a number of identifiers, so it is potential these new identifiers may signify three variants of a single product, or one thing like two variants of 1 product and a single variant of a second product.
We’ll doubtless hear extra concerning the potential for Mac updates as we get nearer to WWDC, however for now it seems the almost certainly Mac launch anticipated on the occasion is a new 15-inch MacBook Air, not a desktop Mac.
