The MacOS 15.2 update released earlier today came with a handful of new features, plus something unexpected: a seemingly coincidental reference to the upcoming M4 MacBook Airs. MacRumors reports that the “MAC16,12” and “Mac16,13” model identifiers refer to 13- and 15-inch models of the M4 air and that both are coming in 2025.
That a MacBook Air Refresh is planned for next year isn't much of a surprise at this point – in reporting that has pretty much nailed down the details of the first M4 Macs, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has said that the Air, the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro are all scheduled for updates in 2025.
But a reference in the current release of macOS could point to a launch sooner rather than later; The M4 Mac Mini was targeted for a macOS update in mid-September about a month and a half before it was released. The M3 Airs were released in March this year, but Apple has been known to release new Macs as early as January in recent years.
The M4 isn't a massive update over the M3 – we tested performance in the M4 iMac, although a passively cooled MacBook Air version would probably be a bit slower on heavier workloads – but the fully powered version comes with two extra CPUs – cores And some nice quality of life updates. Those updates include Thunderbolt 5 ports and support for a total of three displays (two external and the built-in display), up from a total of two for the M1, M2, and M3 MacBook Airs.
We didn't get M4 MacBook Airs in November, but Apple “updated” the M2 and M3 versions from 8GB to 16GB of RAM without raising their prices. The RAM increase will be useful for all kinds of things, although it could foreshadow increased memory requirements for upcoming Apple Intelligence features.
