As spotted by a MacRumors (opens in new tab) tipster, the November Steam Hardware and Software Survey, a regular census of what Steam users are running the platform’s games on, features entries for “Mac14,6” and “Mac15,4” listed at 0.00% usage. As these models don’t have proper names, and are used by a tiny minority of Mac-based Steam users, it seems likely that these are pre-release models, being tested using Steam games. Supporting that further are two sets of recent benchmarks found for the Mac14,6. The results show a chip with more power and capable of supporting more RAM than current MacBook models, which also suggests this is a new model running an Apple M2-based chip. The Mac15,4 model hasn’t been seen before however. This could refer to a different MacBook Pro, perhaps using an alternate chip or a different display size, but could also be a different type of unreleased Mac altogether. We’ve been expecting updated Mac mini, Mac Studio and Mac Pro models to appear soon, so maybe Mac15,4 refers to one of these.
OLED MacBook Air by 2024?
Looking towards the future, leaker and displays expert Ross Young (opens in new tab) (in a subscriber-only tweet) has an interesting new claim that a 13.3-inch OLED MacBook Air is on the cards for 2024, along with OLED 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros. Currently, Apple uses mini-LED displays for the 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro, and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (the 11-inch model still uses LCD). Jumping straight to mini-LED from the LCD MacBook Air M2 would be a significant upgrade for a next-gen MacBook Air, and likewise for the 11-inch iPad Pro, but they would be ones we’d appreciate. OLED displays offer richer blacks and superior brightness to LCD panels, making them great for watching video or playing games on. For now though, we’re still waiting on new MacBook Pros, and possibly some new desktop Macs too. It was thought that these models would appear by the end of this year, but that’s not happened and feels very unlikely to happen now we’re approaching the end of December. Chances are that we’ll see these Macs emerge in Spring since Apple typically holds a product launch event around March.
