Did Apple hint that the M4 MacBook Pro may not launch this year?

Apple held its third-quater earnings call this week, and it looks like things went pretty well overall. Total revenue was $85 billion, up around 5% year-over-year, and the Mac managed to go up 2% year-over-year as well, bringing in just over $7 billion. But a comment from the Q&A section of the call suggests that the company isn’t expecting any bumps in Mac revenue for the rest of the year and, as MacRumors suggests, this could be code for “no new MacBook.”

After being pressed for clarification on product revenue expectations for the September quarter, Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri commented:

“We’re not going into other categories … Keep in mind on the Mac that we will have a challenging [quarter compared] from a year ago, given the fact that we launched, and we had the full quarter impact of the launch of the MacBook Air 15-inch.”

Put a little more simply, this means the Mac revenue for the later quarters of last year was particularly high because Apple had just launched the new MacBook Air M3 — and this year might look a little disappointing in comparison. It’s possible that Maestri is making the point that Apple saw a larger bump in revenue from the 15-inch MacBook Air than it expects from the upcoming M4 MacBook Pro.

On the other hand, this comment could easily be interpreted that the M4 MacBook Pro has been pushed to 2025. This would be odd, especially since that would mean the iPad Pro would be the only M4 device released this year.

However, it’s clear in the call that the questioner was asking for more information than Maestri was willing to provide. Apple obviously doesn’t want to simply leak its plans for the rest of the year, so although the comments imply there won’t be a new MacBook Pro this year, nothing is set in stone.