The macOS 15.2 update that was released earlier today came with a handful of new features, plus something unexpected: an apparently accidental reference to the upcoming M4 MacBook Airs. MacRumors reports that the “Mac16,12” and “Mac16,13” model identifiers reference 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 pretty much nailed 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 slated for updates throughout 2025.
But a reference in the current release of macOS could point to a launch sooner rather than later; the M4 Mac mini was referenced in a macOS update in mid-September around a month and a half before it was released. The M3 Airs came out in March this year, but Apple has been known to put out new Macs as early as January in recent years.
The M4 isn’t a gigantic update over the M3—we tested its performance in the M4 iMac, though a passively cooled MacBook Air version would likely be a bit slower at heavier workloads—but the fully enabled version does come with two extra CPU 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 screen), 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 did “update” the M2 and M3 versions from 8GB to 16GB of RAM without increasing their prices. The RAM increase will be useful for all kinds of things, though it could be a harbinger of increased memory requirements for upcoming Apple Intelligence features.
