Apple wasn’t short of new products in 2024, a year which marked the 40th anniversary of the launch of the very first Mac. For starters, the company introduced a new processor range in the form of the M4 chip, although there was a curveball in terms of the first device to get this CPU – a tablet (gasp).
Eventually, though, the M4 came to a bunch of Macs – where you’d have expected the chip to debut, really – and we ended the year with a clutch of new PCs, and the release of Apple Intelligence, the firm’s inevitable take on AI that was realized during the course of 2024. Read on for a recap of all the highlights – and indeed lowlights – of Apple’s year.
Vision Pro proves a head-turning headset – but stupidly expensive
Apple’s Vision Pro mixed-reality headset arrived in February 2024 (in the US) and early reaction was certainly excited about this all-in premium product, which was regarded as a bold move by Apple.
In our Vision Pro review, we noted that the main drawbacks were the weight of the headset, and of course, the fact that the price was weighty too – it’s a seriously expensive piece of kit. But we found the Vision Pro boasted a good deal of strong points, including powerful hardware, a slick design, and excellent eye and gesture tracking.
Furthermore, we observed that ‘spatial computing’ was no longer just a marketing term, but a very real next-gen computing experience which had arrived courtesy of Apple’s headset.
We heard tales of wobbly sales figures for the Vision Pro after the launch, although this was inevitably going to be something of a niche product given the price tag. (There were strong rumors of a cheaper model coming next year, though – well, relatively more affordable, we should say).
Shock M4 arrival on iPad
In March 2024, we had some laptops sprung on us, with the surprise launch of new MacBook Air 13-inch and 15-inch models with M3 silicon inside. While there was no M4 to be seen here, the next-gen chip turned up shortly afterwards – in an iPad, as rumors had suggested.
This represented a major shift for Apple, because before this, new M series processors had always arrived in Macs first, before being brought to the iPad tablet range.
The M4 came packing a second-gen (enhanced 3nm) architecture, and was upgraded to a 10-core CPU (with 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores) along with a 10-core GPU (for the top-tier M4 chip). That made for a big boost in performance over the M3, and in particular, Apple upgraded the NPU (neural engine) in a major way, pushing it to 38 TOPS – more than double the M3.
The M4 initially landing in an iPad, the ‘thinpossible’ OLED-toting iPad Pro to be precise, caused quite some waves when it happened in May 2024. Indeed, it wasn’t until much later in the year that the M4 SoC came to Macs – but when it did, Apple provided much more powerful variants of the M4.
New M4 Macs power onto the scene with Pro and Max variants
Early in the year, there were hints that 8GB of RAM wouldn’t be enough for the next generation of M4-powered Macs, and rumors soon abounded that Apple might equip these machines with 16GB at the entry-level across the board.
That speculation turned out to be true, thankfully, and when the iMac 24-inch, Mac mini and MacBook Pro models with the M4 chip were revealed late in October, they carried 16GB on all the base models. We can assume this will be true for all Macs going forward – even the existing MacBook Air M3 and M2 models got boosted to 16GB at the entry-level, with no price hike, in October – and the reason for it is Apple Intelligence (which we’ll come onto shortly – this is, of course, also the reason for that huge NPU boost with the M4 silicon).
The first new Macintosh (yes, don’t forget, that’s what Mac stood for originally) to arrive was the iMac 24-inch M4. Apple announced the machines one by one, during the days running up to Halloween, and the revamped iMac took the crown of the best all-in-one PC out there (admittedly from its predecessor with the M3 chip). It’s an excellent computer and the 16GB of RAM at entry-level was a welcome boost, plus there were some notable hidden upgrades here, too.
Next up was the eco-friendly Mac mini M4 which can be summed up as a compelling evolution of the tiny box of computing tricks that’s ‘smaller, faster, and better’ than its predecessor (which was already excellent).
The Mac mini received a sizeable performance boost from the M4 – or the more powerful M4 Pro as a second option – alongside a design that packed everything into a remarkably small size. It also benefited from a laudably repairable nature on the whole, while keeping the same price as the previous Mac mini, making the new device nothing short of superb value. In short, this was top-notch work from Apple (just don’t mention that power button).
Finally, Apple saved the MacBook Pro as the last launch packing the new M4 Max CPU for top-of-the-range performance, along with the M4 Pro. We were treated to MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch models, and while those new M4 chips were definitely a major boost, these professional-targeted laptops didn’t change their design much compared to the previous models.
Aside from the M4, we got faster Thunderbolt 5 ports, and some upgrades for the screen that might have passed you by (not OLED, of course) – but really, much of the MacBook Pro remained the same.
One key change, as we’ve already noted, was the move to 16GB of RAM all-round, which was long overdue for the entry-level MacBook Pro 14-inch. In fact, we can’t believe it took this long for Apple to unify the MacBook Pro range with an absolute minimum of 16GB of system memory across every single model.
The new M4 silicon also helped push the power of Mac gaming, a topic often discussed here at TechRadar, and as we noted in our MacBook Pro 14-inch M4 review, AAA gaming on a Mac has become a reality – with games looking nothing short of jaw-dropping on that nano-texture screen. No, the MacBook Pro is not supposed to be a gaming laptop, but it’s nice to be able to unwind with a session on your favorite shooter after a hard day’s rendering.
While all these new M4 Macs pretty much went down a storm, there was some controversy around one of the new peripherals introduced alongside them. The Magic Mouse (bundled with the iMac) still had the charging port on the underside, a design flaw that has long been complained about, but something Apple evidently isn’t willing to budge on. Another oddity from Apple here was the lack of Wi-Fi 7 support with these M4-packing cutting-edge PCs.
Mac sales slumped – and Apple was outgunned by Nvidia
Apple really needed that fresh Mac M4 blood, because sales of its PCs have been very much flagging in recent history. After poor sales figures in 2023, when April 2024 rolled around, it became clear that Mac sales dropped by a precipitous 27% in the preceding fiscal year. And the picture didn’t get any better in Q3 2024 when a 17.5% year-on-year drop in Mac shipments was estimated by an analyst firm.
At the same time, analyst predictions (yes, add seasoning) turned to forecasts of massive growth for Microsoft Copilot+ PCs that could ‘cause a crisis in Apple’s MacBook Pro sales’ in the future. And then Nvidia emphatically overtook Apple as the most valuable company in the world in November 2024 (that actually happened earlier in the year, too, for a brief time).
In short, Mac sales needed a good kick up the Magic Mouse charging port, and doubtless Tim Cook hopes that the new M4 Macs will deliver just that when we get to hear the sales figures for this final quarter of 2024.
Further potential financial wobbles also loomed as threats on the legal side with that iCloud ‘lock in’ lawsuit and the iPhone monopoly lawsuit giving Apple plenty to worry about there.
macOS Sequioa launched with iPhone Mirroring
Every year, we get a new macOS as well as new Macs from Apple, and macOS Sequioa was announced at WWDC 24 (alongside Apple Intelligence) in June, followed swiftly by its beta release (it arrived in July for the public). The finished version of macOS 15 turned up in September – without Apple Intelligence to start with (we’ll be onto that topic shortly) – packing quite a few new features, including one major highlight.
That was iPhone Mirroring which, as the name suggests, lets you use your Apple smartphone on the macOS desktop. You get a resizable window for your iPhone activity, and through this, you can receive iPhone notifications, reply to texts, use your apps and so on. For iPhone owners, it’s a fabulous addition to macOS 15, and we were seriously impressed by the functionality on offer.
There were other smart additions with macOS Sequioa, including a new Password app, some nifty storage tweaks and interface polishing, and work on Game Mode for faster frame rates that helped make Macs a more potent gaming force alongside the new M4 silicon as already observed.
Sequioa was well received in the main, even if the changes weren’t exactly jaw-slackening for those not interested in iPhones. That said, there were plenty of unfortunate niggling bugs with macOS 15, and quite a fuss around overzealous app permission pop-ups.
Apple finally joins the generative AI rat race
Apple finally jumped on the generative AI bandwagon with all the other tech behemoths after being a notable absence from this space in 2023.
Early chatter about Apple’s take on generative AI revolved around emphasizing privacy and tight security – in the face of concerns about other AI features, such as Microsoft’s Recall functionality in Windows 11 – which was a sensible angle for Apple to take. A ‘customer comes first’ approach, as Tim Cook cleverly pitched it.
As we already mentioned, Apple Intelligence wasn’t in macOS 15 (Sequioa) when it first launched, but came later in macOS 15.1 – at the end of October, when those M4 Macs appeared on the scene, complete with their peppier NPUs to accelerate AI workloads. As Apple made clear, it was only Macs that have Apple silicon which got support for Apple Intelligence – so Intel-powered computers were ruled out.
Apple Intelligence is generative AI in the same broad mold we see elsewhere. You can get the AI to write for you, or edit content, summarize text, create images from scratch and so forth. There are neat touches like an AI-powered focus (do not disturb) mode, and summarized notifications picking out, for example, key points from active group chats.
Still, Apple Intelligence is somewhat limited in this initial release, and reaction has been rather mixed – with some underwhelmed notes – but this is still early days, and Apple has some big plans for pushing the AI capabilities of macOS and iOS in the future, you can bet on that.
Concluding thoughts
All in all, it was a pretty busy year between the launch of Apple Intelligence, and the arrival of a host of excellent new Macs with that M4 chip. True, those Macs were more iterative than revolutionary – although the Mac mini did move the upgrade dial considerably more than Apple’s other launches – and it’s also true that the best is still yet to come from Apple Intelligence.
With Apple’s Mac sales clearly flagging at this point in time – and the company suffering a similar slump last year, too – we imagine Apple will be keen to drive forward with more meaningful changes, in terms of AI, and elsewhere for that matter.
Mac (and iPhone or iPad) owners will be expecting some serious improvements with Apple Intelligence, and Apple will inevitably keep up the pace with new silicon given that M5 Macs are already rumored for next year (but not that OLED-packing MacBook Pro, sadly). Will M4, or indeed M5-packing Macs help turn those flagging sales around? Apple better hope so, as a third year of decline in 2025 won’t be a good look at all.
