MacworldAccording to the latest reports, the new M4 MacBook Air is due to arrive within weeks and for Apple, it may not be soon enough. Its not that theres anything wrong with the current M3 MacBook Airits Apples best laptop. It offers a great combination of performance, portability, and price for the customer.The issue is with the M3 chip itselfagain, theres nothing wrong with it from a user standpoint. But behind the scenes, the M3 caused major issues with Apples Mac lineup, with the shortest lifespan of any Apple silicon chip.Its expensive to produceThe A17 Pro and M3 were Apples first 3nm chips. 3nm doesnt define a chips physical size but rather the fabrication process used to create the chips. Its a general term used to refer to a chips transistor density, speed, and power efficiency, and smaller is better. 3nm was a milestone for TSMC, which manufactures Apples chips, but as a first-gen chip, there were issues with the initial process. It was costly, and yields (the number of viable chips in a semiconductor production wafer) werelowerthan those ofprevious processes.Thats not ideal for Apple, a company that needs high volume and does everything to maintain steady profit margins. When it was released, the M3 MacBook Air was priced the same as the M2 MacBook Air, so the company likely took a hit on its margins. Since then, TSMC has implemented its enhanced 3nm fabrication process, which cut costs and produced higher yields. The enhanced 3nm process is used to make Apples M4 chips, which means the M4 MacBook Air will be cheaper to makeand Apple wont have the same yield issues.Skipping a beatThe M3s cost and yield issues most certainly came into play when Apple decided how to implement the chip throughout its products. For example, the release of the iPad Pro in May 2024 wasnt a surprise, but its M4 chip was. The previous iPad Pro had an M2, and the M3 MacBook Air had arrived just a couple of months earlier, so it was easy to conclude that the M3 would succeed the M2 in the iPad Pro. Apple also upgraded the M3 iMac to an M4 after just 12 months, quicker than its usual cadence.The M4 iPad Pro serves as proof that Apple wanted to move off the M3 as soon as possible and move to a chip that has a better production value. The M3 issue was so pressing that the company was willing to disrupt its pattern of introducing new M-series chips in the MacBook Prolikely a one-time hiccup that the company was willing to accept. Making the iPad Pro the first M4 product also allows TSMC to ramp up production of the chip at a moderate pacedemand for iPads isnt as high as for MacBooks.With the release of the first M5 Macs later this year, Apple will be back on track. The M5 is a 3nm chip but will be made using a new process that TSMC started testing last year.The M4 made its debut in the iPad Pro likely because the M3 is too costly.Brady Snyder / FoundryApples remaining updatesApple still uses the base-level M2 chip in the iPad Air and the Apple Vision Pro. The iPad Air is reportedly going to be updated soon with an M4 chipanother product that skips the M3. The Vision Pro is reportedly skipping both the M3 and M4, going with an M5 upgrade that may not happen until late this year or in 2026. The Mac mini, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro also all skipped the M3 entirely and we never even got an Ultra version of the chip.The M2 chip is also used in Apples cheapest laptop, the $999 M2 MacBook Air. Bloombergs Mark Gurman brought up this particular laptop in his recent report on Apples 2025 release schedule, and it appears that Apple will still offer this model for another year rather than moving to the similar M3 model. Apple moved the $999 model from the M1 to the M2, but like everything else, the M3 is chip non grata. The M2 is an enhanced 5nm chip, and since that chip is still going to be used in the Vision Pro, Apple the M2 MacBook Air justifies the M2 chips production. This also means that the $999 MacBook Air wont get upgraded until the M4 MacBook Air gets its chip upgrade to the M5 in 2026. At that time, Apple will discontinue the M2 model and move the base M4 MacBook Air to the $999 price point.What about the A17 Pro?The A17 Pro in the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max was actually Apples first 3nm chip; it was released a month before the M3. The A-series and M-series chips are basically the same, with the A chips used in the iPhone and low-end iPads, and the M chips in Macs and high-end iPads.Like the M3, the A17 Pro is made using TSMCs standard 3nm process. The current iPad mini has an A17 Pro and the upcoming 11th-gen iPad is rumored to get the same chip. If the A17 Pro is made with the same 3nm process, where are the chips for these new products coming from, if Apple is moving away from 3nm?The current iPad mini uses a binned A17 Pro.Dominik Tomaszewski / FoundryThats where chip binning comes into play. Remember those low yields during the standard 3nm process? Binning is where those rejected chips are taken and made useful by disabling processing cores, slowing down speeds, and other methods. Apple is likely using binned A17 Pros for these products. For example, the iPad minis A17 Pro has a 5-core GPU, which is a binned version of the iPhone 15 Pros A17 Pro that had a 6-core GPU.Binned chips are perfectly good chips, so theres no need to worry about performance. Also, it puts them to use instead of wasting them in the trash or figuring out a way to recycle them. These binned chips will be the last remnants of a chip cycle Apple is eager to move on fromand users benefit with better performance and power efficiency from the newer processes. So expect the iPad mini and 11th-gen iPad to get updates sooner than later as Apple puts the whole M3 nightmare behind it for good.