Yesterday we got reports from Asia that the successor to the M1 is now in production. I’d expect this is the chip for the next round of Mac upgrades (MacBook Pro, big iMac, upper-tier Mac mini). I’d also expect this looks a lot like the M1, except it has more performance and graphics cores.

On the marketing side, I’d be surprised if they call it the M2. Presumably, they will make a successor to the M1 at some point as the current lower performance/more battery life chip for things like the MacBook Air. Naming the higher performance chip M2 would put them in a weird place where an M3 (for MacBook Air) could be slower than an M2 (for MacBook Pro). The more I think about this, the more convinced I am that the performance chip currently in production will get an entirely different name, like X1, allowing them to have two chips for Macs. (Or possibly three once the Mac Pro releases.)