Apple

It's just what they did. M2 was pushed one quarter internally and came out ~3 months later than it originally was planned to.

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The M1 family had an unusually extended run due to M2 not releasing when it was widely expected to.

M1 Family:

M1 ships November 2020

M1 Pro/Max ships October 2021

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M2 Family:

Widely expected October 2022 both by the rumor mill and by Apple themselves and ended up pushing out to January 2023 for an undisclosed reason, likely supply chain issues. Up until this point, M1 family was the flagship offering from November 2020 all the way to January 2023 which is quite a long time.

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M3 Family:

Apple has been working hard on the 3nm process and following their internal roadmap and in October 2023 is ready to ship notably better chips, as well as feeling pressure to keep on top of the competition (first mass market 3nm chip family, and more performance) - it makes very good business sense to adhere to their original roadmap and refresh the chips to 3nm designs, add a new color, and entice more Mac sales and overall excitement when the market consensus with M2 was that it was a somewhat of a smaller update to the M series chips.

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M2 Pro is still an insane chip now at an even better value.