New MacBook Air and Mac Studio Will Have Day One Software Update

Monday March 10, 2025 4:57 pm PDT by Juli Clover

New MacBook Air and Mac Studio users who are expecting one of the machines later this week will need to install a day one software update to upgrade to the latest version of macOS Sequoia.

macOS Sequoia Night Feature
The M4 ‌MacBook Air‌ and M4 Max and M3 Ultra ‌Mac Studio‌ models will come with older versions of macOS installed. The ‌MacBook Air‌ models appear to ship with macOS Sequoia 15.2, while the ‌Mac Studio‌ models have macOS Sequoia 15.3 installed.

Apple released macOS Sequoia 15.3.1 back on February 10, but the ‌Mac Studio‌ and ‌MacBook Air‌ were clearly prepared for launch before that update came out. macOS 15.3.1 is not available for the new machines just yet, but Apple is likely to release a new 24D2072 variant for the upcoming Macs ahead of their launch date.

Pre-orders for the M4 ‌MacBook Air‌, M4 Max ‌Mac Studio‌, and M3 Ultra ‌Mac Studio‌ began last week, and the first shipments are set to arrive to customers on Wednesday, March 12.

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Top Rated Comments

waterfta

21 months ago

This is the way the business works these days. Nothing is shipped as a finished product anymore. For good or bad.

It's a computer. Aren't software updates happening almost daily for any device you have? The fact that a computer has updates day 1 is not a revelation to anyone is it? The fact that MacRumors is putting this up as news is what is more ridiculous.

Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)

DPL145$

21 months ago

Threads like these always get me in trouble; especially when I ask 'what planet are you people from?" Dang--do you think that Apple announces a product then a batch of magical sky fairies produce tens of thousands of units and stock them all over the world in 24 hours? The computers (MacBook/Studio) went into production months ago...it takes time to produce the large number of units needed for initial inventory and have them shipped to the US...Production clearly started well before the current version of iOS was finalized--so yeah, you need to update to get the most recent version of iOS if you are buying the initial release hardware.

Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Smartuser

21 months ago

This is the way the business works these days. Nothing is shipped as a finished product anymore. For good or bad.

Oh wow, an update, the humanity!

Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)

svish

21 months ago

Not surprised to see a day one update. Think the devices were ready for launch sometime back. Also it is now quite common for Apple devices to get day 1 update. Prefer to have the latest version pre-installed but it is not a huge hassle to update.

Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Otwer22

21 months ago

All Apple products are released as public beta tests. This is not shocking.

How so? I would say this is more of a windows issue than a Mac, at least the Mac software update is for security reasons, more than bug fixes.

Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

asiga

21 months ago

I don't think this is new. In fact, IIRC, none of the Macs that I bought throughout the years came with the last OS update installed. I think I updated the OS in the first day even with the white G5 iMac.

Edit: Also, I don't expect too many bugs this time, because there are no new processors except for the M3 Ultra. When the M4 was released, there were quite a few reports of OS crashes with the M4 Pro and M4 Max, but all of that is fixed by now (at least I haven't found more complaints about M4-related crashes).

Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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New MacBook Air and Mac Studio Will Have Day One Software Update

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