I want to emphasize it's unknown whether this is the successor to the M1 by major or minor version - but it's more likely that this is a production ramp-up for

I want to emphasize it's unknown whether this is the successor to the M1 by major or minor version - but it's more likely that this is a production ramp-up for the new Pro machines to be announced during WWDC and will likely ship later this summer. The successor to the M1, the lowest-end Apple Silicon running on Macs, is likely expected next year in a rumored redesign of the Macbook Air (whatever the CPU itself is called)