An All-New Redesigned MacBook Pro (and More) | Everything We’re Expecting Apple to Announce Next Week
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Invites have just gone out for Apple’s second major event of the season, setting off a whole new round of speculation as to exactly what we can expect the company to unveil next week.
To be fair, it shouldn’t come as a surprise at all that Apple is holding another event this month, as the company has held a second fall event more often than not, and it’s almost always landed in October.
In fact, last year was the only really notable exception to that rule in recent years, since Apple held an unprecedented three events due to the pandemic pushing the iPhone 12 launch into October. This in turn pushed Apple’s debut of its new M1 Mac lineup into November.
However, with the iPhone 13 family, the Apple Watch Series 7, and two new iPads now behind us, Apple has fully cleared the stage for what will almost certainly be an event focused primarily on its Mac lineup, although we wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a few other surprises. Read on for 5 things that we’re hoping to see Apple unveil next week.
The All-New 14-inch MacBook Pro
The past two years have brought us one of the longest MacBook rumour cycles in recent Apple history, but that’s probably not surprising since if the rumours are even slightly true, we’re going to be seeing the first significant upgrade to Apple’s MacBook Pro lineup in over a decade.
Last fall, Apple fulfilled at least one major prediction by bringing its insanely powerful M1 chip to the MacBook Air and entry-level MacBook Pro, but it also failed to introduce any new designs.
The message, however, was clear: Apple wanted the power of Apple Silicon to speak for itself, and it would do so most loudly by putting all of that power into a series of MacBook models that otherwise looked identical to their Intel versions. An Apples-to-Apples comparison, if you will.
Now that that’s out of the way it’s time for Apple to lay the rest of its cards on the table, and every report we’ve heard suggests that the long-rumoured redesign is scheduled to arrive this fall, with the 13-inch MacBook Pro being retired in favour of a new 14-inch version that will also be powered by an even more wildly powerful M1X chip.
While some had previously speculated this chip would be called the “M2”, it looks like Apple is saving that for next year’s colourful new MacBook Air lineup. As with Apple’s A-series chips over the years, the “X” suffix will likely be reserved for the “Pro” versions of Apple Silicon in the Mac family, meaning that we might even see an “M2X” by this time next year.
The Redesigned 16-inch MacBook Pro
Alongside the 14-inch MacBook Pro, Apple is also expected to finally release a redesigned version of its 16-inch model — something that we’ve been hearing about for even longer.
In fact, Apple actually threw us a curveball with this one, when it released a 16-inch MacBook Pro near the end of 2019 that replaced the 15-inch model but had no sign of the new design. Now, two years later, it remains the oldest MacBook Pro still on the market, stuck on ninth-generation Intel silicon, even as Apple bumped up the rest of its Mac lineup to Intel’s 10th-generation chips in the months leading up to the arrival of the M1 chip.
So, to say this one is overdue for a refresh would be an understatement — some rumours even suggested Apple would release one last Intel version last fall, but it clearly didn’t want to diminish the arrival of Apple Silicon by even tacitly admitting that an Intel chip might still have some relevance. Instead, it froze its Intel MacBook lineup in time, leaving them to await the arrival of the much more powerful M1X.
The redesign of the 16-inch MacBook Pro is likely to be more than purely aesthetic, however, as multiple reports have suggested a return of multiple ports, expanding beyond the USB-C and Thunderbolt design that Apple has stuck with over the past several years. While it’s not entirely clear what ports will be coming back, it’s likely to include an SD card reader, possibly an HDMI port, and perhaps even a MagSafe power connector for faster and more convenient charging.
A More Powerful Mac mini
As Apple moves to its own M-series chips, it’s naturally working to push out Intel as quickly as possible, but as last year’s M1 MacBook Pro and Mac mini lineup showed, it’s clearly going to be doing that in stages.
While the MacBook Air family moved to the M1 chip in one fell swoop, the MacBook Pro and Mac mini maintained “higher-end” Intel versions alongside the new M1 models. We put that in quotes, however, because the entry-level M1 versions ran circles around their more premium counterparts.
However, the Intel MacBook Pro and Mac mini did offer a few things that the M1 version couldn’t seem to deliver: more RAM, more storage, and more Thunderbolt ports. The M1 Mac mini capped out at a 2TB SSD, 16GB of RAM, and only two Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports, while the Intel model had four Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports, and could be configured with up to 64GB of RAM and an 8TB SSD (although Apple still only offers it with a 2TB).
With the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models obviously pushing out their Intel predecessors, it seems likely that Apple wants to do the same with the Intel Mac mini, so there’s a good chance we’ll see an M1X Mac mini arrive next week too.
There have also been suggestions that the M1X Mac mini might get a new design, but we’re less sure about this one, since it would be odd to see that set alongside the current M1 Mac mini. Apple currently distinguishes the M1 and Intel variants by colour, with last year’s M1 model seeing a return to the 2014 silver finish that Apple abandoned with its 2018 models. It seemed like an odd decision at the time, but it makes sense if Apple was saving the Space Grey version for an upcoming higher-end M1X Mac mini.
This would leave the 27-inch iMac and the Mac Pro as the only remaining Intel machines in the Mac lineup, and while Apple could also choose to give the larger iMac the M1X treatment, we’ve heard nothing about that just yet, so we suspect it’s not slated until next year. As for the Mac Pro? Well, we imagine Apple has even bigger things in mind for that one.
macOS 12 Monterey
Although last month saw the release of most of Apple’s major operating system updates — iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, tvOS 15, and HomePod 15 — as usual macOS remains the outlier.
macOS 12 Monterey was announced at WWDC back in June, alongside iOS 15 and the rest, but as of now, it remains in beta. With new Macs coming next week, however, it’s safe to say we’ll get a release date for macOS 12 as well, since that will almost certainly be the version that ships on the new Macs.
The bulk of Monterey’s goodness will be focused on Apple’s M-series Macs, although Apple did relent on at least one new feature, conceding that it will be able to bring Live Text in Photos to recent Intel Macs, albeit in a slightly more limited way.
AirPods 3
While we wouldn't bet the farm on it, as next week’s event will almost certainly be all about the Mac family, there’s a non-zero chance that Apple could also use the opportunity to unveil a new set of third-generation AirPods.
We’ve been hearing rumours that these new AirPods are in the works for almost a year now, and many pundits expected that Apple would show them off during its California Streaming event last month. However, that came and went with barely a mention of the word “AirPods.”
That wasn’t entirely surprising, as Apple hasn’t given its headphones stage time since the original AirPods arrived back in 2016. Even the much more interesting AirPods Pro and AirPods Max were quietly slipped out via press release. However, the fact that Apple hasn’t even done that yet makes us wonder if it might prefer to talk about them during an event after all, in which case next week could be it.
Of course, it’s equally likely that they’re simply not quite ready yet, in which case it would be far too early to announce them via a press release. Even though Apple announced the Apple Watch Series 7 at last month’s event without being able to say specifically when it would be shipping, it’s fair to say that’s a much more significant product release than a new set of AirPods.