With a more efficient chip, Apple could also take the opportunity to shrink the 16-inch MacBook Pro's huge 100 WHr battery, reducing the 4.3-pound laptop's size and weight. And breadcrumbs left in some macOS betas suggest that Apple is working on laptops with higher-resolution screens that could obviate the need for the scaled, non-native resolution that all current MacBooks use out of the box.
But the new MacBook Pros could be a bit more adventurous, in the vein of the 24-inch iMac.įor example, persistent rumors claim that the 13-inch MacBook Pro could become a 14-inch MacBook Pro.
New MacBook Pros that replace the four-port 13-inch MacBook Pro and the 16-inch MacBook Pro are the thing we're most likely to get out of Monday's event.Īpple's first few Apple Silicon Macs were very conservative from a design standpoint-the MacBook Air, two-port MacBook Pro, and Mac mini all put new guts into computers that looked identical to the ones they were replacing. The M1X will also reportedly be available with either 16 or 32 GPU cores, compared to the seven or eight GPU cores included in the standard M1 (Apple could also improve graphics performance by increasing memory bandwidth, as it has done in some older iPad processors, but we haven't heard anything specific about that). Even eight performance cores should be able to outpace the 4-, 6-, 8-, and 10-core processors in today's Intel Macs. We'd also expect configurations with more than 16 GB of RAM, the current maximum for M1 Macs.Ī report from late last year suggested that a higher-performance chip destined for the MacBook Pros could include as many as 16 of Apple's performance cores, though more recent reporting suggests we could be looking at a chip with eight performance cores and two low-power efficiency cores. Without adapters or docks, the M1 can drive only two screens at once, including the computer's internal display. To replace the higher-end Intel Macs, the M1X will need to have just a bit more of everything compared to the M1: more processor cores, more GPU cores, and support for more monitors and Thunderbolt and USB ports. Recent Intel MacBook refreshes have struggled to provide one or the other of these things, but the M1 Macs managed to do both. But it's not hard to guess the general gist of what we'll be getting-new chips that improve upon the performance of the Intel processors they're replacing while also enabling a dramatic increase in battery life. Commonly referred to as the "M1X," the chip's exact specifications are a bit of a mystery, since Apple's chip designs are among its best-kept secrets. Just as the MacBook Air, the newest 13-inch MacBook Pro, the Mac mini, and the 24-inch iMac all use the same M1 chip, we expect the next round of Macs to share the same silicon as well. The short version is that Apple should finally be gearing up to show us high-performance Apple Silicon chips. We'll be following along live starting at 10 am Pacific on Monday, but in the meantime, we've gathered all the current rumors and put together a list of things we're most likely to see (as well as one or two things that aren't as likely). Further Reading “Unleashed”: Apple’s next, probably Mac-focused event happens October 18