The upcoming week will be a big one for Apple. Apart from the launch of the seventh generation of the iPad mini, Cupertino, California is gearing up for an “exciting week of announcements” starting on Monday. This will likely include the next step in the iOS 18 operating system, as well as a comprehensive unveiling of new MacBook Pros, Mac Minis, and entirely new iMacs all powered by the M4 chip.
On Thursday, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, Greg Joswiak, tweeted a brief message asking Apple fans to “stay tuned.” It’s pretty clear that this refers to new Mac products, as the main image displayed features a glowing neon Finder icon transitioning into the Apple logo. Joswiak also urges us to “Mac” our calendars, indicating that Apple is dropping the veil on its future product plans just in time for Halloween.
This statement doesn’t point to an actual video event like Apple did last year when they first launched M3 MacBook Pros. However, it’s likely that the company will drop the new MacBooks in press releases as they did with the iPad mini last week. Apple has already stated that we will get the official release of iOS 18.1 on Monday. Barring any surprises, the rest of that time will likely be spent with Mac devices. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, a usually reliable Apple rumor mill, has indicated that we will see these products sometime by the end of October.
Rumors suggest that Apple will have a 14-inch MacBook Pro with the core M4 chip. After that, the company will sell 16-inch versions with either the M4 Pro or M4 Max chip. The backside tease might be an updated 24-inch iMac to replace the M3 version. All these devices will look very similar to the last two iterations, though we wish the webcam-housing notch finally disappears.
The most crucial release next week is likely to be the revamped Mac Mini. It’s expected to be smaller than the M2 version and support three USB-C ports and an HDMI port. We’ll need to know if any Mac Mini models use the M4 Pro instead of the base M4.
The M4 chip made its debut with the 2024 iPad Pro. It should be slightly more potent than M3 in laptop form, although we need to wait to see how it fares in benchmarks. The reason behind Apple’s push for this new batch is to assist in supporting a larger NPU unit in its desktop products and better support upcoming Apple Intelligence features in the macOS Sequoia operating system.
Gurman wrote on Thursday that Apple plans to update the MacBook Airs with M4 chips as well. We may see that between January and March, according to Apple rumor mills. However, we may have to wait longer for a new and improved Mac Studio device.
