Next week will be a big one for Apple. Hot off the presses with its 7th-gen iPad mini, the Cupertino, California company is about to debut “an exciting week of announcements” starting Monday. Whatever could that mean? We already have a pretty good idea based on some reliable rumors. It’s going to be the next step in iOS 18, plus a sweeping reveal of all-new MacBook Pros, Mac Minis, and iMacs all sporting the M4 chip.
On Thursday, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing, Greg Joswiak, tweeted a terse message, telling Apple fans to “stay tuned.” You don’t have to be a Sherlock Holmes-level sleuth to tell it’s going to be new Mac products. The main image shown includes a neon glowing Finder icon that transforms into the Apple logo. Also, Joswiak wants us to “Mac” our calendars, so yes, Apple’s giving up the ghost hiding its future product plans, just in time for Halloween.
Mac (😉) your calendars! We have an exciting week of announcements ahead, starting on Monday morning. Stay tuned… pic.twitter.com/YnoCYkZq6c
— Greg Joswiak (@gregjoz) October 24, 2024
That statement doesn’t indicate an actual video event like Apple did last year when it debuted the M3 MacBook Pros. However, it’s more likely the company will drop these new MacBooks in press releases as it did the iPad mini last week. Apple has already made it clear we’ll get the official release of iOS 18.1 on Monday. Barring any surprises, the rest of that time will be taken up with Macs. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, normally the most reliable Apple rumormonger, reports we’ll see these products sometime at the end of October.
The rumor mill says Apple will have a lower-end 14-inch MacBook Pro with the base M4 chip. Then, the company will sell 16-inch versions with an M4 Pro and/or an M4 Max chip. Bringing up the rear may be a refreshed 24-inch iMac to replace the M3 version. All these devices will look very, very similar to the last two iterations, as much as we might wish the notch housing the webcam would finally bite the dust.
The most significant release next week will likely be the revised Mac Mini. It’s supposed to be smaller than the M2 version and support three USB-C ports and a HDMI connection. We’ll have to see if any Mac Mini models use the M4 Pro rather than the base M4.
The M4 chip entered the scene with the 2024 iPad Pro. It should be slightly more powerful than the M3 in laptop form, though we need to wait and see how well it does in benchmarks. The reason Apple’s making this new push is to help support a bigger NPU in its desktop products, better to support the upcoming Apple Intelligence features in macOS Sequoia.
Gurman wrote on Thursday that Apple plans to refresh the MacBook Airs with M4 chips as well. We might see those sometime between January and March, according to the Apple rumormonger. However, we may have to wait longer for a new, high-end Mac Studio.
