The highly anticipated new MacBook Pro models with Apple-designed silicon will arrive by this November, reporter Mark Gurman said in his most recent newsletter.
Gurman, who has a strong history of accurately reporting on new Apple products from sources with direct knowledge of Apple’s plans, writes that “some hiccups have led to production delays” for the new MacBook Pro computers, which analysts and consumers have been expecting any day now for most of the year.
Previous reports from the supply line suggest that the manufacturing of new Mini LED displays may be a bottleneck. Still, Gurman says that the new computers “should still go on sale by the time the current MacBook Pro hits its two-year anniversary.” Context suggests he is talking about the second anniversary of the 16-inch model, not the 13-inch one. That model went on sale on November 13, 2019.
This update is expected to be a major one. Most importantly, it will move the 16-inch MacBook Pro to Apple’s custom-designed silicon with a new, faster cousin to the M1 that hit the 13-inch model and other Macs late last year.
Some reports have called the new chip the M1X, and others have called it the M2. (In his newsletter, Gurman refers to it as the M1X.) In any case, it is expected to have eight high-performance CPU cores and two efficiency CPU cores. It is also expected to come in two variants, one with a 16-core GPU and another with 32 GPU cores.
For comparison, the M1 has four high-performance CPU cores and four efficiency CPU cores, and it comes in configurations with either seven or eight GPU cores.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro was updated with Apple’s M1 last year, but despite the chip’s strong performance, Apple treats the M1 as a low-end option, with the faster one described above destined for the 16-inch MacBook Pro—plus a new 14-inch MacBook Pro to replace the 13-inch model at the high end and possibly a new replacement for the 27-inch iMac.
Apple typically announces several products in the fall. In recent years, the company has held two events late in the year. One invariably focuses on the iPhone and Apple Watch (and this year, it may include a new AirPods refresh as well), while the other may touch on Macs or iPads. Usually, the iPhone event is held in mid-September, while the other event is later, in October or November.
