According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, second-generation refreshes of the current 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro designs could arrive as soon as this fall. The updated laptop will have more powerful chips based on Apple’s M2, they claim.
In his weekly Power On newsletter, the journalist—who has previously accurately reported on upcoming Apple products—wrote that the MacBook Pro’s overall design is “likely to remain roughly the same,” beyond any major new visual changes or features. With the M2 generation of system-on-a-chip.
Gurman predicts that, not surprisingly, the two new MacBook Pro models will offer buyers a choice between the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips. These chips will be faster and more focused on heavy-duty workflows than the M2 shipped in the last few months in the 2022 refresh of the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro.
“Look for more focus on the graphics side,” Gurman writes. This means; The M2 offers a modest increase in CPU performance over its predecessor (10 to 20 percent depending on the task), but it provides up to 40 percent faster graphics performance.
A fall launch would suggest the MacBook Pro is adopting an iPhone-like annual update cadence. But it looks a bit more aggressive than we expected. The M1 Pro and M1 Max rolled out a full year after the first M1 machines, so if Apple keeps pace with its second-generation chips, we’d expect the MacBook Pro to be refreshed in 2023, not spring 2022.
Gurman admits it’s a possibility. “Given the ongoing supply chain challenges,” he writes, “it’s difficult to predict exactly when these will hit store shelves.” Still, despite Apple’s M1 rollout pacing, it’s reasonable that the laptops will arrive this fall. That’s in part because Apple may be faster to develop second-generation chips than the first.