We’ve been anticipating the announcement of the next generation of Mac with the M4 series of chips alongside the long-awaited refresh of the iPad mini, and we may have a release date for those aforementined prodcuts. In this week’s Powered On newsletter from Mark Gurman, he expects Apple to have another event in late October to announce those products, and they will potentially launch on November 1.
To recap, Apple may announce the following Macs and iPads this month:
- 14-inch MacBook Pro with M4 chip
- 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros with M4 Pro and M4 Max chips
- 24-inch iMac with M4 chip
- Mac mini with M4 and M4 Pro chips
On the Mac side, we may expect all MacBook Pro models, including the base 14-inch model, to have three Thunderbolt 4 ports and the Space Black finish standard. The iMac’s included Magic accessories (Mouse/Trackpad/Keyboard) may switch from Lightning to USB-C. Finally, the Mac mini is expected to get an all-new smaller redesign since 2010.
For the iPads, the iPad mini was last updated in September 2021, so it has been just three years since. The iPad mini may be upgraded with either an A17 Pro, A18, or A18 Pro chip to support Apple Intelligence. I personally believe the iPad mini is going to get the base A18 chip since that chip is also used in the current iPhone 16 models. However, Gurman didn’t mention anything about the base iPad. That iPad was last updated in October 2022, and the 10th generation features the A14 chip. Other sources initially thought that the iPad would get updated this month; however, they’re now saying that the tablet may not see a hardware refresh until early next year. On the contrary, @ParkerOrtolani on X pointed out that Best Buy was attempting to clear out the inventory of the current iPad (10th generation). My theory is that Apple may be phasing out the 64GB configuration in favor of a new base 128GB (storage) configuration, which may allow Apple to reduce the price for the 256GB configuration further. So far, both the base iPad and iPad mini start at 64GB of storage, so we’ll also see the next iPad mini start at 128GB if Apple wants to finally increase the starting storage on the base models.As part of Apple’s master plan, Apple has been focusing on reducing the overall price of the iPad (10th generation) so that it can hold off until next spring to announce both the next iPad Air and the iPad (11th generation), which may be a significant upgrade that finally supports Apple Intelligence, and 2025 looks to be very promising too as we can expect these new products:
- MacBook Air models with M4 chip
- Mac Studio with at M4 Max/Ultra (around summer 2025)
- Mac Pro with M4 Ultra (around late 2025)
- iPhone SE 4 with Apple Intelligence
- Redesigned Magic Keyboard for iPad Air
- Next-generation AirTag
This month is going to be another exciting one for Apple, so stay tuned for more news as we get closer to Halloween.
