Apple's Disappointing MacBook Pro Delay
Apple is on course to release the new iPhone 17 family in September, but the outlook for MacBook Air and MacBook Pro fans is not as rosy. Apple looks to have delayed the release of the new macOS hardware into 2026.
MacBook Pro Launch Date Details
The new date comes from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Reporting on Apple's upcoming portfolio (including the long-suspected iPhone 17e), he notes that the upgraded MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops may not arrive until 2026.
Until now, the expectation has been that Apple would introduce the M5 —the next desktop classic Apple Silicon chipset—before the end of the year with new versions of the iPad Pro and MacBook Pro. This would be a similar path to the release of the Apple Silicon M4 last year, but not identical.
The M4 was launched ahead of Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in May 2024 and debuted inside the seventh generation of the iPad Pro almost immediately. That was followed in the fall with the M4 MacBook Pro, MacBook Pro Max and MacBook Pro Max.
Delaying The MacBook Pro
The Apple Silicon M5 has yet to show up in 2025. The Worldwide Developer Conference came and went with nary a sight of the new silicon. Neither has the next iPad Pro or the MacBook Pro. Many have been looking at the traditional October dates for the release of the MacBook M5 family, potentially with the iPad Pro arriving at the same time.
Gurman's report pushes back this launch date into 2026.
Apple has taken this route before, with the MacBook Pro M2 pushed back into January 2023. Unlike the iPhone, which has an almost mythical need to launch in the second week in September. Arguably, that's linked to the one-year contracts provided by networks, and there's no such historical support for buying laptops and desktops.
Keeping The MacBook Pro On An Annual Schedule
That gives Apple a little bit more of a cushion ot get things right rather than follow a strict schedule, at least for hardware. The annual updates across the operating systems does refresh the ecosystem every twelve months. With the increased demand for artificial intelligence and Apple's push to process as much data locally, the demands on computing power are climbing ever upwards. In part, that demand is driving the update.
It may not be as traditional as the locked-in September date, but with the operating system on an annual update cycle, and the Apple Silicon chipsets on a similar schedule, annual updates of the Mac hardware are inevitable.
Now read the latest MacBook Pro, iPhone, and Apple news in Forbes' weekly news digest...
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