A New MacBook Pro Could Arrive Today. Here’s What We’ve Heard

Apple’s March event, its first of 2022, is happening at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) today, and rumors indicate that the presentation will introduce a new Mac with an Apple-made M2 chip to succeed its M1. It’s possible that this Mac could be a new 13-inch MacBook Pro to follow 2021’s MacBook Pro 16 and MacBook Pro 14.

Follow along with our Apple event live blog here, and in the meantime, read on for everything we’ve heard so far about the rumored new 13-inch MacBook Pro. 

When will new MacBook Pros be announced?

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, a seasoned Apple watcher, estimated in February that the 13-inch MacBook Pro, succeeding the 2020 MacBook Pro, will be announced during today’s Apple event. (DigiTimes also says a new low-end model will be coming at the event, but it has a mixed accuracy record and Twitter leaker @dylantk’s account has disappeared since it initially posted some related rumors.) The rumor is bolstered by a recent EEC filing, which includes at least one new laptop, model A2681. Note that his prognostications don’t (yet) include a new MacBook Pro 14 or 16 for 2022.

Gurman wrote on Sunday that today’s event will feature at least one Mac with Apple Silicon, and if it’s not the MacBook Pro 13, the new laptop could launch in the first half of 2022.

An M2 chip?

The so-called M2 is being bandied about as an update to Apple’s first-gen M1 entry-level version, although we’ve heard no details beyond that. AppleTrack and others have said that the aforementioned specs would take away everything that makes a MacBook Pro a “pro” model, especially in light of speculation about a revamped Air, but I disagree. If the rumored M2 chip has specs somewhere between the M1 and M1 Max, say eight cores (with six or eight P cores), support for 32GB RAM, 14 GPU cores and no ProRes accelerator, it could serve quite well as a less expensive Pro for low-end content creation, such as most photo editing. Not everyone is editing video. And that still leaves room for a light, less powerful Air.

Most recently, Gurman wrote that a developer told him Apple has been testing multiple Macs with a new chip, and that this new chip’s specs match those of the M2 that Gurman predicted last year.

Touch Bar: Yes or no?

According to AppleTrack, a previously reliable source on Weibo indicates that the design of the new 13-inch MacBook Pro wouldn’t change. If it’s true, that means the Touch Bar is staying — a decision that won’t thrill everyone. It also means no updated ProMotion display.