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5 Reasons to Wait for Next Year's MacBook Pro

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Apple in October 2024 overhauled its 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models, adding M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chips, Thunderbolt 5 ports on higher-end models, display changes, and more. That's quite a lot of updates in one go, but if you think this means a further major refresh for the MacBook Pro is now several years away, think again.

M6-MacBook-Pro-Feature-1.jpg

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has said he expects only a small performance boost for the 2025 MacBook Pro models with the introduction of new M5 chips, while the "true overhaul" for the laptop will come in 2026. So if you are planning to skip this year's MacBook Pro, or you're just plain curious about what's two generations away, here are five big changes rumored to come to Apple's premium laptop line next year.

OLED Display
Goodbye, mini-LED
Several rumors have indicated that the first MacBook Pro models with OLED displays will be released in 2026. Research firm Omdia claims Apple is "highly likely" to introduce new MacBook Pros featuring OLED displays next year, while display analyst Ross Young has said that Apple's supply chain is expected to have sufficient notebook-optimized OLED display production capacity in 2026 to bring the technology to MacBook Pro. Compared to current MacBook Pro models that use mini-LED screens, the benefits of OLED technology would include increased brightness, higher contrast ratio with deeper blacks, improved power efficiency for longer battery life, and more.

Thinner, Lighter Laptop
Major Redesign
The switch to OLED displays could allow future MacBook Pro models to have a thinner design, and rumors suggest that is indeed what Apple intends. When the M4 iPad Pro was unveiled in May 2024, Apple touted it as the company's thinnest product ever. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman subsequently called the iPad Pro the "beginning of a new class of Apple devices," and said Apple was working to make the MacBook Pro thinner over the "next couple of years." Apple is reportedly focusing on delivering the thinnest possible device without compromising on battery life or major new features.

Notably, the MacBook Pro got thicker and heavier with its most recent redesign in 2021. A major highlight was the reintroduction of several ports that were removed in previous iterations in favor of chassis thinness. How Apple will make its 2026 MacBook Pro thinner without removing the functionality it reintroduced fairly recently is the big question.

Punch-Hole Camera
No More Notch
If you are fed up of the notch intruding on your Mac display, here's some good news. Apple plans to remove the notch from the MacBook Pro in 2026, according to a roadmap shared by research firm Omdia. The roadmap indicates that 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models released next year will have a hole-punch camera at the top of the display, rather than the notch we've become accustomed to. A MacBook Pro without a notch would offer additional visible pixels on the screen, creating a more uninterrupted and cohesive display design.

5G Modem
Cellular Connectivity
Early in 2025, Apple plans to introduce the custom-built 5G chip that it's had in the works for years now. The modem chip will be added to the iPhone SE, low-cost iPad, and iPhone 17 "Air," giving Apple an opportunity to test the technology before rolling it out to flagship devices. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple will then consider bringing cellular connectivity to the Mac lineup for the first time. The company is said to be "investigating" the possibility of adding a second-generation modem chip to a future Mac as soon as 2026, teasing the potential for a cellular MacBook Pro in the same year. The first Apple modem chip will be limited to sub-6GHz 5G speeds, but the second-generation version will support faster mmWave technology, according to Gurman.

M6 Series Chip
2nm Process
Assuming Apple follows a similar timeframe to its M4 chip rollout, Apple will update the MacBook Pro lineup in October this year with M5 series chips. The chips will be manufactured with TSMC's third-generation 3nm process, known as N3P, resulting in typical year-over-year performance and power efficiency improvements compared to the M4 series of chips. M6 chips, on the other hand, could adopt a completely new packaging process for Apple's 2026 MacBook Pro models.

According to one rumor, Apple's A20 chip in next year's iPhone 18 models will switch from the previous InFo (Integrated Fan-Out) packaging to WMCM (Wafer-Level Multi-Chip Module) packaging. WMCM integrates multiple chips within the same package, allowing for the development of more complex chipsets. Components such as the CPU, GPUs, DRAM, and Neural Engine would therefore be more tightly integrated. While we don't know for sure, this could see Apple develop the M6 using the 2nm process while taking advantage of WMCM packaging to make even more powerful versions of its custom processor.

Article Link: 5 Reasons to Wait for Next Year's MacBook Pro
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/01/08/5-reasons-to-wait-for-next-years-macbook-pro/
Definitely keeping my M1 Max until at least this point - I want Face ID, Cellular and OLED. The M6 and later are way more than I will need for a while, although I am starting to feel my RAM limit a very small bit (have 32 now, so I want 64 at least next time I upgrade).
 
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"Next year" could easily be November 2026 (certainly by the time DHL delivers), which feels a long way off!

Sounds like some great updates otherwise!
 
I started using MacBooks in 2005 and they were never good enough to play video games.

Recently I realized you can install Parsec in your desktop Windows computer at home and give access to your laptop. For $999 you can get a good one with a GeForce RTX 4060.

So I will keep my MacBook Air M2 since it’s fast for everything else, it’s lightweight, battery last the whole day… when I want to play video games, I can connect to my desktop at home or even somewhere else if the internet connection is good.

No reason to buy a MacBook Pro for $4-5k to be able to play games at medium settings.
 
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Mark Gurman sits in his top-of-the-line Razor gaming chair, alone in his office. He needs an article out, urgently, the deadline rapidly approaching. His entire body tenses as he forces out a long, slow fart. It is delicately but efficiently guided by the chair's custom, built-in fart duct, through the integrated warming coils, around and directly back up to the bulky mask that covers his mouth, sitting slightly uncomfortably below his Vision Pro. He inhales deeply, his eyes taking on a cloudy shade as he briefly descends into a delirious, hallucinatory state, his Vision Pro losing the ability to track his gaze.

Suddenly a new and alarming prophecy blazes in his mind, snapping him from his stupor, back to his office: "a small performance boost for the 2025 MacBook Pro models with the introduction of new M5 chips, while the true overhaul for the laptop will come in 2026"
 
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zedsdead said:
Definitely keeping my M1 Max until at least this point - I want Face ID, Cellular and OLED. The M6 and later are way more than I will need for a while, although I am starting to feel my RAM limit a very small bit (have 32 now, so I want 64 at least next time I upgrade).
Click to expand...
Genuine question: what are you doing that 32GB feels constrained?

When I specced out my M2 Mac Studio (Ultra) I really wanted to go all out - but I spent quite a bit of time trying to push the various pro apps I used (loads of heavyweight virtual instruments in Logic, Audio and Video processing and encoding, some fairly heavy ML processing, C++ Compilation - although I don't have any huge projects - so that may have made a difference). I could never get it to use much past 24GB. So I went with 64GB instead of 128 ... and when I traded in for an M3 MacBook Pro (Max) I went with 48GB. I've yet to feel constrained. Interested to know what people are doing that needs much more.
 
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Apple in October 2024 overhauled its 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models, adding M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chips, Thunderbolt 5 ports on higher-end models, display changes, and more. That's quite a lot of updates in one go
Click to expand...

Sorry?
 
SexExpert said:
Mark Gurman sits in his top-of-the-line Razor gaming chair, alone in his office. He needs an article out, urgently, the deadline rapidly approaching. His entire body tenses as he forces out a long, slow fart. It is delicately but efficiently guided by the chair's custom, built-in fart duct, through the integrated warming coils, around and directly back up to the bulky mask that covers his mouth, sitting slightly uncomfortably below his Vision Pro. He inhales deeply, his eyes taking on a cloudy shade as he briefly descends into a delirious, hallucinatory state, his Vision Pro losing the ability to track his gaze.

Suddenly a new and alarming prophecy blazes in his mind, snapping him from his stupor, back to his office: "a small performance boost for the 2025 MacBook Pro models with the introduction of new M5 chips, while the true overhaul for the laptop will come in 2026"
Click to expand...
you are an expert in several domains i would say :)
 
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jambon said:
"Next year" could easily be November 2026 (certainly by the time DHL delivers), which feels a long way off!

Sounds like some great updates otherwise!
Click to expand...
Knowing how Apple has been over the last several years, watch 2026 become 2027.
That’s why the idea of waiting for a computer that’s *checks notes* 22 months away at the minimum makes no sense.
Also, I think it very unlikely we get all of these things at the same time, Apple likes to spread things out.
For example, maybe the OLED comes a year before the thinner design, and then the thinner design comes as a year before the 5G modem.
And before long, you’re still waiting for a new laptop in 2030.
 
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All fine and dandy but we are getting to the point that unless you are designing a bridge across the Pacific Ocean and making and editing 8K video about your efforts on the same device, your day to day needs are far exceeded by the power of the device you are using to watch cat videos most of the time
 
So, if there's a change to the design of the body, keyboard etc we know that 1st gen models often come with issues. The last iteration of any design is often the best in terms of reliability and absence of major flaws. I'm thinking of the 2015 MBP before the advent of the 2016 keyboards and the like.
There was also the flexgate saga. My still new M3 MacBook Air has been the most complete package I've yet owned. All of the previous MacBook Pros I owned had issues, mostly small but annoying.
 
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I'd also expect Silicon-Carbon batteries for higher battery densities, meaning thinner & lighter laptops if they stick with the 100Watt-hour limit for airplane flights.
 
The "notch" has always been idiotic to me. It's simply lazy engineering and a poor design choice. Any intrusion into an already limited laptop display, whether a notch or a hole punch, is unacceptable. Apple should be putting a FaceID capable camera into the bezel like PC laptop manufacturers have been doing for YEARS now. If I had to use the MacBook's display as my primary, I probably wouldn't own a MacBook at all. I'm fortunate to have full-sized monitors at all my work locations, though, so the notch doesn't bother me as much. Seriously....who thought this was a good idea?!?
 
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