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Waiting for the Perfect MacBook Pro? 2026 Might Be the Year

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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 the biggest changes rumored to be coming 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: Waiting for the Perfect MacBook Pro? 2026 Might Be the Year
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/04/10/2026-perfect-macbook-pro-rumors/
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Welcome back thin design :) . I'm still on an Intel MBP 13 from 2020 and it's so much more stylish then all these M-based boxy MBP's. Or wait, it actually looks like the MBA from 2025. So much power in today's phones and laptops that we actually don't need. Apple to me should be all about design and build quality. So much looking forward to then thin and light trend that we now finally see rumored for both MBP and iPhone 17. Just hope that my Intel MBP will survive until 2026.
 
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Kylo83 said:
Trusting Apple I feel this big refresh will be delayed until 2029 or something
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TechRunner said:
“Might” be the year. So 2028 “might” be the year, too.
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Apple has historically had a new MBP design every 4-5 years. This report lines up.


nt5672 said:
With all of the ignored software bugs, does new hardware even matter at this point?
Click to expand...
Yes. Hardware and software are different teams and can be both improved simultaneously.
 
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When there's an Apple product I really like and I hear "new version" I just automatically assume they'll ruin it. It wasn't always that way with Apple, but it has been lately.

I love my M1 Pro 14" MBP.

I love that it's over-engineered with two fans that it probably doesn't need because they barely ever come on and are more than the M1 Pro needs. I love that it's relatively thick and has no risk of overheating. I love that it has an SD card slot for expandable storage. Given that they haven't updated the SD card slot specification with MBP spec bumps, I'm guessing the new thinner model will get rid of it altogether.

I love gorgeous mini-LED display with no risk of burn-in. I love the speakers that don't sound like they come from a laptop.

They're going to mess it up. That's just my gut feeling. I had years with thinner MBPs and they were not in any way as nice as this laptop. With my previous MBPs, with regard to thermals, it seems like they wanted to push the envelope and give it just not quite enough room to breathe and work efficiently without throttling and quietly and cool. The ethos of the current models is exactly the opposite, and it's a breath of fresh air.
 
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Perfection changes. I bet my record collection that not even Apple considers the new MacBook to be so perfect that there will never be another one afterwards. That much I would like to say about the headline.
 
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aevan said:
Visually, I hate those camera holes. I hope they go for something that looks like a Dynamic Island instead.

Also, notch is definitely not a big deal.
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I mean, a punch hole in the menu bar is just a tiny "free floating" notch . I think notifications in the center of your Mac's display, forcing third party apps to move the menus around the menu bar because a notification appeared, could be too visually distracting, and very likely to be poorly implemented by devs (and highly criticized by them if Apple does the the shuffling without letting them control their own menu bar layout). If MacOS adopted a "Static Island" where the field around the camera was reserved and only changed with user input (Either clicking or even through an Attention Awareness feature with the help of the FaceID camera), the software would draw the notch instead of it being cut out permanently. You'd get the best of both worlds that way, and would be nice for full screen apps/non-letterboxed video 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
I would expect some serious delays due to geopolitical turmoil. There's very little Apple can do about the current M4 or even the soon-to-be-released M5 lines. But I'll bet they are actively managing Plan B, C, D with every product line (2026 and beyond) with different locations in order to minimize tariffs. That, along with the complications of a new chip design will probably push this (and every pipeline) out a bit.

At least you can say the current lineup is outstanding. If we were still on Intel Macs with fans blowing loudly on every Teams call...that would be a very different predicament.
 
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I don't care about thin, but I do care about weight. And the current MBPs are much heavier (around 50% heavier) than the Intel ones released in 2018. Also, the notch is one of the worst things Apple has ever done, and I don't see the "island" as a solution, because it also interferes with the menu bar. Bezels should be back, they give you a real full screen for you to use, and besides, the wider and taller the MBP, the better, as it helps you concentrate more in your work and avoid distractions from the background. But of course, when you market the MBP towards teens, you'll only sell if the MBP looks like an iPhone.
 
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swingerofbirch said:
When there's an Apple product I really like and I hear "new version" I just automatically assume they'll ruin it. It wasn't always that way with Apple, but it has been lately.

I love my M1 Pro 14" MBP.

I love that it's over-engineered with two fans that it probably doesn't need because they barely ever come on and are more than the M1 Pro needs. I love that it's relatively thick and has no risk of overheating. I love that it has an SD card slot for expandable storage. Given that they haven't updated the SD card slot specification with MBP spec bumps, I'm guessing the new thinner model will get rid of it altogether.

I love gorgeous mini-LED display with no risk of burn-in. I love the speakers that don't sound like they come from a laptop.

They're going to mess it up. That's just my gut feeling. I had years with thinner MBPs and they were not in any way as nice as this laptop. With my previous MBPs, with regard to thermals, it seems like they wanted to push the envelope and give it just not quite enough room to breathe and work efficiently without throttling and quietly and cool. The ethos of the current models is exactly the opposite, and it's a breath of fresh air.
Click to expand...
I love mine too. But it’s about 20% too thick and heavy, and I’d love OLED.
 
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I have a 2022 M1 Max MacBook Pro and it's been an absolute beast of a machine (though Apple is telling me that it's going to need a battery service... thank goodness for Apple Care+).

I feel like the notch was designed with the intention of Apple adding Face ID to their laptops. And clearly that hasn't happened yet, or is low priority, or their research showed that people didn't actually want it. So if Face ID is now off the table, I can see a use case for a hole punch camera or under-display camera.

One challenge with the thinner-and-lighter approach is that the thin lid of laptops already strains what the cameras can do optically. The quality of the built-in cameras is abysmal compared to even the front camera on the iPhone. I almost exclusively use Continuity Camera with my MBP any time I have to make a video call, because the quality is SO MUCH BETTER than the camera built into the MBP's screen.

My only real wish is that Apple recesses the key caps by a fraction of a millimetre, and/or adds an oleophobic coating to the screen, because key cap imprints on the screen are still an issue, and they make me crazy.
 
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Awwwwww, perfect Macbook Pro?

- 5G Connectivity, finally 👍
- OLED panel, don't like, degrades over time 👎
- Thinner, Lighter Laptop 🥱
- Punch-Hole Camera 🥱
- M6 Series Chip, with massive AI improvement? 👍

Precondition #1 for a perfect MBP: Replaceable/Upgradeable SSD like found in modern Mac Mini.

Nevertheless for an AI machine with 128GB you'll have to sell house, wife and your firstborn son.
 
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swingerofbirch said:
When there's an Apple product I really like and I hear "new version" I just automatically assume they'll ruin it. It wasn't always that way with Apple, but it has been lately.

I love my M1 Pro 14" MBP.

I love that it's over-engineered with two fans that it probably doesn't need because they barely ever come on and are more than the M1 Pro needs. I love that it's relatively thick and has no risk of overheating. I love that it has an SD card slot for expandable storage. Given that they haven't updated the SD card slot specification with MBP spec bumps, I'm guessing the new thinner model will get rid of it altogether.

I love gorgeous mini-LED display with no risk of burn-in. I love the speakers that don't sound like they come from a laptop.

They're going to mess it up. That's just my gut feeling. I had years with thinner MBPs and they were not in any way as nice as this laptop. With my previous MBPs, with regard to thermals, it seems like they wanted to push the envelope and give it just not quite enough room to breathe and work efficiently without throttling and quietly and cool. The ethos of the current models is exactly the opposite, and it's a breath of fresh air.
Click to expand...
I love my 14” M1Pro MBP too. But I’d love it even more if it was lighter and thinner and had an extra USBC port.
 
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