On Monday, Apple is set to begin a string of product announcements culminating in their “Apple Experiences” with press events simultaneously all over the world on Wednesday. Of those announcements, Apple is widely expected to announce a new low-cost MacBook powered by the iPhone 16 Pro’s A18 Pro chip, and will presumably resurrect the “MacBook-no-second-word” brand. Oh, and it’s widely expected to come in Good Colors 🤩.
Theres a lot of speculation regarding how configurable this product will be with respect to chip-binning, RAM, and storage. I don’t think this computer will be any more configurable than the iPhone 16 Pro was: storage options starting at 128 GB and up to 1 TB. I just don’t think Apple can afford to hit a low price, and go about making new configurations of that A18 Pro SoC. That also means it’ll only have a measly 8 GB of RAM, the minimum needed to support Apple Intelligence. This machine may be small and fun, but it may not be a good Mac.
Otherwise, the announcements are expected to be rather milquetoast. Chip-bumps for most products getting an update. There are some on-going rumors that the M5 Pro and Max will have some new-to-Apple 2.5D packaging updates to further separate CPU and GPU thermals and gain performance. This may be interesting considering the gains Apple Silicon had by allowing CPU and GPU to pull from a single pool of RAM. Does one or the other of them slow if the CPU and GPU are no longer on the same die?
Lastly, on a personal note, I am *really* hoping for a new Apple TV. There doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm for this product, but I have an original Apple TV 4K model that is feeling awfully old now, and I just sent the remote through the wash and killed it. It could use an upgrade, and I think my only chance its updated this week is if it is *such* a small upgrade that its flown under the radar of all the usual leaks in the supply chain.
At Ken 