Apple could be planning another dramatic MacBook upgrade in a few months

Apple shook-up its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro series in early November when it unveiled the models powered by its own custom-designed chipset, known as M1. Like its iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch before it, the M1 system-on-a-chip (SoC) is tailored to only work with Apple’s operating system and reflects the Californian company’s priorities, such as security or battery life.
This is a dramatic departure from previous Mac hardware, which relied on Intel processors – the standard across the industry. While this ensures compatibility with almost every application (something that’s not the case with M1 devices), it means that Apple was beholden to Intel’s development timescale as well as its own priorities. In recent years, Intel has struggled to keep up with developments from Apple’s own chipset team, which produced the likes of the A14 Bionic system-on-a-chip inside the latest iPhone.
The proof that Intel was falling behind? Well, the M1-powered MacBook Air and MacBook Pro are both significantly faster than the previous Intel-fuelled models. And boast hours more battery life to boot. Of course, it’s not perfect. The M1 is only compatible with up to 16GB of RAM right now, so isn’t able to be used inside the likes of the iMac Pro or Mac Pro, which offer more memory in order to chew through intensive tasks demanded by video and photo editing professionals.
And there was another slight disappointment about the launch of the M1-powered MacBook Air and MacBook Pro – they look identical to the previous models. Yes, despite the vast improvements inside the notebooks… Apple didn’t change a thing about the exterior.
Well, aside from a tweak to the keyboard on the MacBook Air.
For those who hoped to see a dramatic change to the outside as well as the inside, Apple could have an answer in the pipeline. According to a new report from reliable blog Digitimes, Apple is gearing up to launch a new MacBook Pro in the second financial quarter of 2021, which runs from April to June.


